The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 58

26. Later, this was prefixed: 'Readers already acquainted with my Poems will recognise, in the following composition, some eight or ten lines which I have not scrupled to retain in the places where they originally stood. It is proper, however, to add, that they would not have been used elsewhere, if I had foreseen the time when I might be induced to publish this Tragedy. February 28. 1842.'

II. POEMS REFERRING TO THE PERIOD OF CHILDHOOD.

27. *_My Heart leaps up when I behold_. [I.]

This was written at Grasmere, Town-End, 1804.

28. *_To a b.u.t.terfly_. [II.]

Grasmere, Town-End. Written in the Orchard, 1801. My sister and I were parted immediately after the death of our mother, who died in 1777, both being very young. [Corrected in pencil on opposite page--' March 1778.']

29. *_The Sparrow's Nest_, [III.]

The Orchard, Grasmere, Town-End, 1801. At the end of the garden of my Father's house at c.o.c.kermouth was a high terrace that commanded a fine view of the river Derwent and c.o.c.kermouth Castle. This was our favourite play-ground. The terrace wall, a low one, was covered with closely-clipt privet and roses, which gave an almost impervious shelter to birds that built their nests there. The latter of these stanzas alludes to one of these nests.

30. *_Foresight_, [IV.]

Also composed in the Orchard, Grasmere, Town-End.

31. *_Characteristics of a Child three Years old_. [V.]

Picture of my daughter Catharine, who died the year after. Written at Allan-Bank, Grasmere, 1811.

32. *_Address to a Child_, [VI.]

During a boisterous Winter's Evening. Town-End, Grasmere, 1806.

33. *_The Mother's Return_, [VII.]

Ditto. By Miss Wordsworth [_i.e._ both poems].

34. *_Alice Fell; or Poverty_. [VIII.]

1801. Written to gratify Mr. Graham, of Glasgow, brother of the Author of 'The Sabbath.' He was a zealous coadjutor of Mr. Clarkson, and a man of ardent humanity. The incident had happened to himself, and he urged me to put it into verse for humanity's sake. The humbleness, meanness if you like, of the subject, together with the homely mode of treating it, brought upon me a world of ridicule by the small critics, so that in policy I excluded it from many editions of my Poems, till it was restored at the request of some of my friends, in particular my son-in-law, Edward Quillinan.

35. *_Lucy Gray; or Solitude_. [IX.]

Written at Goslar, in Germany, in 1799. It was founded on a circ.u.mstance told me by my sister, of a little girl, who, not far from Halifax, in Yorks.h.i.+re, was bewildered in a snow-storm. Her footsteps were tracked by her parents to the middle of the lock of a ca.n.a.l, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however, was found in the ca.n.a.l. The way in which the incident was treated, and the spiritualising of the character, might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences, which I have endeavoured to throw over common life, with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of handling subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his disparagement, far from it; but to direct the attention of thoughtful readers into whose hands these notes may fall, to a comparison that may enlarge the circle of their sensibilities, and tend to produce in them a catholic judgment.

36. *_We are Seven_. [X.] _The Ancient Mariner and Coleridge, &c. &c._ &c.&c.

Written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798, under circ.u.mstances somewhat remarkable. The little girl who is the heroine, I met within the area of G.o.derich Castle in the year 1793. Having left the Isle of Wight, and crost Salisbury Plain, as mentioned in the preface to 'Guilt and Sorrow,' I proceeded by Bristol up the Wye, and so on to N. Wales to the Vale of Clwydd, where I spent my summer under the roof of the father of my friend, Robert Jones.

In reference to this poem, I will here mention one of the most remarkable facts in my own poetic history, and that of Mr. Coleridge. In the spring of the year 1798, he, my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Linton, and the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the _New Monthly Magazine_, set up by Phillips, the bookseller, and edited by Dr. Aikin. Accordingly we set off, and proceeded, along the Quantock Hills, towards Watchet; and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of the 'Ancient Mariner,' founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I myself suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed which would bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's _Voyages_, a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that lat.i.tude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. 'Suppose,'

said I, 'you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the s.h.i.+p by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time, at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. We began the composition together, on that to me memorable evening: I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular--

'And listen'd like a three years' child; The Mariner had his will.'

These trifling contributions, all but one, (which Mr. C. has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded,) slipt out of his mind, as they well might. As we endeavoured to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely different, that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog. We returned after a few days from a delightful tour, of which I have many pleasant, and some of them droll enough, recollections. We returned by Dulverton to Alfoxden. The 'Ancient Mariner' grew and grew till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds; and we began to talk of a volume which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has told the world, of Poems chiefly on natural subjects, taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium. Accordingly I wrote 'The Idiot Boy,' 'Her Eyes are wild,' &c., and 'We are Seven,' 'The Thorn,' and some others. To return to 'We are Seven,' the piece that called forth this note:--I composed it while walking in the grove of Alfoxden. My friends will not deem it too trifling to relate, that while walking to and fro I composed the last stanza first, having begun with the last line. When it was all but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr.

