Page 14. "And, hovering, round it often did a raven fly."

From a short MS. poem read to me when an undergraduate, by my schoolfellow and friend, Charles Farish, long since deceased. The verses were by a brother of his, a man of promising genius, who died young.

Page 20.

"The Borderers."

Caux,' about a league from Yvetot, close to the church, and in the burial-ground of Allonville.

"The height of this Tree does not answer to its girth; the trunk, from the roots to the sumthis cone is hollow throughout the whole of its mit, forms a complete cone; and the inside of height.

inspires.

The lower part of its hollow trunk has been transformed into a Chapel of six or seven feet in diameter, carefully wainscotted and paved, and an open iron gate guards the humble Sanc

tuary.

twists round the body of the Tree. At certain "Leading to it there is a staircase, which seasons of the year divine service is performed in this Chapel.

Such is the Oak of Allonville, in its state of nature. The hand of Man, however, has endeavoured to impress upon it a character still more interesting, by adding a religious This Dramatic Piece, as noticed in its title-feeling to the respect which its age naturally page, was composed in 1795-6. It lay nearly from that time till within the last two or three months unregarded among my papers, without being mentioned even to my most intimate friends. Having, however, impressions upon my mind which made me unwilling to destroy the MS., I determined to undertake the responsibility of publishing it during my own life, rather than impose upon my successors the task of deciding its fate. Accordingly it has been revised with some care; but, as it was at first written, and is now published, without any view to its exhibition upon the stage, not the slightest alteration has been made in the conduct of the story, or the composition of the characters; above all, in respect to the two leading Persons of the Drama, I felt no inducement to make any change. The study of human nature suggests this awful truth, that, as in the trials to which life subjects us, sin and crime are apt to start from their very opposite quali ties, so are there no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion of the understand ing to which they may carry their slaves. During my long residence in France, while the Revolution was rapidly advancing to its extreme of wickedness, I had frequent opportunities of being an eye-witness of this process, and it was while that knowledge was fresh upon my memory that the Tragedy of "The Borderers' was composed.

Page 52.

"The Norman boy." "Among ancient Trees there are few, I believe, at least in France, so worthy of attention as an Oak which may be seen in the 'Pays de

"The summit has been broken off many trunk, of the diameter of a very large tree, and years, but there is a surface at the top of the from it rises a pointed roof, covered with slates, with an iron Cross, that rises in a picturesque in the form of a steeple, which is surmounted manner from the middle of the leaves, like an ancient Hermitage above the surrounding Wood.

tion appears, which informs us it was erected
"Over the entrance to the Chapel an Inscrip-
by the Abbé du Détroit, Curate of Allonville
dedicating it "To Our Lady of Peace.
in the year 1606; and over a door is another,

Vide 14 No. Saturday Magazine.
Page 94.

"To the Daisy."

Flower, were written in the year 1802; which This Poem, and two others to the same is mentioned, because in some of the ideas, though not in the manner in which those ideas are connected, and likewise even in some of the expressions, there is a resemblance to passages in a Poem (lately published) of Mr Montgomery's, entitled, a Field Flower. This being said, Mr Montgomery will not think

Several years after the event that forms the subject of the Poem, in company with my friend, the late Mr Coleridge, I happened to fall in with the person to whom the name of Benjamin is given. Upon our expressing regret that we had not, for a long time, seen upon the road either him or his waggon, he said:"They could not do without me; and as to the man who was put in my place, no good could come out of him; he was a man of no ideas."

The fact of my discarded hero's getting the horses out of a great difficulty with a word, as related in the poem, was told me by an eye

NOTES.

