first there. It appeared on Dec. 12, 1835, in The Athenæum. The only change of text in the "Poetical Works" is in 1. 25, where "slumber" before 1845 was "slumbers."

Wordsworth added the following note:

In the Fenwick note is much interesting gossip about Crabbe and Mrs. Hemans, but to Mrs. Hemans Wordsworth is unjust.

1-4.

p. 251.

Refers to the tour in Scotland, 1814. See "Yarrow Visited,"

5-8. Refers to the visit to Abbotsford in 1831. See "Yarrow Revisited," p. 290, and the sonnet "A trouble not of clouds,” p. 341.

17, 18. Hazlitt, in describing S. T. Coleridge ("My First Acquaintance with Poets"), writes: " His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre."

32. Wordsworth frequently met Crabbe at Mr. Hoare's upon Hampstead Heath, where Crabbe was accustomed to pay a visit of some length in the spring.

35. Crabbe died in his 78th year.

39. Felicia Hemans died in Dublin in her 42d year.

41, 42. Referring to the ballads of Yarrow.

See notes on " Yarrow

Unvisited," p. 433.

SONNETS.

COMPOSED BY THE SEASIDE, NEAR CALAIS, August, 1802. ("Fair Star," etc.).

Taking advantage of the Peace of Amiens, Wordsworth and his sister visited Calais in the summer of 1802. This sonnet, written in August of that year, was first published in 1807. The text is unchanged except in 1. 10, where "that" was substituted in 1837 for the earlier "it." Dorothy Wordsworth writes in her Journal: "We arrived at

Calais at four o'clock on Sunday morning (Aug. 1). . . . We had delightful walks after the heat of the day was past-seeing far off in the west the coast of England, like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, which was but like the summit of the cloud—the evening Star, and the glory of the sky; the reflections in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself; purple waves brighter than precious stones for ever melting away upon the sands."

The war of England against the French Republic had for a time alienated Wordsworth from his own country; but he had lost his faith in France and was now restored in heart to England. Yet he had fears that England was fallen in moral temper from her ancient simplicity and strength. This invocation of the evening star as his country's emblem serves as an appropriate introduction to the political sonnets. The Poet looks away from France, which had once been the source of his hopes and faith, to England and her glorious crest.

CALAIS, AUGUST, 1802 ("Is it a reed").

This sonnet first appeared in The Morning Post, in January, 1803; it was first included among Wordsworth's poems in 1807. On Aug. 2, 1802, Napoleon was appointed First Consul for life. I, 2. From St. Matthew xl. 7.

1801 ("I grieved," etc.).

This sonnet was written on May 21, 1802; it was first published on Sept. 16, 1802, in The Morning Post, and again in the same paper in January, 1803; first included among Wordsworth's poems in 1807. In Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, May 21, 1802, we read: William wrote two sonnets on Buonaparte, after I had read Milton's sonnets for him." Napoleon had been chosen First Consul for ten years to come on May 8. Wordsworth's date "1801" is perhaps an error, or perhaps it refers to the treaties of peace of that year viewed as preliminaries to Napoleon's supreme power.

As the text stood in 1807 "vital blood" appeared in 1. 2 where "tenderest mood" (1837) appears in the present text. In edd. 1815-32 11. 2-4 were as follows:

for who aspires

To genuine greatness but from just desires

And knowledge such as He could never gain?

Happily Wordsworth reverted to his original text, with the alteration of "vital blood" just noted. The alteration of rhymes in 1815 removed the sonnet farther from the Italian model than it originally was or is

now.

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC.

Written, probably, in August, 1802; first published in 1807. The text has never been altered.

"The Venetians were called on to recognize the French Republic; they refused, but did not join the coalition against it. When Bonaparte was at the gates of Mantua, they at length decided to treat with him; but it was too late. . . . On 8th May [1797] the great council decided to offer no resistance to the French; the doge abdicated on the 12th; and Napoleon entered the city on the 16th, and proclaimed the end of the Republic. On 17th October following, Bonaparte, by the treaty of Campo Formio, abandoned the territory of Venice to Austria. Venice was buffeted to and fro between France and Austria from 1798 to 1814, when the new coalition assigned her to Austria." — Encyc. Brit., article "Venice."

