and Pendragon, were demolished, and the timber and other materials sold by Thomas Earl of Thanet.  We will hope that, when this order was issued, the Earl had not consulted the text of Isaiah, 58th chap. 12th verse, to which the inscription placed over the gate of Pendragon Castle, by the Countess of Pembroke (I believe his grandmother), at the time she repaired that structure, refers the reader:—­’And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places:  thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.’  The Earl of Thanet, the present possessor of the estates, with a due respect for the memory of his ancestors, and a proper sense of the value and beauty of these remains of antiquity, has (I am told) given orders that they shall be preserved from all depredations.

150. *_Ibid._

See the note attached.  This poem was composed at Coleorton, while I was walking to and fro along the path that led from Sir George Beaumont’s farm-house, where we resided, to the Hall, which was building at that time.

151. Sir John Beaumont.

    ‘Earth helped him with the cry of blood’ (l. 27).

This line is from ‘The Battle of Bosworth Field,’ by Sir John Beaumont (brother to the dramatist), whose poems are written with much spirit, elegance, and harmony; and have deservedly been reprinted in Chalmers’ Collection of English Poets.

152. The undying Fish of Bowscale Tarn (l. 122).

It is believed by the people of the country that there are two immortal fish, inhabitants of this Tarn, which lies in the mountains not far from Threlkeld—­Blencathara, mentioned before, is the old and proper name of the mountain vulgarly called Saddle-back.

153. The Cliffords.

    ’Armour rusting in his Halls
    On the blood of Clifford calls’ (ll. 142-3).

The martial character of the Cliffords is well known to the readers of English history; but it may not be improper here to say, by way of comment on these lines and what follows, that besides several others who perished in the same manner, the four immediate Progenitors of the Person in whose hearing this is supposed to be spoken all died on the Field.

154. *_Tintern Abbey_. [XXVI.]

July 1798.  No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this.  I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister.  Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol.  It was published almost immediately after in the little volume of which so much has been said in these notes, the ’Lyrical Ballads,’ as first published at Bristol by Cottle.

155. *_It is no Spirit, &c._ [XXVII.]