Part 2

The next character, to whom the priest is led by contrast with the resoluteness displayed by the foregoing, is taken from a person born and bred in Grasmere, by name Dawson; and whose talents, dispositions, and way of life, were such as are here delineated. I did not know him, but all was fresh in memory when we settled at Grasmere in the beginning of the century. From this point the conversation leads to the mention of two individuals, who, by their several fortunes, were, at different times, driven to take refuge at the small and obscure town of Hawkshead on the skirt of these mountains. Their stories I had from the dear old dame with whom, as a schoolboy, and afterwards, I lodged for nearly the space of ten years. The elder, the Jacobite, was named Drummond, and was of a high family in Scotland; the Hanoverian Whig bore the name of Vandeput, and might, perhaps, be a descendant of some Dutchman who had come over in the train of King William. At all events, his zeal was such, that he ruined himself by a contest for the representation of London or Westminster, undertaken to support his Party, and retired to this corner of the world, selected (as it had been by Drummond) for that obscurity which, since visiting the Lakes became fashionable, it has no longer retained. So much was this region considered out of the way till a late period, that persons who had fled from justice used often to resort hither for concealment, and some were so bold as to not unfrequently make excursions from the place of their retreat for the purpose of committing fresh offences. Such was particularly the case with two brothers of the name of Weston, who took up their abode at Old Brathay, I think about seventy years ago. They were highwaymen, and lived there some time without being discovered, though it was known that they often disappeared, in a way, and upon errands, which could not be accounted for. Their horses were noticed as being of a choice breed, and I have heard from the Relph family, one of whom was a saddler in the town of Kendal, that they were curious in their saddles, and housings, and accoutrements of their horses. They, as I have heard, and as was universally believed, were, in the end, both taken and hanged.

Tall was her stature; her complexion dark And saturnine.

This person lived at Town-end, and was almost our next neighbour. I have little to notice concerning her beyond what is said in the poem. She was a most striking instance how far a woman may surpass in talent, in knowledge, and culture of mind, those with and among whom she lives, and yet fall below them in Christian virtues of the heart and spirit. It seemed almost, and I say it with grief, that in proportion as she excelled in the one, she failed in the other. How frequently has one to observe in both sexes the same thing, and how mortifying is the reflection!

As, on a sunny bank, a tender lamb Lurks in safe shelter from the winds of March.

The story that follows was told to Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister, by the sister of this unhappy young woman. Every particular was exactly as I have related. The party was not known to me, though she lived at Hawkshead; but it was after I left school. The clergyman who administered comfort to her in her distress I knew well. Her sister, who told the story, was the wife of a leading yeoman in the vale of Grasmere, and they were an affectionate pair, and greatly respected by every one who knew them. Neither lived to be old; and their estate--which was, perhaps, the most considerable then in the vale, and was endeared to them by many remembrances of a salutary character, not easily understood or sympathised with by those who are born to great affluence--passed to their eldest son, according to the practice of these vales, who died soon after he came into possession. He was an amiable and promising youth, but was succeeded by an only brother, a good-natured man, who fell into habits of drinking, by which he gradually reduced his property; and the other day the last acre of it was sold, and his wife and children, and he himself still surviving, have very little left to live upon; which it would not, perhaps, have been worth while to record here, but that through all trials this woman has proved a model of patience, meekness, affectionate forbearance, and forgiveness. Their eldest son, who through the vices of his father has thus been robbed of an ancient family inheritance, was never heard to murmur or complain against the cause of their distress, and is now (1843) deservedly the chief prop of his mother's hopes.

The Clergyman and his family described at the beginning of the seventh book were, during many years, our principal associates in the vale of Grasmere, unless I were to except our very nearest neighbours. I have entered so particularly into the main points of their history, that I will barely testify in prose that--with the single exception of the particulars of their journey to Grasmere, which, however, was exactly copied from real life in another instance--the whole that I have said of them is as faithful to the truth as words can make it. There was much talent in the family, and the eldest son was distinguished for poetical talent, of which a specimen is given in my notes to the Sonnets to the Duddon. Once, when in our cottage at Town-end I was talking with him about poetry, in the course of our conversation I presumed to find fault with the versification of Pope, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. He defended him with a warmth that indicated much irritation; nevertheless I would not abandon my point, and said, "In compass and variety of sound your own versification surpasses his." Never shall I forget the change in his countenance and tone of voice: the storm was laid in a moment; he no longer disputed my judgment, and I passed immediately in his mind, no doubt, for as great a critic as ever lived. I ought to add, he was a clergyman and a well-educated man, and his verbal memory was the most remarkable of any individual I have known, except a Mr. Archer, an Irishman, who lived several years in this neighbourhood, and who in this faculty was a prodigy: he afterwards became deranged, and I fear continues so if alive.

