[IE] This "tuft of trees" is still standing (1896).—ED.

[IF] The road "up the heathy waste," and mounting "in mazes serpentine," is the Keswick road over Dunmail Raise, the "easy outlet of the vale."—ED.

[IG] The cottage in which the parson of Wytheburn then lived still stands on the right or eastern side of the road, as you ascend the Raise, beyond the Swan Inn. It abuts on the public road about three hundred yards beyond the bridge over Tongue Ghyll beck. "The Clergyman and his family described at the beginning of the seventh book were, during many years, our principal associates in the vale of Grasmere, unless I were to except our very nearest neighbours.... With the single exception of the particulars of their journey to Grasmere—which, however, was exactly copied from real life in another instance—the whole that I have said of them is as faithful to the truth as words can make it." (I. F.)—ED.

[IH] Compare Dryden's Epilogue to Henry II.—

Also Sir Walter Scott's Woodstock, and The Talisman.—ED.

[II] Compare Gay, The Shepherds Week, the Sixth Pastoral, line 91—

[IJ] Compare The Prelude, book vii. ll. 110-115 (see vol. iii. p. 251).—ED.

[IK] The chapel of Wytheburn, at the northern or Cumberland side of Dunmail Raise.—ED.

[IL] This house, in which Mr. Sympson lived, and which—though no longer the parsonage—still belongs to Wytheburn church, is easily identified. The "blue slabs of mountain-stone," common to all old houses in the vale, remain just as they were, when the old pastor lived, and Wordsworth was his frequent guest. The windows, too, "by shutters weather-fended," are described with minute fidelity.—ED.

[IM] Mrs. Sympson was twelve years her husband's junior, and she pre-deceased him by a year and a half.

Compare—

And

[IN] Old Mr. Sympson was found dead in his garden on the opposite side of the road from the cottage, in 1807, in his ninety-second year. There is now a new door into the garden, but the posts are old enough to have been there in Sympson's time.—ED.

[IO] The Sympsons are all buried at Grasmere. Their gravestone stands about ten yards north-west from that of their poet, not far from the monument erected in memory of Arthur Hugh Clough. There is only one stone, a low one, with a pointed top. The following is the inscription on it:—"Here lie the remains of the Reverend Jos. Sympson, Minister of Wytheburn for more than 50 years. He died June 27, 1807, aged 92; also of Mary, his wife, who died Jan. 24, 1806, aged 81; also of Eliz. Jane, their youngest Dr., who died Sep. 11, 1801, aged 37."—ED.

[IP] The Duddon valley.—ED.

[IQ] See the notes to the Duddon sonnets.—ED.

[IR] The chapelry of Seathwaite. The reference to "yon hill" suggests that the conversation is carried on at Hackett (rather than Grasmere), whence Wetherlam—which concealed the Duddon valley—would be visible.—ED.

[IS] It is so. In the churchyard of Seathwaite a plain stone slab records the fact that he died on the 25th June 1802, in the ninety-third year of his age.—ED.

[IT] "The Deaf Man, whose epitaph may be seen in the churchyard at the head of Hawes Water, and whose qualities of mind and heart, and their benign influence in conjunction with his privation, I had from his relatives on the spot."—I. F.

Thomas Holme of Chapel Hill was his name. On his epitaph it is said "he was deprived of the sense of hearing in his youth, and lived about 58 years without the comfort of hearing one word. He reconciled himself to his misfortune by reading, and useful employment." He died in 1773, "aged 67 years."

From this it is clear that we must not look for the "tall pine" or the "plain blue stone" in Grasmere churchyard! and that the localities as well as the narratives of The Excursion are at times composite.—ED.

[IU] For another reference to the streams in the Grasmere Vale, compare the Lines composed at Grasmere, when Mr. Fox's death was hourly expected (vol. iv. p. 47)—

[IV] Either Stone Arthur, or Loughrigg. Compare the lines To the Clouds, suggested by their appearance on Nab Scar—

[IW] "The Blind Man was John Gough, of Kendal, a man known, far beyond his neighbourhood, for his talents and attainments in natural history and science."—I.F. For an account of John Gough, see Appendix, and note [IX] p. 304.—ED.

[IX] This John Gough, a friend of Wordsworth's, was one of the first mathematicians of his time, and a most successful teacher. Whewell and King (senior wranglers) were amongst his pupils. So was Dalton. Gough had been deprived of sight by an attack of small-pox, when he was between two and three years of age. He was a great botanist, as is mentioned in the text; and the following remarkable circumstance is recorded of him, showing at once his marvellous memory, and the extreme delicacy of his sense of touch. In the Elegiac Verses on his brother John, Wordsworth had described the moss campion, Silene acaulis—

This poem was read to Gough in 1805 (it was not published till 1845), and twelve years afterwards, in 1817, a specimen of the moss campion was placed in his hand, and he said at once, "I have never examined this plant before, but it is Silene acaulis." Compare Atkinson's Worthies of Cumberland and note E in the Appendix to this volume, p. 398.—ED.

[IY] Compare Paradise Lost, book vi. l. 752.—ED.

[IZ] See note [XI] above.—ED.

[JA] Compare L'Allegro, l. 137—

[JB] See Wordsworth's note, p. 389.—ED.

