VARIANTS:
[211] 1827.
[212] 1836.
[213] 1827.
[214] 1814.
[215] 1827.
[216] 1827.
[217] 1827.
[218] 1827.
[219] 1827.
[220] 1827.
[221] 1827.
[222] 1827.
[223] 1827.
[224] 1827.
[225] 1827.
[226] 1827.
[227] 1845.
[228] 1827.
[229] 1845.
[230] 1827.
[232] 1827.
[233] 1827.
[234] 1827.
[235] 1827.
[236] 1827.
[237] 1845.
[238] 1814.
[239] 1836.
[240] 1827.
[241] 1827.
[242] 1845.
[243] 1845.
[244] 1832.
[245] 1836.
[246] Italics were first used in 1836.
[247] 1827.
[248] Italics were first used in 1832.
[249] 1827.
[250] 1827.
[251] 1827.
[252] 1836.
[253] 1836.
[254] 1827.
[255] 1827.
[256] 1845.
[257] 1845.
[258] 1845.
[259] 1836.
[260] 1827.
[261] 1814.
[262] 1845.
[263] 1845.
[264] 1845.
[265] 1832.
[266] 1827.
[267] 1840.
[268] 1827.
[269] 1827.
[270] 1827.
[271] 1836.
[272] 1827.
[273] 1827.
[274] 1845.
[275] 1827.
[276] 1827.
[277] 1827.
[278] 1827.
[279] 1845.
[280] 1836.
[281] 1836.
[282] 1845.
[283] 1836.
FOOTNOTES:
[CS] There is still a single "yew-tree" high up the eastern side of the valley on the face of Lingmoor Fell,
[CT] The local allusions in this passage, and in what follows, are most exact and literal. The three men are supposed to leave the cottage, and to cross to the west side of the tarn, just a little to the north of the fir-wood which overshadows it. The "barrier of steep rock" is the low perpendicular crag to the west of the tarn, immediately below the fir-wood, and the "semicirque of turf-clad ground" is apparent at a glance, whether seen from below the rock or from above it. There are many fragments of ice-borne rock, high up the flank of Blake Rigg to the west, and on the slopes of Lingmoor to the east, which might at first sight be mistaken for the stone, like
or the
but this particular mass of rock lay
and there it still lies, obvious enough even to the casual eye. The "semicirque" is the cup-shaped recess between the fir-wood and the cliff; and on entering it, the mass of rock is seen lying north-west to north-east. It is not ice-borne, but a fragment dislodged from the crag above it. It is now broken into three smaller fragments, by the weathering of many years. Cracked probably when it fell, the rents have widened, and the fragments are separated by the frosts of many winters. A sycamore of average size is now growing at its side; its root being in the cleft, where the stone is broken. Holly grows luxuriantly all along the face of the crag above; so that the existence of the bush, described as growing in the stone which resembled an altar, is easily explained. The brook is a short one, flowing through the meadow-pastures of the wood, and after a hundred yards is lost in the turfy slope, but is seen again upon the face of the "moist precipice," "softly creeping"—precisely as described in the poem. The "three several stones" that "stand near" are, I think, the one to the front, in a line with the keel of the ship; and the other two to the right and left respectively. The "pair," with the "fragment like an altar, flat and smooth," are to the left, and close at hand.
In connection with all this a remark of Southey's to J. Neville White may be quoted. "Keswick, September 7, 1814.... Have you read Wordsworth's poem? If not, read it, if you can, before you see the author. You will see him with the more pleasure, and look with more interest at the scenery he describes." (Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, vol. ii. p. 376.)—ED.
[CU] Lady Richardson writes thus of a visit Wordsworth paid to Lancrigg in 1841:—"We took a walk on the terrace, and he went as usual to his favourite points. On our return he was struck with the berries on the holly tree, and said, 'Why should not you and I go and pull some berries from the other side of the tree, which is not seen from the window? and then we can go and plant them in the rocky ground behind the house.' We pulled the berries, and set forth with our tools. I made the holes, and the poet put in the berries. He was as earnest and eager about it as if it had been a matter of importance, and, as he put the seeds in, he every now and then muttered, in his low, solemn tone, that beautiful verse from Burns' Vision:—
He clambered to the highest rocks in the 'Tom Intak,' and put in the berries in such situations as Nature sometimes does, with such true and beautiful effect. He said, 'I like to do this for posterity.'"—ED.
is a perfect description of this tiniest and gentlest of rills, flowing through the meadow-grass; while the "chasm of sky above," of which the Wanderer speaks, though an obvious exaggeration, is more appropriate to this spot than to any other in the vale.—ED.