Then follows the character of Robert Walker, for which see notes to the Duddon.

That of the _Deaf Man_, whose epitaph may be seen in the churchyard at the head of Hawes Water, and whose qualities of mind and heart, and their benign influence in conjunction with his privation, I had from his relatives on the spot.

The _Blind Man_, next commemorated, was John Gough, of Kendal, a man known, far beyond his neighbourhood, for his talents and attainments in natural history and science.

Of the _Infant's Grave_ next noticed, I will only say, it is an exact picture of what fell under my own observation; and all persons who are intimately acquainted with cottage life must often have observed like instances of the working of the domestic affections.

A volley thrice repeated o'er the corse Let down into the hollow of that grave.

This young volunteer bore the name of Dawson, and was younger brother, if I am not mistaken, to the prodigal of whose character and fortunes an account is given towards the beginning of the preceding book. The father of the family I knew well; he was a man of literary education and considerable experience in society--much beyond what was common among the inhabitants of the Vale. He had lived a good while in the Highlands of Scotland as a manager of ironworks at Bunaw, and had acted as clerk to one of my predecessors in the office of Distributor of Stamps, when he used to travel round the country collecting and bringing home the money due to Government in gold, which it may be worth while to mention, for the sake of my friends, was deposited in the cell or iron closet under the west window, which still exists, with the iron doors that guarded the property. This, of course, was before the time of Bills and Notes. The two sons of this person had no doubt been led by the knowledge of their father to take more delight in scholarship, and had been accustomed, in their own minds, to take a wider view of social interests, than was usual among their associates. The premature death of this gallant young man was much lamented, and as an attendant upon the funeral, I myself witnessed the ceremony, and the effect of it as described in the poems.

... Tradition tells That, in Eliza's golden days, a Knight Came on a war-horse.... ... The house is gone.

The pillars of the gateway in front of the mansion remained when we first took up our abode at Grasmere. Two or three cottages still remain which are called Nott Houses, from the name of the gentleman (I have called him a knight) concerning whom these traditions survive. He was the ancestor of the Knott family, formerly considerable proprietors in the district. What follows in the discourse of the Wanderer, upon the changes he had witnessed in rural life by the introduction of machinery, is truly described from what I myself saw during my boyhood and early youth, and from what was often told me by persons of this humble calling. Happily, most happily, for these mountains, the mischief was diverted from the banks of their beautiful streams, and transferred to open and flat counties abounding in coal, where the agency of steam was found much more effectual for carrying on those demoralising works. Had it not been for this invention, long before the present time, every torrent and river in this district would have had its factory, large and populous in proportion to the power of the water that could there be commanded. Parliament has interfered to prevent the night-work which was once carried on in these mills as actively as during the day-time, and by necessity, still more perniciously; a sad disgrace to the proprietors and to the nation which could so long tolerate such unnatural proceedings.

Reviewing, at this late period, 1843, what I put into the mouths of my interlocutors a few years after the commencement of the century, I grieve that so little progress has been made in diminishing the evils deplored, or promoting the benefits of education which the Wanderer anticipates. The results of Lord Ashley's labours to defer the time when children might legally be allowed to work in factories, and his endeavours to limit still further the hours of permitted labour, have fallen far short of his own humane wishes, and of those of every benevolent and right-minded man who has carefully attended to this subject; and in the present session of Parliament (1843) Sir James Graham's attempt to establish a course of religious education among the children employed in factories has been abandoned, in consequence of what might easily be foreseen, the vehement and turbulent opposition of the Dissenters; so that for many years to come it may be thought expedient to leave the religious instruction of children entirely in the hands of the several denominations of Christians in the Island, each body to work according to its own means and in its own way. Such is my own confidence, a confidence I share with many others of my most valued friends, in the superior advantages, both religious and social, which attend a course of instruction presided over and guided by the clergy of the Church of England, that I have no doubt, that if but once its members, lay and clerical, were duly sensible of those benefits, their Church would daily gain ground, and rapidly, upon every shape and fashion of Dissent; and in that case, a great majority in Parliament being sensible of these benefits, the Ministers of the country might be emboldened, were it necessary, to apply funds of the State to the support of education on church principles. Before I conclude, I cannot forbear noticing the strenuous efforts made at this time in Parliament by so many persons to extend manufacturing and commercial industry at the expense of agricultural, though we have recently had abundant proofs that the apprehensions expressed by the Wanderer were not groundless.

I spake of mischief by the wise diffused, With gladness thinking that the more it spreads The healthier, the securer, we become; Delusion which a moment may destroy!

The Chartists are well aware of this possibility, and cling to it with an ardour and perseverance which nothing, but wiser and more brotherly dealing towards the many, on the part of the wealthy few, can moderate or remove.