The

might be entitled to mercy from his youth.—
But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and
savage one, the Family of Clifford had done
enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred
of the House of York: so that after the Battle
of Towton there was no hope for them but in
flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of
the Poem, was deprived of his estate and ho-
nours during the space of twenty-four years;
all which time he lived as a shepherd in York-
shire, or in Cumberland, where the estate of
his Father-in-law (Sir Lancelot Threlkeld) lay.
He was restored to his estate and honours in
the first year of Henry the Seventh. It is re-
corded that, "when called to Parliament, he
behaved nobly and wisely; but otherwise came
seldom to London or the Court; and rather de-
lighted to live in the country, where he repaired
several of his Castles, which had gone to decay
during the late troubles." Thus far is chiefly
collected from Nicholson and Burn; and I can
add, from my own knowledge, that there is a
tradition current in the village of Threlkeld and
its neighbourhood, his principal retreat, that,
in the course of his shepherd-life, he had ac-
quired great astronomical knowledge. I cannot
conclude this note without adding a word upon
the subject of those numerous and noble feudal
Edifices, spoken of in the Poem, the ruins of
some of which are, at this day, so great an
ornament to that interesting country.
Cliffords had always been distinguished for an
honourable pride in these Castles; and we have
seen that, after the wars of York and Lancaster,
they were rebuilt; in the civil wars of Charles
the First they were again laid waste, and again
restored almost to their former magnificence by
the celebrated Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of
Pembroke, &c. &c. Not more than twenty-
five years after this was done, when the estates
of Clifford had passed into the Family of Tuf-
ton, three of these Castles, namely, Brough,
Brougham, and Pendragon, were demolished,
and the timber and other materials sold by
Thomas Earl of Thanet. We will hope that,
when this order was issued, the Earl had not
consulted the text of Isaiah, 58th chap. 12th
verse, to which the inscription placed over the
gate of Pendragon Castle, by the Countess of
Pembroke (I believe his Grandmother), at the
time she repaired that structure, refers the
reader:-"And they that shall be of thee shall
build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up
the foundations of many generations; and
thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach,
The Earl
the restorer of paths to dwell in."
of Thanet, the present possessor of the Estates,
with a due respect for the memory of his an-
cestors, and a proper sense of the value and
beauty of these remains of antiquity, has (I am
told) given orders that they shall be preserved
from all depredations.

Page 126.

"And both the undying Fish that swim

Through Bowscale-Tarn," &c.

501

It is imagined by the people of the country that there are two immortal Fish, inhabitants of this Tarn, which lies in the mountains not far from Threlkeld.-Blencathara, mentioned before, is the old and proper name of the mountain vulgarly called Saddleback. Page 126.

"Armour rusting in his Halls

On the blood of Clifford calls." The martial character of the Cliffords is well known to the readers of English history; but it may not be improper here to say, by way of comment on these lines and what follows, that besides several others who perished in the same manner, the four immediate Progenitors of the Person in whose hearing this is supposed to be spoken all died in the Field.

Page 130.
"Dion."

This poem began with the following stanza, which has been displaced on account of its detaining the reader too long from the subject, and as rather precluding, than preparing for, the due effect of the allusion to the genius of Plato :

Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing
O'er breezeless water, on Locarno's lake,
Bears him on while proudly sailing
He leaves behind a moon-illumined wake:
Behold! the mantling spirit of reserve
Fashions his neck into a goodly curve;
An arch thrown back between luxuriant wings
Of whitest garniture, like fir-tree boughs
To which, on some unruffled morning, clings
A flaky weight of winter's

purest

snows!

Behold!-as with a gushing impulse heaves
That downy prow, and softly cleaves
The mirror of the crystal flood,
Vanish inverted hill, and shadowy wood,'
And pendent rocks, where'er, in gliding state,
Winds the mute Creature without visible Mate
Or Rival, save the Queen of night
Showering down a silver light,
From heaven, upon her chosen Favourite!

"In the Vale of Grasmere, by the side of the old highway leading to Ambleside, is a gate which, time out of mind, has been called the Wishing-gate."

Having been told, upon what I thought good authority, that this gate had been destroyed, and the opening, where it hung, walled up, gave vent immediately to my feelings in these stanzas. But going to the place some time after, I found, with much delight, my old favourite unmolested.

Page 155.

"Something less than joy, but more than dull content."

COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA.

Page 166.

