146. *_The Thorn_. [XXIII.]

Alfoxden, 1798.  Arose out of my observing on the ridge of Quantock Hill, on a stormy day, a thorn, which I had often past in calm and bright weather without noticing it.  I said to myself, cannot I by some invention do as much to make this Thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment?  I began the poem accordingly, and composed it with great rapidity.  Sir George Beaumont painted a picture from it, which Wilkie thought his best.  He gave it to me; though, when he saw it several times at Rydal Mount afterwards, he said, ’I could make a better, and would like to paint the same subject over again.’  The sky in this picture is nobly done, but it reminds one too much of Wilson.  The only fault however, of any consequence, is the female figure, which is too old and decrepit for one likely to frequent an eminence on such a call.

147. Hart-Leap Well. [XXIV.]

Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg.  Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there described them.

148. Ibid.

Town-End, 1800.  The first eight stanzas were composed extempore one winter evening in the cottage; when, after having tired and disgusted myself with labouring at an awkward passage in ‘The Brothers,’ I started with a sudden impulse to this, to get rid of the other, and finished it in a day or two.  My sister and I had past the place a few weeks before in our wild winter journey from Sockburn on the banks of the Tees to Grasmere.  A peasant whom we met near the spot told us the story, so far as concerned the name of the well, and the hart, and pointed out the stones.  Both the stones and the well are objects that may easily be missed:  the tradition by this time may be extinct in the neighbourhood:  the man who related it to us was very old.

[In pencil on opposite page—­See Dryden’s dog and hare in Annus Mirabilis.]

149. Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle. [XXV.]

Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John Lord Clifford, as is known to the reader of English history, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, son of the Duke of York, who had fallen in the battle, ‘in part of revenge’ (say the Authors of the History of Cumberland and Westmoreland); ‘for the Earl’s father had slain his.’  A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); but who, as he adds, ’dare promise anything temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch