unfortunately incomplete; but enough remains to throw a flood of light on the details of the whole affair.

The first letter of complaint has not been preserved, but the subsequent correspondence shows that it was addressed to the Duke of Portland, who was then Home Secretary, by Dr. Lysons, of Bath, on the 8th of August 1797. No doubt the original was given to the detective employed, and no copy kept. On the 11th of August Dr. Lysons addressed a supplementary letter to the Home Office. This also was sent to the detective, but a copy was kept in the Home Office. It is docketed, 'Copy of Mr. Lysons' second letter to the Duke of Portland,' and is as follows:

Bath, 11 Aug 1797.

MY LORD DUKE,-On the 8th instant I took the liberty to acquaint your Grace with a very suspicious business concerning an emigrant family, who have contrived to get possession of a Mansion House at Alfoxton, late belonging to the Revd. Mr. St. Albyn, under Quantock Hills. I am since informed, that the Master of the House has no wife with him, but only a woman who passes for his Sister. The man has Camp Stools, which he and his visitors take with them when they go about the country upon their nocturnal or diurnal excursions, and have also a Portfolio in which they enter their observations, which they have been heard to say were almost finished. They have been heard to say they should be rewarded for them, and were very attentive to the River near them-probably the River coming within a mile or two of Alfoxton from Bridgewater. These people may possibly be under Agents to some principal at Bristol.

Having got these additional anecdotes which were dropt by the person mentioned in my last I think it necessary to acquaint your Grace with them, and have the honor to be &c. D. LYSONS.

The next paper in the series is a report from the detective employed by the Home Office. It is addressed to Mr. J. King, then Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department.

Bear Inn, Hungerford, Berks: 11 Aug 1797.

SIE, Charles Mogg says that he was at Alfoxton last Saturday was a week, that he there saw Thomas Jones who lives in the Farm House at Alfoxton, who informed Mogg that some French people had got possession of the Mansion House and that they were washing and Mending their cloaths all Sunday, that He Jones would not continue their as he did not like It. That Christopher Trickie and his Wife who live at the Dog pound at Alfoxton, told Moggs that the French people had taken the plan of Their House, and that They had also taken the plan of all the places round that part of the Country, that a Brook runs in the front of Trickie's House and the French people inquired of Trickie wether the Brook was Navigable to the Sea, and upon being informed by Trickie that It was not, They were afterwards seen examining the Brook quite down to the Sea. That Mrs. Trickie confirmed everything her husband had said. Mogg spoke to some other persons inhabitants of that Neighbourhood, who all told him they thought these French people very suspicious persons and that They were doing no good there. And that was the general opinion of that part of the country. The French people kept no Servant, but They were visited by a number of persons, and were frequently out upon the heights most part of the Night.

Mogg says that Alfoxton lays about Twelve miles below Bridgewater and within Two Miles of the Sea. Mogg says that he never spoke to Doctor Lysons, but that a Woman who is Cook to the Doctor had lived fellow Servant

with Mogg at Alfoxton, and that in his way from Thence home, he called upon her at the Doctor's House in Bath last Monday, when talking about Alfoxton, He mentioned these circumstances to her.

As Mr. Mogg is by no means the most intelligent Man in the World, I thought It my duty to send You the whole of his Storry as he related It.

I shall wait here Your further Orders and am

Sir,

Your most obedient Humble Servt.
G. WALSH.

On receipt of this letter further instructions were at once sent to the detective. The next paper is docketed Copy of Mr. King's letter to Walsh.'

Whitehall Aug 12th, 1797.

SIR, I have considered the contents of your letter to me from the Bear Inn, Hungerford, of yesterday's date. You will immediately proceed to Alfoxton or its neighbourhood yourself, taking care on your arrival so to conduct yourself as to give no cause of suspicion to the Inhabitants of the Mansion house there. You will narrowly watch their proceedings, and observe how they coincide with Mogg's account and that contained in the within letter from Mr. Lysons to the Duke of Portland. If you are in want of further information or assistance, you will call on Sir P. Hale Bart of Boymore near Bridgewater, and upon showing him this letter you will I am confident receive it. You will give me a precise account of all the circumstances you observe, with your sentiments thereon; you will of course ascertain if you can the names of the persons, and will add their descriptions-and above all you will be careful not to give them any cause of alarm, that if necessary they may be found on the spot. Should they however move you must follow their track and give me notice thereof, and of the place to which they have betaken themselves. I herewith transmit you a bank note for £20.

