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AND 
 
 THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 READ BEFORE THE MEMBERS OP 
 
 THE BATH LITERARY CLUB 
 
 ON THE 
 
 llTH DECEMBER, 1871. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. W. L. NICHOLS, M.A., F.S.A. 
 
 BATH : 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 
 MDCCCLXXIII. 
 
PRINTED AT THE " CHRONICLE" OFFICE, KINGSTON BUILDINGS, BATH. 
 
TO 
 
 HENRY DUNCAN SERINE, ESQ., 
 OP WARLEIGH MANOR, 
 AT WHOSE SUGGESTION IT WAS WRITTEN, 
 AND TO THE OTHER MEMBERS OP 
 
 THE BATH LITERARY CLUB, 
 
 BEFORE WHOM IT WAS READ, 
 AND AT WHOSE REQUEST IT IS PRINTED, 
 THIS PAPER 
 IS, WITH MUCH RESPECT AND ESTEEM, 
 INSCRIBED. 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 In preparing this pamphlet for the press, some passages, 
 which from their length were necessarily omitted in reading a 
 post-prandial paper, are now restored, and a few additional notes 
 have been thrown into an appendix. It is hoped that the whole 
 may be useful to members of the Literary Club, or to strangers 
 to this part of the country, as a guide to the associations, 
 antiquarian and literary, connected with a very interesting 
 district. 
 Woodlands : 
 
 15 March, 1873. 
 
THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 AND 
 
 THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
Wordsworth's glen. 
 Alfoxden. 
 
"Naturane nobis hoc datum dicam, an errore quodam ; ut, 
 cum ea loca videamus, in CLuibus memoria dignos viros acceperi- 
 mus multum esse versatos, magis moveamur, quam si quando 
 eorum ipsorum ant facta audiamus, aut scriptum aliquod legamus? 
 Velut ego nunc moveor. Venit enim mihi Platonis in mentem, 
 quern accepimus primum hie disputare solitum ; cujus etiam illi 
 hortuli propinqui non memoriam solum mihi afFemnt, sed ipsum 
 videntur in conspectu meo hie ponere. Hie Speucippus, hie 
 Xenoerates, hie ejus auditor Polemo ; cujus ipsa ilia sessio fuit^ 
 quam videmus. . . . Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis." 
 — Cicero de Finih., Lib. v., c. i. 
 
 " I remember once, when Coleridge, Thelwall and I were seated 
 upon the turf on the brink of the stream, in the most beautiful 
 part of the most beautiful glen of Alfoxden, Coleridge exclaimed, 
 * This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and conflicts 
 of the wide world.' ' Nay,' said Thelwall, ' to make one forget 
 them altogether.' It was a chosen resort of mine." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
AVING resided for some time on the borders of the 
 Quantock-hills, I have been requested to give my 
 impressions of the scenery of the district, and especially to 
 note any reminiscences I may have met with of the two 
 great Poets, whose genius has thrown an additional charm 
 over the locality, and made it for ever classic ground. 
 
 The mountain range of the Quantocks, the Oberland of 
 Somersetshire, runs for nearly sixteen miles in a direction 
 from south-east to north-west between the Bristol Channel 
 and the town of Taunton, and attains its greatest elevation 
 at Wilsneck, an eminence rising between the two rival 
 heights of Cothelstone and Dousborough. 
 
 The chief characteristic of Quantock scenery I venture 
 to designate as Cheeeful Beauty. Unlike the savage 
 grandeur of the Scottish mountains, or the wild and bleak 
 uplands of Northern England, its breezy summits rise in 
 gentle and graceful undulations, and sink into woody combes 
 of the most romantic beauty, thickly clothed, many of them 
 
10 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 with scrub oak, and eacli with its own little stream winding 
 through it ; its slopes fringed with gorse and ferns of 
 luxuriant growth, or purple with heather, and abounding 
 everywhere with the pretty little shrub vaccinium myrtillus, 
 or whortleberry, the fruit of which, locally known by the 
 name of " whorts," becomes from its sale during the season a 
 source of considerable profit to the surrounding villages. 
 The prevalence of the yew and the holly may also be noted ; 
 the former is found singly in the woods and hedgerows, or in 
 the churchyards, of which few are without one or more 
 specimens often of majestic growth and venerable age. The 
 holly is still more abundant, and the fine undergrowth of 
 this tree, like those in the grove at Alfoxden, so much 
 admired by Wordsworth, forms quite a speciality of these 
 woods. Nor must the charm which the colour of the soil 
 imparts be forgotten ; — that rich red sandstone* which always 
 gives such a warm tone to the landscape, and so much luxu- 
 riance to the foliage. Those numerous combes, however, in 
 the sheltered hollows of which may be found some of the 
 rarest of our native plants,f form the most marked feature 
 of the district ; and Ijdng, as they generally do, at right 
 angles to the sea-shore, break the outline of the mountain 
 range into " Heads,'' as they are locally termed, and these 
 eminences, seen from the Bristol Channel, gave rise in days 
 of yore to the Keltic name of the Quantocks, i.e., the water- 
 headlands 
 
 * Appendix, note 1. f Note ii. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 11 
 
 Around tke brows of these hills wind beautiful walks that 
 extend for miles through oak woods, once the favourite haunt 
 of the poets and their friends ; such are the valley of the 
 Seven Wells, Cockercombe, Hunter's Dell, and other points 
 of similar interest. They have since been rendered more 
 accessible by the formation of drives that open out the most 
 charming scenes of woodland beauty. Southey, in one of his 
 letters, affirms that "Devonshire falls very flat after the 
 North of Somerset, which is truly a magnificent country.'* 
 Few strangers, however, who travel along the public road at 
 the base of these hills would anticipate the countless beauties 
 that lie hidden in the recesses of their " dingles and bosky 
 dells,'' nor the splendid prospects which their heights 
 command. Certainly, as far as my own experience extends, 
 I never met with so much fine mountain scenery that could 
 be enjoyed with so trifling an amount of climbing, nor a 
 district in which so many spots impressive from their solitude 
 and seclusion could be so easily reached. An advantage this, 
 to be appreciated, it may be, by persons somewhat advanced 
 in years, more than by the droves of good people infected by 
 the modern vulgar mania for climbing the snowy peaks of 
 enormous mountains, with, as it would seem, no intelligible 
 object except that of coming down again, and apart from any 
 of those scientific researches which justify and ennoble so 
 great an expenditure of time and toil. To such hunters after 
 the sublime I cannot commend this part of Somersetshire, 
 nor invite their steps to wander — 
 
12 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 On seaward Quaiitock's heathy hills, , 
 Where quiet sounds from hidden rills 
 Float here and there like things astray.* 
 
 Our Quantock scenery, with its gentler features, and a beauty 
 more of expression than of form, would be to them " as is a 
 picture to a blind man's eye or might affect them much as 
 a pastoral symphony of Beethoven might affect the crowd 
 that is rushing from a " monster concert at Exeter Hall. 
 
 This exaggerated passion for lofty mountains, so much in 
 vogue of late years, appears to have been unknown to classical 
 antiquity, and the greatest poets and painters would seem to 
 have drawn but little of their inspiration from its influence. 
 Beauty of scenery is in truth independent of mere altitude 
 and expanse, and grandeur is not necessarily connected with 
 magnitude. To persons who are susceptible of the true 
 enjoyment of external nature, and can watch with an intelli- 
 gent eye the constant changes of shade and colour in 
 landscape, and note the delicate harmonies and manifold 
 transformations in sea, and sky, and cloud, which succeed 
 each other in such infinite variety ; — to them, the wild 
 heathy moorlands, the softly rounded heights, and the deep- 
 sunk combes of the Quantocks will, however inferior in scale, 
 be found, in their way, scarcely less impressive than the 
 passes of the Alps or the mountains of Switzerland. For 
 after all, it is upon the mind which the spectator brings 
 
 * Coleridge, vol. i., p. 180. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 13 
 
 along with him that his acquisitions of pleasure or profit 
 
 must depend : — 
 
 we receive but what we give, 
 
 And in our life alone doth Nature live.* 
 
 Other points of interest remain to be noticed. The 
 mountain heights not only afford views of great extent and 
 grandeur, but are many of them crowned with ancient 
 encampments. Of these perhaps the most considerable in size, 
 and commanding in position is Dousborough, a corruption of 
 How's-borough, i.e., the hill-fort. A long green path of 
 elastic turf leads up for about a mile in nearly a straight li|ie 
 from the gate of my residence, Woodlands, to the camp on 
 the summit. This has been sometimes ascribed to the 
 Eomans, but, as appears to me, is evidently a fortress of 
 Belgic-British construction, and is of great size and strength. 
 In form it is nearly oval, but accommodated to the shape of 
 the hill. Its enclosure, partially overgrown with heather 
 and dwarf-oak coppice, contains an area of more than ten 
 acres. A deep fosse and a lofty agger surround it, and the 
 ramparts are pierced by three entrances. On its western 
 declivity may be' traced a raised road, or causey, leading to 
 the British trackway, that, running from the ancient ford at 
 Combwitch, skirts the entrenched post at Cannington Park 
 Hill, keeps along a valley to the south of Nether Stowey, 
 ascends Quantock, passing between Dousborough and Wills- 
 neck, and then descends to the vale of Crowcombe ; next it 
 
 ♦ Coleridge: Poems i., 237. 
 
14 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 mounts the Brendon Hills, and stretches far away over the 
 wilds of Exmoor to the mining districts of Cornwall. On the 
 highest point of Dousborough, where stands the flag-staff, a 
 heap of loose masonry marks the site of a specula, or watch- 
 tower, and beside it are two or three circular pits, which 
 formerly held the beacon fires. These were in correspondence 
 with a chain of other forts of ante-Eoman origin on the long 
 ridge of the Mendips, and on the opposite Brendon Hills, 
 protecting the Belgic frontiers, communicating with both 
 Channels, and ready on the appearance of danger to convey 
 onwards the telegraphic fire-signals, like the flame from 
 Mount Ida that leapt from height to height to announce 
 to Argos the news of the fall of Troy. 
 
 That the Eomans, after their subjugation of this part of 
 Britannia Prima, may have occasionally occupied as castra 
 aestiva the military post constructed long before their 
 day, is not improbable. No Roman road, however, comes 
 within ten miles of the fort, although a few coins of the 
 Lower Empire have been found at the village of Kilton and 
 elsewhere in the vicinity. An oval-shaped barrow within 
 the enciente, with a trench round it, which appears to have 
 been formerly opened, is sometimes pointed out as the 
 Pretorium, but more probably marks the grave of some 
 Belgic chieftain, — the oldest form of sepulture and the most 
 durable. There is also at no great distance another sepulchral 
 monument in the hollow below the northern slope of the 
 encampment, on the left of the greensward path leading up 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 16 
 
 to the summit. This is a cairn or heap of loose stones, sur- 
 rounded by a shallow trench ; and on the hill just above 
 Woodlands, is one of those circular pits so common on the 
 Wiltshire Downs, which Stukely calls, oddly enough, " in- 
 verted barrows." This excavation marks the site of an 
 outpost to the fort above, from which it was visible ; it 
 commands the road at the foot of the hill, and was probably 
 roofed over in a bee-hive shape to form a shelter for the 
 guard. Many tumuli are found scattered over the Quantocks, 
 and but few Eoman remains. Other ancient beacons may be 
 traced on Willsneck, Cothelstone, Morncombe, and elsewhere. 
 
