have passed on one occasion between Wordsworth and myself. I was generally, of course, only a listener, but in this instance I appear to have stepped forward, and to have put questions to Wordsworth, for the sake of his answers.

"10 February, 1814.-Some time ago I asked Wordsworth which of his own poems he liked best ? He gave me no other answer than another question which I liked best? I instantly repented that I had ventured out of my depth, but his manner was kind and encouraging to a young beginner in criticism. I soon perceived that I made a rather unfortunate reply I had recently been reading his "Female Vagrant," and, without saying, or indeed meaning, that I liked that best, I mentioned, it as a production that had given me great pleasure. He replied that he was sorry for it (supposing that I intended to praise it above all his other productions) for it was one upon which he set comparatively small value: it was addressed to coarse sympathies, and had little or no imagination about it, nor invention as to story. I explained that I did not mean to say that I liked it best, but that I liked it well, and that I should have been very glad indeed to have written it. That may be,' continued he, smiling, 'but it is one of my worst poems, nevertheless-merely descriptive, although the description is accurate enough.'

"I told him that I was extremely fond of the Spenserian stanza in which it is written, and he admitted that it was the best form of stanza in our language; but he seemed to think

* Wordsworth, at one time, thought so ill of the "Female Vagrant" that, excepting one or two stanzas, he absolutely excluded it from some of the editions of his poems. He has, however, since restored it to its place. See edit. 1836, vol. i. p. 97.

any set form comparatively bad, and that nothing, especially for a poem of any continuance, was equal to blank verse. I mentioned Dryden's opinion, that a poet was sometimes indebted to rhyme for a thought; but Wordsworth did not accord with the notion, and observed, 'I am rather disposed to pity the poet who is so barren of thoughts, that he is obliged to owe them to the accidental recurrence of the same sound.' He believed that Dryden had not done himself justice by the observation; for, though he was not a great poet, in the sense of invention and imagination, his thoughts were not unfrequently new and noble, and his language, in point of strength, fulness, and idiomatic freedom, incomparable.

"Still I pressed him as to which of his own poems he liked best, but I could not obtain any satisfactory answer, beyond his saying that he liked many of them best, according to the class and character of each-each in its separate department. He laid it down, that Dryden was the finest writer of couplets, Spenser of stanzas, and Milton of blank verse; yet Pope was a more finished and polished versifier than Dryden, and some of Thomson's stanzas in the 'Castle of Indolence' were quite equal to Spenser. He was strong in his admiration of Dyer's 'Fleece,' a poem I had not read; and I was rather surprised to hear him speak so well of the earlier portion of Beattie's 'Minstrel,' not so much for originality of thought, as for the skilful manner in which he had employed the nine-line stanza. Wordsworth seemed to be endeavouring to direct my taste towards the best models in our language.

He afterwards spoke of his own poem, 'The Cuckoo,' with such warm praise as to make it evident to me that, if he did

not consider it his best of its kind, it was a favourite with him, especially the opening :

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'Everybody must admit the justice of the thought; and Wordsworth added, that the merit did not so much consist in that thought, which must be familiar to all, but in the power of recording what struck all as true, but what had never before been remarked upon; the Cuckoo was always heard, but never seen, and therefore poetically termed a wandering voice.' I mentioned that I had several times seen the cuckoo, but Wordsworth observed that that made no difference as to the general accuracy. It was hinted that the same might be said of the owl: as the cuckoo was heard and never seen in the day, so the owl was heard and never seen in the night. Wordsworth seemed to think this remark hypercritical, but was willing to admit that it was, to a certain extent, true of the owl: it was also a voice, but not 'a wandering voice,' since, when it hooted at night, it was invariably stationary."

Such is my memorandum of a matter then of tolerably recent occurrence, and to this day I have a grateful recollection of the patience, I may almost say indulgence, with which

* See the Preface to the edit. of Wordsworth's Poems, 6 vols. 12mo, 1836, i. p. xvi., where the poet quotes two of the lines I have above extracted, and remarks upon them that "this concise interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of corporeal existence."

the great poet listened to me, then a young man, and, I must own, not by any means an unqualified admirer of his poetry. Coleridge by his-(powers of conversation I cannot properly call them, but)-powers of speech, and a wonderfully attractive delivery,* had so taken possession of my mind, both as a poet and a critic, that Wordsworth had only a secondary place. I have since learned to estimate the last more justly. I then liked him, not so much for what he had written, (the hyper-simplicity of which is even now not thoroughly relished by me) as for the admiration I had always heard Coleridge express of him. Long after the "Lyrical Ballads" were published, I was much more in love with the two pieces by Coleridge, than with any other part of the production. I believe I am so still.

I had not seen Wordsworth before Coleridge had delivered his Lectures of 1811-12; but afterwards I met him rather frequently, and I cannot say, as others have said in my company, that I was ever weary of listening to him, when (as he usually did) he talked about his own poetry. Whenever he was in town, I did what I could to get into his society, and by the date that Coleridge delivered his course of Lectures in 1818, I was upon pretty easy terms with him; but he was not a man with whom one could ever be as familiar and hilarious as

* I always thought his mouth beautiful: the lips were full, and a little drawn down at the corners, and when he was speaking the attention (at least my attention) was quite as much directed to his mouth as to his eyes, the expression of it was so eloquent. In the energy of talking, "the rose-leaves" were at times "a little bedewed," but his words seemed to flow the easier for the additional lubricity. I did not especially admire Coleridge's "large grey eyes," for, now and then, they assumed a dead, dull look, almost as if he were not seeing out of them; and I doubt if external objects made much impression upon his sight, when he was animated in discourse.

with Charles Lamb. It was during Coleridge's Lectures in 1818 that I only took scattered and unconnected memoranda of particular passages, some of which I applied to my purpose in the "Introductions" to different plays by Shakespeare, as published in 1843 and 1844. Near the end of 1817, as well as I can recollect, for the note has no date beyond the day of the week, Wordsworth had written to me, stating that Coleridge was suffering under considerable mental depression (owing in part to the way in which his " Lay Sermons" had been treated by the Reviews, and received by the public), and asking me to lend him what aid I could, from the trifling interest I possessed with the periodical press, in giving publicity to his intention to deliver another course of lectures upon Poets and Poetry. It was in these terms:

"Wednesday.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Coleridge, to whom all but certain reviewers wish well, intends to try the effect of another course of Lectures in London on Poetry generally, and on Shakespeare's Poetry particularly. He gained some money and reputation by his last effort of the kind, which was, indeed, to him no effort, since his thoughts as well as his words flow spontaneously. He talks as a bird sings, as if he could not help it: it is his nature. He is now far from well in body or spirits: the former is suffering from various causes, and the latter from depression. No man ever deserved to have fewer enemies, yet, as he thinks and says, no man has more, or more virulent. You have long been among his friends; and as far as you can go, you will no doubt prove it on this as on other occasions.