Compare The Prelude, book i. l. 269 (vol. iii. p. 140):—
Ed.
[798] Many years ago, when I was at Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, the hostess of the inn, proud of her skill in etymology, said, that "the name of the river was taken from the bridge, the form of which, as every one must notice, exactly resembled a great A." Dr. Whitaker has derived it from the word of common occurrence in the North of England, "to greet;" signifying to lament aloud, mostly with weeping: a conjecture rendered more probable from the stony and rocky channel of both the Cumberland and Yorkshire rivers. The Cumberland Greta, though it does not, among the country people, take up that name till within three miles of its disappearance in the River Derwent, may be considered as having its source in the mountain cove of Wythburn, and flowing through Thirlmere, the beautiful features of which lake are known only to those who, travelling between Grasmere and Keswick, have quitted the main road in the vale of Wythburn, and, crossing over to the opposite side of the lake, have proceeded with it on the right hand.
The channel of the Greta, immediately above Keswick, has, for the purposes of building, been in a great measure cleared of the immense stones which, by their concussion in high floods, produced the loud and awful noises described in the sonnet.
"The scenery upon this river," says Mr. Southey in his Colloquies, "where it passes under the woody side of Latrigg, is of the finest and most rememberable kind:—
W. W. 1835.
[799] The Cocytus was a tributary of the Acheron, in Epirus, but was supposed to have some connection with the underworld, doubtless, as Wordsworth puts it,
Compare Homer, Odyssey x. 513, and Virgil, Aenid vi. 295.—Ed.
[800] This sonnet has already appeared in several editions of the author's poems; but he is tempted to reprint it in this place, as a natural introduction to the two that follow it.—W. W. 1835.
It was first published in 1819.—Ed.
[801] The river Derwent rises in Langstrath valley, Borrowdale, in which is Eagle Crag, so named from its having been the haunt of a bird that is now extinct in Cumberland.—Ed.
[802] The Nemæan games were celebrated every third or fifth year at Nemæa in Argolis. The victor was crowned with a wreath of olive.—Ed.
(Where the Author was born, and his Father's remains are laid.)
[803] His children, Catherine and Thomas, who died in infancy at the Parsonage, Grasmere, and were buried in Grasmere Churchyard.—Ed.
[804] Compare To a Butterfly (1802), vol. ii. p. 284—
Ed.
[805] Compare The Prelude, book i. ll. 283-85—
Compare also the sonnet At Furness Abbey, written in 1844.—Ed.
[So named from the religious House that stood close by. I have rather an odd anecdote to relate of the Nun's Well. One day the landlady of a public-house, a field's length from the well, on the roadside, said to me—"You have been to see the Nun's Well, Sir?" "The Nun's Well! what is that?" said the Postman, who in his royal livery stopt his mail-car at the door. The landlady and I explained to him what the name meant, and what sort of people the nuns were. A countryman who was standing by, rather tipsy, stammered out—"Aye, those nuns were good people; they are gone; but we shall soon have them back again." The Reform mania was just then at its height.—I.F.]
[806] 1837.
[807] Attached to the church of Brigham was formerly a chantry, which held a moiety of the manor; and in the decayed parsonage some vestiges of monastic architecture are still to be seen.—W. W. 1835.
[808] See Pope's Eloïsa to Abelard, l. 224.—Ed.
(ON THE BANKS OF THE DERWENT)
[My son John, who was then building a parsonage on his small living at Brigham.—I.F.]
[809] John Wordsworth, the poet's son, the subject of this sonnet, was incumbent of Moresby, near Whitehaven, before he went to Brigham. See the Fenwick note to the lines, Composed by the Sea-shore, p. 340. In 1833 Wordsworth wrote to Lady Beaumont:—
"Were you ever told that my son is building a parsonage-house upon a small living, to which he was lately presented by the Earl of Lonsdale. The situation is beautiful, commanding the windings of the Derwent both above and below the site of the house; the mountain Skiddaw terminating the view one way, at a distance of six miles, and the ruins of Cockermouth Castle appearing nearly in the centre of the same view. In consequence of some discouraging thoughts expressed by my son when he had entered upon this undertaking, I addressed to him the following Sonnet, which you may perhaps read with some interest at the present crisis."—Ed.
(LANDING AT THE MOUTH OF THE DERWENT, WORKINGTON)[812]
[I will mention for the sake of the friend who is writing down these notes, that it was among the fine Scotch firs near Ambleside, and particularly those near Green Bank, that I have over and over again paused at the sight of this image. Long may they stand to afford a like gratification to others!—This wish is not uncalled for, several of their brethren having already disappeared.—I. F.]
