Book Tenth

Footnote A:   He left Blois for Paris in the late autumn of 1792—Ed.
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Footnote B:   King Louis the Sixteenth, dethroned on August 10th, 1792.—Ed.
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Footnote C:  "The Ormrahs or lords of the Moghul's court." See François Besnier's letter Concerning Hindusthan.—Ed.
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Footnote D:  The "Republic" was decreed on the 22nd of September 1792.—Ed.
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Footnote E:  The "September Massacres" lasted from the 2nd to the 6th of that month.—Ed.
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Footnote F:   He reached Paris in the beginning of October 1792.—Ed.
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Footnote G:   The Place du Carrousel.—Ed.
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Footnote H:   See notes [E] and [F].—Ed.
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Footnote I:  

"One day, among the last of October, Robespierre, being summoned to the tribune by some new hint of that old calumny of the Dictatorship, was speaking and pleading there, with more and more comfort to himself; till rising high in heart, he cried out valiantly: Is there any man here that dare specifically accuse me? ''Moi!'' exclaimed one. Pause of deep silence: a lean angry little Figure, with broad bald brow, strode swiftly towards the tribune, taking papers from its pocket: 'I accuse thee, Robespierre,—I, Jean Baptiste Louvet!' The Seagreen became tallow-green; shrinking to a corner of the tribune, Danton cried, 'Speak, Robespierre; there are many good citizens that listen;' but the tongue refused its office. And so Louvet, with a shrill tone, read and recited crime after crime: dictatorial temper, exclusive popularity, bullying at elections, mob-retinue, September Massacres;—till all the Convention shrieked again," etc. etc.

Carlyle's French Revolution, vol. iii. book ii. chap. 5. —Ed.
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Footnote K:   Robespierre got a week's delay to prepare a defence.

"That week he is not idle. He is ready at the day with his written Speech: smooth as a Jesuit Doctor's, and convinces some. And now?...poor Louvet, unprepared, can do little or nothing. Barrère proposes that these comparatively despicable personalities be dismissed by order of the day! Order of the day it accordingly is."

Carlyle, ut supra.—Ed.
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Footnote L:   Harmodius and Aristogiton of Athens murdered the tyrant Hipparchus, 514 B.C., and delivered the city from the rule of the Pisistratidæ, much as Brutus rose against Cæsar.—Ed.
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Footnote M:  He crossed the Channel, and returned to England reluctantly, in December 1792. Compare p. 376, l. 349:

'Since I withdrew unwillingly from France.'

Ed.
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Footnote N:   Had he remained longer in Paris, he would probably have fallen a victim, amongst the Brissotins, to the reactionary fury of the Jacobin party.— Ed.
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Footnote O:  He left England in November 1791, and returned in December 1792.— Ed.
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Footnote P:  He stayed in London during the winter of 1792-3 and spring of 1793, probably with his elder brother Richard (who was a solicitor there), writing his remarkable letter on the French Revolution to the Bishop of Landaff, and doubtless making arrangements for the publication of the Evening Walk. The Descriptive Sketches were not written till the summer of 1793 (compare The Thirteenth Book of The Prelude, p. 366); but in a letter dated "Forncett, February 16th, 1793," his sister sends to a friend an interesting criticism of her brother's verses. The Evening Walk must therefore have appeared in January 1793.—Ed.
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Footnote Q:   The movement for the abolition of slavery, led by Clarkson and Wilberforce. Compare the sonnet To Thomas Clarkson, on the final passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, March 1807, in vol. iv.—Ed.
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Footnote R:   The red-cross flag, i. e. the British ensign.

"On the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, James I. issued a proclamation that all subjects of this isle and the kingdom of Great Britain should bear in the main-top the red cross commonly called St. George's Cross, and the white cross commonly called St. Andrew's Cross, joined together according to the form made by our own heralds. This was the first Union Jack."

Encyclopaedia Britannica (ninth edition), article "Flag."—Ed.
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Footnote S:  In the Isle of Wight. Wordsworth spent a month of the summer of 1793 there, with William Calvert. (See the Advertisement to [volume 1 link: Guilt and Sorrow], vol. i. p. 77.)—Ed.
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Footnote T:  The goddess of Reason, enthroned in Paris, November 10th, 1793.—Ed.
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Footnote U:  Jeanne-Marie Phlipon—Madame Roland—was guillotined on the 8th of November 1793.

"Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her: a remarkable request; which was refused. Looking at the Statue of Liberty which stands there, she says bitterly: O Liberty, what things are done in thy name! ... Like a white Grecian Statue, serenely complete," adds Carlyle, "she shines in that black wreck of things,—long memorable."

French Revolution, vol. iii. book v. chap. 2.

Madame Roland's apostrophe was

'Ô Liberté, que de crimes l'on commet en ton nom!'

Ed.
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Footnote V:   In the long vacation of 1790, with his friend Jones.—Ed.
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Footnote W:  Compare the [volume 2 link: vol. ii. p. 332, beginning:

'Jones! as from Calais southward you and I
Went pacing side by side, this public Way
Streamed with the pomp of a too-credulous day,
When faith was pledged to new-born Liberty.'

Ed.
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Footnote X:  Robespierre was a native of Arras.—Ed.
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Footnote Y:  Robespierre was guillotined with his confederates on the 28th July 1794. Wordsworth lived in Cumberland—at Keswick, Whitehaven, and Penrith— from the winter of 1793-4 till the spring of 1795. He must have made this journey across the Ulverston Sands, in the first week of August 1794. Compare Wordsworth's remarks on Robespierre, in his Letter to a Friend of Burns,—Ed.
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Footnote Z:  The "honoured teacher" of his youth was the Rev. William Taylor, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who was master at Hawkshead School from 1782 to 1786, who died while Wordsworth was at school, and who was buried in Cartmell Churchyard. See the note to the [volume 2 link: Address to the Scholars of the Village School of ——] (vol. ii. p. 85).—Ed.
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Footnote a:  The following is the inscription on the head-stone in Cartmell Churchyard:

'In memory of the Rev. William Taylor, A. M., son of John Taylor of Outerthwaite, who was some years a Fellow of Eman. Coll., Camb., and Master of the Free School at Hawkshead. He departed this life June the 12th 1786, aged 32 years 2 months and 13 days.

His Merits, stranger, seek not to disclose,
Or draw his Frailties from their dread abode,
There they alike in trembling Hope repose,
The Bosom of his Father and his God.'

Ed.
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Footnote b:   This is exact. Taylor died in 1786. Robespierre was executed in 1794, eight years afterwards.—Ed.
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Footnote c:  He refers to the Lines written as a School Exercise at Hawkskead, anno ætatis 14; and, probably, to The Summer Vacation, which is mentioned in the "Autobiographical Memoranda" as "a task imposed by my master," but whether by Taylor, or by his predecessors at Hawkshead School in Wordsworth's time—Parker and Christian—is uncertain.—Ed.
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Footnote d:  Compare Hausman's Guide to the Lakes (1803), p. 209.

"Chapel Island on the right is a desolate object, where there are yet some remains of an oratory built by the monks of Furness, in which Divine Service was daily performed at a certain hour for passengers who crossed the sands with the morning tide."

This, evidently, is the ruin referred to by Wordsworth.—Ed.
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Footnote e:  See note, book ii. ll. 103-6.—Ed.
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Footnote f:   By Arrad Foot and Greenodd, beyond Ulverston, on the way to Hawkshead.—Ed.
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Contents—The Prelude
Main Contents

Book Eleventh