430. *_Matthew_. [X.]

Such a tablet as is here spoken of continued to be preserved in Hawkshead school, though the inscriptions were not brought down to our time.  This and other poems connected with Matthew would not gain by a literal detail of facts.  Like the wanderer in the ‘Excursion,’ this schoolmaster was made up of several, both of his class and men of other occupations.  I do not ask pardon for what there is of untruth in such verses, considered strictly as matters of fact.  It is enough if, being true and consistent in spirit, they move and teach in a manner not unworthy of a Poet’s calling.

431. *_Personal Talk_. [XIII.]

Written at Town-End.  The last line but two stood at first, better and more characteristically, thus: 

    ‘By my half-kitchen and half-parlour fire.’

My sister and I were in the habit of having the teakettle in our little sitting-room; and we toasted the bread ourselves, which reminds me of a little circumstance not unworthy of being set down among these minutiae.  Happening both of us to be engaged a few minutes one morning, when we had a young prig of a Scotch lawyer to breakfast with us, my dear sister, with her usual simplicity, put the toasting-fork with a slice of bread into the hands of this Edinburgh genius.  Our little book-case stood on one side of the fire.  To prevent loss of time, he took down a book, and fell to reading, to the neglect of the toast, which was burnt to a cinder.  Many a time have we laughed at this circumstance and other cottage simplicities of that day.  By the bye, I have a spite at one of this series of sonnets (I will leave the reader to discover which), as having been the means of nearly putting off for ever our acquaintance with dear Miss Fenwick, who has always stigmatised one line of it as vulgar, and worthy only of having been composed by a country squire.

432. *_To the Spade of a Friend_. 1804. [XIV.]

This person was Thomas Wilkinson, a Quaker by religious profession; by natural constitution of mind—­or, shall I venture to say, by God’s grace? he was something better.  He had inherited a small estate, and built a house upon it, near Yanwath, upon the banks of the Emont.  I have heard him say that his heart used to beat, in his boyhood, when he heard the sound of a drum and fife.  Nevertheless, the spirit of enterprise in him confined itself in tilling his ground, and conquering such obstacles as stood in the way of its fertility.  Persons of his religious persuasion do now, in a far greater degree than formerly, attach themselves to trade and commerce.  He kept the old track.  As represented in this poem, he employed his leisure hours in shaping pleasant walks by the side of his beloved river, where he also built something between a hermitage and a summer-house, attaching to it inscriptions, after the manner of Shenstone at his Leasowes.  He used to travel from time to time, partly from love of Nature, and partly