antock Hill,
on a stormy day, a thorn, which I had often past in calm and bright
weather without noticing it. I said to myself, cannot I by some
invention do as much to make this Thorn permanently an impressive object
as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment? I began the poem
accordingly, and composed it with great rapidity. Sir George Beaumont
painted a picture from it, which Wilkie thought his best. He gave it to
me; though, when he saw it several times at Rydal Mount afterwards, he
said, 'I could make a better, and would like to paint the same subject
over again.' The sky in this picture is nobly done, but it reminds one
too much of Wilson. The only fault however, of any consequence, is the
female figure, which is too old and decrepit for one likely to frequent
an eminence on such a call.

147. _Hart-Leap Well_. [XXIV.]

Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water, about five miles from
Richmond in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from
Richmond to Askrigg. Its name is derived from a remarkable Chase, the
memory of which is preserved by the monuments spoken of in the second
Part of the following Poem, which monuments do now exist as I have there
described them.

148. _Ibid._

Town-End, 1800. The first eight stanzas were composed extempore one
winter evening in the cottage; when, after having tired and disgusted
myself with labouring at an awkward passage in 'The Brothers,' I started
with a sudden impulse to this, to get rid of the other, and finished it
in a day or two. My sister and I had past the place a few weeks before
in our wild winter journey from Sockburn on the banks of the Tees to
Grasmere. A peasant whom we met near the spot told us the story, so far
as concerned the name of the well, and the hart, and pointed out the
stones. Both the stones and the well are objects that may easily be
missed: the tradition by this time may be extinct in the neighbourhood:
the man who related it to us was very old.

[In pencil on opposite page--See Dryden's dog and hare in _Annus
Mirabilis_.]

149. _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_. [XXV.]

Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the
son of John Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John
Lord Clifford, as is known to the reader of English history, was the
person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young
Earl of Rutland, son of the Duke of York, who had fallen in th