By my Sister.  Rydal Mount, 1832.  It arose, I believe, out of a casual expression of one of Mr. Swinburne’s children.

82. *_Farewell Lines_. [XXXVI.]

These Lines were designed as a farewell to Charles Lamb and his Sister, who had retired from the throngs of London to comparative solitude in the village of Enfield, Herts, [sic.]

83. (1) The Redbreast.

Lines 45-6.

    ’Of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John
    Blessing the bed she lies upon.’

The words—­

    ’Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John,
    Bless the bed that I lie on,’

are part of a child’s prayer still in general use through the northern counties.

84. (2)

Rydal Mount, 1834.  Our cats having been banished the house, it was soon frequented by Red-breasts.  Two or three of them, when the window was open, would come in, particularly when Mary was breakfasting alone, and hop about the table picking up the crumbs.  My Sister being then confined to her room by sickness, as, dear creature, she still is, had one that, without being caged, took up its abode with her, and at night used to perch upon a nail from which a picture had hung.  It used to sing and fan her face with its wings in a manner that was very touching. [In pencil—–­ But who was the pale-faced child?]

85. *_Her Eyes are wild_. [XXXVIII.]

Alfoxden, 1798.  The subject was reported to me by a lady of Bristol, who had seen the poor creature.

* * * * *

IV.  POEMS ON THE NAMING OF PLACES.

86. Advertisement.

By persons resident in the country and attached to rural objects, many places will be found unnamed or of unknown names, where little Incidents must have occurred, or feelings been experienced, which will have given to such places a private and peculiar interest.  From a wish to give some sort of record to such Incidents, and renew the gratification of such feelings, Names have been given to Places by the Author and some of his Friends, and the following Poems written in consequence.

87. *_It was an April Morn, &c._ [I.]

Grasmere, 1800.  This poem was suggested on the banks of the brook that runs through Easedale, which is, in some parts of its course, as wild and beautiful as brook can be.  I have composed thousands of verses by the side of it.

88. ’_May call it Emmas Dell’_ (I. 47).

[In pencil, with reference to the last line is this—­Emma’s Dell—­Who was Emma?]

89. *_To Joanna Hutchinson_. [II.]

Grasmere, 1800.  The effect of her laugh is an extravagance; though the effect of the reverberation of voices in some parts of these mountains is very striking.  There is, in ‘The Excursion,’ an allusion to the bleat of a lamb thus re-echoed and described, without any exaggeration, as I heard it on the side of Stickle Tarn, from the precipice that stretches on to Langdale Pikes.