productions of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. Joseph Cottle, the author of Alfred, an epic poem, whom Byron so mercilessly handled, grafting upon him the name of his brother Amos, for the sake of more ludicrous effect--Joseph Cottle was a bookseller here, and became the patron of those three young, aspiring, but far from wealthy young men. Coleridge had made the acquaintance of a Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether Stowey, a gentleman of some property, and a magistrate. Mr. Poole was a friend of the two great brother potters, Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, of Staffordshire; he introduced Coleridge to them, and eventually they settled on him an annuity of £150 a-year. Poole invited Coleridge to come down to Stowey to see him, and after his marriage prevailed on him to go and live in Stowey. The Wedgewoods were accustomed also to visit Mr. Poole; and the same causes drew Wordsworth and Southey occasionally down there. Thus Bristol ceased to be the general rendezvous of this new literary coterie, and the solitudes of Somersetshire received them. People have often wondered what induced this poetical brotherhood to select a scene so far out of the usual haunts of literary men, so inferior to Wordsworth's own neighborhood, as Stowey and its vicinity. These are the circumstances. It was Mr. Poole and cheapness which had a deal to do with it. Poole drew Coleridge, Coleridge and the dreams of Pantisocracy drew most of the others. Wordsworth, I believe, never speculated on the exclusive happiness of following the plough on the banks of the Susquehannah; but the whole of the corps had made the discovery that true poetry was based on nature, and that it was to be found only by looking into their own minds, and into the world of nature around them. They therefore sought, not cities, but solitude, where they could at once read, reflect, and store up that treasury of imagery, full of beauty and truth, which should be reproduced, woven into the living tissue of their own thought and passion, as poetry of a new, startling, and high order. To this life of country seclusion Wordsworth and Southey adhered, from choice, all their after-lives.