Yours sincerely,
               W. WORDSWORTH.

My sister will transcribe three sonnets,[19] which I do not send you from any notion I have of their merit, but merely because they are the only verses I have written since I had the pleasure of seeing you and Lady Beaumont.  At the sight of Kilchurn Castle, an ancient residence of the Breadalbanes, upon an island in Loch Awe, I felt a real poetical impulse:  but I did not proceed.  I began a poem (apostrophising the castle) thus: 

    Child of loud-throated war! the mountain stream
    Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
    Is come, and thou art silent in thine age;

but I stopp’d.[20]

[19] Written at Needpath, (near Peebles,) a mansion of the Duke of Queensbury:  ‘Now as I live, I pity that great Lord,’ &c. (Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, xii.) To the Men of Kent:  ’Vanguard of Liberty, ye Men of Kent.’ [Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, xxiii.] Anticipation:  ‘Shout, for a mighty victory is won!’ (Ibid, xxvi.) &c.  If you think, either you or Lady Beaumont, that these two last Sonnets are worth publication, would you have the goodness to circulate them in any way you like. (On various readings in these Sonnets, see our Notes and Illustrations.  G.)

[20] Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 260-4, with important additions from the original.  G.

OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, &c.

Letter to Sir George H. Beaumont, Bart.

     Grasmere, July 20. 1804.  DEAR SIR GEORGE,

Lady Beaumont in a letter to my sister told her some time ago that it was your intention to have written to me, but knowing my aversion to letter writing you were unwilling to impose upon me the trouble of answering.  I am much obliged to you for the honour you intended me, and deeply sensible of your delicacy.  If a man were what he ought to be, with such feelings and such motives as I have, it would be as easy for him to write to Sir George Beaumont as to take his food when he was hungry or his repose when he was weary.  But we suffer bad habits to grow upon us, and that has been the case with me, as you have had reason to find and forgive already.  I cannot quit the subject without regretting that any weakness of mine should have prevented my hearing from you, which would always give me great delight, and though I cannot presume to say that I should be a punctual correspondent, I am sure I should not be insensible of your kindness, but should also do my best to deserve it.

A few days ago I received from Mr. Southey your very acceptable present of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Works, which, with the Life, I have nearly read through.  Several of the Discourses I had read before, though never regularly together:  they have very much added to the high opinion which I before entertained of Sir Joshua Reynolds.  Of a great part of them, never having had an opportunity of studying