 It was the judicious advice of a distinguished antiquary, 
 the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, " to avoid above all things 
 the common error of looking for Roman stations on high 
 mountains ; but on the contrary to examine those gentle 
 eminences in the plains, having an open circuit of country 
 around them. This latter quality seems peculiarly to have 
 been considered by the Romans, as we may collect from their 
 historians ; and for this reason, the Britons seldom ventured 
 to attack the enemy in the open, but depended more on 
 surprising them unawares. Hence the Romans fixed on 
 situations for their camps where they could perceive at a 
 distance the Britons descending from their strongholds in the 
 mountains.'' The Roman generals, although they never 
 failed, even on halting for a single night, to throw up 
 entrenchments round their camp, yet relied less upon moun- 
 tain-heights and huge ramparts than upon the disciplined 
 
16 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 bravery of their legions, and their own superior military 
 tactics. Their camps, although occasionally found inter- 
 mingled with older British fortifications, were generally, 
 smaller, of a square form with four gates, and placed on some 
 gentle eminence with water near at hand. Nor have the 
 Danes a greater claim than the Romans to the construction 
 of these grand military works that are sometimes called by 
 their name. Their camps were mostly small and hastily 
 thrown up to serve the purpose of some sudden piratical 
 landing. In the neighbourhood of Watchet and Porlock are 
 several small entrenchments near the coast, which may with 
 great probability be assigned to this people ; while others, of 
 dimensions equally small, consisting of merely a single agger 
 and a fosse, may be found constructed on the hill-sides, or at 
 the head of some little valley, commanding its approach from 
 the sea, and placed so as to defend the interior of the country 
 from these marauding descents. Such are " Trendle Eing," 
 on the slope of Quantock, above BicknoUer, and another 
 diminutive earthwork, of which I know not the name, on a 
 little rocky promontory a mile further to the west towards 
 Stogumber. 
 
 It is not improbable that the whole of this wild outlying 
 district of the Quantocks, so far removed from the great line 
 of Eoman traffic, remained for a considerable time a woody 
 fastness of the Belgic-Britons. An interesting discovery 
 which has been lately made on the Fairfield Estate, goes far 
 to confirm the supposition of their occupancy. It consists of 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 17 
 
 a great variety of objects in bronze, amounting, together with 
 fragments, to nearly 150 pieces. There are portions of swords 
 and their sheaths ; daggers and knives ; spear heads of the 
 leaf shape and of the barbed type ; more than a score of 
 Celts, of sections square or oval ; palstaves ; gouges ; a disc 
 of molten metal ; a number (^f jets from the necks of moulds ; 
 &c. These articles were lately exhibited at the rooms of the 
 Society of Antiquaries, at Somerset House, and are now 
 arranged in the library at St. Audries. 
 
 The view from the summit of Dousborough is of great 
 extent and variety. Immediately beneath the spectator, on 
 the north, stretching away towards the Bristol Channel, lies a 
 level tract of woodland, interspersed with meadows, and 
 orchards, and farmsteads, from which shoots up the spire 
 of the fine old Priory Church of Stoke-Courcey, and near it 
 stand the moated walls of its Norman Castle. Hard by is 
 visible the ancient mansion of Fairfield, half hidden in its 
 trees. Across the Channel is seen the Coast of Wales, and 
 the horizon beyond is fringed by the mountains of Glamorgan, 
 Brecknock, and Monmouthshire. The broad expanse of the 
 Severn-sea, yellow as the Tiber, occupies the middle distance, 
 with the bold, rocky islet of the Steep Holms rising abruptly 
 from its bosom, — an out-lying mass severed from the mountain 
 limestone of the Mendips, and not without a little history of 
 its own. For here the survivors of the pirate Danes, after 
 
18 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 the repulse of their attempted landing at Watchet (A.D. 915), 
 
 found a brief refuge, and " sat on the island/'' as the " Saxon 
 
 Chronicle'' expresses it, foodless and forlorn, till most of them 
 
 died of hunger. Gildas, the oldest British historian, is said 
 
 to have retired to this secluded spot to write his book of 
 
 lamentations, called a Treatise de excidio Britannice ; and 
 
 here, after the battle of Hastings, Girtha, the mother of 
 
 Harold, with some of the noble ladies of her court, found a 
 
 temporary asylum. The island, which has been lately 
 
 fortified with all the appliances of modern warfare, lies in 
 
 the very highway of Channel traffic, for here the Severn-sea 
 
 becomes free and open to the Atlantic, and any one of yonder 
 
 vessels, whose white sails add so much animation and interest 
 
 to the view, might, it is said, make from hence in a fair wind, 
 
 without a tack, the harbour of New York. The sister islet, 
 
 the Flat Holmes, is less visible from hence, except at night, 
 
 when, as Coleridge describes it, — 
 
 Dark reddening from the channelled isle, 
 Twinkles the watch-fire, like a sullen star. 
 
 Turning towards the east, the long range of the Mendips 
 appears, beyond the sandy flats that mark the position of 
 the ancient estuary Uxella, now reduced, by their accumu- 
 lations, to form the mouth of the river Parret. On the 
 highest point of the range, is a beacon, once perhaps the 
 most important watch-tower in the county, being equally 
 visible from the north and south sides of Mendip. At one 
 point, the long outline is obscured by a faint cloud of smoke 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 19 
 
 which hangs over the busy town and port of Bridgwater, 
 
 with its factories and foundries, and at another, a sharp 
 
 fracture indicates the position of the grand ravine of Cheddar. 
 
 More in advance towards the spectator the low-lying ridge of 
 
 Polden, with a Roman road running along it, stretches away 
 
 towards Sedgmoor ; and standing apart, islanded by its 
 
 circling marshes, and hidden now and then by their mists, 
 
 rises St. MichaeFs famous tower, recalling the lines of a fine 
 
 descriptive poet : — 
 
 How hath it vanished in a hasty spleen, 
 The Tor of Glastonbury !" 
 
 Still further south, Alfred's tower looks out from the woods of 
 Stourhead; and on a very clear day are visible the double peaks 
 of Montacute. On the west the prospect is limited by high 
 and heathery moorlands, the haunt of the black game, except 
 where a depression admits a glimpse of the Brendon hills, and 
 the fine bold headland of Minehead ; and at times the peak of 
 Dunkery, the monarch of western mountains, may be distin- 
 guished. Immediately below, to the left of the woods of 
 Alfoxden, and looking across two parallel coombs of great 
 beauty, lies the little valley of Kilve, and beyond its gap the 
 glittering sea. 
 
 The view from Cothelstone Beacon has been so well 
 described in the Proceedings of the Somerset Archseological 
 Society, by the late Mr. Warre, that it would be difficult to 
 add much to the clever sketch he has left us ; and Wilsneck, 
 although of somewhat greater altitude, has little additional 
 
20 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 interest, and much in common with the neighbouring height. 
 Neither elevation, however, affords a prospect so fascinating as 
 that from Dousborough, although both command a wider 
 expanse of view over the central part of the county, embracing 
 a large portion of that fair valley known far and wide as 
 Taunton Dean ; a goodly landscape, recalling to the recollection 
 of the lover of our elder poets the fervid encomium of Drayton 
 in his Poly-olbion ; 
 
 " What eare so empty is, that hath not heard the sound 
 Of Taunton's fruitfull Deane 1 not niatcht by any ground ; . . . 
 Where sea-ward Quantock stands ." 
 
 Having accomplished the ascent of Wilsneck, the climber 
 (and if a botanist, he may chance on its higher slopes to 
 light on a specimen of the rare stag's-horn moss), finds 
 himself on the loftiest point of Quantock. As his eye 
 ranges over the fertile campaign below, he will see innumer- 
 able meadows, and cornfields, farms, and rural dwellings ; 
 and, rising frequent from the valley, or nestling here and 
 there in the woody openings of the hills, the battlements of 
 some of those unrivalled ' perpendicular' Towers for which 
 Somersetshire over all other parts of England reigns supreme. 
 Nor will the survey prove less suggestive to the historian or 
 the antiquary. Within ken are the sites of a score of battle- 
 fields ; the mediaeval castle and the moated grange lend their 
 associations ; nor are wanting old historic mansions, and 
 
 " ghostly halls of grey renown, 
 
 With woodland honours graced ." 
 
 On the south the heights of Blagdon form a rampart to the 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 21 
 
 vale of Taunton, and at their extremity throw out a bold 
 
 projecting spur, crowned by the strong British encampment 
 
 of Castle Neroche. Turning away from this fair scene 
 
 towards the west, we have at our feet the romantic village 
 
 of Crowcombe, and, on the opposite slope of the valley, 
 
 Combe-Florey, a name now well known from its connection 
 
 with the witty Canon of S. Paul's, whose playful sallies, 
 
 never spiced by malice, were always sine felle joci His glebe 
 
 is described, in the memoir of his life, as truly a " valley of 
 
 flowers,'' — " a lovely little spot where nature and art combined 
 
 to realise the Happy Valley/' The long line of the Brendon 
 
 hills extends in front of our station, on an outlying point of 
 
 which is conspicuous Willett Tower, a modern erection, and 
 
 behind it are the Elworthy barrows, a large Belgic-British 
 
 earthwork left half finished. It has formed a subject of 
 
 fruitless conjecture with antiquaries, why these warlike 
 
 fortifications were discontinued, and for so many centuries, 
 
 " pendent opera interrupta, minaeque 
 
 Murorum ingentes." 
 
 Yet one other distinction of the Quantocks remains to be 
 
 noticed, which they possess in common with the hill country 
 
 south of the Bristol Channel, including the heights of Exmoor 
 
 and a portion of North Devon ; and that is, the fact that this 
 
 district is now the last home in -Q r e a t Britain of the wild 
 
 red-deer, and that here alone still survive some relics of the 
 
 grand old Stag-hunting establishments whose sport and 
 
 hospitalities are associated with the bye-gone history of the 
 
22 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 county of Somerset. Here may still sometimes be seen the 
 broad-antlered stag or the graceful hind hotly pursued by a 
 gallant train of horsemen, while the echoes of the Quantocks 
 are roused by the shouts of the gay cavalcade and the voices 
 of the hounds swelling and dying away over the autumn 
 woods, till their deepened note is followed by the wild bugle- 
 call that proclaims " the mort o' the deer/' 
 
 Into this charming country there came, between seventy 
 and eighty years ago, two men, destined to exercise by their 
 genius and their writings an influence upon the minds of 
 their generation more profound than any others of their 
 contemporaries. " Perhaps,'' says a recent critic, " no two 
 such men have met anywhere on English ground during this 
 century." It was the period when the stir and turmoil 
 which disturbed men's minds at the outset of the first French 
 Revolution had given place to comparative calm and repose, 
 and the political fever of the nation was subsiding, that 
 Coleridge, the younger of the two, " retired," as he himself 
 informs us, "to a cottage in Somersetshire at the foot of 
 Quantock, to devote himself to poetry and to the study of 
 ethics and psychology, and the foundations of religion and 
 morals." Wordsworth, his senior by more than two years, 
 was attracted to the same neighbourhood by mental sjnnpathy 
 with his brother philosopher and poet, and a wish to enjoy 
 the society of a man by whose marvellous conversation he 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 23 
 
 had been so much impressed. He loved to describe Cole- 
 ridge's talk as " like a majestic river, the sound or sight of 
 whose course you caught at intervals ; which was sometimes 
 concealed by forests, sometimes lost in sand ; then came 
 flashing out broad and distinct ; and even when it took a 
 turn which your eye could not follow, yet you always felt 
 and knew that there was a connection in its parts, and that 
 it was the same river.'' Those persons who have listened to 
 the discourse of " the old man eloquent," in his after years, 
 will recognize the accuracy of this description.* Yet no 
 two men could be more unlike than the poets who now met 
 beside the Quantocks. Coleridge, a student and recluse 
 from his boyhood, of immense erudition, a heluo lihrorum ; 
 all his life a valetudinarian who scarcely knew what health 
 was — ever planning mighty works — multa et pnlcra minans 
 — ^yet so irresolute and infirm of purpose as never to realize 
 his aspirations — the very Hamlet of literature ; — Words- 
 worth, on the other hand, as robust in body as one of the 
 peasants of his native Cumberland, of indomitable purpose, 
 keeping his way right onward when made the scorn of fools 
 till he became the glory of his age — was no reader of books, 
 except of the great book of nature, and his " study" was on 
 the Quantock downs. It was his creed that 
 
 * Coleridge, on his side, speaking in his Biographia Literaria, of his 
 residence at Stowey, and the blessing he then acquired in the society of 
 "Wordsworth, whom he could look up to with equal reverence as a poet, a 
 philosopher or a man, adds "his conversation extended to almost all 
 subjects, except physics and politics ; with the latter he never troubled 
 himself." 
 
