These trifling contributions, all but one, (which Mr. C. has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded,) slipt out of his mind, as they well might.  As we endeavoured to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely different, that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog.  We returned after a few days from a delightful tour, of which I have many pleasant, and some of them droll enough, recollections.  We returned by Dulverton to Alfoxden.  The ‘Ancient Mariner’ grew and grew till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds; and we began to talk of a volume which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has told the world, of Poems chiefly on natural subjects, taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium.  Accordingly I wrote ’The Idiot Boy,’ ‘Her Eyes are wild,’ &c., and ‘We are Seven,’ ‘The Thorn,’ and some others.  To return to ‘We are Seven,’ the piece that called forth this note:—­I composed it while walking in the grove of Alfoxden.  My friends will not deem it too trifling to relate, that while walking to and fro I composed the last stanza first, having begun with the last line.  When it was all but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr. Coleridge and my sister, and said, ’A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task was finished.’  I mentioned in substance what I wished to be expressed, and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza, thus: 

    ‘A little child, dear brother Jem.’

I objected to the rhyme, ‘dear brother Jem,’ as being ludicrous; but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching in our friend James Tobin’s name, who was familiarly called Jem.  He was the brother of the dramatist; and this reminds me of an anecdote which it may be worth while here to notice.  The said Jem got a sight of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ as it was going through the press at Bristol, during which time I was residing in that city.  One evening he came to me with a grave face, and said, ’Wordsworth, I have seen the volume that Coleridge and you are about to publish.  There is one poem in it which I earnestly entreat you will cancel, for, if published, it will make you everlastingly ridiculous.’  I answered, that I felt much obliged by the interest he took in my good name as a writer, and begged to know what was the unfortunate piece he alluded to.  He said, ‘It is called “We are Seven."’ ‘Nay,’ said I, ’that shall take its chance, however;’ and he left me in despair.  I have only to add, that in the spring of 1841, I visited Goodrich Castle, not having seen that part of the Wye since I met the little girl there in 1793.  It would have given me greater pleasure to have found in the neighbouring hamlet traces of one who had interested me so much, but that was impossible, as, unfortunately, I did