glow-worms we have often seen hanging on it as described." The name must have been given early, for in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, Apr. 24, 1802, we find: "We walked in the evening to Rydal. Coleridge and I lingered behind. . . . We all stood to look at Glow-worm Rock a primrose that grew there and just looked out on the road from its own sheltered bower." In 1878 Professor Knight wrote (" The English Lake District," p. 76): "The primrose has disappeared, and the glow-worms have almost deserted the place, but the rock is unmistakable.”

Mr. Hutton, in illustrating the difference between Wordsworth's earlier and later styles, contrasts the poem "Daffodils," so wonderful for buoyancy, with this poem, in which there is less exultant buoyancy "and yet a grander and more stately movement." The style "is altogether more ideal reality counts for less, symbol for more." Aubrey de Vere says of this poem that it is "as distinctly Wordsworthian in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine." A poem by Tennyson, which may not be "Christian in its doctrine," expresses at least part of the idea of "The Primrose of the Rock,”. that the humblest fragment of nature is inseparably connected with the Highest :

Flower in the crannied wall,

But Tennyson emphasises if with italics; his mood is one of awed inquisition; Wordsworth's is one of faith.

YARROW REVISITED.

Written in 1831 and published in 1835. The changes of text are too slight to deserve notice. In the autumn of 1831 Wordsworth with his daughter visited Scott at Abbotsford, before Scott's departure, in shattered health, to Italy. They found him grievously changed in body and mind. On the morning after their arrival Scott accompanied them to Newark Castle on the Yarrow. When we alighted from the carriages," wrote Wordsworth, "he walked pretty stoutly, and had great pleasure in revisiting those his favourite haunts. Of that excursion the verses Yarrow Revisited' are a memorial. Notwithstanding the

romance that pervades Sir Walter's works and attaches to many of his habits, there is too much pressure of fact for these verses to harmonise

as much as I could wish with other poems [i.e., in the volume of 1835]. On our return in the afternoon we had to cross the Tweed directly opposite Abbotsford. The wheels of our carriage grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream, that flows somewhat rapidly; a rich but sad light of rather a purple than a golden hue was spread over the Eildon hills at that moment; and thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the sonnet beginning A trouble not of clouds or weeping rain."" Two days later the Wordsworths left Abbotsford. Both the verses Yarrow Revisited" and the sonnet were sent to Scott before his departure from England.

Before leaving, Wordsworth expressed a hope that Scott's health would be benefited by the climate of Italy. Scott's reply is recorded in Wordsworth's " Musings at Aquapendente":

Still, in more than ear-deep seats,
Survives for me, and cannot but survive,
The tone of voice which wedded borrowed words
To sadness not their own, when with faint smile
Forced by intent to take from speech its edge,
He said "When I am there, although 't is fair,
'T will be another Yarrow."

102, 103. Scott's minstrel of the "Lay" passes the " embattled portal arch" with "hesitating step" (Introduction to the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," ll. 31, 32).

er

On the Yarrow poems, see Shairp's "Aspects of Poetry," chap. xi, 'The Three Yarrows," and Veitch's" History and Poetry of the Scottish Border."

DEVOTIONAL INCITEMENTS.

Written at Rydal Mount in 1832 and published in 1835. The motto is from "Paradise Lost," Bk. v, 78–80.

47. By art to unsensualise the mind. Wordsworth probably had in his memory some lines of Coleridge's early poem "Religious Musings" (11. 208-212):

All the inventive arts, that nursed the soul
To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants
Unsensualized the mind, which in the means
Learnt to forget the grossness of the end,
Best pleasured with its own activity.

50-54. The two pairs of lines before 1836 appeared in a reverse order. 69. Eternal Will: before 1836, "almighty Will."

71. In 1835: "Her admonitions Nature yields." In 1836, " Divine admonishment She yields." Altered to present text in 1845.

"CALM IS THE FRAGRANT AIR."

(An Evening Voluntary.)

Written 1832; published 1835.

22. The busy dor-hawk: before 1837, "Far-heard the dor-hawk." The night-jar or European goat-sucker, called dor-hawk from the sound it makes, would not be "far-heard."