I. "The crusading expeditions of the Doge Faliero, followed up by his successor Doge Michele, riveted the power of Venice in Syria by the reduction of Tyre. . . . Enrico Dandalo reduced Trieste, reconquered Zara, and headed the fourth crusade, nominally for Palestine, really against Constantinople, which he stormed." - Chambers's Encyc.,

article "Venice."

2. The latter half of the 15th century was partly occupied with hostilities against the Turks.

7, 8. From the Bucentaur on every Ascension Day the doge solemnly espoused the Adriatic.

13, 14. Compare Burke on the fall of greatness in the French Revolution: "Why do I feel so differently from the Rev. Dr. Price, and those of his lay flock, who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? For this plain reason - because it is natural I should; because we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason."

TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

Written in 1802; first published, with an inferior text, in The Morning Post, Feb. 2, 1803; first included among Wordsworth's poems in 1807. Toussaint (surnamed L'Ouverture in 1793, because he broke through the entrenched quarters of the Spaniards), one of the liberators of Hayti, was born in slavery 1743, joined the negro insurgents in 1791, was made a general by the French Convention for his services against the Spaniards, and became chief of the army of St. Domingo. About 1800 he "began to aim at independence of France. Bonaparte having, after the peace of Amiens, proclaimed the reëstablishment of slavery in San Domingo, Toussaint declined to obey, whereupon General Le Clerc was sent with a strong fleet to compel him. The liberator soon submitted, but was treacherously arrested, sent to France, and flung into a damp, dark dungeon at Fort de Joux, near Besançon, where he sank after ten months, Apr. 27, 1803."- Chambers's Encyc.

2-4.

Date from 1827. The earlier readings were :

Whether the rural milk-maid by her Cow

Sing in thy hearing, or thou liest now

Alone in some deep dungeon's earless den; (1807.)

Whether the all-cheering Sun be free to shed

His beams around thee, or thou rest thy head

Pillowed in some dark dungeon's noisome den. (1815.)

Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough

Within thy hearing, or thou liest now

Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den. (1820.)

The reading of 1815 was probably rejected because the powers of nature, of which the sun is one, should not be introduced until the sextet, where they appear as taking up and carrying on Toussaint's work of liberation. There was also in 1815 a loss to the regular rhymesystem of the sonnet.

Observe how the powers of external nature and of human passion are presented as conjoint workers on behalf of freedom.

SEPTEMBER, 1802, NEAR DOVER.

First published 1807; the text was never altered. The thought that material powers will not avail for the defence of freedom unless supported by moral powers is of frequent recurrence in Wordsworth,

especially in these political sonnets and in the pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra. In Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal we read: "On Sunday, the 29th of August, we left Calais at twelve o'clock in the morning and landed at Dover at one on Monday the 30th. The

next day was very hot. We . . . bathed, and sate upon the Dover Cliffs, and looked upon France with many a melancholy and tender thought. We could see the shores almost as plain as if it were but an English lake."

THOUGHT OF A BRITON ON THE SUBJUGATION OF

SWITZERLAND.

This sonnet, which was composed while Wordsworth was pacing to and fro between the Hall of Coleorton (Sir George Beaumont's residence), then rebuilding, and the principal farmhouse on the estate, occupied by the Wordsworth family for several months, belongs to the close of 1806 or opening of 1807; it was first published in 1807; the text was never altered. In September, 1808, Wordsworth called it his best sonnet.

"

The invasion of Switzerland by France in 1797 completely alienated Coleridge's sympathies from the French, and he expressed his feelings in his great poem "France: an Ode." Carnot, one of the founders of the French Republic, gives expression to a like indignation in his "Réponse. au Rapport fait sur la conjuration du 18 fructidor . . . par J.-Ch. Bailleul But Wordsworth's sonnet probably has special reference to Bonaparte's "Act of Mediation," 1803, by which the Swiss Confederation was reinstituted. While it was an improvement in many respects on the Helvetic Republic, the new arrangement guaranteed by Bonaparte made French influence predominant in Switzerland.

WRITTEN IN LONDON SEPTEMBER, 1802 ("O Friend!" etc.).

"This was written immediately after my return from France to London, when I could not but be struck, as here described, with the vanity and parade of our own country, especially in great towns and cities, as contrasted with the quiet, and I may say the desolation, that the revolution had produced in France. This must be borne in mind, or else the reader may think that in this and the succeeding sonnets I