APPENDIX. NOTES SUPPLEMENTARY TO THOSE WHICH FOLLOW THE POEMS. While the sheets of Volumes I. and II. of this edition were passing through the press, several points illustrative of the poems have come to light. These I put in a brief appendix to Volume II. NOTE TO Three Years she Grew in Sun and Shower; p. 64. Extract from a letter of S. T. Coleridge to Sir Humphrey Davy, October 9, 1800. "We mean to publish the Christabel with a long blank-verse poem of Wordsworth's, entitled The Pedlar" (this was the original name of The Excursion). "I assure you I think very differently of the Christabel. I would rather have written Ruth, and Nature's Lady, than a million such poems." (Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart., London, Churchhill, 1858, p. 82.) 'Nature's Lady' evidently refers to the above poem beginning, "Three years she grew." ADDITIONAL NOTE TO Stanzas, Written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence; pp. 305-9. I am indebted to Professor Dowden, of Trinity College, Dublin, for a very ingenious suggestion in reference to the second of the two characters described in these stanzas. He thinks, with others, that Coleridge is described, not in the last, but in the first half of the poem; and that the last four verses may refer to William Calvert, the brother of Raisley Calvert, and a friend both of Wordsworth and of Coleridge. It must be remembered that Wordsworth tells us, in the Fenwick note, that Hartley Coleridge used to say, "that his father's character and habits are here preserved," &c. Now, there is very little reference to habits in the stanzas describing the second character in the poem; while the allusions to habit are numerous in those verses which refer to the first of the two men. As Mr Dowden's suggestion is based upon a letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Sir Humphrey Davy, I may quote verbatim from that letter rather than give a summary of it :— "Greta Hall, February 3, 1801. . . . A gentleman resident here, his name Calvert, an idle, good-hearted, and ingenious man, has a great desire to commence fellow student with me and Wordsworth in chemistry. He is an intimate friend of Wordsworth's, and he has proposed to W. to take a house which he (Calvert) has nearly built, called Windy Brow, in a delicious situation, scarce half-a-mile from Greta Hall, the residence of S. T. Coleridge, Esq., and so for him (Calvert) to live with them, ie., Wordsworth and his sister. In this case he means to build a little laboratory, &c. Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have lived with Calvert on the same footing, and are much attached to him; because my health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his health, too, is like little potatoes, no great things, and therefore Grasmere (thirteen miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us to enjoy each other's society, without inconvenience, as much as it would be profitable for us both; and likewise, because he feels it more necessary for him to have some intellectual pursuit less closely connected with deep passion than poetry; and is of course desirous, too, not to be so wholly ignorant of knowledge so exceedingly important. However, whether Wordsworth come or no, Calvert and I have determined to begin, and go on. Calvert is a man of sense, and some originality, and is besides what is well called a handy man. He is a good practical mechanic, &c., and is desirous to lay out any sum of money that is necessary." He goes on to ask his friend Davy, "firstly, What books it will be well for me and Calvert to purchase. Secondly, Directions for a convenient little laboratory," &c., &c., and adds in a P.S.-" An electrical machine, and a number of little nick-nacks connected with it, Mr Calvert has." By the term "idle," applied in this letter to Calvert, Coleridge probably only meant that he had not the same ardent and enthusiastic temperament as himself. He spoke of Wordsworth in the same strain, as "that lazy fellow." I do not know when the Wordsworths lived with Calvert; but William was with him in the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1793, and in the spring of 1794 both William and Dorothy Wordsworth stayed for some weeks together at Windy Brow Farm-house, at Keswick. This was not the same house which |