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WOEDSWOETH AT BEINSOP COUET. 



[By Mb. Thomas Hutchinson]. 



Wordsworth's first visit to Brinsop was in the year 1S27, when he was 

 accompanied by his wife and Miss Southey, the eldest daughter of the Poet 

 Southey. In 183.5 he and his wife were again here, and on this occasion he wrote 

 three sonnets connected with the district — (1) Roman Antiquities at Bishopstone ; 



(2) St. Catherine'.s, Ledbury ; (3) To . No name is given to whom this 



last sonnet was addressed ; but it was to Miss Loveday Walker, daughter of the 

 late rector of Bishopstone, who in the sonnet is called Lesbia. It relates an 

 incident which took place at Bishopstone Rectory. Miss Walker was seated in 

 the drawing-room playing the piano, which in the sonnet by poetic licence is called 

 a harp, when a pet dove she had let out of its cage came and flapped its wings 

 against the window, and before she could let it in a hawk pounced down and 

 carried off the bird. The sonnet begins, "Wait, prithee, wait." Miss Walker 

 died only a year or two ago in Hereford. In 1837 the poet and Mrs. Wordsworth 

 again visited Brinsop with their daughter Dora, but on this occasion he had to 

 hasten his departure on account of illness and inflammation in his eyes, which 

 frequently gave him trouble when composing. The next visit he paid was in 1841, 

 when he was accompanied by his wife, and on this occasion he assisted in laying 

 out the garden at Brinsop Vicarage, for which he had great taste, as is shown by 

 the beautiful winter garden still in existence at Coleorton, Leicestershire (the 

 residence of his friend the late Sir George Beaumont, the celebrated landscape 

 painter), which he entirely designed and laid out. On this occasion he also 

 visited my father at the neighbouring parish of Hentland. In 1845, his last visit, 

 he was accompanied by his wife and an old servant, who died while here, and is 

 buried in Brinsop churchyard. He and his wife also visited Grantsfield, and 

 spent a night at Bockleton Vicarage with the Rev. J. and T. E. Miller. There is 

 a large stone on the road between the Church House, Layster.s, and Wilden, 

 marking a spot where he sat and admired the view, and on which the Millers had 

 his initials " W.W." cut. I had almost forgotten to say that on one of his visits 

 he planted the cedar tree at Brinsop Court. The Poet Southey visited Brinsop on 

 one occasion, and Edward Quillinan, anotVier of the Lake Poets, who afterwards 

 married Dora Wordsworth, the Poet's daughter, came there constantly for the 

 shooting. The Court was at this period visited by Dorothy Wordsworth, the 

 Poet's sister, and Sara Hutchinson, his wife's sister, to both of whom he was 

 indebted for much assistance in his poetical works. Sara Hutchinson was at one 

 time Southey's amanuensis. Henry Crabb Robinson was also another celebrated 

 man of that time who visited Brinsojj. He was a great friend of Wordsworth, 

 Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb. In the January number of Temple Bar, 1877, is a 

 paper written by Miss Anne Beale entitled "The Wordsworths at Brinsop 

 Court," and I will conclude this paper by relating, for the most part in her 

 language, two anecdotes of a favourite dog, which are interesting from their 



