here are two immortal
fish, inhabitants of this Tarn, which lies in the mountains not far from
Threlkeld--Blencathara, mentioned before, is the old and proper name of
the mountain vulgarly called Saddle-back.

153. _The Cliffords_.

'Armour rusting in his Halls
On the blood of Clifford calls' (ll. 142-3).

The martial character of the Cliffords is well known to the readers of
English history; but it may not be improper here to say, by way of
comment on these lines and what follows, that besides several others who
perished in the same manner, the four immediate Progenitors of the
Person in whose hearing this is supposed to be spoken all died on the
Field.

154. *_Tintern Abbey_. [XXVI.]

July 1798. No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more
pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern,
after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol
in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not
a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I
reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the little
volume of which so much has been said in these notes, the 'Lyrical
Ballads,' as first published at Bristol by Cottle.

155. *_It is no Spirit, &c._ [XXVII.]

1803. Town-End. I remember the instant my sister Sarah Hutchinson called
me to the window of our cottage saying, 'Look, how beautiful is yon
star! It has the sky all to itself.' I composed the verses immediately.

156. _French Revolution_. [XXVIII.]

An extract from the long poem on my own poetical education. It was first
published by Coleridge in his _Friend_, which is the reason of its
having had a place in every edition of my poems since.

157. *_Yes, it was the Mountain Echo_. [XXIX.]

Town-End, 1806. The Echo came from Nabscar, when I was walking on the
opposite side of Rydal Mere. I will here mention, for my dear sister's
sake, that while she was sitting alone one day, high up on this part of
Loughrigg Fell, she was so affected by the voice of the cuckoo, heard
from the crags at some distance, that she could not suppress a wish to
have a stone inscribed with her name among the rocks from which the
sound proceeded. On my return from my walk I recited those verses to
Mary, who was then confined with her son Thomas, who died in his seventh
year, as recorded on his headstone in Grasmere Churchyard.

158. _To a Skylark_. [XXX.]

R