25, 26. These lines were happily added in 1837

"IF THIS GREAT WORLD OF JOY AND PAIN."

Written in 1833; published in 1835. The text is unchanged. The lines may have been suggested by the Reform Bill of 1832, to which Wordsworth had been opposed.

ON A HIGH PART OF THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND.

(An Evening Voluntary.)

"The

Written in 1833; published in 1835. The text is unchanged. lines," said Wordsworth (Fenwick note), "were composed on the road between Moresby [County Cumberland] and Whitehaven, while I was on a visit to my son, then rector of the former place. This and some other Voluntaries originated in the concluding lines of the last paragraph of the poem." Wordsworth had been familiar from earliest childhood with this coast.

24. wisdom."

Psalms cxi. 10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of

"NOT IN THE LUCID INTERVALS OF LIFE."

(An Evening Voluntary.)

Written in 1834 and published in 1835. The only change of text is the alteration in 1837 of "dares" to "dare " after "if," a change made in several instances in the ed. of 1836-37. Wordsworth notes that 11.

7-15" were written with Lord Byron's character, as a poet, before me, and that of others, his contemporaries, who wrote under like influences." 6. Mammon's cave. Perhaps Wordsworth thought of the "Faerie Queene," Bk. ii, canto vii, where Guyon finds Mammon "in a delve, sunning his threasure hore."

The poem expresses Wordsworth's feeling for nature in its latest phase :

By grace divine

Not otherwise, O Nature! we are thine.

TO A CHILD.

WRITTEN IN HER ALBUM.

Written in 1834 and published in 1835. "This quatrain," said Wordsworth (Fenwick note), “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.”

2.

Before 1845: "Of friends, however humble, scorn not one." Another poem of Wordsworth's, that beginning "So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive," was suggested by the shadow of a daisy, seen in July, 1844, near Loughrigg Tarn, whither Wordsworth walked in company with Archer Butler, Julius C. Hare, Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, and R. Perceval Graves. The poet wishes

That to this mountain-daisy's self were known
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown
On the smooth surface of this naked stone!

WRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB.

Lamb died Dec. 27, 1834; this poem was written in November, 1835, and was privately printed; in 1837 it appeared in Wordsworth's "Poetical Works," but without a title; the title was given in 1845. The text of 1837 remained unaltered, but several variations found in the rare private impression are recorded in the Aldine ed. of Wordsworth's "Poetical Works." At first an epitaph (11. 40-43) was designed for inscription on the stone, but the poem grew too long for this purpose. The epitaphs of Chiabrera (some of which had been translated by Wordsworth in earlier years) served as the model.

It may suffice to note here with respect to the private impression that it opened with the line, "To the dear memory of a frail good Man," and closed thus:

The sacred tie

Is broken, to become more sacred still.

Lamb's place of burial is Edmonton church-yard. His sister, who survived him nearly thirteen years, was buried by his side..

Elegiac poems in memory of the dead may either aim at perpetuating the memory of the dead by a monumental portrait or by an impassioned lament in which there is little of portraiture. To the latter class belong Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis"; to the former Daniel's "Memorial of the Earl of Devonshire," Henry Taylor's admirable lines in remembrance of Edward Villiers, and the present poem. Lamb's birth in London, his love of the great city, his service in the India House, his delight in books, his literary work, his gentleness of nature, his wit and pathos, his devotion to his sister and her devotion to him, are here recorded; and with becoming reserve reference is made to the great affliction of Mary Lamb's life, her tendency to insanity, which brought out the heroism of Charles Lamb's character. The reader should consult Ainger's " Charles Lamb" in the series of "English Men of Letters."

In illustration of the lines

Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend,
But more in show than truth,

see a letter from Lamb to Wordsworth of Jan. 30, 1801: “Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and as intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead Nature." What follows, on the delights of London, is in Lamb's most characteristic manner, but is too long to quote.

EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG.

Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, died on Nov. 21, 1835, and these verses were, Wordsworth says, written extempore immediately after reading a notice of his death in a Newcastle paper. To the editor of that paper he sent a copy for publication, and the poem may have been printed