"Wild Redbreast," &c. This Sonnet, as Poetry, explains itself, yet the scene of the incident having been a wild wood, it may be doubted, as a point of natural history, whether the bird was aware that his attentions were bestowed upon a human, or even a living, creature. But a Redbreast will perch upon the foot of a gardener at work, and alight on the handle of the spade when his hand is half upon it-this I have seen. And under my own roof I have witnessed affecting instances of the creature's friendly visits to the chambers of sick persons, as described in the verses to the Redbreast, page 84. One of these welcome intruders used frequently to roost upon a nail in the wall, from which a picture had hung, and was ready, as morning came, to pipe his song in the hearing of the Invalid, who had been long confined to her room. These attachments to a particular person, when marked and continued, used to be reckoned ominous; but the superstition is passing away.

Page 172.

The following is extracted from the journal of my fellow-traveller, to which, as persons acquainted with my poems will know, I have been obliged on other occasions:

mahogany desk; opposite the window a clock, which Burns mentions, in one of his letters, having received as a present. The house was cleanly and neat in the inside, the stairs of stone scoured white, the kitchen on the right side of the passage, the parlour on the left. In the room above the parlour the poet died, and his son, very lately, in the same room. The servant told us she had lived four years with Mrs Burns, who was now in great sorrow for the death of Wallace. She said that Mrs B.'s youngest son was now at Christ's Hospital. We were glad to leave Dumfries, where we could think of little but poor Burns, and his moving about on that unpoetic ground. In our road to Brownhill, the next stage, we passed Ellisland, at a little distance on our right- his farm-house. Our pleasure in looking round would have been still greater, if the road had led us nearer the

spot.

"I cannot take leave of this country which we passed through to-day, without mentioning that we saw the Cumberland mountains within half-a-mile of Ellisland, Burns's house, the last view we had of them. Drayton has prettily described the connection which this neighbourhood has with ours, when he makes Skiddaw say,

'Scruffel, from the sky

That Annandale doth crown, with a most amorous eye

Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim,

Oft threatening me with clouds, as I oft threaten him.'

"These lines came to my brother's memory, as well as the Cumberland saying,—

'If Skiddaw hath a cap

"Dumfries, August, 1803. "On our way to the church-yard where Eurns is buried, we were accompanied by a bookseller, who showed us the outside of Burns's house, where he had lived the last three years of his Scruffel wots well of that.' life, and where he died. It has a mean appear"We talked of Burns, and of the prospect he ance, and is in a bye situation; the front whitewashed; dirty about the doors, as most must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Scotch houses are; flowering plants in the win-selves in the fancy that we might have been Skiddaw and his companions; indulging ourdow. Went to visit his grave; he lies in a corner of the churchyard, and his second son, Francis Wallace, beside him. There is no stone to mark the spot; but a hundred guineas have been collected to be expended upon some sort of monument. There,' said the bookseller, pointing to a pompous monument, 'lies Mr(I have forgotten the name)-a remarkably clever man he was an attorney, and scarcely

ever lost a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him, and there they rest as you see." We looked at Burns's grave with melancholy and painful reflections, repeating to each other his own poet's epitaph :

'Is there a man,' &c.

"The churchyard is full of grave-stones and expensive monuments, in all sorts of fantastic shapes, obelisk-wise, pillar-wise, &c. When our guide had left us we turned again to Burns's grave, and afterwards went to his house, wishing to inquire after Mrs Burns, who was gone to spend some time by the sea-shore with her children. We spoke to the maid-servant at the door, who invited us forward, and we sate down in the parlour. The walls were coloured with a blue wash; on one side of the fire was a

personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects with more pleasure for our sakes."

Page 186.

"Jones! as from Calais southward." (See Dedication to Descriptive Sketches.)' dearest friends, died in the year 1835. We This excellent Person, one of my earliest and were under-graduates together of the same year, at the same college; and companions in tic Country of North Wales. Much of the many a delightful ramble through his own romanlatter part of his life he passed in comparative solitude; which I know was often cheered by remembrance of our youthful adventures, and of the beautiful regions which, at home and abroad, we had visited together. Our long friendship was never subject to a moment's interruption,--and, while revising these volumes for the last time, I have been so often reminded of my loss, with a not unpleasing sadness, that I trust the Reader will excuse this passing mention of a Man who well deserves from me something more than so brief a notice. Let me only add, that during the middle part of his