74. *_Ibid._

Town-End, 1805.  Faithfully narrated, though with the omission of many pathetic circumstances, from the mouth of a French lady, who had been an eye and ear-witness of all that was done and said.  Many long years after I was told that Dupligne was then a monk in the Convent of La Trappe.

75. The Idiot Boy.

Alfoxden, 1798.  The last stanza, ’The cocks did crow, and the sun did shine so cold,’ was the foundation of the whole.  The words were reported to me by my dear friend Thomas Poole; but I have since heard the same reported of other idiots.  Let me add, that this long poem was composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost extempore; not a word, I believe, being corrected, though one stanza was omitted.  I mention this in gratitude to those happy moments, for, in truth, I never wrote anything with so much glee.

76. *_Michael_. [XXXII.]

Town-End, 1807.  Written about the same time as ‘The Brothers.’  The sheepfold on which so much of the poem turns, remains, or rather the ruins of it.  The character and circumstances of Luke were taken from a family to whom had belonged, many years before, the house we lived in at Town-End, along with some fields and woodlands on the eastern shore of Grasmere.  The name of the Evening Star was not in fact given to this house, but to another on the same side of the valley more to the north. [On opposite page in pencil—­’ Greenhead Ghyll.’]

77. Clipping.

     ‘The Clipping Tree, a name which yet it bears’ (foot-note on 1.
     169).

Clipping is the word used in the North of England for shearing.

78. *_The Widow on Windermere Side_. [XXXIV.]

The facts recorded in this Poem were given me and the character of the person described by my highly esteemed friend the Rev. R.P.  Graves, who has long officiated as Curate at Bowness, to the great benefit of the parish and neighbourhood.  The individual was well known to him.  She died before these Verses were composed.  It is scarcely worth while to notice that the stanzas are written in the sonnet-form; which was adopted when I thought the matter might be included in 28 lines.

79. The Armenian Lady’s Love. [XXXIV.]

The subject of the following poem is from the ‘Orlandus’ of the author’s friend, Kenelm Henry Digby:  and the liberty is taken of inscribing it to him as an acknowledgment, however unworthy, of pleasure and instruction derived from his numerous and valuable writings, illustrative of the piety and chivalry of the olden time. Rydal Mount, 1830.

80. Percy’s ’Reliques’ (foot-note on 1. 2).

    ’You have heard “a Spanish Lady
    How she wooed an English man."’

See in Percy’s Reliques that fine old ballad, ’The Spanish Lady’s Love’; from which Poem the form of stanza, as suitable to dialogue, is adopted.

81. *_Loving and Liking_. [XXXV.]