[Footnote S: In a copy of the quarto edition of _The Excursion_ (1814)
bequeathed by the Poet to his grandson, the Rev. John Wordsworth, there
are numerous changes of text in his own handwriting, or that of his wife.
The majority of these were incorporated in later editions. Several of
them, however, were not. These are reproduced in this edition, wherever
it has been thought expedient to preserve them, and are indicated as
"MS." readings. On the fly-leaf of the same presentation copy of the 1814
edition, Mrs. Wordsworth wrote out Mr. R. P. Gillies' sonnet, addressed
to the author of _The Excursion_.--ED.]
[Footnote T: Compare _An Evening Walk_ (vol. i. p. 9)--
When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still,
Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill. ED.
]
[Footnote U: Compare _An Evening Walk_ (vol. i. p. 11)--
And its own twilight softens the whole scene. ED.
]
[Footnote V: Compare the sonnet composed in boyhood, beginning--
Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane,
and printed in an Appendix to vol. viii.--ED.]
[Footnote W: Compare the _Sonnet composed at ---- Castle_, in the
"Memorials of a Tour in Scotland," 1803 (vol. ii. p. 410)--
A brotherhood of venerable Trees. ED.
]
[Footnote W1: Hawkshead. Compare the notes to _The Prelude_, in books
i. and ii. The Fenwick note tells us, "At Hawkshead, while I was a
schoolboy, there occasionally resided a Packman, with whom I had frequent
conversations upon what had befallen him, and what he had observed,
during his wandering life; and, as was natural, we took much to each
other."--ED.]
[Footnote X: Compare the _Elegiac Stansas, suggested by a Picture of
Peele Castle, in a Storm_ (vol. iii. p. 54)--
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;
and the Discourse on Poetry in the Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads" of
1800. See the _Prose Works_.--ED.]
[Footnote Y: Compare Sir Henry Taylor, _Philip van Artevelde_, act 1.
scene v.--
The world knows nothing of its greatest men. ED.
]
[Footnote Z: Compare Horace, _Epistles_ i. 17, 10--
Nec vixit male qui natus moriensque fefellit. ED.
]
[Footnote AA: Compare _Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture of Peele
Castle_ (vol. iii. p. 54)--
The light that never was, on sea or land. ED.
]
[Footnote AB: Compare _Resolution and Independence_, stanza xiv. (vol.
ii. p. 319)--
Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,
Religious men, who give to God and man their dues. ED.
]
[Footnote AC: Compare Byron, _Childe Harold_, canto iv. stanza clxxxiv.--
From a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,--'twas a pleasing fear. ED.
]
[Footnote AD: Compare _Ode, Intimations of Immortality_, stanza ix. (vol.
viii.)--
those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things, etc.
and _The Prelude_, book ii. l. 350 (vol. iii. p. 164)--
what I saw
Appeared like something in myself, a dream,
A prospect in the mind. ED.
]
[Footnote AE: Compare Milton, _Il Penseroso_, l. 109--
Or call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold. ED.
]
[Footnote AF: Compare _Lines Written in Early Spring_ (vol. i. p. 269)--
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes. ED.
]
[Footnote AG: Compare _The Prelude_, book ii. l. 411 (vol. iii. p. 166)--
Communing ...
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love. ED.
]
[Footnote AH: Compare book iv. ll. 111-14; also in Robert Browning's _Old
Pictures in Florence_, stanza i.--
And washed by the morning water-gold,
Florence lay out on the mountain-side. ED.
]
[Footnote AI: The sea is not visible from the hills of Athole, except
from the summit of Ben y' Gloe, where it can be seen to the south-east
in the clearest weather. Wordsworth did not care for local accuracy in
this passage. It was quite unnecessary for his purpose. Compare his
account of the morning walk near Hawkshead in _The Prelude_, and see the
Appendix-note to book iv. l. 338 (vol. iii. p. 389).--ED.]
[Footnote AJ: Compare _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_
(vol. ii. p. 54), in which Wordsworth speaks of the rock, the mountain,
and the wood, their colours and their forms, as an appetite, a feeling,
and a love--
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. ED.
]
[Footnote AK: Compare the line in the sonnet on Milton (vol. ii. p. 346)--
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart. ED.
]
[Footnote AL: In this description of the eagle's birth-place, and the
peak "familiar with forgotten years," Wordsworth probably wandered in
imagination from the Athole district to Westmoreland, as this part
of the poem was in all likelihood written in 1801-2. He visited the
Athole country, with his sister, in 1803; going up as far as Blair, and
returning: but there is no peak in that district (at least none that he
would see) that shows
Inscribed upon its visionary sides,
The history of many a winter storm,
Or obscure records of the path of fire,
as does, for example, the Stob Dearg in the Buchaile Etive Mor group in
Argyll, a peak which he saw in the course of his Scottish tour in that
year. --ED.]
[Footnote AM: Compare _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_
(vol. ii. p.54)--
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood.
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite. ED.
]
[Footnote AN: With this description of the boy and youth, compare
Coleridge's words in _The Friend_, vol. iii. p. 46 (edition of 1818)--
"We have been discoursing of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth,
of pleasures lying upon the unfolding intellect plenteously as morning
dew-drops--of knowledge inhaled insensibly like the fragrance--of
dispositions stealing into the spirit like music from unknown
quarters--of images uncalled for and rising up like exhalations, of hopes
plucked like beautiful wild flowers from the ruined tombs that border
the highways of antiquity, to make a garland for a living forehead: in a
word, we have been treating of nature as a teacher of truth through joy
and through gladness, and as a creatress of the faculties by a process of
smoothness and delight. We have made no mention of fear, shame, sorrow,
nor of ungovernable and vexing thoughts; because, although these have
been and have done mighty service, they are overlooked in that stage of
life when youth is passing into manhood, overlooked or forgotten."--ED.]
[Footnote AO: Enterprise. Compare the poem _To Enterprise_, which,
Wordsworth says, "arose out of _The Italian Itinerant, and The Swiss
Goatherd_." Compare also the latter poem, No. xxv. of the "Memorials of a
Tour on the Continent" (1820).--ED.]
[Footnote AP: See Wordsworth's note, p. 383.]
[Footnote AQ: Compare the Preface to "Lyrical Ballads" (1800), in the
_Prose Works_.--ED.]
[Footnote AR: Compare _Simon Lee_, ll. 5-8 (vol. i. p. 263)--
Full five-and-thirty years he lived
A running huntsman merry;
And still the centre of his cheek
Is red as a ripe cherry.