'_The River Duddon_.' A Poet, whose works are not yet known as they deserve to be, thus enters upon his description of the 'Ruins of Rome:' 'The rising Sun Flames on the ruins in the purer air Towering aloft;' and ends thus-- 'The setting sun displays His visible great round, between yon towers, As through two shady cliffs.' Mr.Crowe, in his excellent loco-descriptive Poem, 'Lewesdon Hill,' is still more expeditious, finishing the whole on a May-morning, before breakfast.
'Tomorrow for severer thought, but now To breakfast, and keep festival to-day.' No one believes, or is desired to believe, that those Poems were actually composed within such limits of time; nor was there any reason why a prose statement should acquaint the Reader with the plain fact, to the disturbance of poetic credibility.

But, in the present case, I am compelled to mention, that the above series of Sonnets was the growth of many years;--the one which stands the 14th was the first produced; and others were added upon occasional visits to the Stream, or as recollections of the scenes upon its banks awakened a wish to describe them.

In this manner I had proceeded insensibly, without perceiving that I was trespassing upon ground pre-occupied, at least as far as intention went, by Mr.Coleridge; who, more than twenty years ago, used to speak of writing a rural Poem, to be entitled 'The Brook,' of which he has given a sketch in a recent publication.

But a particular subject cannot, I think, much interfere with a general one; and I have been further kept from encroaching upon any right Mr.C.may still wish to exercise, by the restriction which the frame of the Sonnet imposed upon me, narrowing unavoidably the range of thought, and precluding, though not without its advantages, many graces to which a freer movement of verse would naturally have led.
May I not venture, then, to hope, that, instead of being a hindrance, by anticipation of any part of the subject, these Sonnets may remind Mr.
Coleridge of his own more comprehensive design, and induce him to fulfil it ?--There is a sympathy in streams,--'one calleth to another;' and I would gladly believe, that 'The Brook' will, ere long, murmur in concert with 'The Duddon.' But, asking pardon for this fancy, I need not scruple to say, that those verses must indeed be ill-fated which can enter upon such pleasant walks of Nature, without receiving and giving inspiration.
The power of waters over the minds of Poets has been acknowledged from the earliest ages;--through the 'Flumina amem sylvasque inglorius' of Virgil, down to the sublime apostrophe to the great rivers of the earth, by Armstrong, and the simple ejaculation of Burns, (chosen, if I recollect right, by Mr.Coleridge, as a motto for his embryo 'Brook,')-- The Muse nae Poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander Adown some trotting burn's meander AND NA' THINK LANG.' 319.

*_The Sonnets on the River Duddon_.
It is with the little River Duddon as it is with most other rivers, Ganges and Nile not excepted,--many springs might claim the honour of being its head.