Book Fourteenth

Footnote A:   With Robert Jones, in the summer of 1793.—Ed.
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Footnote B:  Compare Paradise Lost, book i. l. 21.—Ed.
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Footnote C:   Compare Paradise Lost, book v. l. 488.—Ed.
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Footnote D:  Compare [volume 2 link: The Sparrow's Nest], vol. ii. p. 236.—Ed.
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Footnote E:  See Paradise Lost, book ix. ll. 490, 491.—Ed.
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Footnote F:   Mary Hutchinson. Compare the lines, p. 2, beginning:

'She was a Phantom of delight.'

Ed.
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Footnote G:   Compare the preface to The Excursion. "Several years ago, when the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary work that might live," etc.—Ed.
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Footnote H:  After leaving London, he went to the Isle of Wight and to Salisbury Plain with Calvert; then to Bristol, the Valley of the Wye, and Tintern Abbey, alone on foot; thence to Jones' residence in North Wales at Plas-yn-llan in Denbighshire; with him to other places in North Wales, thence to Halifax; and with his sister to Kendal, Grasmere, Keswick, Whitehaven, and Penrith.—Ed.
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Footnote I:   Raisley Calvert.-Ed.
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Footnote K:   His friend, dying in January 1795, bequeathed to Wordsworth a legacy of £900. Compare the sonnet, in vol. iv., beginning

'Calvert! it must not be unheard by them,'

and the Life of Wordsworth in this edition.—Ed.
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Footnote L:  The Wordsworths went to Alfoxden in the end of July, 1797. It was in the autumn of that year that, with Coleridge,

'Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge they roved
Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan combs;'

when the latter chaunted his Ancient Mariner and Christabel, and Wordsworth composed [volume 1 links: The Idiot Boy and The Thorn]. The plan of a joint publication was sketched out in November 1797. (See the Fenwick note to [volume 1 link: We are Seven], vol. i. p. 228.)—Ed.
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Footnote M:   The death of his brother John. Compare the Elegiac Verses in memory of him, p. 58.—Ed.
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Contents—The Prelude
Main Contents

Grayrigg

Table of Contents

• From the Italian of Michael Angelo
• From the Same
• From the Same. To the Supreme Being

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From the Italian of Michael Angelo

The Poem

Translations from Michael Angelo, done at the request of Mr. Duppa, whose acquaintance I made through Mr. Southey. Mr. Duppa was engaged in writing the life of Michael Angelo, and applied to Mr. Southey and myself to furnish some specimens of his poetic genius.—I. F.

Compare the two sonnets entitled 'At Florence—from Michael Angelo', in the "Memorials of a Tour in Italy" in 1837.

The following extract from a letter of Wordsworth's to Sir George Beaumont, dated October 17, 1805, will cast light on the next three sonnets.

"I mentioned Michael Angelo's poetry some time ago; it is the most difficult to construe I ever met with, but just what you would expect from such a man, shewing abundantly how conversant his soul was with great things. There is a mistake in the world concerning the Italian language; the poetry of Dante and Michael Angelo proves, that if there be little majesty and strength in Italian verse, the fault is in the authors, and not in the tongue. I can translate, and have translated two books of Ariosto, at the rate, nearly, of one hundred lines a day; but so much meaning has been put by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him insurmountable. I attempted, at least, fifteen of the sonnets, but could not anywhere succeed. I have sent you the only one I was able to finish; it is far from being the best, or most characteristic, but the others were too much for me."

The last of the three sonnets probably belongs to the year 1804, as it is quoted in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, dated Grasmere, August 6. The year is not given, but I think it must have been 1804, as he says that "within the last month," he had written, "700 additional lines" of The Prelude; and that poem was finished in May 1805.

The titles given to them make it necessary to place these Sonnets in the order which follows.

One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."—Ed.

