[Variant 7: 

  ... visitant! 
  The showman with his freight upon his back,
  And once, perchance, in lapse of many years

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 8: 

  But one is here, ...

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 9: 

  ... orchard, apples, pears,
  (On this day only to such office stooping)
  She carries in her basket and walks round

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 10: 

  ... calling, ...

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 11: 

  ... rich, the old man now (l. 44)
  Is generous, so gaiety prevails
  Which all partake of, young and old.  Immense (l. 55)

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 12: 

  ... green field: 

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 13: 

  ... seem,
  Their herds and flocks about them, they themselves
  And all which they can further ...

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 14: 

  The lurking brooks for their ...

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

[Variant 15: 

  And the blue sky that roofs ...

MS. to Sir George Beaumont, 1805.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  Dorothy Wordsworth alludes to one of these “Fairs” in her Grasmere Journal, September 2, 1800.  Her brothers William and John, with Coleridge, were all at Dove Cottage at that time.

“They all went to Stickle Tarn.  A very fine, warm, sunny, beautiful morning.  We walked to the fair. ...  It was a lovely moonlight night.  We talked much about our house on Helvellyn.  The moonlight shone only upon the village.  It did not eclipse the village lights; and the sound of dancing and merriment came along the still air.  I walked with Coleridge and William up the lane and by the church....”

Ed.]

[Footnote B:  These lines are from a descriptive Poem—­’Malvern Hills’—­by one of Wordsworth’s oldest friends, Mr. Joseph Cottle of Bristol.  Cottle was the publisher of the first edition of “Lyrical Ballads,” 1798 (Mr. Carter 1850).—­Ed.]

[Footnote C:  The district round Cockermouth.—­Ed.]

[Footnote D:  Possibly an allusion to the hanging gardens of Babylon, said to have been constructed by Nebuchadnezzar for his Median queen.  Berosus in Joseph, contr.  Ap. I. 19, calls it a hanging Paradise (though Diodorus Siculus uses the term [Greek:  kaepos]).—­Ed.

The park of the Emperor of China at Gehol, is called ‘Van-shoo-yuen’, “the paradise of ten thousand trees.”  Lord Macartney concludes his description of that “wonderful garden” by saying,