24 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS, 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man ; 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 " Over these green hills/' observes the same critic," " the two 
 young poets wandered for hours together rapt in fervid talk, 
 Coleridge no doubt the chief speaker, Wordsworth not the 
 less suggestive. Never before, or since, have these downs 
 heard such high converse." At that period, Benedict de 
 Spinosa was the master spirit whose spell held temporary 
 sway over the mind of Coleridge ; and doubtless the some- 
 what mystical, but ennobling propositions of the famous 5th 
 book of his Ethics, which exercised so profound an influence 
 over the greatest minds of Germany, would form a frequent 
 subject of discussion and possess no small attraction for both 
 poets. But not alone philosophy, poetry would naturally 
 become their theme. Both were disgusted with the inane 
 and artificial versification which then passed under its name, 
 and the false canons of criticism, and formal rules upon 
 which it was based. English poetry was indeed at that 
 period at its lowest ebb, represented mainly by the glitter 
 and false taste of Darwin and the turgid twaddle of Hayley. 
 Burns, it is true, had been lately in full song, but his wood 
 notes wild were little known in the south, and Cowper, 
 the herald of a better day, was timid, and only half emanci- 
 pated from the prevailing system. It was at this period 
 that the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge burst upon the 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 25 
 
 literary world like a new revelation. In after years, the elder 
 
 poet thus recalled their memorable rambles in those days of 
 
 promise : — 
 
 Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved 
 Unchecked, or loitered mid their sylvan combs. 
 Thou in bewitching words, with happy art, 
 Didst chaunt the vision of that Antient man, 
 The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes 
 Didst utter of the Lady Christabel ; 
 And I, associate with such labour, steeped 
 In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours. 
 Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found, 
 After the perils of his moonlight ride, 
 Near the loud waterfall ; or her who sate 
 In misery near the miserable thorn. 
 
 The Prelude, Book xiv. 
 
 The result of these musings on the Quantocks was the 
 publication in the following year (1798) of the famous 
 Lyrical Ballads, a volume which so startled the critics of 
 that day from their propriety. In anticipation of its recep- 
 tion, Wordsworth, the chief contributor, prefixed to the 
 second edition the motto, afterwards withdrawn, " quam 
 nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum," and added an explanatory 
 Preface of considerable length. The Antient Mariner, and 
 the Christabel, planned during a walk along the Quantock 
 Hills towards Watchet, time has stamped as, "after their 
 kind, unsurpassed by any creation of the poet's own genera- 
 tion, or perhaps of any generation of England's poetry/' 
 The Ghristdhel excited the warm admiration of Sir Walter 
 
26 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 Scott, who frankly acknowledged his own considerable 
 obligations to the poetry of Coleridge, and particularly 
 admired his management of the supernatural. " Why/' 
 enquires Sir Walter, " is the Harp of Quant ock silent T' and, 
 in the notes to one of his romances, having occasion to refer 
 to the popular superstition which formerly existed, that evil 
 spirits could not enter an inhabited house unless invited, or 
 even dragged over the threshold, he adds the remark, that 
 fLM/ " ^^^^ picturesque use of this popular belief occurs in 
 Coleridge's beautiful, and tantalizing fragment of ChristaheV 
 Has not our own imaginative poet cause to fear that future 
 ages will desire to summon him from his place of rest, as 
 MUton longed , jufi 
 
 To call him up, who left half-told J/j^ Id 1'^'^ ^ ^ 
 The story of Cambuscan bold ? fl^l' 
 " The verses I refer to,'' continues Sir Walter, " are wl^n 
 Christabel conducts into her father's castle a mysterious and 
 malevolent being, under the disguise of a distressed female 
 stranger : — 
 
 They crossed the moat, and Christabel 
 
 Took the key that fitted well j 
 
 A little door she opened straight, 
 
 All in the middle of the gate ; 
 
 The gate that was ironed within and without, 
 
 Where an army in battle array had marched out. 
 
 The lady sank, belike through pain, 
 
 And Christabel with might and main 
 
 Lifted her up, a weary weight, 
 
 Over the threshold of the gate : . 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 27 
 
 Then the lady rose again, 
 
 And moved as she were not in pain. 
 
 So, free from danger, free from fear, 
 
 They crossed the court : right gLad they were." 
 
 On another occasion, speaking of " the singularly irregular 
 structure of the stanzas, and the liberty it allowed the author 
 to adapt the sound to the sense'' which he found, in 
 Christdbel, he adds the graceful remark, "it is to Mr. 
 Coleridge that I am bound to make the acknowledgment due 
 from the pupil to his master.''* Even Lord Byron owned 
 the charm of what he called " that wild, and singularly 
 original and beautiful poem ;" and to the Ghristabel we are 
 indebted for the opening lines of one of his now nearly for- 
 gotten tales in verse, The Siege of Corinth. Indeed few 
 persons of sensibility can resist the marvellous skill with 
 which the poet of Stowey gives " a local habitation and a 
 name" to the wild fictions of old romantic superstition. The 
 mysterious Geraldine, with her witch-like beauty, uttering 
 her spell over the sleeping Ghristabel, chills the blood with 
 creeping horror, and the wonderful art with which so many 
 minute touches of quaint and picturesque description are 
 thrown in, adds immensely to the magical effect. The mode 
 of narrative, too, by question and answer, then so novel and 
 original, imparts spirit and liveliness to the story, and the 
 moonlit forest ; the moated castle and its massive gate ; the 
 angry moan of the old mastiff ; the echoing hall, and the 
 
 * Int. to The Lay of the Last Minstrel, p. 24. 
 
28 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 sudden flash of the embers on its hearth, revealing only the 
 serpent-eye of the stranger lady ; the carven chamber, and 
 its fresh-trimmed silver lamp, 
 
 Left swinging to and fro, — 
 
 combine, one and all, to lay an irresistible hold upon the 
 imagination of the reader. 
 
 The year 1797, which gave birth to two such works of 
 genius as this poem and The Antient Mariner, may well be 
 called the annus mirahilis of the poet! It was probably the 
 happiest year of his life : he had not yet lost the springing 
 hopes of youth, and keenly felt, no doubt, the exhilirating 
 consciousness of his own great powers. His poetic prime," 
 observes his learned daughter, in her Notes on her father's 
 life, "commenced with the Ode to the Departing Year, 
 composed at the end of December, 1796." The year following, 
 the five-and-twentieth of his life [during which, and in 1798, 
 he resided in his cottage at Nether Stowey], produced The 
 Antient Mariner, Love, and The Dark Ladie, the first part 
 of Christabel, Kuhla Khan, the tragedy of the Remorse, 
 France, and This Lime Tree Bower, Tears in Solitude, i'luJ^- 
 The Nightingale, and The Wanderings of Cain, were 
 written in 1798. Frost at Midnight, The Picture, the Lines 
 to the Rev. G. Coleridge, and those To W. Wordsworth are all 
 of the same Nether Stowey period. " It was in June, 1797," 
 continues the poet's daughter, " that my Father began to be 
 intimate with Mr. Wordsworth, and this doubtless gave an 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 29 
 
 impulse to his mind. The poems which succeed are dis- 
 tinguished from those of my father's Stowey life by a less 
 buoyant spirit."' With these last I am not concerned in the 
 present paper, which is confined to the period of the poet's 
 residence in this part of Somersetshire. Of the above poems 
 Kuhla Khan, a dream within a dream, was composed, as the 
 author himself tells us, in a lonely farmhouse between 
 Porlock and Linton. The Lines to his Brother contain a 
 touching biographical retrospect ; and the noble verses 
 addressed to Wordsworth record his own feelings on hearing 
 the grand poem of The Prelude read by its author. The 
 tragedy of The Remorse was written at the suggestion of 
 Sheridan, and some years afterwards represented at Drury 
 Lane, at the request of Lord Byron, and with great success. 
 In the little artistically-perfect gem, entitled Love, with 
 which, as a poem of the affections, there is nothing antient or 
 modern that, in its way, can bear a moment's comparison, 
 one knows not which most to admire, — -its picturesque 
 description, — its apt locality, and the sculpture-like precision 
 of its handling, — its captivating melancholy, or its exquisite 
 blending of the spiritual and the sensuous. 
 
 Most of the poems by Wordsworth contained in the first 
 edition of the Lyrical Ballads (a little volume now of extreme 
 rarity), were produced at Alfoxden, a mansion about three 
 miles from Nether Stowey, the residence of his brother poet, 
 and are descriptive of Quantock scenery, or founded on 
 incidents that occurred in the neighbourhood. The pic- 
 
30 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 turesque little domain of Alfoxden has naturally acquired 
 some celebrity from the circumstance that the Poet of the 
 Excursion resided there for awhile in his noble poverty. An 
 interesting memorial of the Poet's sojourn at Alfoxden, now 
 nearly effaced by time, used to be visible, —the letters W. W., 
 deeply incised on one of the row of trees on the hill above 
 the house. I have met on the neighbouring downs pilgrims 
 from across the Atlantic on their way to visit the shrine of 
 the Poet, and have been amused by the minute acquaintance 
 they seemed to have acquired at their home in the Dominion 
 of Canada with the names of some of our retired villages 
 merely from their occurrence in the verses of their favourite 
 author, or from the transient honour conferred upon them 
 by his residence. 
 
 Miss Wordsworth, his accomplished sister, thus describes 
 ' the attractions of the place, as seen on their first arrival. 
 " There is everything here ; the sea ; woods wild as fancy 
 ever painted ; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves, 
 found out a sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep 
 hills covered by full-grown timber trees. The woods are as 
 fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic ; 
 it has the character of the less grand parts of the lakes. 
 From the end of the house we have a fine view of the sea, 
 over a woody country, and exactly opposite the window 
 where I now sit is an immense wood, whose round top has 
 the appearance of a mighty dome. A quarter of a mile from 
 the house is the waterfall of which I spoke.'' 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 31 
 
 It was by the side of this fall that Wordsworth composed 
 one of his sweetest lyrics — the Lines in Early Spring: — 
 
 I heard a thousand blended notes 
 
 While in a grove I sat reclined, 
 In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
 
 Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 
 
 In reading a description which he afterwards wrote of this 
 little combe, one doubts whether his verse or his prose be the 
 most beautiful : " It was," he says, " a chosen resort of mine. 
 The brook fell down a sloping rock, considerable for that 
 country, and across the pool below had fallen an ash-tree 
 from which rose perpendicularly boughs in search of the 
 light, intercepted by the deep shade above. The boughs bore 
 leaves of green that for want of sunshine had faded into 
 almost lily-white ; and from the under side of this natural 
 sylvan bridge depended long and beautiful tresses of ivy, 
 which waved gently in the breeze that might be called the 
 breath of the waterfall." This dell, once locally known as 
 "the Mare's Pool," but now consecrated to all time as 
 " Wordsworth's Glen," was a favourite trysting-place of the 
 two poets and their friends. Coleridge has described it in 
 the graceful verses he addressed to his old school-fellow 
 Charles Lamb, who, with his clever sister, then on a visit to 
 the cottage of the Poet at Stowey, were out on the downs en- 
 joying the breezes of Quantock, while their host, disabled 
 during the whole time of their stay by an accident, was left 
 to his solitary musings in the lime-tree bower in his orchard. 
 
