. Coleridge and Wordsworth in the West Country : their friendship, work, and surroundings . ch of a fishing boat. . I retired to a cottage in Somersetshire atthe foot of Quantock, and devoted mythoughts and studies to the foundations ofreligion and morals. Here I found myselfall afloat; . . and it was long ere my arktouched on an Ararat, and rested. [ 177 ] CHAPTER XI SOME REMINISCENCES OF 1798 AND PREVIOUS YEARS BY WILLIAM HAZLITT AND OTHERS IN the afternoon Coleridge took me toAlfoxden. . Wordsworth was fromhome, but his sister kept house, and setbefore us a frugal repast. We had freeaccess
. Coleridge and Wordsworth in the West Country : their friendship, work, and surroundings . ch of a fishing boat. . I retired to a cottage in Somersetshire atthe foot of Quantock, and devoted mythoughts and studies to the foundations ofreligion and morals. Here I found myselfall afloat; . . and it was long ere my arktouched on an Ararat, and rested. [ 177 ] CHAPTER XI SOME REMINISCENCES OF 1798 AND PREVIOUS YEARS BY WILLIAM HAZLITT AND OTHERS IN the afternoon Coleridge took me toAlfoxden. . Wordsworth was fromhome, but his sister kept house, and setbefore us a frugal repast. We had freeaccess to her brothers poems, the LyricalBallads^ which were still in manuscript. Idipt into a few of them with great satis-faction, and with the faith of a novice. Islept that night in an old room with bluehangings, and covered with the round-facedfamily portraits of the age of Georges Iand II ; and from the wooded declivity ofthe adjoining park that overlooked my win-dow, at the dawn of day could hear theloud stag speak.^ That morning, soon^ The quotation is from Ben Jonson.[ 178 J. CHcyndi&ax{^c^. Some Reminiscences as breakfast was over, we strolled into thepark; and, seating ourselves on the branchof an old oak tree, Coleridge read aloud, ina sonorous and musical voice, the ballad ofBetty Foy. I was not critically or scepti-cally inclined. I saw touches of truthand Nature, and took the rest for , in The Thorn, The Mad Mother, andThe Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman, Ifelt that deeper passion and pathos whichhave since been acknowledged as characteris-tics of the author ; and the sense of a newstyle and a new spirit of poetry came overme. It had to me something of the effectthat arises from the turning up of a fresh soil,or the first welcome breath of spring, . . Coleridge and I walked back to Stoweythat evening; and . . as we passed throughechoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfallin the summer moonlight, he lamented thatWordsworth was not prone enough to be-lieve in
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