prayer he uttered for another had been answered for him, and an old age serene and bright had been granted. This Vesper Hymn, instinct with that "grace divine," without which there can be no Sabbath of the heart, should be read in connection with the matins in the Excursion:

"Descend, prophetic Spirit! that inspir'st
The human Soul. Upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight; that my song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence."

"If thou Indeed."

These verses were written some time after we had become residents of Rydal Mount, and I will take occasion from them to observe upon the beauty of that situation, as being backed and flanked by lofty fells which bring the heavenly bodies to touch, as it were, the earth upon the mountain tops, while the prospect in front lies open to a length of level valley, the extended lake, and a terminating ridge of low hills; so that it gives an opportunity to the inhabitants of the place of noticing the stars in both positions here alluded to, namely, on the tops of the mountains and as winter lamps at a distance among the leafless trees. -W. W.

We see from the above what a realist Wordsworth was as regards the origin of his poems, and this makes them exceedingly interesting to a visitor in the Country of the Lakes.

Cf. Sonnet, To B. R. Haydon, 1815.

1833.

"If this Great World."

This poem has reference to the excitement caused by the Reform Bill.

1834.

Not in the Lucid Intervals of Life."

The lines following "nor do words " were written with Lord Byron's character, as a poet, before me, and that of others, his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences.-W. W.

Compare sonnet, The world is too much with us, 1806.

There is no whining, no cynicism here, but the manly utterance of one who knew that better things were near if one had the inclination to reach forth and appropriate them.

To a Child.

This quatrain was extempore on observing this image, as I had often done, on the lawn of Rydal Mount. It was first written down in the album of my god-daughter, Rotha Quillinan. — W. W.

1835.

Written after the Death of Charles Lamb.

Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of her manners, which she maintained inviolable under most trying circumstances. She was loved and honored

by all her brother's friends. The death of Charles Lamb was hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge.-W. W.

The story of the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb is one which, while sad and touching, reveals a sweetness and fraternal fidelity unparalleled in history. What a contrast is the companion picture of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy in their happy lives of health and strength! Lamb was buried in Edmonton church-yard in a spot selected by himself.

23. Cf. Lamb's sonnet addressed to his own name.

See Talfourd's Life of Charles Lamb; also Wordsworth and Charles Lamb, in Transactions of the Wordsworth Society.

Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg.

These lines were written extempore immediately after reading a notice of the Ettrick Shepherd's death, in a Newcastle paper, to the editor of which Wordsworth sent a copy for publication. In Lockhart's Life of Scott, an account is given of their first meeting, in 1803. Crabbe he had met in London at Mr. Rogers's, and in rambles upon Hampstead Heath. Mrs. Hemans, who lived at Dovenest on Windermere, he knew intimately and loved for her amiable qualities, and her irreproachable conduct during her long separation from an unfeeling husband. Of his friendship for Coleridge and Scott his poems

are a sufficient history. With the exception of Crabbe these poets were younger than Wordsworth. They all died between 1832 and 1835.

1845.

"So Fair, So Sweet."

The circumstance which gave rise to this poem was a walk in July, 1844, from Windermere, by Rydal and Grasmere, to Loughrigg Tarn, made by Wordsworth in company with J. C. Hare, Sir William Hamilton, Professor Butler, and others. One of the party writes of it as follows:

When we reached the side of Loughrigg Tarn the loveliness of the scene arrested our steps and fixed our gaze. When the Poet's eyes were satisfied with their feast on the beauties familiar to them, they sought relief in search, to them a happy vital habit, for new beauty in the flower-enamelled turf at his feet. There his attention was arrested by a fair smooth stone, of the size of an ostrich's egg, seeming to imbed at its centre, and at the same time to display a dark star-shaped fossil of most distinct outline. Upon closer inspection this proved to be the shadow of a daisy projected upon it. The Poet drew the attention of the rest of the party to the minute but beautiful phenomenon, and gave expression at the time to thoughts suggested by it, which so interested Professor Butler that he plucked the tiny flower, and, saying that "it should be not only the theme but the memorial of the thought they had heard," bestowed it somewhere for preservation. - PROFESSOR KNIGHT.

"That is a bit of good, downright, foreground painting,—no mistake about it; daisy, shadow, and stone texture and all. Our painters must come to this before they have done their duty."