32 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 He thus follows in imagination the route of his visitors in their 
 charming ramble : 
 
 they meanwhile, 
 
 On springy heath, along the hill top edge, 
 Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, 
 To that still roaring dell of which I told. 
 The roaring dell, o'er wooded, narrow, deep. 
 And only speckled by the midrday sun ; 
 Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock 
 Flings arching like a bridge ; — that branchless ash, 
 Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves 
 Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble stilly 
 Fanned by the waterfall ! 
 
 ««««««« 
 
 Now my friends emerge, 
 
 Beneath the wide, wide Heaven — and view again 
 
 The many-steepled tract magnificent 
 
 Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea. 
 
 With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up 
 
 The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles 
 
 Of purple shadow ! Yes ! they wander on 
 
 In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad, 
 
 My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast pined 
 
 And hungered after Nature many a year, 
 
 In the great city pent, winning thy way 
 
 With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain 
 
 And strange calamity ! Ah ! slowly sink 
 
 Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun ! 
 
 Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb. 
 
 Ye purple heath-flowers ; richlier burn, ye clouds ! * 
 
 Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves I 
 
 And kindle thou blue ocean ! 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 33 
 
 Every reader of taste must be delighted with this grand 
 and nobly sustained piece of local descriptive poetry ; and 
 persons to whom the scene is familiar will recognise in the 
 latter portion of it the view from Woodlands Down. 
 
 Coleridge, who drew his inspiration far less than his 
 brother poet from external nature, has not failed however to 
 weave into his verses several notices of the neighbourhood of 
 his beloved "Nether-Stowey, — sanctum et venerabile nomen \" 
 He thus describes a homeward descent from Dousborough : — 
 
 Through weeds and thorns and matted underwood 
 
 I force my way ; now climb and now descend 
 
 O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot 
 
 Crushing the purple whorts." .... 
 
 Homeward I wend my way, and so recalled 
 
 I find myself upon the brow and pause 
 
 Startled ! and after lonely sojourning 
 
 This burst of prospect, — here the shadowing main 
 
 Dim tinted, there the mighty majesty 
 
 Of that huge amphitheatre of rich 
 
 And elmy fields 
 
 And now, beloved Stowey, I behold 
 
 Thy church-tower, and methinks the four huge elms 
 
 Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ; 
 
 And close beside them, hidden from my view, 
 
 Is my own lonely cottage, where my babe 
 
 And my babe's mother dwell in peace ! 
 Any notice of the sojourn of Coleridge at Stowey would be 
 very imperfect without some reference to the friend to whom 
 he here alludes. This was Mr. T. Poole,* who appears to 
 
 * Note iii. 
 
34 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 have been one of the most kind-hearted and liberal of men, 
 ever ready to assist humble merit ; and though it would seem 
 that he had not himself enjoyed the benefit of a learned 
 education, yet he must have been a person of considerable 
 mental culture, and fully capable of appreciating the genius 
 of the poet of whom he was the generous patron. He must 
 indeed have been no common man to have been the " dear 
 friend" of Coleridge and Wordsworth. At the suggestion of 
 this estimable person, who was desirous of securing his 
 gifted friend as a neighbour, Coleridge, with his wife and 
 child, and Charles Lloyd,* afterwards the translator of Alfieri, 
 removed to a small house at Nether Stowey, hard by the 
 residence of good Mr. Poole ; and like the poet Cowper at 
 Olney, to obtain greater facility of intercourse, made a 
 communication from his cottage-orchard into the garden of 
 his friend. In this orchard was the " lime-tree bower,'' the 
 " prison" of the disabled poet. Here too his friend Cottle 
 describes a pretty garden-scene during a visit he paid to him 
 at Stowey ; " the orchard laden with fruit, the tripod table 
 in the arbour, with its simple meal, surmounted by a brown 
 jug of the true Taunton ale/' " There must have been 
 witchery in our fare," he exclaims, "and the very birds 
 seemed to participate in our felicity. As we sat in our 
 sylvan hall (T. Poole, C. Lloyd, S. T. Coleridge, and myself), 
 Mrs. Coleridge approached with her fine Hartley ; we all 
 smiled, but the father's eye beamed transcendent joy." At 
 
 * Note iv. 
 
AND THEIE ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 35 
 
 the table of this kind neighbour, the poet had the advantage 
 of meeting a number of persons then, or afterwards, of 
 celebrity in literature and science. Seldom, in so retired a 
 village as Stowey, have there been gathered together so many 
 persons of intellectual eminence; — Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Southey, Charles Lamb, George Burnet, Davy (afterwards 
 Sir Humphrey),* Dr. Beddoes, Basil Montagu, De Quincey, 
 and a young man of great promise, too early lost, the 
 younger Wedgwood ; — he is the reputed inventor of photo- 
 graphy and was a most generous patron of the two Quantock 
 poets. All these persons occasionally sat around the hospit- 
 able board of the Maecenas of Stowey. 
 
 At this distance of time few personal anecdotes can be 
 gleaned of the poet's daily life at Stowey. That he was 
 fond of watching the progress of a water-wheel and mill 
 that Mr. Poole was erecting, and that the poetic philosopher 
 sometimes sadly puzzled the skilful engineer who was (fon- 
 structing the work, by his abstruse views of mechanical 
 science ; that, like many others who are not poets, he often 
 sat up late, and that he sometimes got up afterwards when a 
 bright idea occurred to his mind, is the little that is recorded. 
 
 It was during one of these solitary watchings beside his 
 cottage-hearth at Stowey, that he wrote those fine verses, so 
 full of beauty and pathos, entitled Frost at Midnight 
 The frost performs its secret ministry, 
 Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry 
 Came loud — and hark, again ! loud as before. 
 
 _ * Note V, 
 
36 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, 
 Have left me to that solitude which suits 
 Abstruser musings : save that at my side 
 My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 
 'Tis calm, indeed ! so calm that it disturbs 
 • And vex6s meditation with its strange 
 
 And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, 
 This populous village ! Sea, hill, and wood. 
 With all the numberless goings on of life. 
 Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame 
 Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not ; 
 Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, 
 Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. 
 Methinks its motion in this hush of nature 
 Gives it dim sympathies with me who live. 
 
 This fancy leads his thoughts back to his childhood, " and 
 
 his sweet birthplace, and the old church tower," and its bells, 
 
 and his school-days, and the wished-for advent of the 
 
 " stranger," prefigured by the fluttering film upon the bars. 
 
 Then he addresses his sleeping babe, and contrasts his own 
 
 melancholy boyhood, in the great city, " pent mid cloisters 
 
 dim," with what he hopes will be the future life of his child ; 
 
 « 
 
 and, with singular accuracy of prediction, foreshadows the 
 actual locality destined to be the abode in after years of the 
 little unconscious Hartley, " cradled by his side :" 
 
 But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of antient mountain, and beneath the clouds. 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 And mountain crags . 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 37 
 
 Vates — (prophet and bard) — "sic ore effatus amico est !" 
 The inhabitants of that "populous village" at the time 
 when the poet wrote these lines are now doubtless, all, or 
 nearly all, plunged in a deeper slumber than that which he 
 so impressively described. One of them, the last survivor of 
 those who had enjoyed any personal acquaintance with the 
 poet, died, some three or four years ago, in extreme old age. 
 He was accustomed, with harmless vanity, to claim some 
 small share in the production of The Antient Mariner, from 
 the fact that he had made, or mended the poet's pens,* who 
 gratefully conferred upon him the title of his " Pennefactor/' 
 The elder poet, Wordsworth, has connected his verses far 
 more with his own residence and neighbourhoo4. He him- 
 self describes his sojourn at Alfoxden " as a very pleasant 
 and productive time of his life and indeed he has peopled 
 its groves with the creations of his fancy, and hung a thought 
 on every thorn. The romantic glen already described was 
 the scene of his famous ballad. The Idiot Boy, a poem 
 which, together with that entited We are Seven, was a 
 special favourite with Charles James Fox. The latter poem 
 is an exquisite production ; but in the great statesman's 
 admiration for the other ballad, I am I confess unable to 
 share. One stanza, however, of rare beauty occurs in it : — 
 
 By this, the stars were almost gone, 
 
 The moon was setting on the hill, 
 
 So pale you scarcely looked at her : 
 
 The little birds began to stir, 
 
 Though yet their tongues were still. 
 
 * Note vi. 
 
38 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 In truth Wordsworth, like his great prototype Milton, 
 and his contemporary Schiller, failed when he attempted 
 the humorous, of which he had little or no perception. 
 In Cowper's ballad of John Gilpin we find genuine 
 humour. In this one of Wordsworth, which he threw 
 in the face of the shallow critics of his day, as a kind 
 of wanton affront to their prejudices, it is entirely wanting. 
 It was founded on an anecdote related to him by his friend 
 Thomas Poole, and was composed, he tells us, in the grove 
 at Alfoxden almost extempore. " I mention this,'' he adds, 
 " in gratitude to those happy moments, for in truth I never 
 wrote anything with so much glee.'' The Last of the Flock was 
 also written here, and the incident on which it was founded 
 took place in the street of the village of Holford. The 
 affecting ballad of Simon Lee was suggested by a homely 
 occurrence near the entrance gate of Alfoxden, where the 
 poor man's cottage, now pulled down, stood " near the water- 
 fall, upon the village common." He was an old huntsman, a 
 retainer of the estate : — 
 
 but no one now 
 
 Dwelt in the Hall of Ivor ; 
 
 Men, dogs, and horses, all were dead ; 
 
 He was the sole survivor. 
 
 The scene of the charming poem Ruth, is laid by the banks 
 of Tone, and on the highlands of Somersetshire, where the 
 sound of the wanderer's flute 
 
 At evening in his homeward walk 
 
 The Quantock woodman hears. 
 
AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 39 
 
 Expostulation and Reply was composed in front of the house 
 at Alfoxden. The Thorn has vanished from the hill-side of 
 the Quantock, but still lives in the poet's description. Of a 
 number of minor poems written here, a list will be given in 
 the appendix. 
 
 The meeting of our two poets with Thelwall in the glen at 
 Alfoxden has been already noticed. He was a man of con- 
 siderable mental powers, but had by his intemperate politics 
 made himself obnoxious to the Government of the day, 
 and became the subject of the satire of Canning in a witty 
 parody of Milton which appeared in the pages of the Anti- 
 Jacobin ; — "Thelwall, and ye that lecture as ye go."" He was 
 now, however, quietly engaged in the cultivation of a farm 
 near Nether Stowey. The visit of this person to Coleridge 
 gave occasion for the employment of a spy to watch the 
 proceedings of the three supposed conspirators. Coleridge 
 he pronounced to be comparatively harmless, but Wordsworth, 
 who seldom spoke, was a dark and dangerous personage. 
 From the misrepresentations of this man probably, and in 
 spite of the regrets of his friend Poole, and the indignant 
 protestations of Coleridge — "the hills, and the woods, and 
 the streams, and the sea, and the shores will break forth into 
 reproaches against us, if we do not strain every nerve to keep 
 
 their poet amongst them'' — the igxiomnl d^i^^ vAio v^Sl^ vA/V^ 
 employed to let the mansion at Alfoxden refused to continue 
 the lease, and — the poet was driven from his paradise ! 
 More than forty years afterwards, and in the plenitude of 
 
40 
 
 THE QUANTOCKS 
 
 his fame,* Wordsworth once more revisited his old abode. 
 " We visited/' he writes in 1841, " all my old haunts in and 
 about Alfoxden and Nether Stowey. These were farewell 
 visits for life, and of course not a little interesting/' He 
 was accompanied by his wife and daughter and a few chosen 
 friends ; but one friend, alas ! was wanting to share his 
 interest in each well-known scene. That adoring sister,f 
 who had been for so many years the companion of his walks 
 and the partaker of his thoughts, and to whose manifold 
 excellencies and graces he has paid so many affectionate 
 tributes in his poems, was absent ; lying, a melancholy wreck 
 in body and mind, at his home in Westmoreland. As the 
 old man stood once more in his favourite glen, and listened 
 to the waterfall, might not his own delicious lines have come 
 to his mind, and with a new significance ? 
 
