66 66 me with Wordsworth physic even to nau sea; and I do remember then reading some "things of his with pleasure. He had once "a feeling of Nature, which he carried al"most to a deification of it:--that's why Shelley liked his poetry. 66 "It is satisfactory to reflect, that where 66 a man becomes a hireling and loses his "mental independence, he loses also the fa པ 66 66 66 66 culty of writing well. The lyrical ballads, jacobinical and puling with affectation of simplicity as they were, had undoubtedly a certain merit*: and Wordsworth, though "occasionally a writer for the nursery mas"ters and misses, "Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy." Don Juan, Canto III. Stanza 93. 66 66 Who took their little porringer, And ate their porridge there,' now and then expressed ideas worth imi tating; but, like brother Southey, he had "his price; and since he is turned tax-ga"therer, is only fit to rhyme about asses and 66 waggoners. Shelley repeated to me the "other day a stanza from 'Peter Bell' that "I thought inimitably good. It is the ru"mination of Peter's ass, who gets into a "brook, and sees reflected there a family "circle, or tea-party. But you shall have "it in his own words: Is it a party in a parlour, Cramm'd just as you on earth are cramm'd? And every one, as you may see, All silent and all d-d!' "There was a time when he would have "written better; but perhaps Peter thinks 66 feelingly. "The republican trio, when they began "to publish in common, were to have had a "community of all things, like the ancient "Britons; to have lived in a state of nature, "like savages, and peopled some 'island of "the blest with children in common, like A very pretty Arcadian notion ! 66 "It amuses me much to compare the Bo tany Bay Eclogues, the Panegyric of "Martin the Regicide, and Wat Tyler,' “with the Laureate Odes, and Peter's Eu 66 logium on the Field of Waterloo. There "is something more than rhyme in that "noted stanza containing 'Carnage is God's daughter!' *- * Wordsworth's Thanksgiving Ode. "I offended the par nobile mortally-past "all hope of forgiveness-many years ago. "I met, at the Cumberland Lakes, Hogg "the Ettrick Shepherd, who had just been "writing The Poetic Mirror,' a work that ❝contains imitations of all the living poets' 66 styles, after the manner of the 'Rejected "Addresses.' The burlesque is well done, 66 particularly that of me, but not equal to "Horace Smith's. I was pleased with 66 66 Hogg; and he wrote me a very witty let ter, to which I sent him, I suspect, a very "dull reply. Certain it is that I did not 66 spare the Lakists in it; and he told me he "could not resist the temptation, and had "shewn it to the fraternity. It was too 66 tempting; and as I could never keep a "secret of my own, as you know, much less "that of other people, I could not blame "him. I remember saying, among other "things, that the Lake poets were such "fools as not to fish in their own waters; "but this was the least offensive part of the epistle." 66 "Bowles is one of the same little order of "spirits, who has been fussily fishing on for 66 fame, and is equally waspish and jealous. "What could Coleridge mean by praising "his poetry as he does? 66 "It was a mistake of mine, about his making the woods of Madeira tremble, "&c.; but it seems that I might have told "him that there were no woods to make "tremble with kisses, which would have "been quite as great a blunder, 66 66 "I met Bowles once at Rogers's, and thought him a pleasant, gentlemanly man -a good fellow, for a parson, When |