While, from the grassy mountain's open side We gazed, in silence hushed.

The point here fixed upon in my imagination is half way up the northern side of Loughrigg Fell, from which the Pastor and his companions are supposed to look upwards to the sky and mountain-tops, and round the vale, with the lake lying immediately beneath them.

But turned, not without welcome promise given That he would share the pleasures and pursuits Of yet another summer's day, consumed In wandering with us.

When I reported this promise of the Solitary, and long after, it was my wish, and I might say intention, that we should resume our wanderings and pass the Borders into his native country, where, as I hoped, he might witness, in the society of the Wanderer, some religious ceremony--a sacrament say, in the open fields, or a preaching among the mountains--which, by recalling to his mind the days of his early childhood, when he had been present on such occasions in company with his parents and nearest kindred, might have dissolved his heart into tenderness, and so done more towards restoring the Christian faith in which he had been educated, and, with that, contentedness and even cheerfulness of mind, and all that the Wanderer and Pastor by their several effusions and addresses had been unable to effect. An issue like this was in my intentions. But alas!

----'mid the wreck of is and was, Things incomplete and purposes betrayed Make sadder transits o'er thought's optic glass Than noblest objects utterly decayed.[H]

RYDAL MOUNT, _June 24, 1843_. St. John Baptist Day.--I. F.]

Although the Fenwick note to _The Excursion_ has been printed here in full, extracts from it will be introduced as footnotes, in explanation of certain passages of the poem. _The Excursion_ was written at intervals between 1795 and 1814. The story of Margaret, in the first book, was begun at Racedown in 1795, and continued at Alfoxden in 1797-8. But only two short fragments of the poem--the former in book first and the latter in book fourth (as indicated in the Fenwick note)--were written before Wordsworth's arrival at Grasmere. There the poem was thought out, arranged, written down, altered, and re-arranged; the first part during his residence at Dove Cottage, the second and longer part at Allan Bank. The following extracts from Miss Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal show how laboriously her brother worked at this poem:--

Tuesday, Dec. 22, 1801.-- ... "Went to Rydal for letters. The road was covered with snow. We walked home almost without speaking. William composed a few lines of 'The Pedlar.' We talked about Lamb's tragedy."...

Wednesday, Dec. 23.-- ... "Mary wrote out the Tales from Chaucer for Coleridge. William worked at 'The Ruined Cottage,' and made himself very ill."...

Tuesday, Jan. 26, 1802.-- ... "We sate till we were both tired, for William wrote out part of his poem, and endeavoured to alter it, and so made himself ill. I copied out the rest for him."...

Monday, Feb. 1st.-- ... "William worked hard at 'The Pedlar,' and tired himself."...

Tuesday, 2nd Feb.-- ... "William worked at 'The Pedlar.'"...

Thursday, 4th.-- ... "William thought a little about 'The Pedlar.'"

Friday, 5th.-- ... "Sate up late at 'The Pedlar.'"

Sunday, 7th.--"William had a bad night, and was working at his poem. We sate by the fire, and did not walk, but read 'The Pedlar,' thinking it done; but lo! ... could find fault with no one part of it--it was uninteresting, and must be altered. Poor William!"

Wednesday, 10th Feb.--"We read the first part of the poem, and were delighted with it, but William afterwards got to some ugly place, and went to bed tired out." ...

Thursday, 11th.-- ... "William sadly tired, and working at 'The Pedlar.'"

Friday, 12th.-- ... "I re-copied 'The Pedlar'; but poor William all the time at work.... We sate a long time with the window unclosed, and almost finished writing 'The Pedlar,' but poor William wore himself out and me with labour. Went to bed at 12 o'clock."

Saturday, 13th.--"It snowed a little. Still at work at 'The Pedlar,' altering and re-fitting.... William read parts of his _Recluse_ aloud to me."...

Sunday, 14th Feb.-- ... "William left me at work altering some passages of 'The Pedlar,' and went into the orchard."

Sunday, Feb. 28.-- ... "William very ill; employed himself with 'The Pedlar.'"

Friday morning.-- ... "I wrote 'The Pedlar,' and finished it."...

These extracts--which will recall the laborious way in which he toiled over the poem _Michael_ (see vol. ii. p. 233)--all refer to the close of the year 1801, and the beginning of the year 1802. It is impossible to find out, with exactness, what were the parts of _The Excursion_ which were then so carefully written, and so fastidiously altered--since "The Pedlar" was the Wordsworth household name for the entire poem, until it was recast for publication, at Allan Bank. But after February 1802 he turned to other subjects of composition, chiefly lyrical, and laid aside "The Pedlar" for a time--his sister, at least, regarding it as "finished." What was completed, however, did not, probably, extend beyond the story of the Wanderer, and perhaps a part of that of the Solitary. The person, whose character gave rise to the Solitary, came to reside at Grasmere not long after the Wordsworths settled there; but as the Fenwick note expressly says that the poem was written "_chiefly_ during our residence at Allan Bank," I do not think that more than the first two books belong to the Town-end period.

