Charles James Fox died September 13, 1806. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, having assumed office on the 5th February, shortly after the death of William Pitt. Wordsworth's sadness on this occasion, his recognition of Fox as great and good, and as "a Power" that was "passing from the earth," may have been due partly to personal and political sympathy, but also probably to Fox's appreciation of the better side of the French Revolution, and to his welcoming the pacific proposals of Talleyrand, perhaps also to his efforts for the abolition of slavery.
The "lonely road" referred to in these Lines, was, in all likelihood, the path from Town-end towards the Swan Inn past the Hollins, Grasmere. A "mighty unison of streams" may be heard there any autumn evening after a stormy day, and especially after long continued rain, the sound of waters from Easdale, from Greenhead Ghyll, and the slopes of Silver How, blending with that of the Rothay in the valley below. Compare Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, in 1803, p. 229 (edition 1874).—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1837.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Importuna e grave salma. (Michael Angelo.)—W. W. 1807.
Composed 1806.—Published 1807
Classed among the "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty," re-named in 1845, "Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."—Ed.
Napoleon won the battle of Jena on the 14th October 1806, entered Potsdam on the 25th, and Berlin on the 28th; Prince Hohenlohe laid down his arms on the 6th November; Blücher surrendered at Lübeck on the 7th; Magdeburg was taken on the 8th; on the 14th the French occupied Hanover; and on the 21st Napoleon issued his Berlin decree for the blockade of England—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1827.
[2] 1807.
[3] 1820.
FOOTNOTES:
These two lines from Lord Brooke's Life of Sir Philip Sydney—W. W. 1807.
"Danger which they fear, and honour which they understand not." Words in Lord Brooke's Life of Sir P. Sidney.—W. W. 1837.
Composed 1806.—Published 1815
[Written at Town-end, Grasmere.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems referring to the Period of Childhood."—Ed.
Wordsworth dated this poem 1806, and said to Miss Fenwick that it was written at Grasmere. If it was written "during a boisterous winter evening" in 1806, it could not have been written at Grasmere; because the Wordsworths spent most of that winter at Coleorton. I am inclined to believe that the date which the poet gave is wrong, and that the Address really belongs to the year 1805; but, as it is just possible that—although referring to winter—it may have been written at Town-end in the summer of 1806, it is placed among the poems belonging to the latter year.
This Address was translated into French by Mme. Amable Tastu, and published in a popular school-book series of extracts, but Wordsworth's name is not given along with the translation.
From 1815 to 1843 the authorship was veiled under the title, "by a female Friend of the Author." In 1845, it was disclosed, "by my Sister."
In 1815 Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, "We were glad to see the poems 'by a female friend.' The one of the Wind is masterly, but not new to us. Being only three, perhaps you might have clapt a D. at the corner, and let it have past as a printer's mark to the uninitiated, as a delightful hint to the better instructed. As it is, expect a formal criticism on the poems of your female friend, and she must expect it." (The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p. 285.)—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1845.
[2] 1827.
[3] 1827.
Composed 1806?—Published 1815
One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1827.
[2] 1845.
Composed 1806?—Published 1820
[This Rill trickles down the hill-side into Windermere, near Low-wood. My sister and I, on our first visit together to this part of the country, walked from Kendal, and we rested to refresh ourselves by the side of the lake where the streamlet falls into it. This sonnet was written some years after in recollection of that happy ramble, that most happy day and hour.—I. F.]
One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."—Ed.
One of the MS. readings of the ninth line of this sonnet gives the date of the incident as "now seven years gone"; but I leave the date of composition undetermined. If we could know accurately the date of the "first visit" to the district with his sister (referred to in the Fenwick note), and if we could implicitly trust this MS. reading, it might be possible to fix it; but we can do neither. Wordsworth visited the Lake District with his sister as early as 1794, and in December 1799 he took up his abode with her at Dove Cottage. I have no doubt that the sonnet belongs to the year 1806, or was composed at an earlier date. As to the locality of the rill, the late Rev. R. Perceval Graves, of Dublin, wrote to me:—
"It was in 1843, when quitting the parsonage at Bowness, I went to reside at Dovenest, that, calling one day at Rydal Mount, I was told by both Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, as a fact in which I should take a special interest, that the 'little unpretending rill' associated by the poet with 'the immortal spirit of one happy day,' was the rill which, rising near High Skelgill at the back of Wansfell, descends steeply down the hill-side, passes behind the house at Dovenest, and crossing beneath the road, enters the lake near the gate of the drive which leads up to Dovenest.