J. KING.

The following letters show how Walsh obeyed his instructions:

Globe Inn, Stowey, Somerset: 15th Augst 1797. SIR,-In consequence of Your orders which I recd Yesterday, I immediately set of for this Place, which altho it is five Miles from Alfoxton, is the nearest house I can get any accommodation at.

I had not been many minutes in this house before I had an opportunity of entering upon my Business, By a Mr Woodhouse asking the Landlord, If he had seen any of those Rascalls from Alfoxton. To which the Landlord reply'd, He had seen Two of them Yesterday. Upon which Woodhouse asked the Landlord, If Thelwall was gone. I then asked if they meant the famous Thelwall. They said Yes. That he had been down some time, and that there were a Nest of them at Alfoxton House who were protected by a Mr. Poole a Tanner of this Town, and that he supposed Thelwall was there (Alfoxton House) at this time. I told Woodhouse that I had heard somebody say at Bridgewater that They were French people at the Manor House. The Landlord and Woodhouse answered No, No. They are not French, But they are people that will do as much harm, as All the French can do.

I hope To-morrow to be able to give you some information, in the mean time I shall be very attentive to your instructions.

I think this will turn out no French affair, but a mischiefuous gang of disaffected Englishmen. I have just procured the Name of the person who took the House. His name is Wordsworth a name I think known to Mr. Ford. I have the honor to be Sir

Your most obedient Humble Sert.

G. WALSH.

Stowey 16th Augt 1797.

SIR,-The inhabitants of Alfoxton House are a Sett of violent Democrats. The House was taken for a Person of the name of Wordsworth, who came to It from a Village near Honiton in Devonshire, about five Weeks since. The Rent of the ouse is secured to the Landlord by a Mr Thomas Poole of this Town. Mr Poole is a Tanner and a Man of some property. He is a most Violent Member of the Corresponding Society and a strenuous supporter of Its Friends, He has with him at this time a Mr Coldridge and his wife both of whom he has supported since Christmas last. This Coldridge came last from Bristol and is reckoned a Man of superior Ability. He is frequently publishing, and I am told is soon to produce a new work. He has a Press in the House and I am informed He prints as well as publishes his own productions.

Mr Poole with his disposition, is the more dangerous from his having established in this Town, what He stiles The Poor Man's Club, and placing himself at the head of It, By the Title of the Poor Man's Friend. I am told that there are 150 poor Men belonging to this Club, and that Mr Poole has the intire command of every one of them. When Mr Thelwall was here, he was continually with Mr Poole.

By the direction on a letter that was going to the Post Yesterday, It appears that Thelwall is now at Bristol.

I last Night saw Thomas Jones who lives at Alfoxton House. He exactly confirms Mogg of Hungerford, with this addition that the Sunday after Wordsworth came, he Jones was desired to wait at table, that there were 14 persons at Dinner Poole and Coldridge were there, And there was a little Stout Man with dark cropt Hair and wore a White Hat and Glasses (Thelwall) who after Dinner got up and talked so loud and was in such a passion that Jones was frightened and did not like to go near them since. That Wordsworth has lately been to his former House and brought back with him a Woman Servant, that Jones has seen this Woman who is very Chatty, and that she told him that Her Master was a Phylosopher. That the Night before last Two men came to Alfoxton House, And that the Woman Servant Yesterday Morning told Jones that one of the Gentlemen was a Great Counsellor from London, and the other a Gentleman from Bristol.

Jones had been apply'd to by the Servant to weed the Garden, but had declined going, as he was afraid of the people. But upon my applying a few shillings Mr Jones has got the better of his fears and is this Day weeding the Garden, and in the evening is to bring me the Name of the Great Counsellor and every other information he can Collect. It is reported here that Thelwall is to return soon to this Place and that he is to occupy a part of Alfoxton House.

I have the honor to be Sir

Your most obedient Humble Servt.

G. WALSH.

At this point the correspondence unfortunately breaks off, and we are left in uncertainty as to why the watching was discontinued, and whether Mr. Walsh on personal acquaintance actually formed so favourable an opinion of Coleridge as Coleridge says he did.

* There is nothing to show what became of the later letters. It is possible that the Duke of Portland took them away when he went out of office, and that they may still be among the Portland archives. At that time the line between official correspondence and private or semi-official letters was very loosely drawn; and Secretaries of State took away with them much that would now be considered official correspondence, and on the other hand left with the files some things that would certainly be treated as private papers at the present time.

It will be obvious that these letters greatly affect the views hitherto accepted about this affair. To begin with, they make it plain that the information which led to the sending of the detective came not from Sir Philip Hale, but from Dr. Lysons of Bath. It is easy to see how Sir Philip got the credit. Walsh was instructed to go to him for help, probably because he was a leading magistrate and supporter of Government in the immediate neighbourhood. No doubt he did so; and as Sir Philip was prominent in the later stages of the affair, the country folk from whom Coleridge got his information naturally concluded that he had been the prime mover throughout.