_The Excursion_ was originally published in quarto in 1814. The second edition, octavo, appeared in 1820.[I]

_The Excursion_ was included in all the collected editions of 1827, 1832, 1836-7, 1840, 1845, 1849-50, in the Paris reprint of 1828, and in the American edition by Henry Reed. It was also republished by itself in 1836, 1844, and 1847. The textual changes in the several editions were numerous and significant. The longest and most important passage in the earlier ones, omitted after 1820, occurs at the close of the sixth book. Another (shorter) fragment, near the beginning of book seventh, refers to the Sympson household at the Wytheburn parsonage. No edition of _The Excursion_ has as yet been issued with adequate notes, either topographical or literary. The first book--"The Wanderer"--has, however, been annotated, both by Mr. H. H. Turner (published in Rivington's English School Classics), and also by the Rev. H. G. Robinson, Prebendary of York, and published at Edinburgh, by Messrs. Oliver and Boyd.

The following letter from Charles Lamb to Wordsworth, after his first perusal of _The Excursion_ has special interest:--

_August 14, 1814._

"DEAR WORDSWORTH--I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before the rest of the world too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but M. Burney came in the night (while we were out) and made holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. It is the noblest conversational poem I ever read--a day in Heaven. The part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odour on my memory (a bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the Tales of the Churchyard; the only girl among seven brethren, born out of due time, and not duly taken away again,--the deaf man and the blind man; the Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile; the Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude;--these were all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know what to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects for partial naming. That gorgeous sunset[J] is famous; I think it must have been the identical one we saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that drew Phillips from the card-table, where he had sat from rise of that luminary to its unequalled set; but neither he nor I had gifted eyes to see those symbols of common things glorified, such as the prophets saw them in that sunset--the wheel, the potter's clay, the wash-pot, the wine-press, the almond-tree rod, the basket of figs, the fourfold visaged head, the throne, and Him that sat thereon. One feeling I was particularly struck with, as what I recognised so very lately at Harrow Church on entering in it after a hot and secular day's pleasure, the instantaneous coolness and calming, almost transforming properties of a country church just entered; a certain fragrance which it has, either from its holiness, or being kept shut all the week, or the air that is let in being pure country, exactly what you have reduced into words; but I am feeling that which I can-not express. Reading your lines about it fixed me for a time, a monument in Harrow Church. Do you know it? with its fine long spire, white as washed marble, to be seen, by vantage of its high site, as far as Salisbury spire itself almost."

In a letter written in the same year, 1814, Lamb tells Wordsworth of the spurious review of _The Excursion_, in _The Quarterly Review_, "which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palmed upon it for mine," calls his own review "the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ," and gives a specimen of it, viz.--

"The poet of the _Excursion_ 'walks through common forests as through some Dodona or enchanted wood, and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher love-lays.'" (_The Letters of Charles Lamb_, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. pp. 271-281.)

In the Notes to the text I have confined myself chiefly to the explanation of obscure allusions, topographical, historical, or legendary.--ED.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Southey died on the 21st of March, 1843.--ED.]

[Footnote B: See the Appendix to this volume, Note A, p. 391.--ED.]

[Footnote C: "Sarah went to Kendal on our mother's death, but Mr. P. died in the course of a year or two.--M. W." Pencilled on the opposite page of the MS.--ED.]

[Footnote D: See _The Excursion_, book ix. l. 614.--ED.]

[Footnote E: Alas! no longer as they were in Wordsworth's time. See the note to _Yew-Trees_, vol. ii. p. 371.--ED.]

[Footnote F: "Mr. Pearson." Pencilled on the opposite page of the MS.--ED.]

[Footnote G: Pencilled on the opposite page of the MS.--"This boathouse, badly built, gave way, and was rebuilt. It again tumbled, and was a third time reconstructed, but in a better fashion than before. It is not now, _per se_, an ugly building, however obtrusive it may be."--ED.]

[Footnote H: Compare the sonnet _Malham Cove_ in volume vi., to which these lines belong.--ED.]

[Footnote I: The following note from Wordsworth to Mr. Dyce, shews his estimation of the text of the first octavo edition, as compared with that of the earlier quarto edition.

"MY DEAR SIR,--When you read _The Excursion_ do not read the quarto. It is improved in the 8vo E.:--but I thought the quarto might have its value with you as a collector.--Believe me, faithfully yours,

"W. WORDSWORTH." 7th April, my birthday--61, 12 Bryanston Street.

In 1820 there are very few departures from the text of 1814.--ED.]