That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure; 1 Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of life. 1 Flew creaking.] Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleasure to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Savanna Crane. "When these birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate and regular; and even when at a considerable distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quill feathers; their shafts and webs upon one another creak as the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea."-C. TO A FRIEND WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING NO MORE POETRY. EAR Charles!' whilst yet thou wert a babe, I ween That Genius plunged thee in that Hight Castalie; and (sureties of thy faith) And promised for thee, that thou shouldst re nounce The world's low cares and lying vanities, Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son: 1 Charles.] Charles Lloyd, Cottle says, but we agree with H. N. Coleridge in considering it to have been Lamb. Lamb's favourite poet at Christ's Hospital was Burns. "Burns was the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours. --Lamb to Coleridge, Dec. 1796. Burns died in July of this year. وو The poem was printed in a Bristol paper, to aid a subscription for Burns's family, which Cottle,--that largehearted busybody,-wished Bristol to contribute to. might have been more judiciously worded. It Thou'rt flying from thy bounden ministries,— 1 For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed 1 boy, 2 And I have arrows mystically dipt, Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead ? And shall he die unwept,3 and sink to earth Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face! They snatch'd him from the sickle and the plough To gauge ale-firkins.” Oh! for shame return! On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount, 1 Wild-eyed.] The expression is curious. It may be childish,—but we cannot help recalling that Lamb's eyes differed in colour. 2 Arrows, &c.] Vide Pind. Olym. ii. 1. 150.-C. 3 Unwept.] Had Lamb also been requested to supply a poem ? 4 Illustrious, &c.] Verbatim from Burns's dedication of his Poem to the Nobility and Gentry of the Caledonian Hunt.-C. 5 Ale-firkins.] We never could see the force of this oftmade reproach against Burns's well-meaning patrons; yet we sympathize with Hazlitt, when he speaks, in his Lectures on the English Poets, of "the incompatibility between the Muses and the Excise, which never agreed well together, or met in one seat, till they were unaccountably reconciled on Rydal Mount." Does not Hazlitt forget that one peak of Parnassus was sacred to Bacchus ? There stands a lone and melancholy tree, Whose aged branches to the midnight blast Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough, Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled, And weeping wreath it round thy poet's tomb. Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine 1796. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.* COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND. RIEND of the wise! and teacher of the good! Into my heart have I received that lay 1 Then in, &c.] Landor might have written these concluding lines, which, we regret to say, Coleridge, according to Cottle, was very proud of. "The In the edition of 1817-" To a Gentleman." Prelude " was written, 1799-1805, and dedicated to Coleridge. Mrs. Wordsworth, who published it in 1850, after More than historic, that prophetic lay Wordsworth's death, observes in her preface-"Mr. Coleridge read a considerable portion of the poem while he was abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the author (after his return to his own country), are recorded in his verses, addressed to Mr. Wordsworth, which will be found in Sibylline Leaves.'' Wordsworth left Germany in the sixth week of 1799. "Abroad" can hardly refer to Germany. Was a portion of the poem sent to Coleridge in Italy? He would read the first five books before he went there. Or should Mrs. Wordsworth's "while he was abroad" be "before he went abroad"? In any case, the date of Coleridge's poem is 1806. The last eight books of "The Prelude" were written in 1805, when Coleridge was at Malta. The sixth (of the fourteen) was begun during his outward voyage. "Four years and thirty, told this very week," says Wordsworth, in the opening of it. Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, and Coleridge sailed on April 2, 1804. May we add here, from the sixth book, a few lines? "Far art thou wander'd now in search of health, Share with us thy fresh spirits, whether gift |