* * * * *

X. POEMS DEDICATED TO NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE AND LIBERTY.

[HEADED IN I.F.  NOTES ‘SONNETS DEDICATED TO LIBERTY.’]

257. Robert Jones.

‘Jones! as from Calais,’ &c. [Sonnet III.]

(See No. 9, Dedication to Descriptive Sketches.)

This excellent Person, one of my earliest and dearest friends, died in the year 1835.  We were under-graduates together of the same year, at the same college, and companions in many a delightful ramble through his own romantic country of North Wales.  Much of the latter part of his life he passed in comparative solitude; which I know was often cheered by remembrance of our youthful adventures, and of the beautiful regions which, at home and abroad, we had visited together.  Our long friendship was never subject to a moment’s interruption,—­and, while revising these volumes for the last time, I have been so often reminded of my loss, with a not unpleasing sadness, that I trust the Reader will excuse this passing mention of a Man who well deserves from me something more than so brief a notice.  Let me only add, that during the middle part of his life he resided many years (as Incumbent of the Living) at a Parsonage in Oxfordshire, which is the subject of the seventh of the ‘Miscellaneous Sonnets,’ Part III.

258. I grieved for Buonaparte. [Sonnet IV.]

[Note No. 183 is repeated here.]

259. The King of Sweden and Toussaint L’Ouverture.

[Sonnets VII. and VIII.]

In this and a succeeding Sonnet on the same subject, let me be understood as a Poet availing himself of the situation which the King of Sweden occupied, and of the principles AVOWED IN HIS MANIFESTOS; as laying hold of these advantages for the purpose of embodying moral truths.  This remark might, perhaps, as well have been suppressed; for to those who may be in sympathy with the course of these Poems, it will be superfluous; and will, I fear, be thrown away upon that other class, whose besotted admiration of the intoxicated despot hereafter placed in contrast with him is the most melancholy evidence of degradation in British feeling and intellect which the times have furnished.

260. September 1, 1802. [Sonnet IX.]

Among the capricious acts of tyranny that disgraced these times was the chasing of all negroes from France by decree of the Government; we had a fellow-passenger who was one of the expelled.

261. ’_Two Voices are there,’ &c._ [Sonnet XII.]

This was composed while pacing to and fro between the Hall of Coleorton, then rebuilding, and the principal Farm-house of the Estate, in which we lived for nine or ten months.  I will here mention that the Song on the Restoration of Lord Clifford, as well as that on the Feast of Brougham Castle as mentioned [in the place], were produced on the same ground.