domain. 765
  The Spirit of Nature was upon me there;
  The soul of Beauty and enduring Life
  Vouchsafed her inspiration, and diffused,
  Through meagre lines and colours, and the press
  Of self-destroying, transitory things, 770
  Composure, and ennobling Harmony.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  Goslar, February 10th, 1799.  Compare Mr. Carter’s note to ‘The Prelude’, book vii. l. 3.—­Ed.]

[Footnote B:  The first two paragraphs of book i.—­Ed.]

[Footnote C:  April 1804:  see the reference in book vi. l. 48.—­Ed.]

[Footnote D:  Before he left for Malta, Coleridge had urged Wordsworth to complete this work.—­Ed.]

[Footnote E:  The summer of 1804.—­Ed.]

[Footnote F:  Doubtless John’s Grove, below White Moss Common.  On November 24, 1801, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in her Journal,

“As we were going along, we were stopped at once, at the distance perhaps of fifty yards from our favourite birch tree.  It was yielding to the gusty wind with all its tender twigs.  The sun shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower.  It was a tree in shape, with stem and branches, but it was like a spirit of water.  The sun went in, and it resumed its purplish appearance, the twigs still yielding to the wind, but not so visibly to us.  The other birch trees that were near it looked bright and cheerful, but it was a Creation by itself amongst them.”

This does not refer to John’s Grove, but it may be interesting to compare the sister’s description of a birch tree “tossing in sunshine,” with the brother’s account of a grove of fir trees similarly moved.—­Ed.]

[Footnote G:  The visit to Switzerland with Jones in 1790, described in book vi.—­Ed.]

[Footnote H:  He took his B. A. degree in January 1791, and immediately afterwards left Cambridge.—­Ed.]

[Footnote I:  Going to Forncett Rectory, near Norwich, he spent six weeks with his sister, and then went to London, where he stayed four months.—­Ed.]

[Footnote K:  From the hint given in this passage, it would seem that he had gone up to London for a few days in 1788.  Compare book viii. l. 543, and note [Footnote o].—­Ed.]

[Footnote L:  The story of Whittington, hearing the bells ring out the prosperity in store for him,

  ’Turn again, Whittington,
  Thrice Lord Mayor of London,’

is well known.—­Ed.]

[Footnote M:  Tea-gardens, till well on in this century; now built over.—­Ed.]

[Footnote N:  Bedlam, a popular corruption of Bethlehem, a lunatic hospital, founded in 1246.  The old building, with its “carved maniacs at the gates,” was taken down in 1675, and the hospital removed to Moorfields.  The second building—­the one to which Wordsworth refers—­was demolished in 1814.—­Ed.]