 No check, no stay, this streamlet, fears ; 
 How merrily it goes ! 
 'Twill murmur on a thousand years, 
 And flow as now it flows : 
 
 And here on this delightful day, 
 I cannot choose but think 
 How oft, a vigorous man, I lay 
 Beside this fountain's brink. 
 
 My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 My heart is idly stirred, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 
 * Note vii. 
 
 t Note viii. 
 
THE QUANTOCKS, ETC. 
 
 41 
 
 Thus fares it still in our decay : 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what age takes away 
 Than what it leaves behind." 
 
 Here I must pause. I have not undertaken to write the 
 biography of the two poets, but my humbler task has been 
 to bring together a few scattered reminiscences of their 
 residence in the Quantock district. 
 
 I may mention, however, one testimony to the extended 
 influence of the writings of the younger poet, recently afforded 
 by a royal personage, who during his brief sojourn amongst 
 us won golden opinions from the people of this country. 
 One of the earliest visits paid after his arrival in London by 
 the Emperor of Brazil, was to the grave of Coleridge in the 
 old churchyard at Highgate. 
 
 He might there muse upon the genius, the virtues, and the 
 frailties of one of England's noblest poets and profoundest 
 thinkers, and read there the poet's own pathetic epitaph, in 
 which, " he being dead, yet speaketh 
 
 Stop, Christian passer-by ! Stop, Child of God ! 
 
 And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod 
 
 A Poet lies, or that which once seemed he ; 
 
 Oh lift^ thought in prayer for S. T. C. ! 
 
 That he who many a year with toil of breath 
 
 Found death in life, may here find life in death ! 
 
 Mercy for praise ; to be forgiven for fame, 
 
 He asked, and hoped through Christ. Do thou the same. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 TO THE PRKCBDING- PAPER. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE I. Page 10. 
 
 UR hills are not without special interest for the geologist. 
 A question which I proposed to a scientific friend, who 
 was my guest here last summer, " Are the Quantocks 
 part of the Old red sandstone formation T has led to an 
 interesting paper on the subject, from which I extract the 
 concluding summary. I gather from it, that no absolute 
 decision can be arrived at from such roadside sections as alone 
 are accessible. It would seem that a mightier power than the 
 hammer of the geologist is needed, and that unless some 
 potent wizard arise, like " the wondrous Michael Scott," who 
 spake • 
 
 the words 
 That cleft the Eildon hills in three,* 
 
 the interior structure of the axis of the Quantocks will remain 
 a secret of the past. 
 
 " Suffice it to say, that there are two theories respecting those 
 beds which intervene between the Silurian and Carboniferous 
 
 * Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel^ ii., 13, 7. 
 
iv 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 formations ; on the one hand, the late Professor Jukes, correlating 
 them with certain Irish beds with which he was more familiar, 
 and viewing them especially from a physical point of view, pro- 
 nounced them to be identical with the Carboniferous slates of 
 Cork, which attain in some places a thickness of 2,000 feet. 
 Thus, according to his view, they ought stratigraphically to be 
 placed between the top of the Old red and the base of the Goal 
 measures. On the other hand, Mr. Etheridge, Palaeontologist of 
 H.M. Geological Survey of England, viewing them purely from 
 an English point of view, and laying more stress upon their 
 Palseontological contents, affirms that they are one great and 
 well-defined system called Devonian, divisible into three giwps, 
 lower, middle, and upper, each of these divisions characterised by 
 a distinct marine fauna, and possibly equal in time and position 
 to the Old red. In other words, Mr. Jukes would do away with 
 the term " Devonian" altogether as indicating an independent 
 geological system, whereas Mr. Etheridge would preserve it as a 
 useful nomenclature for a group of rocks especially developed in 
 Devonshire. The general body of geologists incline, I think, to 
 uphold the latter view. It is, then, this group of beds to which 
 the Quantocks belong. Those who support Mr. Etheridge's 
 view would call them Devonian ; those who agree with Professor 
 Jukes would consider them Old red sandstone. If fossil evidence 
 is to have any weight in deciding the question, and I know not 
 what else, in the absence of direct superposition, can supply its 
 place, then certainly this evidence clearly tends to corroborate 
 the view that the Quantocks are an easterly continuation of the 
 Devonian beds. All will, however, agree that the}^ come in the 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 V 
 
 order of stratification between the Silurian on the one hand, and 
 
 the Carboniferous formations on the other. There is much yet 
 to be learnt of the geology of these hills. Let all who are inte- 
 rested in the subject narrowly watch every section likely to throw 
 any light upon the beds which constitute the base or nucleus of 
 the range." * 
 
 NOTE II. Page 10. 
 
 The Flora of the Quantocks does not yield in interest to their 
 geological structure. Indeed it is everywhere so unusually rich 
 as to win the envy and delight of strangers. So remarks an 
 accomplished botanist, by whose kind permission I am allowed 
 to enrich these notes with an extract or two from a very pleasant 
 and instructive paper of his on the flora of our hills. "It 
 includes," he says, " almost every English genus ; manifest in the 
 common turnpike roads which skirt the downs, but revealed in 
 full perfection to those only who penetrate the interior of the 
 range. In the sheltered lanes of the less wooded combes, in the 
 road from Kilve to Parson's Farm, the footpath from the Castle 
 of Comfort to Over-Stowey, above all in the lane from the Bell 
 Inn to Aisholt, the hedge banks and the wide grass margins of the 
 road are scarcely surpassed in beauty by the mosaic of a Swiss 
 meadow or an Alpine slope. Four different regions should be 
 
 * Devonian Fossils from the Sandstones on the N. E. of the Quantocks, by 
 Rev. H. H. Winwood, M.A., F.G.S., read before the Both Field Club, 11 
 Dec, 1872. 
 
vi 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 visited — the hill-tops, the bogs, the coppices, and the slopes 
 toward the sea. Heath, furze, bracken, and whortleberries are 
 the four tetrarchs of the hill-tops. The heaths are three — the 
 heather, the cross-leaved heath, and the bottle heath, the last 
 exhibiting rarely a white variety. From beneath their shelter 
 peep the eye-bright, the spring polentil, the heath bed-straw, and 
 the creeping St. John's wort ; amidst them springs the uncommon 
 bristly bent-grass ; everywhere the green paths which wind 
 amongst them are carpeted with the moenchia and the little 
 breakstone, and bordered by the red and yellow sheep's sorrel, 
 and the pale yellow mouse-ear. On many of the prickly furze 
 beds grows the wiry leafless dodder ; every ditch is filled with 
 masses of lemon-scented oreopteris, and every patch of stones is 
 hidden by the pink blossoms of the mountain stone-crop. At 
 800 feet above the sea we meet with mat grass and the cross- 
 leaved heath. Higher still, we find the slender deer's hair, first 
 cousin to the isolepis of our greenhouse, and highest of all grow, 
 for those who know their haunt, two species of the staghom 
 club moss. 
 
 " The bogs are very numerous. They form the summits of the 
 combes, and some of them descend the hill until they join a 
 deep-cut stream. All are covered with the turquoise bloom of 
 the forget-me-not, the glossy peltate leaves of the marsh penny- 
 wort, and choked with the little water blinks. They all include 
 the liver-wort, with its umbrella-shaped fructification, sphagnum, 
 marshwort and pearlwort ; and on their margins grow the ivy- 
 leaved hare-bell, the lesser spear wort, the louse wort, and the bog 
 pimpernel. In a few of them are found the oblong pond-weed 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Vii 
 
 and the marsh St. John's wort ; in two combes grows, alone of 
 its genus, the round leaved sun-dew\" 
 
 " Of the coppices, Cockercombe and Seven Wells are the best 
 known, but their large trees check the growth of flowers, and the 
 botanist will find more to please him in Butterfly Combe and 
 Holford Glen, which are smaller and less frequented. Here in 
 early spring masses of the white wild hyacinth rise amid last 
 year's dead leaves ; here grow the cow-whea,t, wood rush, golden 
 rod, sheep's scabious, wood pimpernel, wild raspberry, sanicle, 
 and twayblade. The helleborine is found in Crowcombe ; in 
 Tetton woods the rare pink lily of the valley ; in Cothelstone the 
 adder's tongue and mountain speedwell ; in Ashley Combe the 
 lypteris ; in Aisholt wood the white fox glove, white herb Robert, 
 and white prunella ; while under the famous hollies of Alfoxden, 
 sacred to the memory of Peter Bell and We are Seven, grow the 
 graceful millet grass and a rare variety of the bramble. 
 
 " On the St. Audries' slope the changed soil and the influence 
 of the sea give bii-th to several new plants. The autumn gentian, 
 the tufted centaury, the round-headed garlic, and the sea star- 
 wort are abundant near the cliffs the perfoliate yellow-wort is 
 common ; fluellen grows in the stubbles, the lady's tresses near 
 the lime-kiln, the sea pimpernel between the stones, the arrow- 
 grass and hard-grass just above the sea, to which we descend 
 between banks covered, as no other banks are covered, by the 
 magnificent large flowered tutsan. 
 
 " A few rare plants remain. The Cornish moneywort abounds 
 in a small combe near Quantock's Head ; the rare white stone- 
 crop at Over-Stow ey ; the white climbing corydalis is found close 
 
viii 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 to Mr. Esdaile's lodge ; the lady's mantle, goldilocks, and bistort 
 in Aisholt meadows ; the stinking ground sell hard by the 
 remains of Coleridge's lime-tree-bower, near which I have found 
 the purple bloom-rape ; and Wilson's film-fern, one of the rarest 
 of British ferns, is established in the Poets' Glen."* 
 
 I am indebted to another friend, also distinguished as a botanist, 
 and a member of the Bath Field Club, for the following notes of a 
 single morning's walk in the neighbourhood of Woodlands. He 
 tells me that he met with Sihthorpia Europea (a very rare plant 
 out of Cornwall); Drosera Anglica ; Anagallis tenella ; Lastrea 
 Oreopteris ; Hypericum elodes ; and the Wahlenhrigia hederacea, a 
 most gi-aceful little plant, which grows all up the sides of the 
 stream in Hayman's Combe. A subsequent more extended 
 walk was not so productive of flowers. " In that respect," he 
 adds, " I give the palm to the neighbourhood of Woodlands, 
 which deserves more accurate search than I could give it. The 
 most interesting plant I found in my walk was the Burnet rose, 
 the parent of the Scotch rose of our gardens. I had found it in 
 Wales before, but did not know it was a Somersetshire plant." 
 So far my botanical friend. There is a parasitical plant, which 
 I, who am no botanist, sometimes find growing on the fern in my 
 walks on the down, and which interests me, because it is one of 
 several species of plants which Paley, in his Natural Theology, 
 mentions as worthy of a particular notice, either from some 
 singular mechanism, or by some peculiar provision, or by both. 
 The one I refer to is the Cuscuta E^iropoea. " The seed opens,'* 
 
 * The Flora of the Qimntocks, a paper read before the Somersetshire 
 A. and N. H. Society, Sept. r2th, 1872. By the Rev. W. Tuckwell. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 ix 
 
 says Paley, " and puts forth a little spiral body, which does not 
 seek the earth to take root, but climbs in a spiral direction, 
 from right to left, up other plants, from which by means of vessels 
 it draws its nourishment. The " little spiral body " proceeding 
 from the seed is to be compared with the fibres which seeds send 
 out in ordinary cases, and the comparison ought to regard both 
 the form of the threads and the direction. They are straight ; 
 this is spiral. They shoot downwards ; this points upwards. 
 In the rule, and in the exception, we equally perceive design.^' 
 
 The lovers of Wordsworth will be interested to learn that in 
 one of our Combes, at least, may be found his own Osmunda 
 Regalis ; — 
 
 that tall fern 
 So stately, of the queen Osmunda named ; 
 Plant lovelier in its own retired abode 
 On Grasmere beach, than Naiad by the side 
 Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere, 
 Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance. * 
 
 NOTE HI. Page 33. 
 
