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--and the following final stanza was added (ll. 3, 4,

however, belong to 1836):

"God has given a kindlier power
To the favoured Strawberry-flower.
Hither, soon as Spring is fled,
You and Charles and I will walk;
Lurking berries, ripe and red,
Then will hang on every stalk,
Each within its leafy bower;

And for that promise spare the flower!"

A Complaint (page 117).-Composed 1806 (W.-1836). The friend was doubtless Coleridge, who returned from Malta with body enfeebled and "mind broken" (his own words) in August, 1806, and on December 21 arrived at Coleorton farmhouse on a visit to the Wordsworths. Evidence is not wanting that the attitude of worshipful uplooking which, up to the date of his departure for Malta, Coleridge had maintained towards his "dearest and most revered William,” had, by the time of this reunion, gradually shifted into one of incipient spiritual "revolt and flying-off." "Wordsworth is a poet,

and I feel myself a better poet in knowing how to honour him, than in all my own poetic compositions " (Knight's Life, ii., pp. 9, 13), he had written to Rd. Sharp in January, 1804; and soon after he had entreated that Dorothy and Mary would set about copying the Poet's MS. verses for him: "OI feel, I feel what a treasure, what an inspiring Deity, they will be to me when I am absent." In a word, up to April, 1804, Wordsworth is still to Coleridge "the man, for whom I must find another name than friend, if I call any others but him by the name of friend." Occasional remonstrance there had been, as for instance over the Ode to Duty, when his friend had deemed it obligatory to warn Wordsworth of the effect of "selfness in a mind incapable of gross selfinterest" (Anima Poetæ, page 131). But remonstrance had not checked the outrush of fondness. Towards the close of 1806, however, there are signs of "a heavy change." Witness the following entry in a pocket-book, written apparently during (or just before) the visit to Coleorton: "The thinking disease is that in which the feelings, instead of embodying themselves in acts, ascend and become

materials of general reasoning and intellectual pride. The dreadful consequences of this perversion [may be] instanced in Germany, e.g., in Fichte versus Kant, Schelling v. Fichte, and in Verbidigno [Wordsworth] v. S. T. C. . . . On such meagre

diet as feelings, evaporated embryos in their progress to birth, no moral being ever becomes healthy " (Anima Poeta, p. 169). Nor was it of moral or spiritual loss only, but of intellectual loss as well, that Wordsworth had to complain. He had counted largely upon Coleridge's succour in the conduct of his magnum opus (Mems. of Coleorton, i., pp. 85, 101), and that aid could now no longer be reckoned on. Cf., as to this aspect of the "change," Coleridge's letter to Allsop, December 2, 1818: "I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main stream," etc. (Letters, Conversations, etc., ed. 1858, page 3).

"I am not one," etc. (page 119).-Composed at some date prior to April, 1807. The very obvious correction, 'of' for 'about' (stanza i., 1. 3), was made in 1815, when also 1. 12 was replaced by:

99

"In the lov'd presence of my cottage fire —a pentimento of which Wordsworth, in the Fenwick Note on this poem, repents. Lines 9-12 of stanza iii. were rehandled successfully in 1827 :

"There find I personal themes, a plenteous store, Matter wherein right voluble I am,

To which I listen with a ready ear;

Two shall be named, pre-eminently dear,—

With i., 1.6 (the line which offended Miss Fenwick) cf. Midsummer Night's Dream, I., i., 77: "[a rose] withering on the virgin thorn;" and with ii., 1. 12, cf. Collins, The Passions, 1. 60: "In notes by distance made more sweet" (see Evening Walk, ed. 1820, 1. 237). illustrated by The Prelude, xii., 1.

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also W. W.'s Line 13 of ii. is "Her eye

153 :

iii., cf. the exquisite

was not the mistress of her heart (of Mary Hutchinson). With ll. 12-14 of Dedication of the White Doe. "In connection with the reference to Desdemona it is worth noting that Wordsworth pronounced Othello, Plato's record of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Walton's Life of George Herbert the most pathetic of human

compositions" (Dowden). This sonnet-group was named in 1820 Personal Talk.

"Yes! full surely 'twas the Echo" (page 123).— Composed 1806 (W.-1836). In 1827 1. 1 became “Yes, it was the mountain Echo,” and “Thee” (1. 3) became "the," while " thee" (1. 4) became "her." In 1815 stanzas ii. and iii. were thrown into onea vast improvement, for which we have to thank Jeffrey or the critic of the Simpliciad:

"Unsolicited reply

To a babbling wanderer sent;
Like her ordinary cry,

Like-but oh, how different!"

Successive remaniements of the final stanza in 1827 and 1832 resulted in the adoption, in 1836, of the following:

"Such rebounds our inward ear

Catches sometimes from afar

Listen, ponder," etc.

To the Spade of a Friend (page 125).-Composed probably in October or November, 1806. In the

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