after he was appointed to the command of the ’Abergavenny’—­the ship was lost at the Bill of Portland, and every one on board perished.  It is clear that the latter part of the poem, “When, to the attractions of the busy world,” was written between John Wordsworth’s departure from Grasmere and the loss of the ‘Abergavenny’, i. e. between September 1800 and February 1805, as there are references in it both to what his brother did at Grasmere and to his return to sea: 

  ‘Back to the joyless Ocean thou art gone.’

There are some things in the earlier part of the poem that appear to negative the idea of its having been written in 1800.  The opening lines seem to hint at an experience somewhat distant.  He speaks of being “wont” to do certain things.  But, on the other hand, I find an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal, which leads me to believe that the poem may have been begun in 1800, and that the first part, ending (as it did then) with the line: 

  ‘While she is travelling through the dreary sea,’

may have been finished before John Wordsworth left Grasmere; the second part being written afterwards, while he was at sea; and that this is the explanation of the date given in the editions of 1815 and 1820, viz. 1802.

Passages occur in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journal to the following effect: 

  “Monday Morning, 1st September.—­We walked in the wood by the lake. 
  William read ‘Joanna’ and ‘the Firgrove’ to Coleridge.”

A little earlier there is the record,

  “Saturday, 22nd August.—­William was composing all the morning.... 
  William read us the poem of ‘Joanna’ beside the Rothay by the
  roadside.”

Then, on Friday, the 25th August, there is the entry,

“We walked over the hill by the Firgrove, I sate upon a rock and observed a flight of swallows gathering together high above my head.  We walked through the wood to the stepping stones, the lake of Rydale very beautiful, partly still, I left William to compose an inscription, that about the path....”

Then, next day,

  “Saturday morning, 30th August.—­William finished his inscription of
  the Pathway, then walked in the wood, and when John returned he sought
  him, and they bathed together.”

To what poem Dorothy Wordsworth referred under the name of the “Inscription of the Pathway” has puzzled me much.  There is no poem amongst his “Inscriptions” (written in or before August 1800) that corresponds to it in the least.  But, if my conjecture is right that this “Poem on the Naming of Places,” beginning: 

  ‘When, to the attractions of the busy world,’

was composed at two different times, it is quite possible that “the Firgrove” which was read—­along with ’Joanna’—­to Coleridge on September 1st, 1800, was the first part of this very poem.