"The authority on which I give this information is decisive of the question. I have often traced upwards the course of the rill; and the secluded hollow, which by its source is beautified with fresh herbage and wild straggling bushes, was a favourite haunt of mine."—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1820.
[2] 1820.
[3] 1827.
[4] 1827.
[5] 1827.
[6] 1820.
In few instances is it more evident that the dates which Wordsworth affixed to his poems, in the editions of 1815, 1820, 1836, and 1845,—and those assigned in the Fenwick notes—cannot be absolutely relied upon, than in the case of the poems referring to Coleorton. Trusting to these dates, in the absence of contrary evidence, one would naturally assign the majority of the Coleorton poems to the year 1808. But it is clear that, while the sonnet To Lady Beaumont may have been written in 1806, the "Inscription" For a Seat in the Groves of Coleorton, beginning—
was written, not in 1808 (as stated by Wordsworth himself), but in 1811; and that the other "Inscription" designed for a Niche in the Winter-garden at Coleorton, belongs (I think) to the same year; a year in which he also wrote the sonnet on Sir George Beaumont's picture of Bredon Hill and Cloud Hill, beginning—
When the dates are so difficult to determine, there is a natural fitness in bringing all the poems referring to Coleorton together, so far as this can be done without seriously interfering with chronological order. The two "Inscriptions" intended for the Coleorton grounds, which were written at Grasmere in 1811, are therefore printed along with the poems of 1807; the precise date of each being given—so far as it can be ascertained—underneath its title.
Several political sonnets, and others, were written in 1807; also the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, and the first and larger part of The White Doe of Rylstone, with a few minor fragments. But, for reasons stated in the notes to The White Doe of Rylstone (see p. 191), I have assigned that poem to the year 1808. The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle forms as natural a preface to The White Doe, as The Force of Prayer, a Tradition of Bolton Abbey, is its natural appendix. The latter was written, however, before The White Doe of Rylstone was finished.
It would be easier to fix the date of some of the poems written between the years 1806 and 1808, if we knew the exact month in which the two volumes of 1807 were published; but this, I fear, it is impossible to discover now.
On November 10th, 1806, Wordsworth wrote to Sir George Beaumont from Coleorton, "In a day or two I mean to send a sheet or two of my intended volume to the press" (evidently referring to the "Poems" of 1807). On the following day—11th November 1806—Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Lady Beaumont, "William has written two other poems, which you will see when they are printed. He composes frequently in the grove.... We have not yet received a sheet from the printer." On the 15th November 1806 she again wrote to Lady Beaumont (from Coleorton), "My brother works very hard at his poems, preparing them for the press. Miss Hutchinson is the transcriber." In a subsequent letter from Coleorton, undated, but bearing the post-mark February 18, 1807, she is speaking of her brother's poetical labour, and says, "He must go on, when he begins: and any interruptions (such as attending to the progress of the workmen and planning the garden) are of the greatest use to him; for, after a certain time, the progress is by no means proportioned to the labour in composition; and if he is called from it by other thoughts, he returns to it with ten times the pleasure, and the work goes on proportionately the more rapidly." From this we may infer that the years 1806-7 were productive ones, but it is disappointing that the dates of the composition of the poems are so difficult to determine.—Ed.
Composed 1807.—Published 1807
[The winter garden of Coleorton, fashioned out of an old quarry, under the superintendence and direction of Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister Dorothy, during the winter and spring we resided there.—I. F.]
One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."—Ed.
The title, To Lady Beaumont, was first given in 1845. In 1807 it was To the ——; in 1815, To the Lady ——; and from 1820 to 1843, To the Lady Beaumont.
