"The subjoined poem" was the one beginning: "She dwelt among the
untrodden ways," and Butler made this note on the letter:

To the foregoing letter I answered that I concluded Miss Savage meant to
imply that Wordsworth had murdered Lucy in order to escape a prosecution
for breach of promise.

_Miss Savage to Butler_.

2nd April, 1880: My dear Mr. Butler: I don't think you see all that I
do in the poem, and I am afraid that the suggestion of a DARK SECRET
in the poet's life is not so very obvious after all. I was hoping you
would propose to devote yourself for a few months to reading the
_Excursion_, his letters, &c., with a view to following up the clue,
and I am disappointed though, to say the truth, the idea of a _crime_
had not flashed upon me when I wrote to you. How well the works of
_great_ men repay attention and study! But you, who know your Bible
so well, how was it that you did not detect the plagiarism in the last
verse? Just refer to the account of the disappearance of Aaron (I
have not a Bible at hand, we want one sadly in the club) but I am sure
that the words are identical [I cannot see what Miss Savage meant.
1901. S. B.] _Cassell's Magazine_ have offered a prize for setting
the poem to music, and I fell to thinking how it could be treated
musically, and so came to a right comprehension of it.

Although Butler, when editing Miss Savage's letters in 1901, could not
see the resemblance between Wordsworth's poem and Numbers xx., he at once
saw a strong likeness between Lucy and Moore's heroine whom he had been
keeping in an accessible pigeon-hole of his memory ever since his letter
about Miss Frances Power Cobbe. He now sent Lucy to keep her company and
often spoke of the pair of them as probably the two most disagreeable
young women in English literature--an opinion which he must have
expressed to Miss Savage and with which I have no doubt she agreed.

In the spring of 1888, on his return from photographing the statues at
Varallo, he found, to his disgust, that the authorities of the British
Museum had removed Frost's _Lives of Eminent Christians_ from its
accustomed shelf in the Reading Room. Soon afterwards Harry Quilter
asked him to write for the _Universal Review_ and he responded with "Quis
Desiderio . . . ?" In this essay he compares himself to Wordsworth and
dwells on the points of resemblance between Lucy and the book of whose
assistance