[CX] Stonehenge. Old legends gave it a mythic origin. Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed it to Merlin, the stones having been brought over from Ireland by magic. It was not a Druid Temple, but a Saxon ring, set up—after the Romans had left Britain—for parliamentary and coronation purposes. "Roman pottery and coins have been found under the stones, and they are fitted with mortice and tenon, an art unknown in Britain till it was taught by the Romans." Compare Dryden's Epistle to Dr. Charleton (Ep. II.)
and Henry Crabb Robinson's account of a visit to Stonehenge, in the second volume of his Diary and Correspondence, p. 230.—ED.
[CY] This must refer to Palmyra. The Baalbec ruins are, for the most part, not marble, but limestone.—ED.
[CZ] The Navagos and several other American tribes have this legend; but see Note B in the Appendix to this volume, p. 392.—ED.
[DA] Before the time of Solon, the Athenians wore golden τέττιγες—probably either brooches, or pins with a golden cicada for the head—as a sign that they considered themselves αὐτόχθονες, since the grasshopper τέττιξ (cicada) was supposed to spring out of the ground.—ED.
[DB] The Ganges—sacred river of India—rising in the snow-clad Himalaya, was believed to have a celestial origin.—ED.
[DC] The great river of Western Africa, which was supposed, until recent geographical discovery, to lose itself in the sand.—ED.
[DE] Compare The Prelude, book viii. I. 133 (see vol. iii. p. 276). Also In Memoriam, stanza xxiii.—
[DF] The end sought by Epicurus, the summum bonum of the Epicurean school, was ἀταραξία, repose or peace of mind. This was to be obtained by freedom from pain of body or distraction of mind; but it consisted in the harmony or equilibrium that resulted, when disturbing influences were withdrawn. To attain to it, little was needed—mental enjoyments being superior to bodily ones, and the social joys of friendship the highest of all. Public life was renounced, and private friendship became the bond of union amongst the members of the Epicurean confraternity: but the root principle of the system was emotional, not intellectual.—ED.
[DG] Rational self-control being regarded as the chief good by the Stoics, the emotion of happiness was looked upon as an interruption of the equilibrium in which the wise man should live. All the emotions were diseases, or disturbances of human nature less or more. They had therefore to be uprooted, rather than regulated: and virtue consisted in being emotionless, passionless, apathetic, with life conformed to the laws of the pure reason, so that one came to be
[DH] Compare the No. vi. Sonnet on The Trosachs (ll. 1-5), in "Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems" (1831).—ED.
[DI] These are reminiscences of Wordsworth's life at Racedown and Alfoxden. His sister wrote thus of their residence at Alfoxden:—"We are three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered over with trees. The hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak woods, which are cut for charcoal.... Walks extend for miles over the hill-tops; the great beauty of which is their wild simplicity: they are perfectly smooth, without rocks."—Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by his nephew Christopher Wordsworth, late Bishop of Lincoln, vol. i. p. 103.—ED.
[DJ] See the note on the preceding page.—ED.
[DK] Wordsworth's own children, Catherine and Thomas, were removed by death, in a manner very similar to this, in June and December 1812, while they were living in the Grasmere Parsonage. Compare the two sonnets—
and
[DL] Compare The Borderers, act IV. 11. 124, 125 (see vol. i. p. 198)—
[DM] See The Prelude, book ix. 1. 68 (vol. iii. p. 295).—ED.
[DN] During the American War of Independence, trees were planted as symbols of freedom. This custom passed over to France. The Jacobins planted the first tree of Liberty in Paris in 1790, and the practice spread rapidly. At each revolutionary period it was revived, and during the Empire again suppressed. A treatise has been written on the custom, by the Abbé Grégoire.—ED.
[DO] It is recorded by Dion Cassius (see Dionis Cassii Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum quae supersunt, lib. xlvii. § 49) that Brutus before his death repeated this saying of Hercules,