With them I take delight in weal,
        And seek relief in woe;
    And while I understand and feel
        How much to them I owe,
    My cheeks have often been bedew’d
    With tears of thoughtful gratitude.’

In the first stanza, for ‘Where’er these casual eyes are cast,’ which he objected to as not simple and natural, and as scarcely correct, he suggested ‘Where’er a casual look I cast;’ and for ‘converse,’ the accent of which he condemned as belonging to the noun and not to the verb, he suggested ‘commune.’  In the second stanza he pointed out the improper sequence of tenses in the third and fifth lines, which he corrected by reading in the latter ‘My cheeks are oftentimes bedew’d.’  Of the narrative poems of his friend, well executed as he considered them, and of the mainly external action of imagination or fancy in which they deal, I have certainly heard him pronounce a very depreciatory opinion; whether I ever heard him use the hard words attributed to him, ‘I would not give five shillings for a ream of them,’ I cannot now assert, but if used, they were said in reference to the nobler kind of imaginative power which reveals to man the deep places and sublimer affinities of his own being.  But to some others of Southey’s verses, as well as to the lines above quoted, and to his prose writings in general, he was wont to give liberal praise; and no one could doubt the sincerity and warmth of his admiration of the intellect and virtues of the man, or the brotherly affection towards him which he not unfrequently expressed.

R.P.  GRAVES.  Dublin, 1875.

(i) AN AMERICAN’S REMINISCENCES.

To PROFESSOR HENRY REED.

Philadelphia, Sept. 1850.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

You have asked me to write out as fully as I can an account of my visit to Wordsworth last Summer, of which your letter of introduction was the occasion.  Feeling very grateful to you for the pleasure which that visit gave me, and desiring to make a more minute record of it than either the letter I addressed to you from Keswick, or my journal written at the time contains, I gladly comply with your request.

It was about noon on the 18th of August 1849, that I set out with my friends, from their house near Bowness, to ride to Ambleside.  Our route was along the shore of Lake Windermere.  It was my first day among the English Lakes, and I enjoyed keenly the loveliness which was spread out before me.  My friends congratulated me on the clearness of the atmosphere and the bright skies.  Twilight is all-important in bringing out the full beauty of the Lake Region, and in this respect I was very fortunate.  I had already been deeply moved by the tranquil beauty of Windermere, for, as I came out of the cottage, formerly Professor Wilson’s, where I had passed the night, there it lay in all its grandeur, its clear waters, its green islands, and its girdle of solemn mountains.