relatives and yet desired to remain near her. All we know of Wordsworth, and all the facts in Professor Harper’s story, make it impossible to believe that he would willingly have deserted Marie-Anne and his daughter. The baptism of the child was entered in the registry of baptisms in the parish of Sainte-Croix, “Williams Wordsodsth” in his absence being represented by a local official. She was baptised Anne Caroline, and it was as Anne Caroline Wordsworth, daughter of “Williams Wordsworth, landowner,” that she was married in Paris about twenty-four years later. Wordsworth appears to have kept constantly in touch with her and her mother in the meantime, and, when peace was in sight in 1802, he and his sister Dorothy determined to cross to France and see them. A meeting took place in Calais. It was the preliminary to a marriage, but not to marriage with Annette, who, indeed, never married, but went through life as Madame Vallon. Two months after the Calais meeting Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson. That he had been deeply moved by the meeting with his child rather than with her mother is suggested by the mood of the sonnet he wrote at the time: “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.” Professor Harper is of opinion that Wordsworth’s love for Marie-Anne Vallon was an event of supreme importance in his life. He holds that the facts he has discovered throw “light upon many of Wordsworth’s poems.” I do not think that on this point he has proved his case. In his two-volume life of Wordsworth, it may be remembered, he even goes so far as to assign the “Lucy” of so many beautiful poems to a French original. Lovers of a great poet are naturally led to speculate as to the experiences out of which his poems grew. There is nothing of the vice of Paul Pry in attempting thus to discover the sources of the experiences the poet communicates in his verse. The theme of every poet is the experiences that have moved his soul most profoundly. And many, or most, of those experiences spring from his relations with other human beings. At the same time, there is no evidence that Wordsworth in his work was ever influenced by Marie-Anne Vallon as Keats was influenced by Fanny Brawne. It is doubtful if any women every really took the place of his sister in his heart. “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,” could be said only of Dorothy. It was the fire of affection, not the fire of passion, that glowed in Wordsworth’s soul. “Oh, my dear, dear sister!” he cried in one of his letters, “with what transport shall I again meet you! With what rapture shall I again wear out the day in your sight. So eager is my desire to see you that all other obstacles vanish. I see you in a moment running, or rather flying, to my arms.” He was in life as in literature a devoted brother rather than a devoted lover. Even Professor Harper can give no other woman but Dorothy the position of presiding genius over his life and work. This does not necessarily involve our acceptance of the common