"himself to telling. His poetry is now "almost forgotten: it will be the same "with that of all but two or three poets “of the day. "Lewis had been, or thought he had "been, unkind to a brother whom he lost 66 66 young; and when any thing disagreeable was about to happen to him, the vision "of his brother appeared: he came as a "sort of monitor. 66 66 66 "Lewis was with me for a considerable period at Geneva; and we went to Coppet several times together; but Lewis was there oftener than I. "Madame de Staël and he used to have " violent arguments about the Slave Trade, "--which he advocated strongly, for most દ "of his property was in negroes and plantations. Not being satisfied with three "thousand a-year, he wanted to make it five; and would go to the West Indies; "but he died on the passage of sea-sick 66 ness, and obstinacy in taking an emetic." Cer I said to him, "You are accused of owing a great deal to Wordsworth. tainly there are some stanzas in the Third Canto of Childe Harold' that smell strongly of the Lakes: for instance 'I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me ;-and to me Very possibly," replied he. Shelley, "when I was in Switzerland, used to dose 66 me with Wordsworth physic even to "nausea: and I do remember then reading 66 some things of his with pleasure. He "had once a feeling of Nature, which he 66 carried almost to a deification of it: "that's why Shelley liked his poetry. 66 "It is satisfactory to reflect, that where 'a man becomes a hireling and loses his "mental independence, he loses also the faculty of writing well. The lyrical "ballads, jacobinical and puling with af "fectation of simplicity as they were, 66 had undoubtedly a certain merit*: and * "Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy." Don Juan, Canto III. Stanza 93. 66 Wordsworth, though occasionally a wri"ter for the nursery-masters and misses, 66 66 • Who took their little porringer, now and then expressed ideas worth imitating; but, like brother Southey, he "had his price; and since he is turned 66 tax-gatherer, is only fit to rhyme about "lasses and waggoners. Shelley repeated 66 66 to me the other day a stanza from 'Pe ter Bell' that I thought inimitably good. "It is the rumination of Peter's ass, who gets into a brook, and sees reflected "there a family-circle, or tea-party. But shall have it in his own words: you Is it a party in a parlour, Cramm'd just as you on earth are cramm'd? Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, And every one, as you may see, All silent and all d- -d!' "There was a time when he would "have written better; but perhaps Peter "The republican trio, when they began "to publish in common, were to have had 66 a community of all things, like the an"cient Britons; to have lived in a state of 66 66 6 nature, like savages, and peopled some island of the blest' with children in "common, like A very pretty Arca"dian notion! It amuses me much to 66 66 compare the Botany Bay Eclogue, the 'Panegyric of Martin the Regicide, and "Wat Tyler,' with the Laureate Odes, "and Peter's Eulogium on the Field of |