“Of my earliest days at School I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, then and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked.  For example, I read all Fielding’s works, ‘Don Quixote’, ‘Gil Blas’, and any part of Swift that I liked; ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and the ‘Tale of a Tub’ being both much to my taste.”

As Wordsworth alludes to Coleridge’s education, along with his own, “in the season of unperilous choice,” the reference is probably to Coleridge’s early time at the vicarage of Ottery St. Mary’s, Devonshire, and at the Grammar School there, as well as at Christ’s Hospital in London, where (with Charles Lamb as school-companion) he was as enthusiastic in his exploits in the New River, as he was an eager student of books.—­Ed.]

[Footnote G:  Mrs. Wordsworth died at Penrith, in the year 1778, the poet’s eighth year.—­Ed.]

[Footnote H:  Compare, in ‘Expostulation and Reply’ (vol. i. p. 273),

  ’Think you, ’mid all this mighty sum
  Of things for ever speaking,
  That nothing of itself will come,
  But we must still be seeking?’

Ed.]

[Footnote I:  See the Fenwick note to the poem, ‘There was a Boy’, vol. ii. p. 57, and Wordsworth’s reference to his schoolfellow William Raincock.—­Ed.]

[Footnote K:  Hawkshead Grammar School.—­Ed.]

[Footnote L:  Lines 364-97 were first published in “Lyrical Ballads,” 1800, and appeared in all the subsequent collective editions of the poems, standing first in the group of “Poems of the Imagination.”

The grave of this “immortal boy” cannot be identified.  His name, and everything about him except what is here recorded, is unknown; but he was, in all likelihood, a school companion of Wordsworth’s at Hawkshead.

  ’And through that churchyard when my way has led
  On summer evenings.’

One may localize the above description almost anywhere at Hawkshead—­Ed.]

[Footnote M:  Hawkshead School, in which Wordsworth was taught for eight years—­from 1778 to 1786—­was founded by Archbishop Sandys of York, in 1585, and the building is still very much as it was in Wordsworth’s time.  The main school-room is on the ground floor.  One small chamber on the first floor was used, in the end of last century, by the head master, as a private class-room, for teaching a few advanced pupils.  In another is a small library, formed in part by the donations of the scholars; it having been a custom for each pupil to present a volume on leaving the school, or to send one afterwards.  Very probably one of the volumes now in the library was presented by Wordsworth.  There are several which were presented by his school-fellows, during the years in which Wordsworth was at Hawkshead.  The master, in 1877, promised me that he would search through his somewhat musty treasures, to see if he could discover a book with the poet’s autograph;