After several years, the stouter plant being left, the others were taken up, and placed in other parts of the same churchyard, and were adequately fenced at the expense and under the care of the late Mr.Barber, Mr.
Greenwood, and myself.

The whole eight are now thriving, and are an ornament to a place which, during late years, has lost much of its rustic simplicity by the introduction of iron palisades, to fence off family burying-grounds, and by numerous monuments, some of them in very bad taste, from which this place of burial was in my memory quite free: see the lines in the sixth book of 'The Excursion,' beginning, 'Green is the Churchyard.' The 'Epistle,' to which these notes refer, though written so far back as 1811, was carefully revised so late as 1842, previous to its publication.

I am loath to add, that it was never seen by the person to whom it is addressed.

So sensible am I of the deficiencies in all that I write, and so far does every thing that I attempt fall short of what I wish it to be, that even private publication, if such a term may be allowed, requires more resolution than I can command.

I have written to give vent to my own mind, and not without hope that, some time or other, kindred minds might benefit by my labours; but I am inclined to believe I should never have ventured to send forth any verses of mine to the world, if it had not been done on the pressure of personal occasions.
Had I been a rich man, my productions, like this 'Epistle,' the 'Tragedy of the Borderers,' &c., would most likely have been confined to MS.
461.