Coleridge and my sister, and said, 'A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task was finished.' I mentioned in substance what I wished to be expressed, and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza, thus:

'A little child, dear brother Jem.'

I objected to the rhyme, 'dear brother Jem,' as being ludicrous; but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching in our friend James Tobin's name, who was familiarly called Jem. He was the brother of the dramatist; and this reminds me of an anecdote which it may be worth while here to notice.

The said Jem got a sight of the 'Lyrical Ballads' as it was going through the press at Bristol, during which time I was residing in that city. One evening he came to me with a grave face, and said, 'Wordsworth, I have seen the volume that Coleridge and you are about to publish. There is one poem in it which I earnestly entreat you will cancel, for, if published, it will make you everlastingly ridiculous.' I answered, that I felt much obliged by the interest he took in my good name as a writer, and begged to know what was the unfortunate piece he alluded to. He said, 'It is called "We are Seven."' 'Nay,' said I, 'that shall take its chance, however;' and he left me in despair. I have only to add, that in the spring of 1841, I visited Goodrich Castle, not having seen that part of the Wye since I met the little girl there in 1793. It would have given me greater pleasure to have found in the neighbouring hamlet traces of one who had interested me so much, but that was impossible, as, unfortunately, I did not even know her name.

The ruin, from its position and features, is a most impressive object. I could not but deeply regret that its solemnity was impaired by a fantastic new castle set up on a projection of the same ridge, as if to show how far modern art can go in surpa.s.sing all that could be done by antiquity and Nature with their united graces, remembrances, and a.s.sociations. I could have almost wished for power, so much the contrast vexed me, to blow away Sir ---- Meyrick's impertinent structure and all the possessions it contains.

37. *_The Idle Shepherd Boys; or Dungeon-Ghyll Force: a Pastoral_. [XI.]

Grasmere, Town-End, 1800. I will only add a little monitory anecdote concerning this subject. When Coleridge and Southey were walking together upon the Fells, Southey observed that, if I wished to be considered a faithful painter of rural manners, I ought not to have said that my shepherd boys trimmed their rustic hats as described in the poem. Just as the words had past his lips, two boys appeared with the very plant entwined round their hats. I have often wondered that Southey, who rambled so much about the mountains, should have fallen into this mistake; and I record it as a warning for others who, with far less opportunity than my dear friend had of knowing what things are, and with far less sagacity, give way to presumptuous criticism, from which he was free, though in this matter mistaken. In describing a tarn under Helvellyn, I say,

'There sometimes doth a leaping fish Send through the tarn a lonely cheer.'

This was branded by a critic of those days, in a review ascribed to Mrs.

Barbauld, as unnatural and absurd. I admire the genius of Mrs. Barbauld, and am certain that, had her education been favourable to imaginative influences, no female of her day would have been more likely to sympathise with that image, and to acknowledge the truth of the sentiment.

38. _Foot-note_.

Heading: 'Dungeon-ghyll Force.' _Ghyll_, in the dialect of c.u.mberland and Westmoreland, is a short and, for the most part, a steep narrow valley, with a stream running through it. _Force_ is the word universally employed in these dialects for waterfall.

39. *_Anecdote for Fathers_. [XII.]

This was suggested in front of Alfoxden. The boy was a son of my friend Basil Montagu, who had been two or three years under our care. The name of Kilve is from a village in the Bristol Channel, about a mile from Alfoxden; and the name of Liswin Farm was taken from a beautiful spot on the Wye. When Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and I had been visiting the famous John Thelwall, who had taken refuge from politics, after a trial for high treason, with a view to bring up his family by the profits of agriculture; which proved as unfortunate a speculation as that he had fled from. Coleridge and he had been public lecturers: Coleridge mingling with his politics theology; from which the other abstained, unless it were for the sake of a sneer. This quondam community of public employment induced Thelwall to visit Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where he fell in my way. He really was a man of extraordinary talent, an affectionate husband, and a good father. Though brought up in the city on a tailor's board, he was truly sensible of the beauty of natural objects. I remember once when Coleridge, he and I were seated together upon the turf, on the brink of a stream in the most beautiful part of the most beautiful glen of Alfoxden, Coleridge exclaimed, 'This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and conflicts of the wide world.' 'Nay,' said Thelwall, 'to make one forget them altogether.' The visit of this man to Coleridge was, as I believe Coleridge has related, the occasion of a spy being sent by Government to watch our proceedings; which were, I can say with truth, such as the world at large would have thought ludicrously harmless.

40. _Rural Architecture_. [XIII.]

These structures, as every one knows, are common among our hills, being built by shepherds, as conspicuous marks, and occasionally by boys in sport. It was written at Town-End, in 1801.

41. _Foot-note: Great How_ (l. 4).

Great How is a single and conspicuous hill, which rises towards the foot of Thirlmere, on the western side of the beautiful dale of Legberthwaite.