Variant 1:  

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Contents—From the Italian of Michael Angelo
Main Contents

From the Same

Variant 1:  

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Variant 2:  

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Contents—From the Italian of Michael Angelo
Main Contents

From the Same. To the Supreme Being

Variant 1:  

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Variant 2:  

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Note:   The sonnet from which the above is translated, is not wholly by Michael Angelo, the sculptor and painter, but is taken from patched-up versions of his poem by his nephew of the same name. Michael Angelo only wrote the first eight lines, and these have been garbled in his nephew's edition. The original lines are thus given by Guasti in his edition of Michael Angelo's Poems (1863) restored to their true reading, from the autograph MSS. in Rome and Florence.

Contents—The Prelude

Ashness Bridge

Table of Contents

• Appendix
• • I
  • II
  • III
  • IV
  • V
  • VI
  • VII

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Note I

When, to the attractions of the busy world...

The following variants occur in a MS. Book containing Yew Trees, Artegal and Elidure, Laodamia, Black Comb, etc.—Ed.

When from the restlessness of crowded life
Back to my native vales I turned, and fixed
My habitation in this peaceful spot,
Sharp season was it of continuous storm
In deepest winter; and, from week to week,
Pathway, and lane, and public way were clogged
With frequent showers of snow ...

When first attracted by this happy Vale
Hither I came, among old Shepherd Swains
To fix my habitation,'t was a time
Of deepest winter, and from week to week
Pathway, and lane, and public way were clogged

When to the	cares and pleasures of the world
attractions of the busy world
Preferring	ease and liberty	I chose
	peace and liberty	I chose
	studious leisure I had chosen
A habitation in this peaceful vale
Sharp season	was it of	continuous storm
	followed by	continuous storm

Contents—Appendix
Main Contents

Note II

(See pp. 188-89, The Prelude, book iv.)

Mr. Rawnsley, formerly of Wray Vicarage—now Canon Rawnsley of Crosthwaite Vicarage, Keswick—sent me the following letter in reference to:

... that unruly child of mountain birth,
The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed
Within our garden, found himself at once,
As if by trick insidious and unkind,
Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down
...
I looked at him and smiled, and smiled again,
...
'Ha,' quoth I, 'pretty prisoner, are you there!'

"I was not quite content with Dr. Cradock's identification of this brook, or of the garden; partly because, beyond the present garden square I found, on going up the brook, other garden squares, which were much more likely to have been the garden belonging to Anne Tyson's cottage, and because in these garden plots the stream was not 'stripped of his voice,' by the covering of Coniston flags, as is the case lower down towards the market place; and partly because—as you notice—you can both hear and see the stream through the interstices of the flags, and that it can hardly be described (by one who will listen) as stripped of its voice.

At the same time I was bound to admit that in comparing the voice of the stream here in the 'channel paved by man's officious care' with the sound of it up in the fields beyond the vicarage, nearer its birth-place, it certainly might be said to be softer voiced; and as the poet speaks of it as 'that unruly child of mountain birth,' it looks as if he too had realised the difference.

But whilst I thought that the identification of Dr. Cradock and yourself was very happy (in absence of other possibilities), I had not thought that Wordsworth would describe the stream as 'dimpling down,' or address it as a 'pretty prisoner.' A smaller stream seemed necessary.

It was, therefore, not a little curious that, in poking about among the garden plots on the west bank of the stream, fronting (as nearly as I could judge) Anne Tyson's cottage, to seek for remains of the ash tree, in which so often the poet—as he lay awake on summer nights—had watched 'the moon in splendour couched among the leaves,' rocking 'with every impulse of the breeze,' I not only stumbled upon the remains of an ash tree— now a 'pollard'—which is evidently sprung from a larger tree since decayed (and which for all I know may be one of the actual parts of the ancient tree itself); but also had the good luck to fall into conversation with a certain Isaac Hodgson, who volunteered the following information.

First, that Wordsworth, it was commonly said, had lodged part of his time with one Betty Braithwaite, in the very house called Church Hill House.

She was a widow, and kept a confectionery shop, and 'did a deal of baking,' he believed.

Secondly, that there was a little patch of garden at the back of the house, with a famous spring well—still called Old Betty's Well—in it, and that only a few paces from where I was then standing by the pollard ash.

