As on a sunny bank the tender lamb.—­The story that follows was told to Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister, by the sister of this unhappy young woman.  Every particular was exactly as I have related.  The party was not known to me, though she lived at Hawkshead; but it was after I left school.  The clergyman who administered comfort to her in her distress I knew well.  Her sister, who told the story, was the wife of a leading yeoman in the Vale of Grasmere, and they were an affectionate pair, and greatly respected by every one who knew them.  Neither lived to be old; and their estate, which was, perhaps, the most considerable then in the Vale, and was endeared to them by many remembrances of a salutary character, not easily understood or sympathised with by those who are born to great affluence, past to their eldest son, according to the practice of these Vales, who died soon after he came into possession.  He was an amiable and promising youth, but was succeeded by an only brother, a good-natured man, who fell into habits of drinking, by which he gradually reduced his property, and the other day the last acre of it was sold, and his wife and children, and he himself still surviving, have very little left to live upon; which it would not, perhaps, have been worth while to record here, but that through all trials this woman has proved a model of patience, meekness, affectionate forbearance, and forgiveness.  Their eldest son, who through the vices of his father has thus been robbed of an ancient family inheritance, was never heard to murmur or complain against the cause of their distress, and is now, deservedly, the chief prop of his mother’s hopes.

BOOK VII.—­The clergyman and his family described at the beginning of this book were, during many years, our principal associates in the Vale of Grasmere, unless I were to except our very nearest neighbours.  I have entered so particularly into the main points of their history, that I will barely testify in prose that (with the single exception of the particulars of their journey to Grasmere, which, however, was exactly copied from real life in another instance) the whole that I have said of them is as faithful to the truth as words can make it.  There was much talent in the family, and the eldest son was distinguished for poetical talent, of which a specimen is given in my Notes to the Sonnets on the Duddon.  Once, when in our cottage at Town-End, I was talking with him about poetry, in the course of our conversation I presumed to find fault with the versification of Pope, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer.  He defended him with a warmth that indicated much irritation; nevertheless I would not abandon my point, and said, ’In compass and variety of sound your own versification surpasses his.’  Never shall I forget the change in his countenance and tone of voice:  the storm was laid in a moment, he no longer disputed my judgment, and I passed immediately in his mind, no doubt, for as great a critic as ever lived.  I ought to add, he was a clergyman and a well-educated man, and his verbal memory was the most remarkable of any individual I have known, except a Mr. Archer, an Irishman, who lived several years in this neighbourhood, and who in this faculty was a prodigy:  he afterwards became deranged, and I fear continues so if alive.