[Footnote M:  Not wholly so.—­Ed.]

[Footnote N:  See note on preceding page.—­Ed.]

[Footnote O:  Compare the sonnet in vol. iv.: 

  ‘Beloved Vale!’ I said, ’when I shall con
  ... 
  By doubts and thousand petty fancies crost.’

There can be little doubt that it is to the “famous brook” of ’The Prelude’ that reference is made in the later sonnet, and still more significantly in the earlier poem ‘The Fountain’, vol. ii. p. 91.  Compare the MS. variants of that poem, printed as footnotes, from Lord Coleridge’s copy of the Poems: 

  ’Down to the vale with eager speed
  Behold this streamlet run,
  From subterranean bondage freed,
  And glittering in the sun.’

with the lines in ‘The Prelude’: 

’The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed Within our garden, found himself at once, ...  Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down, etc.’

This is doubtless the streamlet called Town Beck; and it is perhaps the most interesting of all the spots alluded to by Wordsworth which can be traced out in the Hawkshead district, I am indebted to Mr. Rawnsley for the following note: 

“From the village, nay, from the poet’s very door when he lived at Anne Tyson’s, a good path leads on, past the vicarage, quite to its upland place of birth.  It has eaten its way deeply into the soil; in one place there is a series of still pools, that overflow and fall into others, with quiet sound; at other spots, it is bustling and busy.  Fine timber is found on either side of it, the roots of the trees often laid bare by the passing current.  In one or two places by the side of this beck, and beneath the shadow of lofty oaks, may be found boulder stones, grey and moss-covered.  Birds make hiding-places for themselves in these oak and hazel bushes by the stream.  Following it up, we find it receives, at a tiny ford, the tribute of another stream from the north-west, and comes down between the adjacent hills (well wooded to the summit) from meadows of short-cropped grass, and to these from the open moorland, where it takes its rise.  Every conceivable variety of beauty of sound and sight in streamlet life is found as we follow the course of this Town Beck.  We owe much of Wordsworth’s intimate acquaintance with streamlet beauty to it.”

Compare ‘The Fountain’ in detail with this passage in ’The Prelude’.—­Ed.]

[Footnote P:  So it is in the editions of 1850 and 1857; but it should evidently be “nor, dear Friend!”—­Ed.]

[Footnote Q:  The ash tree is gone, but there is no doubt as to the place where it grew.  Mr. Watson, whose father owned and inhabited the house immediately opposite to Mrs. Tyson’s cottage in Wordsworth’s time (see a previous note), told me that a tall ash tree grew on the proper right front of the cottage, where an outhouse is now built.  If this be so, Wordsworth’s bedroom must have been that on the proper left, with the smaller of the two windows.  The cottage faces nearly south-west.  In the upper flat there are two bedrooms to the front, with oak flooring, one of which must have been Wordsworth’s.  See Note II. (p. 386) in Appendix to this volume.—­Ed.]