XXIII.  POEMS REFERRING TO THE PERIOD OF OLD AGE.

489. The Old Cumberland Beggar. [I.]

The class of Beggars to which the Old Man here described belongs will probably soon be extinct.  It consisted of poor, and mostly old and infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their neighbourhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they regularly received alms, sometimes in money, but mostly in provisions.

490. *_Ibid._

Observed, and with great benefit to my own heart, when I was a child.  Written at Racedown and Alfoxden in my 23d year.  The political economists were about that time beginning their war upon mendicity in all its forms, and by implication, if not directly, on alms-giving also.  This heartless process has been carried as far as it can go by the AMENDED Poor Law Bill, tho’ the inhumanity that prevails in this measure is somewhat disguised by the profession that one of its objects is to throw the poor upon the voluntary donations of their neighbours, that is, if rightly interpreted, to force them into a condition between relief in the Union Poor House and alms robbed of their Christian grace and spirit, as being forced rather from the avaricious and selfish; and all, in fact, but the humane and charitable are at liberty to keep all they possess from their distressed brethren.

491. The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale.

With this picture, which was taken from real life, compare the imaginative one of ‘The Reverie of Poor Susan,’ and see (to make up the deficiencies of the class) ‘The Excursion’ passim.

492. Ibid.

The character of this man was described to me, and the incident upon which the verses turn was told me by Mr. Pool, of Nether Stowey, with whom I became acquainted through our common friend S.T.C.  During my residence at Alfoxden, I used to see a great deal of him, and had frequent occasions to admire the course of his daily life, especially his conduct to his labourers and poor neighbours.  Their virtues he carefully encouraged, and weighed their faults in the scales of charity.  If I seem in these verses to have treated the weaknesses of the farmer and his transgression too tenderly, it may in part be ascribed to my having received the story from one so averse to all harsh judgment.  After his death was found in his escritoir a lock of gray hair, carefully preserved, with a notice that it had been cut from the head of his faithful shepherd, who had served him for a length of years.  I need scarcely add that he felt for all men as brothers.  He was much beloved by distinguished persons:—­Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Southey, Sir H. Davy, and many others, and in his own neighbourhood was highly valued as a magistrate, a man of business, and in every other social relation.  The latter part of the poem, perhaps, requires some apology, as being too much of an echo to the ‘Reverie of Poor Susan.’