1827.

  Art pacing to and fro ... 1815.]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  Compare Daniel’s ‘Hymens Triumph’, ii. 4: 

  ’And where no sun could see him, where no eye
  Might overlook his lonely privacy;
  There in a path of his own making, trod
  Rare as a common way, yet led no way
  Beyond the turns he made.’

Ed.]

[Footnote B:  Compare the line in Coleridge’s ’Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni’: 

  ‘Ye pine groves with your soft and soul-like sound,’

Ed.]

* * * * *

SUB-FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Sub-Footnote a:  In the late Lord Coleridge’s copy of the edition of 1836, there is a footnote in Wordsworth’s handwriting to the word “meanwhile” which is substituted for “newly.”  “If ‘newly’ come, could he have traced a visible path?”—­Ed.]

This wish was not granted; the lamented Person, not long after, perished by shipwreck, in discharge of his duty as Commander of the Honourable East India Company’s Vessel, the ’Earl of Abergavenny’.—­W.  W. 1815.

For the date of this poem in the Chronological Tables given in the editions of 1815 and 1820, Wordsworth assigned the year 1802.  But, in the edition of 1836, he assigned it to the year 1805, the date retained by Mr. Carter in the edition of 1857.  Captain Wordsworth perished on the 5th of February 1805; and if the poem was written in 1805, it must have been in the month of January of that year.  The note to the poem is explicit—­“Not long after” he “perished by shipwreck,” etc.  Thus the poem may have been written in the beginning of 1805; but it is not at all certain that part of it at least does not belong to an earlier year.  John Wordsworth lived with his brother and sister at the Town-end Cottage, Grasmere, during part of the winter, and during the whole of the spring, summer, and autumn of 1800, William and John going together on foot into Yorkshire from the 14th of May to the 7th of June.  John left Grasmere on Michaelmas day (September 29th) 1800, and never returned to it again.  The following is Miss Wordsworth’s record of that day in her Journal of 1800: 

“On Monday, 29th, John left us.  William and I parted with him in sight of Ullswater.  It was a fine day, showery, but with sunshine and fine clouds.  Poor fellow, my heart was right sad, I could not help thinking we should see him again, because he was only going to Penrith.”

In the spring of 1801, John Wordsworth sailed for China in the ‘Abergavenny’.  He returned from this voyage in safety, and the brothers met once again in London.  He went to sea again in 1803, and returned to London in 1804, but could not visit Grasmere; and in the month of February 1805—­shortly