[JC] Compare Burger's Pfarrers Tochter—

[JD] "This refers to the Greens, a very ancient Grasmere family, settled for generations at Pavement End, which, with a considerable tract of land, is still their property. The poet describes them as dwelling at Gold-rill side, and I have been told that the name was a pure invention to avoid the realism of 'Grasmere,' or 'Pavement End.' Such, however, is not exactly the case. On enquiry from Mr. Fleming Green, one of the family now residing in Grasmere, I find that a small stream to which Wordsworth himself, from some fancy of his own, had given the name of Gold-rill, ran formerly by the road side, and then turned by the side of the farm at Pavement End towards the Lake. When the road was reconstructed, the rill was covered, and can no more be seen there; but it issues freely from a culvert at the back of the premises, and runs by the hedge-side to the Lake. Mr. Fleming Green remembers the rill as it was, and pointed out its course to me. He is a son of one of the 'seven lusty sons' mentioned in the poem. (Mr. Green would read 'six.') He said 'we stuck to the old home till we could no longer stand up in it.' He is one of a race well termed 'lusty.' The 'hoary grandsire' and many of his descendants lie buried in a long row, a little to the left of the path leading from the Church to the lichgate at the north. Among them is little Margaret (her name and age not unrecorded), but her 'daisied hillock three spans long' is now merged in the larger graves of her more aged kindred." (Dr. Cradock to the Editor.)—ED.

[JE] "Of the infant's grave I will only say, it is an exact picture of what fell under my own observation."—I. F.

[JF] Compare George Herbert's

[JG] "This young volunteer bore the name of Dawson.... The premature death of this gallant young man was much lamented, and as an attendant upon the funeral, I myself witnessed the ceremony, and the effect of it as described in the poem."—I. F. See the whole of the note (p. 13).

"In The Excursion, book vii., is an animated account of the life and death of a young volunteer, one of a company of eighty men, which, when England was threatened with a French invasion, was formed in the Lake District, and was named 'Wedgwood's Mountaineers,' having by him in a generous spirit of patriotism been clothed and armed, and this in the completest manner, as riflemen." See Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. (1858), p. 109. The Wedgwood referred to was the Thomas Wedgwood who assisted Coleridge so opportunely.

In 1806 Wordsworth wrote of Dawson: "His calm and dignified manner, united with his tall form and beautiful face, produced in me an impression of sublimity beyond what I ever experienced from the appearance of any other human being."—ED.

[JH] The Napoleonic threat of invasion.—ED.

[JI] Dr. John Davy, the editor of his brother Sir Humphry Davy's Fragmentary Remains, was of opinion (see p. 110) that "in describing the high qualities, intellectual and moral, of the young soldier, the poet has in his mind the memory of the man whose name was so properly associated with the company,—idealising according to his wont,—selecting such qualities as suited his purpose." He refers to Mr. Wedgwood, the founder of this volunteer corps.—ED.

[JJ] Compare the Book of Joshua, passim; Josephus, Ant. v. I. Also, Judges vii.; and Josephus, Ant. v. 6.—ED.

[JK] Is it a reference to the Pauline description of Charity (1 Cor. xiii. 7), "Charity ... hopeth all things, endureth all things"?—ED.

[JL] Compare The White Doe of Rylstone, canto i. l. 42 (vol. iv. p. 107)—

[JM] See the Fenwick note, p. 13.—ED.

[JN] See Spenser's Faërie Queene, part 1, canto viii. stanza 2.—ED.

[JO] "The pillars of the gateway in front of the mansion remained when we first took up our abode at Grasmere. Two or three cottages still remain which are called Nott Houses, from the name of the gentleman (I have called him a knight) concerning whom these traditions survive. He was the ancestor of the Knott family, formerly considerable proprietors in the district."—I. F.

[JP] It is clear from the Fenwick note (see p. 13) that the title, "Sir Alfred Irthing," was Wordsworth's invention. I am indebted to the Rector of Grasmere—the Rev. Henry M. Fletcher—for the following information as to the bells of the church, and to the "Nott house":—

"Three bells hang in the tower. That they are 'clear-sounding and harmonious' I think may be said of them without poetical license. They have not on them the name and title of their donor. Two of them have coats of arms. My son believes that the quarterings show that they were the gifts of the Flemings of Rydal Hall, patrons, for some hundred years, of the living. The third, and smallest, reports of itself that it was recast at the expense of Mrs. Dorothy Knott, in the year 1808, and that Thomas Mears of London did the work. This last inscription is partly in Latin. The two older bells have on them the inscriptions respectively of 'Soli Deo' and 'Gloria in altissimis Deo.'

"Looking over the old book of Church Warden's accounts, I observe that, in the year 1732, there is an item

'Towards casting the bells, and other charges, £40, 3s. 9d.,'

and in the following year, 1733, again

'Towards casting the bells, and other charges, £49, 0s. 3d.'

This, at a time when the whole of the general charge yearly ranged from £2 to £5. It was a re-casting, I presume.

"The 'Nott house' still exists, and is the residence of our chief 'statesman,' James Fleming. It is known as 'Knott's Houses.' In the dialect of this county, when purely used, there is no possessive 's. Mr. Fletcher's letters being always, e.g., spoken of at the post-office here as 'Mr. Fletcher letters.' 'Nott house,' therefore, meant a house belonging to Mrs. Dorothy Knott, or her husband's forefathers. A little group of houses has formed round it; but the old Farm House, I make little doubt, is the one for which you ask."

See also Charles Lamb's remarks in his third letter to Wordsworth about The Excursion, written in 1814.

[JQ] See Wordsworth's note, p. 389.—ED.