But it is clear that Dr. Lysons was merely transmitting to the Home Secretary reports which had reached him, and that he had no personal knowledge of the matter. The correspondence printed above makes it probable-in fact almost certain-that Dr. Lysons' informant, and the direct cause of Wordsworth being watched, was the Charles Mogg of Hungerford who figures so largely in it.

It is obvious that the original instructions given to the detective were merely to go to Hungerford and make some inquiry there; otherwise there would have been no need for the Under-Secretary to send him fresh instructions to go to Alfoxton (and a fresh supply of money), as he did in his letter of the 12th of August, written after receiving Walsh's report from Hungerford. The only object in sending a detective to Hungerford can have been to interview Mogg; and his report does in fact relate solely to an interview with Mogg. The reader will have noticed also that the Hungerford report begins about Mogg without introduction or explanation, as though he were already well known to the Under-Secretary in connection with the affair. This can only be explained on the assumption that Mogg was the informant mentioned in Dr. Lysons' first letter. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that Walsh in his report takes special pains to explain Mogg's precise connexion with Dr. Lysons. Mogg says that he never spoke to Dr. Lysons, but that a woman who is cook to the Doctor had lived fellow-servant with Mogg at Alfoxton, and that on his way from thence home he called upon her at the Doctor's house in Bath last Monday, when, talking about Alfoxton, he mentioned these circumstances to her.' The dates fully bear out this view. The passage just quoted was written on Friday, the 11th of August, the previous Monday would therefore be the 7th, and we know that Dr. Lysons' first letter of complaint was written on the 8th. The natural inference is that Dr. Lysons' letter to the Home Office was due to the startling reports of French spies at Alfoxton which his cook told him that Mogg had brought.

A more important result of the correspondence now printed is to make it clear that the rationalising explanation given by the biographers is mistaken. A priori it is far more reasonable that the visits of a notorious democrat like Thelwall should have led to the poets being

suspected than that they should seriously have been mistaken for French spies. But the ridiculous explanation is the true one. It is plain from Dr. Lysons' letter and from Walsh's first report that the original information sent to the Home Office was based entirely on the theory that the Wordsworths were French and spies, and was silent about any connexion with Thelwall. It was not till Walsh got to Stowey that he discovered that this would turn out no French affair, but a mischievous gang of disaffected Englishmen.'

Evidently the country folk at Alfoxton were genuinely alarmed at the eccentric behaviour of the Wordsworths and their friends, and could only explain their want of any apparent occupation, their love of country walks, their note-books and sketches, and their inquisitiveness about the brook on the theory that they were spies. Why they took them for French people is not so plain; but rustics are always prone to put down people of outlandish habits as foreigners; and the French were the foreigners most in men's minds then. Possibly also it may be accounted for by Wordsworth's north country accent, and the introduction into Alfoxton of the Continental Sunday, as evidenced by the Sunday washing and mending of clothes which scandalised and frightened Thomas Jones.

It is interesting to note that the accounts given by Dr. Lysons and Charles Mogg bear out Coleridge's story in one striking feature. Mogg reported that a brook runs in front of Trickie's house, and the French people inquired of Trickie whether the brook was navigable to the sea, and upon being informed by Trickie that it was not, they were afterwards seen examining the brook quite down to the sea.'

This at once confirms and is explained by a passage in the Biographia Literaria:

I sought for a subject that should give equal room and freedom for description, incident and impassioned reflections on men, nature and society, yet supply in itself a natural connection to the parts, and unity to the whole. Such a subject I conceived myself to have found in a stream, traced from its source in the hills among the yellow-red moss and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first break or fall, where its drops become audible and it begins to form a channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark squares as it sheltered; to the sheepfold; to the first cultivated plot of ground; to the lonely cottage and its bleak garden won from the heaths, to the hamlet, the villages, the market town, the manufactories and the seaport. . . . Many circumstances, evil and good, intervened to prevent the completion of the poem, which was to have been entitled 'The Brook.' Had I finished the work, it was my purpose in the heat of the moment to have dedicated it to our then committee of public safety as containing the charts and maps with which I was to have supplied the French Government in aid of their plans of invasion.

...

The official correspondence breaks off before the detective came into personal contact with the poets. It is useless therefore to look for any confirmation of Coleridge's delightful story about Spinoza and the personal interpretation which the spy put upon that celebrated