ressed him, that he often fancied he had
arranged things, which really and upon trial proved to be mere embryos.
I omitted to ask him, what seems obvious enough now, whether, in
conversing about it, he had never asked my uncle how it would end. The
answer would have settled the question. He regretted that the story had
not been made to end the same night in which it begun. There was
difficulty and danger in bringing such a personage as the witch to the
daylight, and the breakfast-table; and unless the poem was to have been
long enough to give time for creating a second interest, there was a
great probability of the conclusion being flat after such a
commencement.

[238] You could not walk with him a mile without seeing what a loving
interest he took in the play and working of simple natures. As you
ascend Kirkstone from Paterdale, you have a bright stream leaping down
from rock to rock, on your right, with here and there silent pools. One
of Wordsworth's poor neighbours worked all the week over Kirkstone, I
think in some mines; and returning on Saturday evenings, used to fish up
this little stream. We met him with a string of small trout. W. offered
to buy them, and bid him take them to the Mount. 'Nay,' said the man, 'I
cannot sell them, Sir; the little children at home look for them for
supper, and I can't disappoint them.' It was quite pleasant to see how
the man's answer delighted the Poet. J.T.C.

* * * * *

A great number of my uncle's sonnets, he said, were written from the
'Cat and Salutation,' or a public-house with some such name, in
Smithfield, where my uncle imprisoned himself for some time; and they
appeared in a newspaper, I think he said the _Morning Chronicle_.

He remembered his writing a great part of the translation of
'Wallenstein,' and he said there was nothing more astonishing than the
ease and rapidity with which it was done.

_Sept. 29th, Foxhow_.--We are just setting out, in a promising day, for
a second trip to Keswick, intending, if possible, to penetrate into
Wastdale, over the Sty Head. Before I go, I wish to commemorate a walk
with the Poet, on a drizzly muddy day, the turf sponging out water at
every step, through which he stalked as regardless as if he were of
iron, and with the same fearless, unchanged pace over rough and smooth,
slippery and sound. We went up by the old road[239] from Ambleside to
Keswick, and struck off from the table-land on the lef