Byron, among whose verses a bit of Wordsworth
showed as incongruously as a sacred vestment on the back of some
buccaneering plunderer of an abbey. There was a general combination to
put him down, but on the other hand there was a powerful party in his
favour, consisting of William Wordsworth. He not only continued in
good heart himself, but, reversing the order usual on such occasions,
kept up the spirits of his friends.

Wordsworth passed the winter of 1806-7 in a house of Sir George
Beaumont's, at Coleorton in Leicestershire, the cottage at Grasmere
having become too small for his increased family. On his return to the
Vale of Grasmere he rented the house at Allan Bank, where he lived
three years. During this period he appears to have written very little
poetry, for which his biographer assigns as a primary reason the
smokiness of the Allan Bank chimneys. This will hardly account for the
failure of the summer crop, especially as Wordsworth composed chiefly
in the open air. It did not prevent him from writing a pamphlet upon
the Convention of Cintra, which was published too late to attract much
attention, though Lamb says that its effect upon him was like that
which one of Milton's tracts might have had upon a contemporary. It
was at Allan Bank that Coleridge dictated _The Friend_, and Wordsworth
contributed to it two essays, one in answer to a letter of Mathetes
(Professor Wilson), and the other on Epitaphs, republished in the
Notes to _The Excursion_. Here also he wrote his _Description of the
Scenery of the Lakes_. Perhaps a truer explanation of the comparative
silence of Wordsworth's Muse during these years is to be found in the
intense interest which he took in current events, whose variety,
picturesqueness, and historical significance were enough to absorb all
the energies of his imagination.

In the spring of 1811 Wordsworth removed to the Parsonage at Grasmere.
Here he remained two years, and here he had his second intimate
experience of sorrow in the loss of two of his children, Catharine and
Thomas, one of whom died 4th June, and the other 1st December, 1812.
Early in 1813 he bought Rydal Mount, and, having removed thither,
changed his abode no more during the rest of his life. In March of
this year he was appointed Distributor of Stamps for the county of
Westmorland, an office whose receipts rendered him independent, and
whose business he was able to do by deputy, thus leaving him ample
leisure for nobler