And such are the poems--_We are Seven, The Pet Lamb_, [6]
[Footnote 6: The _Pet Lamb_ is probably the only poem of
Wordsworth's which can be charged with having done moral injury, and
that to a single individual alone. "Barbara Lewthwaite," says
Wordsworth, in 1843, "was not, in fact, the child whom I had seen and
overheard as engaged in the poem. I chose the name for reasons
implied in the above," (i.e. an account of her remarkable beauty),
"and will here add a caution against the use of names of living
persons. Within a few months after the publication of this poem I
was much, surprised, and more hurt, to find it in a child's
school-book, which, having been compiled by Lindley Murray, had come
into use at Grasmere School, where Barbara was a pupil. And, alas, I
had the mortification of hearing that she was very vain of being
thus distinguished; and in after-life she used to say that she
remembered the incident, and what I said to her upon the occasion."]
_Louisa, The Two April Mornings_--in which the beauty of rustic
children melts, as it were, into Nature herself, and the--
Blooming girl whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew
becomes the impersonation of the season's early joy.
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