 The biography of Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, might 
 form an instructive chapter in that delightful book, the Self 
 Help of Mr. Smiles. 
 
 Of humble parentage, he received only the nidiments of 
 education common to youths in his station of life, and in 
 due course was apprenticed to a tanner in his native village. 
 
 * Poems i vol. i., p. 353. 
 
X 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 His natural good sense and force of character soon led him to 
 conclude, that to succeed in life, it would be requisite to 
 add to his provincial training the more scientific knowledge of 
 his calling which London alone could afford. He accordingly 
 placed himself as a workman in the yard of one Mr. Purkis, the 
 most eminent tanner of the time. During this period, it so 
 chanced one day that his master, observing the youth busily 
 absorbed in reading, found on enquiry that a volume of Tasso in 
 the original Italian was the subject of his study. This led to 
 notice and advancement in his employer's service, and his 
 own high character and commanding talents did the rest. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the early history of a man, who not only 
 became by his own exertions one of the leading characters in his , 
 native place and its neighbourhood, but was honoured with the 
 intimate friendship of many persons among his contemporaries of 
 the highest distinction in literature and science, as well as in 
 political life. It is a remarkable circumstance, however, that 
 among so many persons of note who are recorded as the associates 
 of the two poets and their friendly host, not a single clerical 
 name occurs. Such, indeed, w^as at that time the low state of 
 general education and learning, especially in districts remote 
 from metropolitan influence, that few probably of the rural 
 clergy of his neighbourhood would not have felt themselves more 
 in place amidst the sports of the mountain and the field than in 
 the brilliant society that met at the house of Thomas Poole. 
 The more worthy of record does the fact appear, that the kindly 
 influence of one man, not himself a member of a learned pro- 
 fession, should have been so successful in throwing a gleam of 
 
i 
 
 APPENDIX. xi 
 
 culture and refinement over a little retired Somersetshire town, 
 and in doing much to substitute honest talk and gentle manners 
 for the vulgar gossip and petty squabbles of a country parish. 
 
 Wordsworth says of his friend Poole, " During my residence 
 at Alfoxden'I used to see much of him, and had frequent occasions 
 to admire the course of his daily life, especially his conduct to his 
 labourers and poor neighbours. Their wishes he carefully en- 
 couraged, and weighed their faults in the scales of charity. After 
 his death, was found in his escritoire, a lock of grey hair care- 
 fully preserved, with a notice that it had been cut from the head 
 of his faithful shepherd, who had served him for a length of 
 years. He was much beloved by distinguished persons — Mr. 
 Coleridge, Mr. Southey, Sir H. Davy, and many others, and in 
 his own neighbourhood was highly valued." 
 
 A masculine intellect, matured by diligent reading and foreign 
 travel, enabled him to afford valuable assistance, in statistics and 
 matters of local administration, to the government of the period ; 
 and he had so mastered the political philosophy of Turgot, Adam 
 Smith, and other advanced thinkers, as to suggest the adoption 
 of free trade at a time when it had few or no supporters among 
 the politicians of the day. 
 
 De Quincey, the English opium eater, in one of his marvellous 
 Essays, has given a graphic account of his visit to Coleridge, at 
 Nether Stowey, who was at the time the guest of Mr. Poole, from 
 which I extract the following description of his worthy host : 
 " I found him a stout, plain-looking farmer, leading a bachelor 
 life in a rustic, old-fashioned house ; the house, however, upon 
 further acquaintance, proving to be amply furnished with modern 
 
xii 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 luxuries, and especially with a good library, superbly mounted 
 in all departments bearing at all upon political philosophy ; and 
 the farmer turning out a polished and liberal Englishman, who 
 had travelled extensively, and had so entirely dedicated himself 
 to the service of his humble fellow-countrymen — the hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water in this Southern part of Somerset- 
 shire — that for many miles round he was the general arbiter of 
 their disputes, the guide and counsellor of their difficulties ; 
 besides being appointed executor and guardian to his children by 
 every third man who died in or about the town of Nether Stowey." 
 Coleridge himself how^ever was not quite so easily to be met with, 
 his movements being always very uncertain. Nominally a guest 
 of Mr. Poole, he chanced at the time of De Quincey's arrival to be 
 absent at Enmore, on a visit to his neighbour, Lord Egmont, a 
 kind friend and warm admirer of the poet. For the amusing 
 account of his subsequent discovery at Bridgwater by De Quincey 
 I must refer to the pages of that writer. See Autobiographical 
 Sketches by T. De Quincey, pp. 144-5. A curious sketch of De 
 Quincey himself, under the pseudonym of PapaveriiLs, may be 
 found in Mr. T. Hill Burton's entertaining little volume, The 
 Booh Hunter. For the other particulars contained in this notice 
 of the life of Thomas Poole, I am indebted partly to local informa- 
 tion, and partly to the Life of Sir Humphry Davy by Dr. Paris, 
 which contains a number of letters written by Mr. Poole. I have 
 also gleaned a few facts from a very meritorious little book, A 
 Brief Memoir oj William Baker ^ F.G.S.j Secretary of the Somer- 
 setshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, by John 
 Bowen. Mr. Poole died on the 8th of Sept., 1837, aged 72 years, 
 
APPENDIX. xiii 
 
 and his remains were interi-ed in the Churchyard of his native 
 parish, Nether Stowey. 
 
 NOTE IV. Page 34. 
 
 Of the other names I have mentioned as associates of the 
 Quantock poets, Charles Lloyd, the son of a wealthy Birming- 
 ham banker, and himself a minor poet, deserves a niche in our 
 gallery of Stowey residents. His abode there in the cottage 
 of Coleridge, who describes him as " a young man of great genius," 
 gave occasion to some beautiful lines addressed To a Young 
 Friend^ on his purposing to domesticate with the Author. Composed 
 in 1796. At Stowey, Lloyd wrote a dramatic poem of consider- 
 able merit. The Duke d'Ormond, and published in conjunction 
 with Coleridge and Charles Lamb, a volume of Sonnets and Other 
 Poems : Bristol, 1797, 12mo. To this little book, now very 
 scarce, Coleridge prefixed the following motto, invented for the 
 nonce, I imagine, by himself, and expressive of his own feelings 
 towards his associate friends : Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitice 
 et similium junctarumque Camoenarum ; quod utinam neque mors 
 solvaty neque temporis longinquitas. Here Lloyd also published 
 The Tragedies of Yittorio Aljieri, translated from the Italian : 3 
 ■ vols., 12mo. He also wrote several novels. Serjeant (afterwards 
 ," Judge) Talfourd, in his Life of Charles Lamb, remarks of his 
 writings : " In power of discriminating and distinguishing, carried 
 to a pitch almost of painfulness, Lloyd has scarcely been equalled ; 
 and his ^poems, though rugged in point of versification, will be 
 
xiv 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 found by those who read them with the calm attention they 
 require, replete with critical and moral suggestions of the highest 
 value." He was afterwards a neighbour of Wordsworth, at the 
 beautiful hamlet of Brathay, near Ambleside, and died at 
 Versailles, in 1839, in his 64th year. In January, 1797, he paid 
 a brief visit in London to Charles Lamb, who was then suffering 
 under a strange and melancholy domestic calamity. I insert the 
 first two stanzas from an affecting poem in which Lamb expressed 
 his gratitude to his " Unexpected Visitor :" 
 
 Alone, obscure, without a friend, 
 
 A cheerless, solitary thing, 
 Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out ? 
 
 What offering can the stranger bring 
 
 Of social scenes, homebred delights. 
 That him in aught compensate may 
 
 For Stowey's pleasant winter nights. 
 For loves and friendships far away ? 
 
 Charles Lamb, the most original and amiable of humourists, 
 paid, I think, but a single visit to Stowey. I have already 
 referred to Coleridge's verses on the occasion of his old friend 
 and schoolfellow's presence at his cottage home. Lamb himself 
 thus expresses his own kindly reminiscences of his visit in a 
 letter written shortly after his return home : 
 
 I am scarcely yet so reconciled to the loss of you, or so 
 subsided into my wonted uniformity of feeling as to sit calmly 
 down to think of you and wrrite to you. But I reason myself 
 into the belief that those few and pleasant holidays, shall not 
 have been spent in vain. I feel improvement in the recollection 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 XV 
 
 of many a casual conversation. The names of Tom Poole, of 
 Wordsworth and his good sister, with thine and Sara's, are 
 become familiar in my mouth as household words. You will 
 oblige me by sending my great coat, which I left behind in the 
 oblivious state the mind is thrown into at parting. Is it not 
 ridiculous that I sometimes envy that great coat lingering so 
 cunningly behind — send it to me by a Stowey w^aggon, if there 
 be such a thing. But above all that Inscription ! [a poem of 
 Wordsworth.] It will recall to me all your voices, and with 
 them, many a remembered kindness to one who could and can 
 repay you all only by the silence of a grateful heart." * 
 
 In another letter to Coleridge he says, " Your company was a 
 cordial. When T can abstract myself from the things present 
 I can enjoy the remembrance of it with a freshness of relish ; 
 but it more constantly operates to an unfavourable comparison 
 with the uninteresting converse I partake in." He goes on 
 to lament, that, of all the great names of literature his neighbours 
 were profoundly ignorant, and then proceeds, " They talk a 
 language I understand not, — I conceal sentiments that would 
 be a puzzle to them. I can only converse with you by letter, 
 and with the dead in their books." t 
 
 SouTHEY was only an occasional visitor, — coming up now and 
 then from Burton, near Christchurch, or from Bristol. On one 
 occasion, in a letter to a friend (20th August, 1799), he says : 
 
 " I write to you from Stowey, and at the same table wath 
 Coleridge. ... I have been some days wholly immersed 
 
 * Works i., 106. 
 
 t Ibid, p. 167. 
 
xvi 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 in conversation. In one point of view Coleridge and I are bad 
 companions for each other. Without being talkative, I am 
 conversational, and the hours slip away, and the ink dries upon 
 the pen in my hand." * 
 
 Southey, like Wordsworth, paid at the close of his life (in 
 1836), a farewell visit to the haunts of his youth. In one of 
 his letters to his daughter he has recorded his visits to Stowey^ 
 to Fairfield, Dunster, Killerton, and other places in the West of 
 England, t 
 
 I may be forgiven for bestowing a passing notice on one other 
 and lesser name, referred to in the foregoing pages as a casual 
 associate of our two poets, — that of John Thelwall. He was 
 decidedly the best lecturer on elocution I ever listened to, and 
 had an intimate acquaintance with the choicest English authors. 
 More than thirty years ago, I attended his course at the Royal 
 Institution, Bath ; he had lectured on Milton, and his subject 
 for the morrow was, the Burial Service. On reaching the lecture 
 room next morning I found the doors closed. Mr. Thelwall was 
 dead. He expired suddenly in the preceding night. 
 
 NOTE V. Page 35. 
 
