The six last lines of this sonnet are not written for poetical effect, but as a matter of fact, which in more than one instance could not escape my notice in the servants of the house.
231. Sonnet XXV.
'Why art thou silent?'
In the month of January [blank], when Dora and I were walking from Town-End, Grasmere, across the vale, snow being on the ground, she espied in the thick though leafless hedge a bird's-nest half filled with snow. Out of this comfortless appearance arose this Sonnet, which was, in fact, written without the least reference to any individual object, but merely to prove to myself that I could, if I thought fit, write in a strain that poets have been fond of. On the 14th of February in the same year, my daughter, in a sportive mood, sent it as a Valentine under a fictitious name to her cousin C. W.
232. *Sonnet XXVI.
'Haydon! let worthier judges,' &c.
This Sonnet, though said to be written on seeing the portrait of Napoleon, was in fact composed some time after, extempore, in Rydal Mount. [In pencil—But it was said in prose in Haydon's studio, for I was present: relate the facts and why it was versified.]
233. *Sonnet XXVII.
'A poet!—He hath put,' &c.
I was impelled to write this Sonnet by the disgusting frequency with which the word artistical, imported with other impertinencies from the Germans, is employed by writers of the present day. For 'artistical' let them substitute 'artificial,' and the poetry written on this system, both at home and abroad, will be, for the most part, much better characterised.