This winter garden, fashioned by the Wordsworths out of the old quarry at Coleorton, during Sir George and Lady Beaumont's absence in 1807, exists very much as it was at the beginning of the century. The "perennial bowers and murmuring pines" may still be seen, little altered since 1807. The late Sir George Beaumont (whose grandfather was first-cousin to the artist Sir George, Wordsworth's friend), with strong reverence for the past, and for the traditions of literary men which have made the district famous since the days of his ancestor Beaumont the dramatist, and especially for the memorials of Wordsworth's ten months' residence at Coleorton,—took a pleasure in preserving these memorials, very much as they were when he entered in possession of the estates of his ancestors. Such a reverence for the past is not only consistent with the "improvement" of an estate, and its belongings; it is a part of it. Wordsworth, and his wife and sister, were adepts in the laying out of grounds. (See the reference to the poet's joint labour with Wilkinson at Yanwath, p. 2.) It was the Wordsworths also, I believe, who designed the grounds of Fox How—Dr. Arnold's residence, near Ambleside. Similar memorials of the poet survive at Hallsteads, Ullswater. The following is an extract from the letter of Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont above referred to, and having the post-mark of February 18, 1807. "For more than a week we have had the most delightful weather. If William had but waited a few days, it would have been no anticipation when he said to you, 'the songs of Spring were in the grove;' for all this week the birds have chanted from morn till evening, larks, blackbirds, thrushes, and far more than I can name, and the busy rooks have joined their happy voices."
Wordsworth, writing to Sir George Beaumont, November 16, 1811, says, "I remember, Mr. Bowles, the poet, objected to the word 'ravishment' at the end of the sonnet to the winter-garden; yet it has the authority of all the first-rate poets, for instance, Milton:
VARIANTS:
[1] 1837.
Composed 1807.—Published 1807
Included among the "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty," re-named in 1845, "Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."—Ed.
VARIANTS:
[1] 1820.
[2] 1837.
[3] 1837.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Arminius, or Hermann, the liberator of Germany from the Roman power, A.D. 9-17. Tacitus says of him, "He was without doubt the deliverer of Germany; and, unlike other kings and generals, he attacked the Roman people, not at the commencement, but in the fullness of their power: in battles he was not always successful, but he was invincible in war. He still lives in the songs of the barbarians."—Ed.
[B] The "new-born Kings" were the lesser German potentates, united in the Confederation of the Rhine. By a treaty signed at Paris (July 12th, 1806), by Talleyrand, and the ministers of twelve sovereign houses of the Empire, these princes declared themselves perpetually severed from Germany, and united together as the Confederate States of the Rhine, of which the Emperor of the French was declared Protector.—Ed.
[C] On December 11, 1806, Napoleon concluded a treaty with Frederick Augustus, the Elector of Saxony—who had been secretly on the side of France for some time—to whom he gave additional territories, and the title of King, admitting him into "the Confederation of the Rhine." He had fallen, as one of the Prussian statesmen put it, into "that lowest of degradations, to steal at another man's bidding."—Ed.
Composed 1807.—Published 1807
[This was composed while pacing to and fro between the Hall of Coleorton, then rebuilding, and the principal Farmhouse of the Estate, in which we lived for nine or ten months. I will here mention that the Song on the Restoration of Lord Clifford, as well as that on the Feast of Brougham Castle, were produced on the same ground.—I. F.]
This sonnet was classed among those "dedicated to Liberty," re-named in 1845, "Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."—Ed.
In 1807 the whole of the Continent of Europe was prostrate under the power of Napoleon. It is impossible to say to what special incident, if to any in particular, Wordsworth refers in the phrase, "with holy glee thou fought'st against him;" but, as the sonnet was composed at Coleorton in 1807—after the battles of Austerlitz and Jena, and Napoleon's practical mastery of Europe—our knowing the particular event or events in Swiss history to which he refers, would not add much to our understanding of the poem.
In the Fenwick note Wordsworth incorrectly separates his Song on the Restoration of Lord Clifford from the Feast of Brougham Castle. They are the same song.—Ed.
Composed 1807.—Published 1807
One of the "Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."—Ed.
On the 25th of March 1807, the Royal assent was given to the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The movement for its abolition was begun by Wilberforce, and carried on by Clarkson. Its abolition was voted by the House of Lords on the motion of Lord Grenville, and by the Commons on the motion of Charles James Fox, on the 10th of June 1806. The bill was read a second time in the Lords on the 5th of February, and became law on the 25th of March 1807.
VARIANTS: