Preferring {ease and liberty } I chose
{peace and liberty } I chose
{studious leisure I had chosen
A habitation in this peaceful vale
Sharp season {was it of } continuous storm
{followed by } continuous storm

* * * * *

NOTE II.—­THE HAWKSHEAD BECK

(See pp. 188-89, ‘The Prelude’, book iv.)

Mr. Rawnsley, formerly of Wray Vicarage—­now Canon Rawnsley of Crosthwaite Vicarage, Keswick—­sent me the following letter in reference to: 

  ... that unruly child of mountain birth,
  The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed
  Within our garden, found himself at once,
  As if by trick insidious and unkind,
  Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down
   ... 
  I looked at him and smiled, and smiled again,
   ... 
  ‘Ha,’ quoth I, ‘pretty prisoner, are you there!’

“I was not quite content with Dr. Cradock’s identification of this brook, or of the garden; partly because, beyond the present garden square I found, on going up the brook, other garden squares, which were much more likely to have been the garden belonging to Anne Tyson’s cottage, and because in these garden plots the stream was not ‘stripped of his voice,’ by the covering of Coniston flags, as is the case lower down towards the market place; and partly because—­as you notice—­you can both hear and see the stream through the interstices of the flags, and that it can hardly be described (by one who will listen) as stripped of its voice.

At the same time I was bound to admit that in comparing the voice of the stream here in the ‘channel paved by man’s officious care’ with the sound of it up in the fields beyond the vicarage, nearer its birth-place, it certainly might be said to be softer voiced; and as the poet speaks of it as ‘that unruly child of mountain birth,’ it looks as if he too had realised the difference.

But whilst I thought that the identification of Dr. Cradock and yourself was very happy (in absence of other possibilities), I had not thought that Wordsworth would describe the stream as ‘dimpling down,’ or address it as a ‘pretty prisoner.’  A smaller stream seemed necessary.

It was, therefore, not a little curious that, in poking about among the garden plots on the west bank of the stream, fronting (as nearly as I could judge) Anne Tyson’s cottage, to seek for remains of the ash tree, in which so often the poet—­as he lay awake on summer nights—­had watched ‘the moon in splendour couched among the leaves,’ rocking ‘with every impulse of the breeze,’ I not only stumbled upon the remains of an ash tree—­now a ’pollard’—­which is evidently sprung from a larger tree since decayed (and which for all I know may be one of the actual parts of the ancient tree itself); but also had the good luck to fall into conversation with a certain Isaac Hodgson, who volunteered the following information.

  First, that Wordsworth, it was commonly said, had lodged part of his
  time with one Betty Braithwaite, in the very house called Church Hill
  House.