The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Iii Part 38

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST

[Footnote A: On the authority of the poet's nephew, and others, the "city" here referred to has invariably been supposed to be Goslar, where he spent the winter of 1799. Goslar, however, is as unlike a "vast city"

as it is possible to conceive. Wordsworth could have walked from end to end of it in ten minutes.

One would think he was rather referring to London, but there is no evidence to show that he visited the metropolis in the spring of 1799.

The lines which follow about "the open fields" (l. 50) are certainly more appropriate to a journey from London to Sockburn, than from Goslar to Gottingen; and what follows, the "green shady place" of l. 62, the "known Vale" and the "cottage" of ll. 72 and 74, certainly refer to English soil.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: Compare 'Paradise Lost', xii. l. 646.

'The world was all before them, where to choose.'

Ed.]

[Footnote C: Compare 'Lines composed above Tintern Abbey', II. 52-5 (vol. ii. p. 53.)--Ed.]

[Footnote D: S. T. Coleridge.--Ed.]

[Footnote E: At Sockburn-on-Tees, county Durham, seven miles south-east of Darlington.--Ed.]

[Footnote F: Grasmere.--Ed.]

[Footnote G: Dove Cottage at Town-end.--Ed.]

[Footnote H: This quotation I am unable to trace.--Ed.]

[Footnote I: Wordsworth spent most of the year 1799 (from March to December) at Sockburn with the Hutchinsons. With Coleridge and his brother John he went to Windermere, Rydal, Grasmere, etc., in the autumn, returning afterwards to Sockburn. He left it again, with his sister, on Dec. 19, to settle at Grasmere, and they reached Dove Cottage on Dec. 21, 1799.--Ed.]

[Footnote K: See Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, _pa.s.sim._--Ed.]

[Footnote L: Compare the 2nd and 3rd of the 'Stanzas written in my pocket-copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence', vol. ii. p. 306, and the note appended to that poem.--Ed.]

[Footnote M: Mithridates (the Great) of Pontus, 131 B.C. to 63 B.C.

Vanquished by Pompey, B.C. 65, he fled to his son-in-law, Tigranes, in Armenia. Being refused an asylum, he committed suicide. I cannot trace the legend of Mithridates becoming Odin. Probably Wordsworth means that he would invent, rather than "relate," the story. Gibbon ('Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', chap. x.) says,

"It is supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians, who dwelt on the banks of Lake Maeotis, till the fall of Mithridates, and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with servitude; that Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden."

See also Mallet, 'Northern Antiquities', and Crichton and Wheaton's 'Scandinavia' (Edinburgh Cabinet Library):

"Among the fugitive princes of Scythia, who were expelled from their country in the Mithridatic war, tradition has placed the name of Odin, the ruler of a potent tribe in Turkestan, between the Euxine and the Caspian."

Ed.]

[Footnote N: Sertorius, one of the Roman generals of the later Republican era (see Plutarch's biography of him, and Corneille's tragedy). On being proscribed by Sylla, he fled from Etruria to Spain; there he became the leader of several bands of exiles, and repulsed the Roman armies sent against him. Mithridates VI.--referred to in the previous note--aided him, both with ships and money, being desirous of establishing a new Roman Republic in Spain. From Spain he went to Mauritania. In the Straits of Gibraltar he met some sailors, who had been in the Atlantic Isles, and whose reports made him wish to visit these islands.--Ed.]

[Footnote O: Supposed to be the Canaries.--Ed.]

[Footnote P:

"In the early part of the fifteenth century there arrived at Lisbon an old bewildered pilot of the seas, who had been driven by tempests he knew not whither, and raved about an island in the far deep upon which he had landed, and which he had found peopled, and adorned with n.o.ble cities. The inhabitants told him that they were descendants of a band of Christians who fled from Spain when that country was conquered by the Moslems."

(See Washington Irving's 'Chronicles of Wolfert's Roost', etc.; and Baring Gould's 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'.)--Ed.]

[Footnote Q: Dominique de Gourgues, a French gentleman, who went in 1568 to Florida, to avenge the ma.s.sacre of the French by the Spaniards there.

(Mr. Carter, in the edition of 1850.)--Ed.]

[Footnote R: Gustavus I. of Sweden. In the course of his war with Denmark he retreated to Dalecarlia, where he was a miner and field labourer.--Ed.]

[Footnote S: The name--both as Christian and surname--is common in Scotland, and towns (such as Wallacetown, Ayr) are named after him.

"Pa.s.sed two of Wallace's caves. There is scarcely a noted glen in Scotland that has not a cave for Wallace, or some other hero."

Dorothy Wordsworth's 'Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803'

(Sunday, August 21).--Ed.]

[Footnote T: Compare 'L'Allegro', l. 137.--Ed.]

[Footnote U: Compare 'Paradise Lost', iii. 17.--Ed.]

[Footnote V: The Derwent, on which the town of c.o.c.kermouth is built, where Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April 1770.--Ed.]

[Footnote W: The towers of c.o.c.kermouth Castle.--Ed.]

[Footnote X: The "terrace walk" is at the foot of the garden, attached to the old mansion in which Wordsworth's father, law-agent of the Earl of Lonsdale, resided. This home of his childhood is alluded to in 'The Sparrow's Nest', vol. ii. p. 236. Three of the "Poems, composed or suggested during a Tour, in the Summer of 1833," refer to c.o.c.kermouth.

They are the fifth, sixth, and seventh in that series of Sonnets: and are ent.i.tled respectively 'To the River Derwent'; 'In sight of the Town of c.o.c.kermouth'; and the 'Address from the Spirit of c.o.c.kermouth Castle'. It was proposed some time ago that this house--which is known in c.o.c.kermouth as "Wordsworth House,"--should be purchased, and since the Grammar School of the place is out of repair, that it should be converted into a School, in memory of Wordsworth. This excellent suggestion has not yet been carried out--Ed.]

[Footnote Y: The Vale of Esthwaite.--Ed.]