to a poem which she speaks of as an "inscription about the path": "Sept. 1. W. read 'Joanna' and 'The Fir-grove' to Coleridge," and two days previously: "I left William to compose an inscription, that about the path." On the following day (August 30): "William finished his inscription of the Pathway." It seems highly probable that the poem was partly written in August, 1800, and was carried farther, and to the present close, in 1802. Professor Knight conjectures that in 1800 it closed at 1. 66. The poem was published in 1815.

The Fir-grove," writes Knight, "still exists. It is between Wishing Gate and White-Moss Common, and almost exactly opposite the former." Wordsworth pointed out the single beech-tree (1. 18) to Miss Cookson a few days before Dora Wordsworth's death. 'John's grove" was a favourite haunt with us all," says Wordsworth, "while we lived at Town-end."

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1-5. The time spoken of is the opening of 1800.

36. Beneath in 1836 replaced "between."

39-41. In 1815:

And, baffled thus, before the Storm relaxed,

I ceased that ["the" 1827] Shelter to frequent,

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Altered in 1836. Wordsworth wished to bring out the fact that there was a series of storms.

51-61. In 1815:

Much wondering at my own simplicity

How I could e'er have made a fruitless search
For what was now so obvious. At the sight
Conviction also flashed upon my mind
That this same path (within the shady grove
Begun and ended) by my Brother's steps
Had been impressed. To sojourn a short while
Beneath my roof He from the barren seas
Had newly come a cherished Visitant!
And much did it delight me to perceive
That, to this opportune recess allured,
He had surveyed it with a finer eye,

A heart more wakeful; that, more loth to part
From place so lovely, he had worn the track.

The change was made in 1827, leaving only two words to correct in 1. 54, "Under" in 1845 replacing "Beneath," and in the same line "gladly" in 1840 replacing "newly." A MS. note of Wordsworth's shows that "newly" was removed because time was needed to trace a

visible path. The chief object of the change in this passage was to inform the reader of John Wordsworth's presence before telling of the conviction that the path was made by his footsteps.

64-66. Before 1845:

With which the Sailor measures o'er and o'er

His short domain upon the vessel's deck,

While she is travelling through the dreary sea.

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Wordsworth did not think travelling "the best word to apply to a ship.

67. Esthwaite's pleasant shore, where the brothers were at the Hawkshead school.

72. Mind was: a correction of 1836; previously, " minds were.” 76, 77. Compare Leonard's feelings at sea in "The Brothers." 80. A silent Poet. Compare the passage in Bk. i of " The Excursion," beginning at 1. 77.

82. Inevitable ear, an ear which no sound can elude.

84-87.

Before 1827:

art gone;

And now I call the path-way by thy name
And love

91. Peaceful: before 1827, "placid."

ΙΟΙ.

Thoughtfully: before 1827, "to and fro." John Wordsworth took a deep interest in his brother's poetry. On board ship he was known as "the Philosopher."

THE GREEN LINNET.

Written in 1803; published in 1807. The birds in the orchard at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, suggested the poem.

1-8. In 1807 this stanza was as follows:

The May is come again :- how sweet

To sit upon my Orchard-seat!

And Birds and Flowers once more to greet,

My last year's Friends together;

My thoughts they all by turns employ;
A whispering Leaf is now my joy,
And then a Bird will be the toy

That doth my fancy tether.

The change was made in 1815 (with "flowers and birds" in 1. 7 until 1827). The self-conscious personal element ceased to intrude, and the descriptive power was increased.

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25. Amid was substituted in 1845 for " Upon."

33-40.

This stanza stood thus in 1807:

While thus before my eyes he gleams,

A Brother of the Leaves he seems;

When in a moment forth he teems

His little song in gushes:

As if it pleas'd him to disdain

And mock the form which he did feign

While he was dancing with the train

Of Leaves among the bushes.

In 1820 the sixth line of this stanza became "The voiceless form he chose to feign." The Edinburgh Review objected to the "toy" and tether" of stanza 1 and the " teems" of this stanza. Wordsworth after a time came round to his critic's view. In 1827 the last stanza was altered to the present text, except its first two lines, which cost Wordsworth many "poetic pains":

My sight he dazzles, half deceives,

A bird so like the dancing Leaves; (1827.)

After slight alterations in 1832 and 1840, the present text was reached in 1845.

