mistake; and I record it as a warning for others who, with far
less opportunity than my dear friend had of knowing what things are, and
with far less sagacity, give way to presumptuous criticism, from which
he was free, though in this matter mistaken. In describing a tarn under
Helvellyn, I say,

'There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer.'

This was branded by a critic of those days, in a review ascribed to Mrs.
Barbauld, as unnatural and absurd. I admire the genius of Mrs. Barbauld,
and am certain that, had her education been favourable to imaginative
influences, no female of her day would have been more likely to
sympathise with that image, and to acknowledge the truth of the
sentiment.

38. _Foot-note_.

Heading: 'Dungeon-ghyll Force.' _Ghyll_, in the dialect of Cumberland
and Westmoreland, is a short and, for the most part, a steep narrow
valley, with a stream running through it. _Force_ is the word
universally employed in these dialects for waterfall.

39. *_Anecdote for Fathers_. [XII.]

This was suggested in front of Alfoxden. The boy was a son of my friend
Basil Montagu, who had been two or three years under our care. The name
of Kilve is from a village in the Bristol Channel, about a mile from
Alfoxden; and the name of Liswin Farm was taken from a beautiful spot on
the Wye. When Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and I had been visiting the
famous John Thelwall, who had taken refuge from politics, after a trial
for high treason, with a view to bring up his family by the profits of
agriculture; which proved as unfortunate a speculation as that he had
fled from. Coleridge and he had been public lecturers: Coleridge
mingling with his politics theology; from which the other abstained,
unless it were for the sake of a sneer. This quondam community of public
employment induced Thelwall to visit Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where
he fell in my way. He really was a man of extraordinary talent, an
affectionate husband, and a good father. Though brought up in the city
on a tailor's board, he was truly sensible of the beauty of natural
objects. I remember once when Coleridge, he and I were seated together
upon the turf, on the brink of a 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.' The