The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Iii Part 50

[Footnote Q: Brougham Castle, at the junction of the Lowther and the Emont, about a mile out of Penrith, south-east, on the Appleby road.

This castle is a.s.sociated with other poems. See the 'Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle'.--Ed.]

[Footnote R: Sir Philip Sidney, author of 'Arcadia'.--Ed.]

[Footnote S: Mary Hutchinson.--Ed.]

[Footnote T: The Border Beacon is the hill to the north-east of Penrith.

It is now covered with wood, but was in Wordsworth's time a "bare fell."--Ed.]

[Footnote U: He had gone to Malta, "in search of health."--Ed.]

[Footnote V: The Etesian gales are the mild north winds of the Mediterranean, which are periodical, lasting about six weeks in spring and autumn.--Ed.]

[Footnote W: A blue-coat boy in London.--Ed.]

[Footnote X: Christ's Hospital. Compare Charles Lamb's 'Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago'.

"Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee--the dark pillar not yet turned--Samuel Taylor Coleridge--Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!--How have I seen the casual pa.s.ser through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the _speech_ and the _garb_ of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar--while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the _inspired charity boy_!"

('Essays of Elia.')--Ed.]

[Footnote Y: The river Otter, in Devon, thus addressed by Coleridge in one of his early poems:

'Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West!

How many various-fated years have pa.s.sed, What blissful and what anguished hours, since last I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast, Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep imprest Sink the sweet scenes of Childhood, that mine eyes I never shut amid the sunny haze, But straight with all their tints, thy waters rise, Thy crowning plank, thy margin's willowy maze, And bedded sand that veined with various dyes Gleamed through thy bright transparence to the gaze!

Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled Lone Manhood's cares, yet waking fondest sighs, Ah! that once more I were a careless child!'

Ed.]

[Footnote Z: Coleridge entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in February 1791, just a month after Wordsworth had taken his B. A. degree, and left the university.--Ed.]

[Footnote a: Coleridge worked laboriously but unmethodically at Cambridge, studying philosophy and politics, besides cla.s.sics and mathematics. He lost his scholarship however.--Ed.]

[Footnote b: Debt and despondency; flight to London; enlistment in the Dragoons; residence in Bristol; Republican lectures; scheme, along with Southey, for founding a new community in America; its abandonment; his marriage; life at Nether Stowey; editing 'The Watchman'; lecturing on Shakespeare; contributing to 'The Morning Chronicle'; preaching in Unitarian pulpits; publishing his 'Juvenile Poems', etc. etc.; and throughout eccentric, impetuous, original--with contagious enthusiasm and overflowing genius--but erratic, self-confident, and unstable.--Ed.]

[Footnote c: Robert Jones, of Plas-yn-llan, near Ruthin, Denbighshire, to whom the 'Descriptive Sketches', which record the tour, were dedicated.--Ed.]

[Footnote d: See 'Descriptive Sketches', vol. i. p. 35.--Ed.]

[Footnote e: Compare Shakespeare, 'Sonnets', 16:

'Now stand you on the top of happy hours.'

Ed.]

[Footnote f: In 1790, most of what could be shaken in the order of European, and especially of French society and government, _was_ shaken and changed. By the new const.i.tution of 1790, to which the French king took an oath of fidelity, his power was reduced to a shadow, and two years later France became a Republic.

"We crossed at the time," wrote Wordsworth to his sister, "when the whole nation was mad with joy in consequence of the Revolution."

Ed.]

[Footnote g:

"We went staff in hand, without knapsacks, and carrying each his needments tied up in a pocket handkerchief, with about twenty pounds a-piece in our pockets."

W. W. ('Autobiographical Memoranda.)--Ed.]

[Footnote h: July 14, 1790.

"We crossed from Dover and landed at Calais, on the eve of the day when the King was to swear fidelity to the new const.i.tution: an event which was solemnised with due pomp at Calais."

W. W. ('Autobiographical Memoranda.') See also the sonnet "dedicated to National Independence and Liberty," vol. ii. p. 332. beginning,

'Jones! as from Calais southward you and I, and compare the human nature seeming born again'

of 'The Prelude', book vi. I, 341, with "the pomp of a too-credulous day" and the "homeless sound of joy" of the sonnet.--Ed.]

[Footnote i: They went by Ardres, Peronne, Soissons, Chateau Thierry, Sezanne, Bar le Duc, Chatillon-sur-Seine, Nuits, to Chalons-sur-Saone; and thence sailed down to Lyons. See Fenwick note to 'Stray Pleasures'

(vol. iv.)

"The town of Chalons, where my friend Jones and I halted a day, when we crossed France, so far on foot. There we embarqued, and floated down to Lyons."

Ed.]

[Footnote k: Compare 'Descriptive Sketches', vol. i. p 40:

'Or where her pathways straggle as they please By lonely farms and secret villages.'

Ed.]