On jumping over the fence I found myself on the western side of the quaint old Church Hill House, with magnificent views of the whole of the western side of Hawkshead Vale; grassy swell and wooded rises taking the eye up to the moorland ridge between us and Coniston.

'But,' said I, 'what about Betty's Well.' 'Oh,' said my friend, 'that's a noted spring, that never freezes, and always runs; we all drink of it, and neighbours send to it. Here it is,' he continued; and, gazing down, I saw a little dripping well of water, lustrous, clear, coming evidently in continuous force from the springs or secret channels up hill, pausing for a moment at the trough, thence falling into a box or 'channel paved by man's officious care,' and in a moment out of sight and soundless, to pursue its way, 'stripped of its voice,' towards the main Town beck, that ran at the north-east border of the garden plot. 'Ha, pretty prisoner,' and the words 'dimple down' came to my mind at once as appropriate. 'Old Betty's Well gave the key-note of the 'famous brook'; and 'boxed within our garden' seemed an appropriate and exact description.

Trace of

'the sunny seat
Round the stone table under the dark pine,'

was there none. Not so, however, the Ash tree, the remains of which I have spoken of. From the bedroom of Betty Braithwaite's house the boy could have watched the moon,

'while to and fro
In the dark summit of the waving tree
She rocked with every impulse of the breeze.'

'In old times,' said my friend, 'the wall fence ran across the garden, just beyond this spring well, so you see it was but a small spot, was this garden close.' Yes; but the

'crowd of things
About its narrow precincts all beloved,'

were known the better, and loved the more on that account. Certainly, thought I to myself, here is the famous spring; a brook that Wordsworth must have known, and that may have been the centre of memory to him in his description of those early Hawkshead days, with its metaphor of fountain life.

May we not, as we gaze on this little fountain well, in a garden plot at the back of one of the grey huts of this 'one dear vale,' point as with a wand, and say,

'This portion of the river of his mind
Came from yon

Is it not possible that the old dame whose

'Clear though shallow stream of piety,
Ran on the Sabbath days a fresher course,'

was Betty Braithwaite, the aged dame who owned the cottage hard by?"

The following additional extract from a letter of Mr. Rawnsley's (Christmas, 1882) casts light, both on the Hawkshead beck and fountain, and on the stone seat in the market square, referred to in the fourth book of The Prelude.

"Postlethwaite of the Sun Inn at Hawkshead, has a father aged 82, who can remember that there was a stone bench, not called old Betty's, but Old Jane's Stone, on which she used to spread nuts and cakes for the scholars of the Grammar School, but that it did not stand where the Market Hall now is, and no one ever remembers a stone or stone-bench standing there. This stone or stone-bench stood about opposite the Red Lion inn, in front of the little row of houses that run east and west, just as you pass out of the village in a northerly direction by the Red Lion. This stone or stone-bench is not associated with dark pine trees, but they may have passed away root and branch in an earlier generation.

Next and most interesting, I think, as showing that I was right in the matter of the famous fountain, or spring in the garden, behind Betty Braithwaite's house. There exists in Hawkshead near this house a covered-in place or shed, to which all the village repair for their drinking-water, and always have done so. It is known by the name of the Spout House, and the water—which flows all the year from a longish spout, with an overflow one by its side—comes direct from the little drop well in Betty B.'s garden, after having its voice stripped and boxed therein; and, falling out of the spout into a deep stone basin and culvert, runs through the town to join the Town Beck.

So wedded are the Hawkshead folk to this, their familiar fountainhead, that though water is supplied in stand-pipes now from a Reservoir, the folks won't have it, and come here to this spout-house, bucket and jug in hand, morn, noon and night. I have never seen anything so like a continental scene at the gathering at Hawkshead spout-house.

Lastly, there is a very aged thorn-tree in the churchyard—blown over but propped up—in which the forefathers of the hamlet used to sit as boys (in the thorn, that is, not the churchyard), and which has been worn smooth by many Hawkshead generations. The tradition is, that Wordsworth used to sit a deal in it when at school."

Ed.

Contents—Appendix
Main Contents