almost transforming properties of a country church just entered; a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly what you have reduced into words; but I am feeling that which I can-not express. Reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church. Do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury spire itself almost." In a letter written in the same year, 1814, Lamb tells Wordsworth of the spurious review of _The Excursion_, in _The Quarterly Review_, "which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palmed upon it for mine," calls his own review "the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ," and gives a specimen of it, viz.-- "The poet of the _Excursion_ 'walks through common forests as through some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher love-lays.'" (_The Letters of Charles Lamb_, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. pp. 271-281.) In the Notes to the text I have confined myself chiefly to the explanation of obscure allusions, topographical, historical, or legendary.--ED. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: Southey died on the 21st of March, 1843.--ED.] [Footnote B: See the Appendix to this volume, Note A, p. 391.--ED.] [Footnote C: "Sarah went to Kendal on our mother's death, but Mr. P. died in the course of a year or two.--M. W." Pencilled on the opposite page of the MS.--ED.] [Footnote D: See _The Excursion_, book ix. l. 614.--ED.] [Footnote E: Alas! no longer as they were in Wordsworth's time. See the note to _Yew-Trees_, vol. ii. p. 371.--ED.] [Footnote F: "Mr. Pearson." Pencilled on the opposite page of the MS.--ED.] [Footnote G: Pencilled on the opposite page of the MS.--"This boathouse, badly built, gave way, and was rebuilt. It again tumbled, and was a third time reconstructed, but in a better fashion than before. It is not now, _per se_, an ugly building, however obtrusive it may be."--ED.] [Footnote H: Compare the sonnet _Malham Cove_ in volume vi., to which these lines belong.--ED.] [Footnote I: The following note from Wordsworth to Mr. Dyce, shews his estimation of the text of the first octavo edition, as compared with that of the earlier quarto edition. "MY DEAR SIR,--When you read _The Excursion_ do not read the quarto. It is improved in the 8vo E.:--but I thought the quarto might have its value with you as a collector.--Believe me, faithfully yours, "W. WORDSWORTH." 7th April, my birthday--61, 12 Bryanston Street. In 1820 there are very few departures from the text of 1814.--ED.] [Footnote J: In a subsequent letter (August 29th) he corrects this, and calls it "that celestial splendour of the mist going off."--ED.] TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF LONSDALE, K.G., ETC. ETC.