*_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.