Accordingly I wrote 'The Idiot Boy,' 'Her Eyes are wild,' &c., and 'We are Seven,' 'The Thorn,' and some others.

To return to 'We are Seven,' the piece that called forth this note:--I composed it while walking in the grove of Alfoxden.

My friends will not deem it too trifling to relate, that while walking to and fro I composed the last stanza first, having begun with the last line.

When it was all but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr.
Coleridge and my sister, and said, 'A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task was finished.' I mentioned in substance what I wished to be expressed, and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza, thus: 'A little child, dear brother Jem.' I objected to the rhyme, 'dear brother Jem,' as being ludicrous; but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching in our friend James Tobin's name, who was familiarly called Jem.

He was the brother of the dramatist; and this reminds me of an anecdote which it may be worth while here to notice.
The said Jem got a sight of the 'Lyrical Ballads' as it was going through the press at Bristol, during which time I was residing in that city.