"Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Clifford calls."

-Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, p. 233.

joy, a plant which is very beautiful, especially by moonlight in winter, grows rapidly, and makes a delicious bower. What above all things I delight in is the piece of ground you have chosen for your winter garden; the hillocks and slopes, and the hollow shape of the whole, will make it a perfect wilderness when the trees get up. . . . My brother works very hard at his poems, preparing them for the press. Miss Hutchinson is the transcriber. She also orders dinner, and attends to the kitchen; so that the labour being so divided we have all plenty of leisure. .

I do not understand anything by that line of Michael Angelo but this, that he, seeing in the expression and light of her eye so much of the divine nature, that is, receiving from thence such an assurance of the divine nature being in her he felt therefrom a more confirmed belief or sentiment or sensation of the divinity of his own, and was thereby purified.

I have kept back from speaking of Coleridge, for what can I say? We have had no letter, though we have written again. You shall hear of it when he writes to us.

TO LADY BEAUMONT FROM DOROTHY

WORDSWORTH

November 17th, 1806. about poor

I do not know what to say to you Coleridge. We have had four letters from him, and in all he speaks with the same steadiness of his resolution to separate from Mrs C., and she has fully agreed to it, and consented that he should take Hartley and Derwent, and

superintend their education, she being allowed to have them at the holidays. I say she has agreed to the separation, but in a letter which we have received to-night he tells us that she breaks out into outrageous passions, and urges continually that one argument (in fact the only one which has the least effect upon her mind), that this person, and that person, and everybody will talk. . . . He says: "If I go away without them I am a bird who has struggled himself from off a bird-lime twig, and then finds a string round his leg pulling him back." My brother has written to advise him to bring the boys to us. . . . I hope my brother's letter will make him determined to come with them here, and that I shall have to tell you that they are here before the end of this week.

William has written two other poems, which you will see when they are printed. He composes frequently in the grove, and Mr Gray is going to put him up a bench under the hollies. We have not yet received a sheet from the printer. William and I went to Grâce Dieu1 last week. We were enchanted with the little valley, and its rocks, and the rocks of Charnwood upon the hill, on which we rested for a long time. Adieu, my dear friend. . . . Yours ever,

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH.

1 An old nunnery in Charnwood Forest.

TO LADY BEAUMONT FROM DOROTHY

WORDSWORTH

December 22, 1806.

MY DEAR FRIEND,- We are in expectation every moment of poor Coleridge and his son Hartley. They were to leave Kendal on Wednesday, and if they had come as quickly as my brother and Miss H., they would have been here last night. C. says that Mrs Coleridge intends removing southward in the spring, and is to meet him in London with Derwent, who till that time is to stay with her. . . . He writes calmly and in better spirits. Mrs C. had been outrageous; but for the last two or three days she had become more quiet, and appeared to be tolerably reconciled to his arrangements. I had a letter from her last week—a strange letter! She wrote just as if all things were going on as usual, and we knew nothing of the intentions of Coleridge. She gives but a very gloomy account of Coleridge's health, but this in her old way, without the least feeling or sense of his sufferings. I do think, indeed, that the state of his health will absolutely prevent him from lecturing. It is a sad pity that he did not formally decline accepting the proposal, as I believe his heart was never in it, and nothing but the dreamy and miserable state of his mind (which prevented him from doing anything) kept him from saying that he would not lecture.