James Russell Lowell, Among my books

[223] he spoke with loathing of ‘Wilhelm Meister,’ a part of which he had read in Carlyle's translation apparently. There was some affectation in this, it should seem, for he had read Smollett. On the whole, it may be fairly concluded that the help of Germany in the development of his genius may be reckoned as very small, though there is certainly a marked resemblance both in form and sentiment between some of his earlier lyrics and those of Goethe. His poem of the ‘Thorn,’ though vastly more imaginative, may have been suggested by Burger's Pfarrer's Tochter von Taubenhain. The little grave drei Spannen lang, in its conscientious measurement, certainly recalls a famous couplet in the English poem.

After spending the winter at Goslar, Wordsworth and his sister returned to England in the spring of 1799, and settled at Grasmere in Westmoreland. In 1800, the first edition of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ being exhausted, it was republished with the addition of another volume, Mr. Longman paying £ 100 for the copyright of two editions. The book passed to a second edition in 1802, and to a third in 1805.¹ Wordsworth sent a copy of it, with a manly letter, to Mr. Fox, particularly recommending to his attention the poems ‘Michael’ and ‘The Brothers,’ as displaying the strength and permanence among a simple and rural population of those domestic affections which were certain to decay gradually under