Mr. Wintringham writes in "The Birds of Wordsworth," p. 123: "Of all English birds, the greenfinch - or the green grosbeak - is best adapted to its position in nature. Its colour makes it almost imperceptible to all who are not adepts in ornithology. The bright gamboge yellow of its primary feathers and the bright golden-green of the least wing-coverts do not foil the hiding powers of its other plumage, but rather complete than destroy the bird's perfect adaptation."

YEW-TREES.

Written at Grasmere in 1803; published in 1815. The text is unchanged. The yew-trees of Borrowdale still exist. A favorite excursion from Keswick is to Buttermere by Borrowdale, returning by the Vale of Lorton. Wordsworth considered this—and justly-one of the most imaginative of his poems; it is cited by Coleridge to prove that Wordsworth possessed "imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the

word." Ruskin ("Modern Painters, part III, sect. ii, chap. iv) calls it the most vigorous and solemn bit of forest landscape ever painted."

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5. Umfraville or Percy. Percy is remembered in connection with the Ballad of Chevy Chase. A Sir Ingram Umfraville fought with Edward at Bannockburn; a Sir Robert Umfraville, vice-admiral of England, invaded Scotland in 1410.

II. This prophecy of the undecaying life of the tree has not been fulfilled.

15. Fraternal four. Compare the sonnet beginning " Degenerate Douglas!" 1. 6, "A brotherhood of venerable trees:"

18. Inveterately, by virtue of old habit; Lat., in and veterare, to grow or become old.

22. Pining, decaying. Coleridge, in giving these lines in "Biographia Literaria," printed the word "pinal," meaning perhaps " of pinetrees." See quotation from Ruskin which follows.

23-28. Perhaps the mythology of these lines was suggested by Virgil, Æneid VI, 273–284; but it is also evidently influenced by the associations of the yew with church-yards.

33. Glaramara is a rugged mountain rising out of the Borrowdale valley. Ruskin ("Modern Painters," part IV, chap. xvii), having described how three or four different persons will variously regard a group of pine-trees, comes to "the man who has most the power of contemplating the thing itself": "He will not see the colours of the tree so well as the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer; he will not altogether share the emotion of the sentimentalist, nor the trance of the idealist; but fancy, and feeling, and perception, and imagination will all obscurely meet and balance themselves in him, and he will see the pine-trees somewhat in this manner" (quoting Wordsworth's lines, "Worthier still of note," etc.). Perhaps Ruskin forgot that Wordsworth is describing yews and not pines.

AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS ("I shiver," etc.).

This poem is connected with Wordsworth's tour in Scotland, 1803, and may have been written then or soon after; but it was not published until 1842. In illustration of the poem, Wordsworth gives in a note a long extract from his sister's Journal. The travellers reached Dumfries late on August 17, and next day visited the grave of Burns. There was no stone to mark the spot; not long afterwards the body was moved from its first resting-place to the mausoleum. We looked at the

grave with melancholy and painful reflections, repeating to each other his own verses, 'Is there a man whose judgment clear,' etc." They afterwards visited Burns's house; Mrs. Burns was absent, and the servant said she was in great sorrow for the death of her son Wallace. Proceeding to Ellisland, they saw from within half a mile of Burns's dwelling-place the Cumberland mountains. "Drayton has prettily described the connexion which this neighborhood has with ours when he makes Skiddaw say:

'Scurfell [Criffel] from the sky,

That Anadale [Annandale] doth crown, with a most amorous eye,
Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim,

Oft threatning me with clouds, as I oft threatning him'

These lines recurred to William's memory, and we talked of Burns and of the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions, indulging ourselves in the fancy that we might have been personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects with more pleasure for our sakes." Compare ll. 3748.

In 1816 Wordsworth printed as a pamphlet his "Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns," in which he criticises Dr. Currie's "Life of Burns," attempts to fix the principles on which information as to the lives of authors should be given or withheld, and writes generously of his brother poet.

In the poems relating to Burns, the favourite stanza of the Scottish poet is adopted. Lines 19, 20 refer to Burns's poem "To a Mountain Daisy," from which "glinted forth" is taken. Lines 31-34 previous to 1845 were:

Well might I mourn that He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
When, breaking forth as nature's own
It showed my youth

Wordsworth's grief was not peculiar to himself, except in its degree. 39. Criffel or Crowfell, a mountain in the county of Kirkcudbright, above 1800 feet high.

50. Poor Inhabitant below, from Burns's "A Bard's Epitaph," which Wordsworth and his sister had been repeating to each other at the grave.

77, 78. The reference is to Burns's poem "To Ruin," stanza ii (see its last line).