"The child is father of the man,"

for here, at the age of seventy-five, we have the intense love, the clear vision, the rich coloring, of the earlier poems.

See Aubrey de Vere, Literature in its Social Aspects.

1797.

The Reverie of Poor Susan.

This arose out of my observations of the affecting music of these birds hanging in this way in the London streets during the freshness and stillness of the spring mornings. — W. W.

See Myers' Wordsworth (English Men of Letters Series), page 16.

THE SONNET.

Among the Italians there originated a form of verse combination in which a special rime arrangement prevailed; the name sonnet was given to this. It was a short poem limited to the expression of a single idea; soon fourteen lines became the fixed length, and later these lines were combined according to fixed and intricate rules. According to these rules the ideal sonnet should conform to the following conditions: It must consist of fourteen lines divided into two systems the major system, consisting of the first eight lines, complete in themselves; and then the minor system, with six concluding lines. The major system should contain but two rimes: 1, 4, 5. 8, and 2, 3, 6, 7, concluding with a pause in the sense. In the minor system there should be only two rimes: 9, 11, 13, and 10, 12, 14. Other rules were laid down, many of which were merely capricious, but these were insisted upon.

The earliest forms of the sonnet belong to the thirteenth century. Fra Guittone d'Arrezzo furnished the model for Dante and Petrarch, who perfected this form of writing, the one giving it strength, the other beauty.

"A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;

With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief."

That period of English literature which was the prelude to the age of Spenser and Shakespeare received its main impulse from Italy. The influence of Chaucer had declined, and intellectual life disappeared with religious liberty. There remained only a few puerile chroniclers, and imitators of inane French romance.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century the nobility, possibly shamed by the contrast to the Scottish court, began to give some thought to the education of their children. The literary centre of Europe was at the brilliant court of Lorenzo de Medici, and hither flocked the scholars of all countries. When Englishmen returned filled with enthusiasm, and became tutors, they stimulated their pupils with a desire to visit Italy, the "land of promise."

It was toothis secondary influence of the revival of learning that the new movement in literature was due. The heralds of the dawn were Sir Thost as Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, “who had tasted the swee and stately measures and style of Italian poesy." To them belongs the honor of reforming the literature and introducing the sonnet into our language. Petrarch was their model, and love

their theme. Wyatt followed the Italian model very closely, and his work is characterized by strength and dignity. Surrey introduced some changes into the form of the sonnet: he divided it into three independent quatrains, and closed with a couplet. His work was distinguished for grace and beauty.

During the last ten years of the sixteenth century and the first ten of the seventeenth there was the most remarkable production of sonnets. The list, headed by Sidney, contains the names of Daniel, Constable, Lodge, Watson, Drayton, Spenser, and Shakespeare. With Shakespeare ends the first form of the English sonnet, composed of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, —'

ab ab cd cd ef ef gg.

Milton's sonnets, although few in number, are of the finest quality; in their structure they follow Petrarch's rule, which divides the sonnet into two unequal parts, the major and the minor. This is the second form of the English sonnet,

‚1, 4, 5, 8, 2, 3, 6, 7, || 9, 11, 13, 10, 12, 14, or

ab ba ab ba || cd cd cd.

After Milton we see no more of the sonnet in its power until we come to Cowper; following him is that illustrious company of singers contemporary with the French Revolution,· Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and Keats, each of whom made substantial contributions to the sonnet literature. Among these Wordsworth's work is by far the most significant, not only in the nature and variety of the subjects treated, but also in the manner of composition. He restored the sonnet to the place it held in Milton's time. The style of the sonnet was at the farthest remove from the style of the Prelude and the Excursion, and it is not a little remarkable that one who possessed such wealth of thought and such fluency of language should have been satisfied

"Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground."

But Wordsworth "had the tonic of a wholesome pride;" he was a most careful writer and was exceedingly frugal in his literary economy; these were the prerequisites for success with the s.net. The care which he exercised in pruning, recasting, and correcting his workmanship is seen in the frequent alterations of the t; many of them cover the period of a lifetime, and preserve for the changing moods of the Poet's mind. While nearly every poet since Wordsworth has occasionally dignified the sonnet, with only two- Elizabeth.