Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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In the cottage, Town-end, Grasmere, one afternoon in 1801, my sister read to me the Sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion by the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them,–in character so totally different from the Italian, and still more so from Shakspeare’s fine Sonnets. I took fire, if I may be allowed to say so, and produced three Sonnets the same afternoon, the first I ever wrote except an irregular one at school. Of these three, the only one I distinctly remember is “I grieved for Buonaparte.” One was never written down: the third, which was, I believe, preserved, I cannot particularise.