will scarcely tend to obviate.  The natural imagery of these verses was supplied by frequent, I might say intense, observation of the Rydal Torrent.  What an animating contrast is the ever-changing aspect of that, and indeed of every one of our mountain brooks, to the monotonous tone and unmitigated fury of such streams among the Alps as are fed all the summer long by glaciers and melting snows!  A traveller, observing the exquisite purity of the great rivers, such as the Rhone at Geneva, and the Reuss at Lucerne, where they issue out of their respective lakes, might fancy for a moment that some power in Nature produced this beautiful change, with a view to make amends for those Alpine sullyings which the waters exhibit near their fountain heads; but, alas! how soon does that purity depart, before the influx of tributary waters that have flowed through cultivated plains and the crowded abodes of men.

24. *_The Borderers:  a Tragedy_.

Of this dramatic work I have little to say in addition to the short printed note which will be found attached to it.  It was composed at Racedown in Dorset, during the latter part of the year 1795, and in the course of the following year.  Had it been the work of a later period of life, it would have been different in some respects from what it is now.  The plot would have been something more complex, and a greater variety of characters introduced, to relieve the mind from the pressure of incidents so mournful; the manners also would have been more attended to.  My care was almost exclusively given to the passions and the characters, and the position in which the persons in the drama stood relatively to each other, that the reader (for I never thought of the stage at the time it was written) might be moved, and to a degree instructed, by lights penetrating somewhat into the depths of our nature.  In this endeavour, I cannot think, upon a very late review, that I have failed.  As to the scene and period of action, little more was required for my purpose than the absence of established law and government, so that the agents might be at liberty to act on their own impulses.  Nevertheless, I do remember, that having a wish to colour the manners in some degree from local history more than my knowledge enabled me to do, I read Redpath’s History of the Borders, but found there nothing to my purpose.  I once made an observation to Sir W. Scott, in which he concurred, that it was difficult to conceive how so dull a book could be written on such a subject.  Much about the same time, but a little after, Coleridge was employed in writing his tragedy of Remorse; and it happened soon after that, through one of the Mr. Pooles, Mr. Knight, the actor, heard that we had been engaged in writing plays, and, upon his suggestion, mine was curtailed, and (I believe, with Coleridge’s) was offered to Mr. Harris, manager of Covent Garden.  For myself, I had no hope, nor even a wish (though a successful