[812] "The fears and impatience of Mary were so great," says Robertson, "that she got into a fisher-boat, and with about twenty attendants landed at Workington, in Cumberland; and thence she was conducted with many marks of respect to Carlisle." The apartment in which the Queen had slept at Workington Hall (where she was received by Sir Henry Curwen as became her rank and misfortunes) was long preserved, out of respect to her memory, as she had left it; and one cannot but regret that some necessary alterations in the mansion could not be effected without its destruction.—W. W. 1835.
[813] 1837.
[814] 1840.
[815] 1835.
[816] Compare The Triad, ll. 189, 190 (p. 188)—
[817] 1835.
MS.
[818] St. Bees' Heads, anciently called the Cliff of Baruth, are a conspicuous sea-mark for all vessels sailing in the N.E. parts of the Irish Sea. In a bay, one side of which is formed by the southern headland, stands the village of St. Bees; a place distinguished, from very early times, for its religious and scholastic foundations.
"St. Bees," say Nicholson and Burns, "had its name from Bega, an holy woman from Ireland, who is said to have founded here, about the year of our Lord 650, a small monastery, where afterwards a church was built in memory of her.
"The aforesaid religious house, being destroyed by the Danes, was restored by William de Meschiens, son of Ranulph, and brother of Ranulph de Meschiens, first Earl of Cumberland after the Conquest; and made a cell of a prior and six Benedictine monks to the Abbey of St. Mary at York."
Several traditions of miracles, connected with the foundation of the first of these religious houses, survive among the people of the neighbourhood; one of which is alluded to in these Stanzas; and another, of a somewhat bolder and more peculiar character, has furnished the subject of a spirited poem by the Rev. R. Parkinson, M.A., late Divinity Lecturer of St. Bees' College, and now Fellow of the Collegiate Church of Manchester.
After the dissolution of the monasteries, Archbishop Grindal founded a free school at St. Bees, from which the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland have derived great benefit; and recently, under the patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale, a college has been established there for the education of ministers for the English Church. The old Conventual Church has been repaired under the superintendence of the Rev. Dr. Ainger, the Head of the College; and is well worthy of being visited by any strangers who might be led to the neighbourhood of this celebrated spot.
The form of stanza in this Poem, and something in the style of versification, are adopted from the St. Monica, a poem of much beauty upon a monastic subject, by Charlotte Smith: a lady to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered. She wrote little, and that little unambitiously, but with true feeling for rural nature,[839] at a time when nature was not much regarded by English Poets; for in point of time her earlier writings preceded, I believe, those of Cowper and Burns.[840]—W. W. 1835.
[819] 1845.
[821] 1837.
[822] The Danes, and the Cymric aborigines.—Ed.
[823] 1837.
[824] See the extract from Nicholson and Burn's History of Cumberland, in Wordsworth's note, p. 351.—Ed.
[825] 1837.
[826] 1837.
[827] 1837.
[828] I am aware that I am here treading upon tender ground; but to the intelligent reader I feel that[841] no apology is due. The prayers of survivors, during passionate grief for the recent loss of relatives and friends, as the object of those prayers could no longer be the suffering body of the dying, would naturally be ejaculated for the souls of the departed; the barriers between the two worlds dissolving before the power of love and faith. The ministers of religion, from their habitual attendance upon sick-beds, would be daily witnesses of these benign results; and hence would be strongly tempted to aim at giving to them permanence, by embodying them in rites and ceremonies, recurring at stated periods. All this, as it was in course of nature, so was it blameless, and even praiseworthy; since some of its effects, in that rude state of society, could not but be salutary. No reflecting person, however, can view[842] without sorrow the abuses which rose out of thus formalizing sublime instincts, and disinterested movements of passion, and perverting them into means of gratifying the ambition and rapacity of the priesthood. But, while we deplore and are indignant at these abuses, it would be a great mistake if we imputed the origin of the offices to prospective selfishness on the part of the monks and clergy: they were at first sincere in their sympathy, and in their degree dupes rather of their own creed, than artful and designing men. Charity is, upon the whole, the safest guide that we can take in judging our fellow-men, whether of past ages, or of the present time.—W. W. 1835.
[829] 1837.
[830] 1837.
[831] Compare The Virgin, in the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," Part II. xxv.—Ed.
[832] 1845.
[833] See "The English Town" in Green's Short History of the English People, ch. iv. sec. 4.—Ed.
[834] This stanza and the preceding one were added in 1845.—Ed.
[835] This College was founded for the education of clerks in holy orders who did not mean to proceed to Oxford or Cambridge.—Ed.
[836] 1835.
[837] 1837.
[838] See The Excursion, seventh part; and "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," second part, near the beginning.—W. W. 1850.
The passages referred to are the following: The Excursion, book vii. l. 1008, etc. (vol. v. p. 324), beginning—
and alluding to Sir Alfred Irthing; and in the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," Part II. iii., iv., v., Cistercian Monastery, and Monks and Schoolmen.—Ed.
[839] 1837.
[840] From "at a time" to "Burns" was added in 1837.
[841] 1845.
[842] 1837.