not even know her name.  The ruin, from its position and features, is a most impressive object.  I could not but deeply regret that its solemnity was impaired by a fantastic new castle set up on a projection of the same ridge, as if to show how far modern art can go in surpassing all that could be done by antiquity and Nature with their united graces, remembrances, and associations.  I could have almost wished for power, so much the contrast vexed me, to blow away Sir ——­ Meyrick’s impertinent structure and all the possessions it contains.

37. *_The Idle Shepherd Boys; or Dungeon-Ghyll Force:  a Pastoral_. [XI.]

Grasmere, Town-End, 1800.  I will only add a little monitory anecdote concerning this subject.  When Coleridge and Southey were walking together upon the Fells, Southey observed that, if I wished to be considered a faithful painter of rural manners, I ought not to have said that my shepherd boys trimmed their rustic hats as described in the poem.  Just as the words had past his lips, two boys appeared with the very plant entwined round their hats.  I have often wondered that Southey, who rambled so much about the mountains, should have fallen into this mistake; and I record it as a warning for others who, with far less opportunity than my dear friend had of knowing what things are, and with far less sagacity, give way to presumptuous criticism, from which he was free, though in this matter mistaken.  In describing a tarn under Helvellyn, I say,

    ’There sometimes doth a leaping fish
    Send through the tarn a lonely cheer.’

This was branded by a critic of those days, in a review ascribed to Mrs. Barbauld, as unnatural and absurd.  I admire the genius of Mrs. Barbauld, and am certain that, had her education been favourable to imaginative influences, no female of her day would have been more likely to sympathise with that image, and to acknowledge the truth of the sentiment.

38. Foot-note.

Heading:  ‘Dungeon-ghyll Force.’ Ghyll, in the dialect of Cumberland and Westmoreland, is a short and, for the most part, a steep narrow valley, with a stream running through it. Force is the word universally employed in these dialects for waterfall.

39. *_Anecdote for Fathers_. [XII.]

This was suggested in front of Alfoxden.  The boy was a son of my friend Basil Montagu, who had been two or three years under our care.  The name of Kilve is from a village in the Bristol Channel, about a mile from Alfoxden; and the name of Liswin Farm was taken from a beautiful spot on the Wye.  When Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and I had been visiting the famous John Thelwall, who had taken refuge from politics, after a trial for high treason, with a view to bring up his family by the profits of agriculture; which proved as unfortunate a speculation as that he had fled from.  Coleridge and he had been public lecturers:  Coleridge mingling with his politics