That Brodwater therewith within her banks astound,

In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound,

Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long,
Did mightily commend old Copland for her song.

"THERE IS AN EMINENCE OF THESE OUR HILLS."

Written in 1800 and published in that year. Wordsworth confesses that the "Eminence" could not, in fact, be seen from the orchard-seat. It rises above the road by the side of Grasmere Lake, towards Keswick, and its name is Stone-Arthur."

17. Before 1815: "Hath said, this lonesome Peak shall bear my Name." Wordsworth's contemplative passion for solitude and also his life of the affections are expressed or signified in this poem.

THE CHILDLESS FATHER.

Written at Town-end, Grasmere ; dated by Wordsworth 1800, and published on January 30 of that year in The Morning Post; again, in ** Lyrical Ballads," 1800. Wordsworth (Fenwick note) says that the funeral basin was in use at Cockermouth when he was a child; it was placed upon a table covered with white cloth in front of the house. "The huntings on foot," he adds, "in which the old man is supposed to join as here described, were of common, almost habitual, occurrence in our vales when I was a boy."

9, 10.

These lines are of 1827. In the earliest version, 1800, the

table appears:

The bason of boxwood, just six months before,

Had stood on the table at Timothy's door;

In 1820 Wordsworth thought that "bason of boxwood" might be supposed to be a basin made of boxwood, and he explains the custom in the text as well as the note:

The bason had offered, just six months before,
Fresh sprigs of green boxwood at Timothy's door.

The reserve of passion in this poem heightens the pathos; the old joy of the chase still lives in Timothy's heart; the new sorrow is signified only by a tear and the necessary act of making fast the cottage door.

MICHAEL.

This poem was written at Town-end, Grasmere, between October and December, 1800, and was published in the second volume of “ Lyrical Ballads," which is dated 1800. for the 11th Oct., 1800, we read: Gill in search of a sheepfold. . . . is built nearly in the form of a heart tell us of Wordsworth's working at ber 12, and when she writes on December 9, "W. finished his poem to-day," the reference is probably to Michael." Greenhead Ghyll is not far from Dove Cottage, Grasmere; when Wordsworth in 1843 dictated the Fenwick notes, the ruins of the sheepfold remained. The precise spot cannot now be identified. "Michael's cottage stood," says Professor Knight, "where the coach-house and stables of the Hollins' now stand." The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley, more to the north. The character and circumstances of Luke," said Wordsworth (Fenwick note)," were taken from a family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at Town-end, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern shore of Grasmere." Wordsworth told Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey that in writing the poem he had Poole's character, as suggesting features for that of Michael, often before his eyes, and sometimes thought he was delineating such man as Poole would have been under the same circumstances (Mrs. Sandford's "Thomas Poole and his Friends," vol. II, p. 55). "I have attempted," he writes to Poole, "to give a picture of a man of strong mind and lively sensibility, agitated by two of the most powerful affections of the human heart, the parental affection and the love of property, landed property, including the feelings of inheritance, home and personal and family independence." And to Charles James Fox he wrote, Jan. 14, 1801: "In the two poems, The Brothers' and' Michael,' I have attempted to draw a picture of the domestic affections, as I know they exist among a class of men who are now almost confined to the north of England. They are small independent proprietors of land, here called statesmen [i.e., estates-men], men of respectable education, who daily labour on their little properties. . . . Their little tract of land serves as a kind of rallying-point for their domestic feelings, as a tablet upon which they are written, which makes them objects of memory in a thousand instances, when they would otherwise be forgotten."

In Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal After dinner we walked up Greenhead The sheepfold is falling away. It unequally divided." Other entries the sheepfold poem " until Novem

When the volume containing " Michael' was published, in the early days of January, 1801, Wordsworth was troubled to find that the printer had omitted fifteen lines following 1. 191. He tells Poole in April that half a sheet had been reprinted to amend the error; a copy which gives the lines is in the possession of the Rev. T. Hutchinson.

In Professor Knight's "Life of Wordsworth," vol. I, pp. 382-388, and also in my edition of his poetical works (Aldine Series, vol. V, pp. 182-187), will be found fragments intended for "Michael," recovered from a MS. book of Dorothy Wordsworth's. The greater portion of these fragments are occupied with an episode, judiciously omitted, which tells of the search made in late autumn by Michael and his son for a stray sheep. The boy discovers it on an island of the brook to which he leaps, but the sheep springs into the stream. Luke is found by Michael on the island, and with the aid of his father's staff Luke regains the bank.