 On^ great name still remains to complete the Stowey circle 
 — a band of men of whom it is not too much to say that they 
 were moulding English thought and speech into a higher and 
 
 * Selections from the letters of R. Southey, i. 78. 
 
 t Letters iv., 476. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 newer expression of freedom and intelligence. Sir Humphrey 
 Davy was, for thirty years and more, the intimate friend and 
 frequent guest of Thomas Poole, who watched his career from 
 obscurity to distinction with kindly interest. He too, at the 
 close of his days, came here, the wreck of his former self, to 
 revisit the scenes of his youth, and, as he fondly expressed it, 
 
 to wander about his dear old walks of Quantock and Alfoxden." 
 Accordingly he took up his abode, during the greater part 
 of the last winter he ever spent in England, in " the comfort- 
 able and hospitable house " of his early friend. " On his arrival, 
 ' Here T am,' he said, 'the ruin of what I was.' But neverthe- 
 less," continues Mr. Poole, "the same activity and ardour of 
 mind continued, though directed to different objects. He 
 employed himself three hours in the morning on his Salmonia^ 
 which he was then writing. He would then take a short walk, 
 which he accomplished with difficulty, or ride ; and after dinner 
 I used to read to him some amusing book. We were particularly 
 interested by Southey's Life of Nelson. ' It would give Southey 
 great pleasure,' he said, ' if he knew how much his narrative 
 affected us.' In his Saimonia, he styled it ' an immortal 
 monument raised by genius to valour.' From Rome in February, 
 1829, he sent his last letter to his old friend. ' I am here,' he 
 writes, * wearing away the winter — a ruin amongst ruins.' " He 
 died at Geneva on the 29th of May in the same year. 
 
 To attempt any enumeration of the great scientific discoveries 
 of this illustrious philosopher falls not within the scope of my 
 paper. It is in his literary capacity chiefly that he has conferred 
 honour upon this part of Western Somersetshire, and especially 
 
xviii 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 upon Nether Stowey — half town, half village — nestling under 
 the slope of those Quantock Hills, the beautiful scenery of which 
 retained for him such a life-long charm. Here he wrote his 
 Salmonia. Here after his marriage he contemplated the 
 purchase of an estate. It was here, in his earlier days, that 
 Coleridge said of him, that "if he were not the greatest natural 
 philosopher of the nineteenth century, he would have been its 
 greatest poet." To persons who are acquainted with his sublime 
 quatrains entitled Spinosism, this will scarcely seem exaggerated 
 praise. That the writer who thus records, in a letter to a 
 friend, the feeling of his own intimate communion with nature 
 was essentially a poet, who can doubt 1 
 
 " To-day for the first time I have had a distinct sympathy with 
 nature. I was going on the top of a rock to leeward. The 
 wind was high and everything in motion. The branches of an 
 oak tree were waving and murmuring in the breeze. Yellow 
 clouds, deepened by grey at the base, were rapidly floating over 
 the western hills, the whole sky was in motion, the yellow stream 
 below was agitated by the breeze. Everything was alive, and 
 myself part of the series of visible impressions. I should have 
 felt pain in tearing a leaf from one of the trees." This radiant 
 dream, so exquisitely delineated, is akin to the mood of mind 
 which Wordsworth describes as his own, when as a boy, he says, 
 he " felt a sense of pain " in seeing his own merciless devastation 
 in the hazel grove while engaged in nutting, and bade his 
 companion 
 
 with gentle hand 
 
 Touch, for there is a spirit in the woods. 
 
APPENDIX. XIX 
 
 Several of Davy's early minor poems, suggested by the cliffs 
 and downs of his native Cornwall, appeared in the Bristol 
 Anthology (a work now extremely scarce) in 1799. Some of his 
 later verses are of such rare beauty and so little known, that 
 every reader of taste will thank me for the perusal of the two 
 brief extracts that my space will allow me to insert ; the first ia 
 part of a poem descriptive of Italian scenery : — 
 
 Never shall I forget the happy hours 
 
 We passed in Eboli's enchanting bowers, 
 
 Midst palms, and orange groves, and new-born flowera. 
 
 Far in the west Salerno's villas spread, 
 
 Lucana's mountains rose above our head ; • 
 
 No single cloud obscured the summer sky, 
 
 And yet the wind was turbulent and high 
 
 And fall it blew upon the Tyrrhene sea, 
 
 That rose sublime in billowy majesty, — 
 
 Its waves arose, but not in stormy hue 
 
 For pure as heaven was their ethereal blue, 
 
 Save where they beat the shore in crested pride, 
 
 White as the snow upon the glacier's side. 
 
 Though loud their murmuring 'midst the mountain trees. 
 
 Yet tuneful Philomel, as if to prove 
 
 More loud as well as sweet the voice of love, 
 
 Poured from the caruba her thrilling song. 
 
 The music of a minstrel wild and strong ; 
 
 And gentle turtle-doves, in thicket nigh, 
 
 Heaved, scarcely audible, the broken sigh ; 
 
 The gale was from a zephyr's softest wing. 
 
 The air was that which summer steals from spring ; 
 
 Life seemed in every moving thing to be — 
 
 The blades of maize, the blossom on the tree ; 
 
APPPJNDIX. 
 
 The cones that rattled on the giant pine 
 Seemed stirred by impulse of a power divine. * 
 
 This, charming description of Eboli is not overdrawn. Outside 
 the town, just opposite the little Locanda, formerly a Franciscan 
 Convent, in which some years ago I passed several pleasant 
 days, there stood a gigantic umbrella-pine, the only one near, of 
 any size. This I named Davy's Pine. 
 
 The preceding couplets were composed in the height of his 
 scientific fame, and in the enjoyment of health and happiness. 
 The affecting fragment which follows w^as written at Ravenna, in 
 failing strength and spirits, not long before the close of his 
 brilliant career. It expresses the feelings of a solitary wanderer, 
 and is not without a reference to his want of domestic 
 happiness : — 
 
 Oh ! could' st thou be with me, daughter of heaven, 
 Urania ! I have now no other love : 
 For time hath withered all the beauteous flowers 
 That once adorned my youthful coronet : 
 With thee I still may live a little space, 
 And hope for better intellectual light ; 
 With thee, I may e'en still in vernal times 
 Look upon nature with a poet's Qje, 
 Nursing those lofty thoughts that in the mind 
 Spontaneous rise, blending their sacred powers 
 With images from mountain and from flood. 
 Sir Humphrey's last employment, concluded at the very 
 moment of the invasion of his fatal illness, was the composition 
 
 * Fragmentary Remains of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart.; edited by John 
 Davy, M.D., F.R.S., p. 205. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 of the suggestive little volume, Consolations in Travel, or the 
 Last Days of a Philosopher. The author evidently shews his 
 attachment to the not improbable belief that our intellectual 
 essence is destined hereafter to enjoy a higher and better state of 
 planetary existence, drinking intellectual light from a purer 
 source and approaching nearer to the Divine mind. In the 
 letter from Rome, already referred to, he says of this work : " It 
 contains the essence of my philosophical opinions, and some of 
 my poetical reveries. It is, like the Salmonia, the amusement 
 of my sickness ; but paulo majora canamus. I sometimes think 
 of the lines of Waller, and seem to feel their truth : — 
 
 The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
 
 Lets in new lights from chinks that time has made." 
 
 One of his latest acts, at a time when he had lost the power 
 of writing, was to dictate the following dedication of his book : 
 
 To 
 
 Thomas Poole, Esq, , 
 Of Nether Stowey, 
 In remembrance of 
 Thirty years of continued and faithful friendship. 
 
 NOTE VI. Page 37. 
 
 Since my paper was written, I have learnt that there existed 
 another claimant for the office of ' Pennefactor and, by the 
 courtesy of a lady, the daughter of the Poet's friend, I have 
 
xxii APPENDIX. 
 
 been allowed to read several plajrful letters from Coleridge to 
 her father, one of which I subjoin : — 
 
 Octob. 7, 1799. 
 Stowey. 
 
 Most exquisite Pennefactor ! 
 I will speak dirt and daggers of the wretch who shall deny thee to be 
 the most heaven-inspired, munificent Penmaker that these latter Times, 
 these superficial, weak, and evirtuate ages, have produced to redeem them- 
 selves from ignominy ! And may he, great Calamist ! who shall vilipend 
 or derogate from thy pen-making merits, do penance, and suffer ^mitential 
 penaXtj, penn'd up in some pennrioxis peninsnla of penal fire, ^msive and 
 pendnlona, pending a huge slice of eternity ! Were I to write till Pmtecost, 
 filling whole P(?wtateuchs, my grateful expressions would still remain merely 
 a Pmumbra of my Debt and Gratitude. 
 
 Thine, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge. 
 
 To Mr. W , 
 
 This pentsigonal letter 
 
 comes ^^wcil'd as well as Your messenger neither came or 
 
 penn'd, returns jsmniless. 
 
 I often drive past that thatched cottage by the road side at 
 the entrance of the long street of Nether Stowey, where, more 
 than seventy years ago, the above note was written, and the 
 wish has sometimes occurred to me, that it were possible to 
 rescue it from its present use, a village ale-house, — (The Coleridge 
 Cottage Inn). Are there no admirers of Coleridge who would 
 be willing to assist in appropriating to some purpose connected 
 with education — a Free Library, or a village reading-room, — 
 the house and orchard of the Poet, where he spent those three 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 xxiii 
 
 marvellous years which formed the prime and manhood of his 
 poetical life, and where were conceived the splendid dreams of 
 The Mariner and the Christabel ? 
 
 NOTE VII. Page 40. 
 
 It is curious and interesting to contrast the difierent estimate 
 formed of Wordsworth at the two periods of his visits to 
 Alfoxden. Driven from the place in early manhood, by ignorant 
 prejudice and misrepresentation, as a suspected * conspirator,' 
 the grand old bard after more than forty years' absence, returned 
 to his former abode, as the Poet Laureate of England, with the 
 enthusiastic plaudits of the University of Oxford and the cheers 
 of the House of Commons ringing in his ears. " The latent 
 love of his poetry," observes one of his ablest and most dis- 
 criminative critics,* " cherished here and there in secret places 
 among the wise and good, had caught and spread into a general 
 admiration." Coleridge had already, in his philosophical and 
 beautiful criticism of the Lyrical Ballads in his Biographia 
 Literaria^ established to the conviction of more reflective minds, 
 the fact, that, in spite of his peculiar poetic theory, in itself 
 only partially tenable, Wordsworth was a true and a great Poet ; 
 but one of the earliest popular recognitions of the poet's great 
 merits came from the pen of Professor Wilson in Blackwood's 
 Magazine (August, 1822). 
 
 * Notes from Books, by Henry Taylor, Author of Philip Van Artevelde-, 
 &c., p. 181. 
 
xxiv 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 " We believe that Wordsworth's genius has had a greater 
 influence on the spirit of poetry in Britain than was ever before 
 exercised by any individual mind. He was the first man who 
 impregnated all his descriptions of external nature with senti- 
 ment and passion; the first man that vindicated the native 
 dignity of human nature by showing that all elementary feelings 
 were capable of poetry. He was the first man who in poetry 
 knew the real province of language, and suffered it not to veil 
 the meanings of the spirit. In all these things and in many 
 more, Wordsworth is indisputably the most Original Poet op 
 THE Age j and it is impossible, in the very nature of things, 
 that he ever can be echpsed. From his golden urn other orbs 
 may draw light ; but still it will be said of him — 
 
 Then shone the firmament 
 
 With Uving sapphires. Hesperus who led 
 The starry host shone brightest." 
 
 This admirable criticism was soon followed by many other 
 similar tributes, till the homage to the poet!s genius, so long 
 denied, swelled into a burst of admiration, which found an echo 
 in the Senate itself The following eloquent eulogy I copy from 
 the newspaper report of the speech of Sir H. N. Talfourd in the 
 House of Commons on the 18th of May, 1837. 
 
