and I were seated upon the turf on the brink of the stream, in the most beautiful part of the most beautiful glen of Alfoxden, Coleridge exclaimed, “This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and conflicts of the wide world.”  “Nay,” said Thelwall, “to make one forget them altogether.”  The visit of this man to Coleridge was, as I believe Coleridge has related, the occasion of a spy being sent by Government to watch our proceedings, which were, I can say with truth, such as the world at large would have thought ludicrously harmless.’[41]

[40] Memoirs, i. 95-6.

[41] Ibid. i. 104-5.

19. Poetry added to:  April 12th, 1798.

’You will be pleased to hear that I have gone on very rapidly adding to my stock of poetry.  Do come and let me read it to you under the old trees in the park [at Alfoxden].  We have little more than two months to stay in this place.’[42]

20. On the Wye.

’We left Alfoxden on Monday morning, the 26th of June, stayed with Coleridge till the Monday following, then set forth on foot towards Bristol.  We were at Cottle’s for a week, and thence we went towards the banks of the Wye.  We crossed the Severn Ferry, and walked ten miles further to Tintern Abbey, a very beautiful ruin on the Wye.  The next morning we walked along the river through Monmouth to Goderich Castle, there slept, and returned the next day to Tintern, thence to Chepstow, and from Chepstow back again in a boat to Tintern, where we slept, and thence back in a small vessel to Bristol.

’The Wye is a stately and majestic river from its width and depth, but never slow and sluggish; you can always hear its murmur.  It travels through a woody country, now varied with cottages and green meadows, and now with huge and fantastic rocks.’[43]

21. At Home again.

‘We are now’ (he says in a letter to Cottle) ’in the county of Durham, just upon the borders of Yorkshire.  We left Coleridge well at Gottingen a month ago.  We have spent our time pleasantly enough in Germany, but we are right glad to find ourselves in England—­for we have learnt to know its value.’[44]

22. Early Visit to the Lake District.

On September 2nd [1799] Wordsworth writes from Sockburn to his friend Cottle:  ’If you come down....  I will accompany you on your tour.  You will come by Greta Bridge, which is about twenty miles from this place:  thither Dorothy and I will go to meet you....  Dorothy will return to Sockburn, and I will accompany you into Cumberland and Westmoreland.’[45]

[42] Letter to Cottle, Memoirs, i. 116.

[43] Ibid. i. 116-17.

[44] 1799:  Memoirs, i. 145.

[45] Ibid. i. 147.

23. On a Tour, 1799.