One passage of these fragments is of peculiar interest, as giving Wordsworth's answer to the question," What feeling for external nature has such a man as Michael?" It corresponds to the passage of the poem, 11. 62-77:

No doubt if you in terms direct had asked
Whether he loved the mountains, true it is
That with blunt repetition of your words

He might have stared at you, and said that they
Were frightful to behold, but had you then
Discoursed with him

Of his own business, and the goings on

Of earth and sky, then truly had you seen

That in his thoughts there were obscurities,

Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought

Not less than a religion of his heart.

And the passage proceeds for fifteen lines more in the same spirit. In ed. 1805 Wordsworth omitted the following lines, which in edd. 1800 and 1802 followed 1. 128:

Not with a waste of words, but for the sake
Of pleasure, which I know that I shall give

To many living now, I of this Lamp

Speak thus minutely: for there are no few

Whose memories will bear witness to my tale.

The Light was famous, etc.

A recast of these lines was sent to Poole in April, 1801, and it was then intended that they should immediately succeed the following passage,

in which, it will be observed, some words appear identical with those which have just been given from Dorothy Wordsworth's MS. book; this passage, slightly varied, also appears in the MS. book with the added lines which I place in brackets :

Though in these occupations they would pass

Whole hours with but small interchange of speech,
Yet were there times in which they did not want
Discourse both wise and prudent, shrewd remarks
Of daily providence, clothed in images
Lively and beautiful, in rural forms

That made their conversation fresh and fair
As is a landscape:- And the shepherd oft

:

Would draw out of his heart, the obscurities
And admirations that were there, of God
And of his works, or, yielding to the bent

Of his peculiar humour, would let loose

The tongue and give it the wind's freedom, then
Discoursing on remote imaginations, strong
Conceits, devices, day-dreams, thoughts and schemes,
[Of alterations human hands might make

Among the mountains, fens which might be drained,
Mines opened, forests planted, and rocks split,]
The fancies of a solitary man.

The version of these lines sent to Poole is later than that in the MS. book, where in place of the word "obscurities," transferred to Poole's version from another experimental passage quoted above, the word "mysteries" is found. These lines sent to Poole were to follow 1. 128 of the poem ("Murmur as with the sound of summer flies ").

A bold passage of the poem as originally printed, 1800, was altered in 1802. Lines 405-410 stood thus:

When thou art gone away, should evil men
Be thy companions, let this Sheep-fold be
Thy anchor and thy shield; amid all fear
And all temptation, let it be to thee

An emblem of the life thy Fathers liv'd.

Probably Wordsworth thought that to name the sheepfold an anchor and a shield was overbold, or was inappropriate in a shepherd's life.

2. Ghyll. Wordsworth explains the word - of Scandinavian origin—in a note of 1800 on "The Idle Shepherd Boys" as "in the dialect of Cumberland and Westmoreland, a short and, for the most part, a steep narrow valley with a stream running through it.”

6. Around in 1827 replaced the earlier "beside."

51. Subterraneous music. I am not sure that I understand this aright. Does it mean the sound of the wind under overhanging cliffs and in hollows of the hills?

73, 74. Before 1832 as follows:

So grateful in themselves, the certainty

Of honourable gain ["gains,” 1800-2]; these fields, these hills,

Which were his living Being, even more

Than his own blood what could they less? - had laid

The narration which follows shows that the fields and hills were not more a part of Michael's being than was his son.

Altered, probably, to avoid the recurring "he had "in two different uses, at the beginning of two successive lines.

II2. Before 1836: "Did with a huge projection overbrow"; altered to avoid the enfeebling expletive " did.”

125. Far in 1836 replaced "late," going better with the preposition "into."

134. Easedale, near Grasmere. Dunmail-Raise, the pass on the way from Grasmere to Keswick.

147.

150.

This line was added in 1836.

After this line the following lines were omitted in 1827 :

From such, and other causes, to the thoughts

Of the old Man, his only Son was now

The dearest object that he knew on earth.

155. Pastime in 1827 replaced the less masculine "dalliance." 158. A possible objection was anticipated by the insertion in 1836 of "as."

163-166 replaced in 1836 the following:

207.

Had work by his own door, or when he sate
With sheep before him on his Shepherd's stool
Beneath that large old Oak, which near their door
Stood, and from its enormous breadth of shade,

In 1800: "While this good household thus were living on." In 1802 and 1805:

While in the fashion which I have described

This simple Household thus were living on.