 " Let me suppose an author of true, original genius, disgusted 
 with the inane phraseology which had taken the place of poetry, 
 and devoting himself from youth to its service, disdaining the 
 superficial graces which attract the careless, and unskilled in the 
 moving accidents of fortune, — not sailing in the tempest of the 
 passions, but in the serenity which lies above them ; whose 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 XXV 
 
 works shall be scoffed at by fools — whose name made a bye- 
 word — yet who shall persevere in his high and holy cause, 
 gradually impressing thoughtful minds with the perception of 
 truths made visible in the severest forms of beauty, until he 
 shall gradually create the taste by which he shall be appreciated 
 — influence one or other of the master-spirits of his age — be 
 felt pervading every part of the national literature — softening, 
 raising, and enriching it ; and, when at last he shall find his 
 confidence in his own aspirations justified, and the name which 
 was the scorn, admitted to be the glory of his age, he shall look 
 forward to the close of his earthly career, as the event that shall 
 lend the last consecration to his fame, and deprive his children 
 of the harvest he was just beginning to reap. As soon as his 
 , copyright becomes valuable it is gone. This is no imaginary 
 case ; I refer to one who ' in this setting part of time,' has 
 opened a vein of sentiment and thought unknown before — who 
 has supplied the noblest antidote to the peering effects of the 
 scientific spirit of the age — who while he has detected that 
 poetry which is the essence of the greatest things, has cast a 
 glory round the lowliest conditions of humanity, and traced out 
 the subtle links by which they are connected with the highest 
 — of one, whose name will now find an echo, not only in the 
 heart of the secluded student, but in that of the busiest of those 
 who are fevered by political controversy — of William Words- 
 worth.'' (Loud cheers). 
 
 Another estimate of the poet's merits will, I am sure, be read 
 with interest, coming as it does from the pen of one so highly 
 venerated as the present Lord Chancellor : — " Wordsworth I 
 
xxvi 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 esteem as the greatest and most truthful poetical thinker of his 
 generation, who has done far more than any other man to 
 neutralise the poison of Rousseau's system, and to extract what is 
 good from it, leaving the poison behind. He is a poet conscious 
 of a great vocation, whose works (to use a metaphor of his own) 
 are an intellectual temple dedicated to God as seen in nature, 
 and in the power, variety, beauty and sacredness of natural 
 human feeling. The whole office and object of his poetry is to 
 harmonise the philosophy of sentiment with natural religion — 
 not opposing natural religion to the Christian scheme (the truth 
 and exclusive sufficiency of which he never fails to recognize) — 
 but appealing to the voice of God in His works, as one, in its 
 moral meaning, admonitions, and tendencies, with the voice in 
 His word."* 
 
 But the tribute to his genius which gave most pleasure to the 
 poet was that offered by the author of The Christian Year, in the 
 dedication to his Frcelectiones Academicoe, which was as follows : 
 
 Viro Vere Philosopho 
 
 Et Vati Sacro 
 G^ulielmo Wordsworth 
 Cui Illud Munus Tribuit 
 Deus Opt. Max. 
 Ut, Sive HominuruAffectus Caneret, 
 Sive Terrarum Et Coeli Pulcritudtnem, 
 Legentium Animos Semper Ad Sanctiora Erigeret, 
 Semper A Pauperum Et Simpliciorum Partibiis Staret, 
 
 * The Connection of Poetry with History. A Lecture, by RoundeU Palmer, 
 Esq., Q.C., M.P. for Plymouth. Jan. 8, 1852. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 xxvii 
 
 Atque Adeo, Labente Sseculo, Existeret, 
 Non Solum DulcissimeB Poeseos, 
 Verum Etiam Divinas Veritatis 
 Antistes. 
 
 Mr. Keble's expression " ad sanctiora erigeret" was particularly 
 gi-ateful to the poet, indicating, as it does very happily, the 
 main scope of the writings of him who left his laurels to his 
 living and worthy successor — 
 
 greener from the brow 
 
 Of him who uttered nothing base. * 
 
 NOTE VIII. Page 40. 
 
 Any reminiscence of the sojourn of Wordsworth under the 
 shadow of our Quantock Hills would be very imperfect, if it failed 
 to include a reference to his accomplished and fascinating sister. 
 During his residence at Alfoxden, she was the cherished associate 
 of her illustrious brother ; the well-informed companion of his 
 mountain walks and of his winter fire-side. She combined with 
 the most charming simplicity an intimate acquaintance with the 
 best and purest literature, and a fund of various knowledge, 
 which was never obtruded. In fact, there was nothing about 
 her at all resembling that irksome personage, the blue-stocking 
 lady, or femme savante. In the poet's early temperament there 
 existed a certain hardness and harshness, which her gentle 
 influence and exquisite sensibility tended to soften and refine ; 
 she diverted his attention from the exciting politics of that 
 stormy period, and 
 
 * Tennyson : Dedication to the Queen. 
 
ixviii 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 preserved him still 
 
 A poet ; made him seek beneath that name 
 And that alone, his office upon earth.* 
 
 He has recorded in a number of passages his obligations to his 
 " sole sister,'* and the power for good which her tenderness and 
 the hallowing sway of her fine mind exerted over his own sterner 
 nature : it is to her that he refers in this stanza — 
 
 She gave me eyes, she gave me ears. 
 And humble cares and delicate fears ; 
 A heart the fountain of sweet tears, 
 And love and thought, and joy. 
 
 The few extracts that have been hitherto printed from Miss 
 Wordsworth's "Diary" reveal, if not the actual "accomplish- 
 ment of verse," much of her brother's genius and poetic insight. 
 Of her " magical entry " in her journal about the daffodils, a 
 critic in the Quarterly Review some years ago observed, " Few 
 poets ever lived who could have written a description so simple 
 and original, so vivid and picturesque. Her words are scenes 
 and something more. The poet's own pretty stanzas are only an 
 enfeebled paraphrase." Of this my readers shall judge for them- 
 selves : — " We saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. As 
 we went along there were more and yet more ; and at last, 
 under the boughs of the trees, we saw there was a long belt of 
 them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They 
 grew among the mossy stones about them. Some rested their 
 heads on these stones as on a pillow ; the rest tossed and reeled, 
 
 ♦ The Prelude, 309. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 xxix 
 
 and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, 
 they looked so gay and glancing." 
 
 Favoured by the kindness of an intimate friend of the poet 
 and his sister, Lady Richardson, of Lancrigg, I am enabled to 
 subjoin some pathetic verses (probably the last effort of her pen), 
 which Miss Wordsworth wrote while lying on her couch, hopeless 
 of recovery : — 
 
 AN INVALID'S HYMN. 
 
 The worship of this Sabbath morn 
 
 How sweetly it begins ; — 
 With the full choral hymn of birds 
 
 Mingles no sad lament for sins, 
 
 Alas ! my feet no more may join 
 
 The cheerful Sabbath train ; 
 But, if I inwardly lament, 
 
 Oh ! may a will subdued all grief restrain. 
 
 No prisoner am I on this couch, 
 
 My mind is free to roam, 
 And leisure, peace, and loving friends 
 
 Are the best treasures of our earthly home. 
 
 Such gifts are mine ; then why deplore 
 
 The body's gentle slow decay, 
 A warning mercifully sent, 
 
 To fix my hopes upon a surer stay. 
 
 D.W., March 19th, 1840. 
 
XXX 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Miss Wordsworth became, in 1836, as the poet has told us, a 
 confirmed invalid ; yet such was the natural strength of her 
 constitution, that she survived eighteen years; but her fine 
 mind was clouded long before her decease, and during the latter 
 years of her life became a melancholy blank. The poet relates 
 a pleasing incident of her long sickness. " While confined to her 
 room, a red-breast came and took up its abode with her, and at 
 night used to perch upon a nail from which a picture had hung. 
 It used to sing, and fan her face with its wings in a manner that 
 was very touching : 
 
 She long had lain 
 
 With languid limbs and patient head, 
 
 Reposing on a lone sick-bed ; 
 
 Where now, she daily hears a strain 
 
 That cheats her of too busy cares, 
 
 Eases her pain, and helps her prayers. . . 
 
 Now, cooling with his passing wing 
 
 Her forehead like a breeze of Spring, 
 
 Recalling now, with descant soft, 
 
 Shed round her pillow from aloft, 
 
 Sweet thoughts of angels hovering nigh," 
 
 There are several poems inserted in Wordsworth's collected 
 Works (ed. 1857), that were written by his sister. The 
 Address to a Child (i. 171). The Cottager to Her Infant 
 (p. 275). Loving and Liking (p. 338). The Floating Island 
 (iv., 332). Miss Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, in 1855, 
 in her 84th year. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 xxxi 
 
 I have now finished my task. It will be a source of much 
 gratification to me, if the few facts I have collected, and the 
 descriptions I have attempted to give, should prove useful to 
 any of my friends who may visit this district, or to others into 
 whose hands this little brochure may chance to fall; and still 
 more so, if its guidance should contribute to lend some additional 
 interest to their walks or rides over our breezy downs, or to 
 their explorations of the countless beauties that lurk in many a 
 nook of our secluded combes. 
 
 The amount of literary associations that cluster round our 
 Quantock Hills may possibly prove a surprise to some of my 
 readers. Omitting further mention of the other distinguished 
 individuals that I have enumerated, this locality may claim as 
 its own a large share in the fame of two great Poets — the half, 
 and more perhaps, of the choicest writings of one of them ; 
 and, of the immortal productions of the elder bard, no incon- 
 siderable portion owes its inspiration to his wanderings over 
 ' smooth Quantock's airy ridge.' It is no exaggeration, there- 
 fore, to designate both of them as Somersetshire Foets, and to 
 assert the claim of the county to inscribe in the long roll of its 
 worthies, the grand names of Wobdsworth and of Coleridge. 
 
xxxii 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A List of the Poems composed by Wordsworth while residing 
 at Alfoxden, or written elsewhere, and containing allusions to 
 Quantock scenery : — 
 
 We are Seven. Written at Alfoxden in the Spring of 1798, but 
 suggested iy an incident which occurred during a visit to the 
 Ruins of Goderich Castle on the Wye. 
 
 An Anecdote for Fathers. Suggested in front of Alfoxden 
 House. 
 
 The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman. Written at 
 Alfoxden. 
 
 The Last of the Flock. Written at Alfoxden : the incident 
 occurred in Holford Village. 
 
 The Idiot Boy. Composed in the Holly Grove at Alfoxden. 
 
 Her Eyes are Wild. Written at Alfoxden. 
 
 A Night Piece. Composed on the road between Nether 
 Stowey and Alfoxden, 1798. 
 
 Ruth. Written in Germany, but the scene laid on the 
 Quantocks. 
 
 The Thorn. Written at Alfoxden. 
 
 Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey. While a 
 resident at Alfoxden. 
 
 Peter Bell. Written at Alfoxden in the summer of 1798. 
 
 A Whirl-blast from behind the Hill. Written in the Holly 
 Grove at Alfoxden in the spring of 1799. 
 
 Expostulation and Reply, Composed in front of the House 
 at Alfoxden, in the spring of 1798. 
 
 The TaUes Turned. Ibid. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 xxxiii 
 
 Lines written in Early Spring. Composed in the Glen at 
 Alfoxden. 
 
 To my Sister. Composed in front of Alfoxden House. 
 Simon Lee. Written at Alfoxden. 
 
 Goody Blake and Harry GilL Written at Alfoxden, 1798. 
 
 The Old Cumberland Beggar. Written partly at Racedown, 
 1797, partly at Alfoxden, 1798. 
 
 Animal Tranquillity and Decay. Written while at Alfoxden. 
 
 Some parts of The Excursion ; the fine passages describing the 
 affliction of Margaret, and the lines, which form the conclusion 
 of the fourth book, were also written at Alfoxden.