He said there was some foundation in fact, however slight, for every poem he had written of a narrative kind; so slight indeed, sometimes, as hardly to deserve the name; for example, ‘The Somnambulist’ was wholly built on the fact of a girl at Lyulph’s Tower being a sleep-walker; and ‘The Water Lily,’ on a ship bearing that name.  ‘Michael’ was founded on the son of an old couple having become dissolute and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd having been seven years in building up a sheepfold in a solitary valley:  ‘The Brothers,’ on a young shepherd, in his sleep, having fallen down a crag, his staff remaining suspended midway.  Many incidents he seemed to have drawn from the narration of Mrs. Wordsworth, or his sister, ‘Ellen’ for example, in ‘The Excursion;’ and they must have told their stories well, for he said his principle had been to give the oral part as nearly as he could in the very words of the speakers, where he narrated a real story, dropping, of course, all vulgarisms or provincialisms, and borrowing sometimes a Bible turn of expression:  these former were mere accidents, not essential to the truth in representing how the human heart and passions worked; and to give these last faithfully was his object.  If he was to have any name hereafter, his hope was on this, and he did think he had in some instances succeeded;[238] that the sale of his poems increased among the classes below the middle; and he had had, constantly, statements made to him of the effect produced in reading ‘Michael’ and other such of his poems.  I added my testimony of being unable to read it aloud without interruption from my own feelings.  ‘She was a phantom of delight’ he said was written on ‘his dear wife,’ of whom he spoke in the sweetest manner; a manner full of the warmest love and admiration, yet with delicacy and reserve.  He very much and repeatedly regretted that my uncle had written so little verse; he thought him so eminently qualified, by his very nice ear, his great skill in metre, and his wonderful power and happiness of expression.  He attributed, in part, his writing so little, to the extreme care and labour which he applied in elaborating his metres.  He said, that when he was intent on a new experiment in metre, the time and labour he bestowed were inconceivable; that he was quite an epicure in sound.  Latterly he thought he had so much acquired the habit of analysing his feelings, and making them matter for a theory or argument, that he had rather dimmed his delight in the beauties of nature and injured his poetical powers.  He said he had no idea how ‘Christabelle’ was to have been finished, and he did not think my uncle had ever conceived, in his own mind, any definite plan for it; that the poem had been composed while they were in habits of daily intercourse, and almost in his presence, and when there was the most unreserved intercourse between them as to all their literary projects and productions, and he had never heard from