[Footnote CS: There is still a single "yew-tree" high up the eastern side
of the valley on the face of Lingmoor Fell,
Darkening the silver bosom of the crag. ED.
]
[Footnote 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
A stranded ship, with keel upturned, that rests
Fearless of winds and waves,
or the
fragment, like an altar;
but this particular mass of rock lay
Right at the foot of that moist precipice,
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.]
[Footnote 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_:--
'And wear thou this,' she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head:
The polish'd leaves, and berries red,
Did rustling play;
And, like a passing thought, she fled
In light away.
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.]
[Footnote CV:
--Voiceless the stream descends ...
With timid lapse ...
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.]
[Footnote CW: See Wordsworth's note, p. 385.--ED.]
[Footnote 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.)
Stonehenge, once thought a temple, you have found
A throne, where kings, our earthly Gods, were crown'd.
and Henry Crabb Robinson's account of a visit to Stonehenge, in the
second volume of his _Diary and Correspondence_, p. 230.--ED.]
[Footnote CY: This must refer to Palmyra. The Baalbec ruins are, for the
most part, not marble, but limestone.--ED.]
[Footnote CZ: The Navagos and several other American tribes have this
legend; but see Note B in the Appendix to this volume, p. 392.--ED.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote DB: The Ganges--sacred river of India--rising in the snow-clad
Himalaya, was believed to have a celestial origin.--ED.]
[Footnote DC: The great river of Western Africa, which was supposed,
until recent geographical discovery, to lose itself in the sand.--ED.]
[Footnote DE: Compare _The Prelude_, book viii. I. 133 (see vol. iii. p.
276). Also _In Memoriam_, stanza xxiii.--
And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady. ED.
]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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
A reasoning self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all-in-all. ED.
]
[Footnote DH: Compare the No. vi. Sonnet on _The Trosachs_ (ll. 1-5), in
"Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems" (1831).--ED.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote DJ: See the note on the preceding page.--ED.]
[Footnote 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--
Surprised by joy--impatient as the Wind,
(1815)
and
Desponding Father! mark this altered bough,
(1835).--ED.]
[Footnote DL: Compare _The Borderers_, act IV. 11. 124, 125 (see vol. i.
p. 198)--
Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way. ED.
]
[Footnote DM: See _The Prelude_, book ix. 1. 68 (vol. iii. p. 295).--ED.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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,
O misera virtus, nomen inane. Te quidem
Ceu rem colebam; at serva tu Fortunae eras. ED.
]
[Footnote DP: "At the commencement of the French Revolution, in
the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and
enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic
politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed
enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the
imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution,
which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations
alike were under the obligation of adopting."-S.T. Coleridge, _The
Statesman's Manual, a Lay Sermon_ (1816), p. 19.--ED.]
[Footnote DQ: The Hudson river, some of the sources of which rise in the
Adirondack wilderness.--ED.]
[Footnote DR: New York.--ED.]
[Footnote DS: See Wordsworth's note, p. 386.--ED.]
[Footnote DT: The St. Lawrence.--ED.]
[Footnote DU: "The Mocking Bird (_Turdus polyglottus_, Linn.), the
American nightingale. He has a voice full, strong, and musical, and
capable of almost every modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the
Wood Thrush, to the savage scream of the Bald Eagle. In measure and
accent he faithfully follows his originals. In force and sweetness of
expression he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves, his song
rises pre-eminent over every competitor. Neither is his strain altogether
imitative. His notes are bold and full, and varied seemingly beyond all
limits. They consist of short expressions of two, three, or, at the most,
five or six syllables; generally interspersed with imitations, and all
of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity, and continued with
undiminished ardour for half an hour, or an hour at a time."--_American
Ornithology_, by Wilson, Bonaparte, and Jardine, vol. i. p. 164,
etc.--ED.]
[Footnote DV: I was indebted to Mr. Edward B. Tylor, and also to the
Rev. Charles M. Addison, of Arlington, Mass., for identifying the
"melancholy Muccawiss" as the Whip-poor-will (_Caprimulgus vociferus_,
or _Antrostomus vociferus_). "Their melancholy night song has led some
Indians to consider them the souls of ancestors killed in battle."--Mr.
Tylor. For letters in reference to the Muccawiss, see Note C in the
Appendix to this volume, p. 393; and compare Charles Waterton's
_Wanderings in South America_, etc. etc. (1828), and Wordsworth's poem,
_A Morning Exercise_, written in 1828.
Since Messrs. Tylor, Addison, and Col. Trumbull identified the Muccawiss
with the Whip-poor-will, I have had access to the original MSS. of _The
Excursion_; and have found that the point which is discussed--in the
above note and in Note C in the Appendix--is set conclusively at rest, by
one of the earlier (discarded) readings of the text in Wordsworth's own
handwriting.
"and verily was cheered
By the blithe Mocking Bird, and heard alone
The melancholy cry of whip-pow-will."
Another version of the last line is also given,
"The plaintive cry repeated whip-poor-will."
I entertain no doubt that Wordsworth first of all met with the name of
this bird, whip-pow-will, in Waterton's _Wanderings_ (a copy of which
he possessed), and that he afterwards exchanged it--before sending
his _Excursion_ to press, in 1814--for the more musical Indian name,
Muccawiss.
It is also worthy of note that Southey had transferred to his
_Commonplace Book_ (see vol. ii. p. 567), Carver's account of the
Whipper-will, or as it is termed by the Indians, Muckawiss. "As soon as
night comes on these birds will place themselves on the fences, stumps,
or stones that lie near some house, and repeat their melancholy note
without any variation till midnight." (_Travels_, by Jonathan Carver, p.
467.)--ED.]
=Book Fourth=