poem. I mean all through; yet 'Benjamin' is no common favourite there is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it; it is as good as it was in 1806; and it will be as good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it. Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the subject of the narrative and the subject of the dedication.

"I do not know which I like best-the prologue (the latter part especially) to P. Bell, or the epilogue to Benjamin. Yes, I tell stories; I do know I like the last best; and the 'Waggoner' altogether is a pleasanter remembrance to me than the 'Itinerant.'

"If, as you say, the 'Waggoner,' in some sort, came at my call, O for a potent voice to call forth the 'Recluse' from his professed dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge-the world.

"C. LAMB."

(See The Letters of Charles Lamb, by Thomas Noon Talfourd, Vol. II., pp. 52-55.)

To this may be added what Southey wrote to Mr Wade Browne on June 15, 1819:

"I think you will be pleased with Wordsworth's 'Waggoner,' if it were only for the line of road which it describes. The master of the waggon was my poor landlord Jackson, and the cause of his exchanging it for the one-horse cart was just as is represented in the poem ; nobody but Benjamin could manage it upon these hills, and Benjamin could not resist the temptations by the wayside.”

(See The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, Vol. IV., p. 318.)

NOTE III. THE HAWKSHEAD BECK.
(See pp. 191-194.)

Mr Rawnsley, of Wray Vicarage, sends me the following note 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 Ann 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) Ann Tyson's Cottage, to seek for remains of the ashtree, 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.

"She was a widow, and kept a confectionery shop, and 'did a deal of baking,' he believed.

"Secondly, that there was a little patch of garden at the back of the house, with a famous spring well-still called Old Betty's well—in it, and that only a few paces from where I was then standing by the pollard ash.

"On jumping over the fence I found myself on the western side of the quaint old Church Hill House, with magnificent views of the whole of the western side of Hawkshead Vale; grassy swell and wooded rises taking the eye up to the moorland ridge between us and Coniston.

"But,' said I, 'what about "Betty's well." 'Oh,' said my friend, 'that's a noted spring, that never freezes, and always runs; we all drink of it, and neighbours send to it.' 'Here it is,' he continued; and, gazing down, I saw a little dipping well of water, lustrous, clear,

coming evidently in continuous force from the springs or secret channels up hill, pausing for a moment at the trough, thence falling into a box or 'channel, paved by man's officious care,' and in a moment out of sight and soundless, to pursue its way, 'stript of its voice,' towards the main Town beck, that ran at the north-east border of the garden plot. Ah, pretty prisoner,' and the words 'dimpling mind at once as appropriate. 'Old Betty's Well' gave the key-note of the 'famous brook;' and 'boxed within a garden' seemed an appropriate and exact description. "Trace of

down' came to my

I was there none.

I have spoken of.

'the sunny seat

Round the stone table, under the dark pine,'

Not so, however, the Ash tree, the remains of which
From the bedroom of Betty Braithwaite's house

the boy could have watched the moon,

666

'while to and fro

In the dark summit of the waving tree

She rocked with every impulse of the breeze.'

In old times,' said my friend, the wall fence ran across the garden, just beyond this spring well, so you see it was but a small spot, was this garden close.' Yes; but,

'The crowd of things

About its narrow precincts all beloved,'

were known the better, and loved the more on that account. Certainly, thought I to myself, here is the famous spring; a brook that Wordsworth must have known, and that may have been the centre of memory to him in his description of those early Hawkshead days, with its metaphor of fountain life.

"May we not, as we gaze on this little fountain well, in a garden plot at the back of one of the grey huts of this 'one dear vale,' point as with a wand, and say,

'This portion of the river of his mind

Came from yon fountain.'

Is it not possible that the old dame whose

'Clear though shallow stream of piety,

Ran on the Sabbath days a fresher course,'

was Betty Braithwaite, the aged dame who owned the cottage hard by ?"

The following additional extract from a letter of Mr Rawnsley's (Christmas, 1882) casts light, both on the Hawkshead beck and fountain, and on the stone seat in the market square, referred to in The Prelude.

"Postlethwaite of the Sun Inn at Hawkshead, has a father aged 82, who can remember that there was a stone bench, called not old Betty's, but old Jane's Stone, on which she used to spread nuts and cakes for the scholars of the Grammar School, but that it did not stand where the Market Hall now is, and no one ever remembers a stone or stone

bench standing there. This stone or stone-bench stood about opposite the Red Lion inn, in front of the little row of houses that run east and west, just as you pass out of the village in a northerly direction by the Red Lion. This stone or stone-bench is not associated with dark pine trees, but they may have passed away root and branch in an earlier generation.

"Next and most interesting, I think, as showing that I was right in the matter of the Famous Fountain, or spring in the garden, behind Betty Braithwaite's house. There exists in Hawkshead near this house a covered-in place or shed, to which all the village repair for their drinking-water, and always have done so. It is known by the name of the Spout House, and the water-which flows all the year from a longish spout, with an overflow one by its side-comes direct from the little drop well in Betty B.'s garden, after having its voice stripped and boxed therein; and, falling out of the spout into a deep stone basin and culvert, runs through the town to join the Town Beck.

"So wedded are the Hawkshead folk to this, their familiar fountainhead, that though water is supplied in stand-pipes now from a Reservoir, the folks won't have it, and come here to this spout-house, bucket and jug in hand, morn, noon and night. I have never seen anything so like a continental scene as the gathering at Hawkshead spout-house.

"Lastly, there is a very aged thorn tree in the churchyard-blown over but propped up-in which the forefathers of the hamlet used to sit as boys (in the thorn, that is, not the churchyard), and which has been worn smooth by many Hawkshead generations. The tradition is, that 'Wordsworth used to sit a deal in it when at school.'"

NOTE IV. THE HAWKSHEAD MORNING WALK :

SUMMER VACATION.

(See p. 202.)

If the farm-house where Wordsworth spent the evening before this memorable morning walk was either at Elterwater or High Arnside, and the homeward pathway led across the ridge of Ironkeld, either by the old mountain road (now almost disused), or over the pathless fells, there are two points from either of which the Sea might be seen in the distance. The one is from the heights looking down to the Duddon estuary, across the Coniston valley; the other is from a spot nearer Hawkshead, where Morecambe Bay is visible. In the former case "the meadows and the lower grounds" would be those in Yewdale; in the latter case, they would be those between Latterbarrow and Hawkshead; and, on either alternative, the "solid mountains" would be those of the Coniston group-the Old Man and Wetherlam. It is also possible that the course of the walk was over the Latterbarrow fells, or heights of Colthouse, but from the reference to the sunrise "not unseen " from the copse and field, through which the "homeward pathway wound,"

it may be supposed that the course of this walk was south-east, and therefore not over these fells, when his back would have been to the sun. Dr Cradock's note to the text (p. 202) sums up all that can "be safely said;" but Mr Rawnsley has supplied me with the following interesting remarks:-"After a careful reading of the passage describing the poet's return from a festal night, spent in some farm-house beyond the hills, I am quite unable to say that the path from High Arnside over the Ironkeld range entirely suits the description. Is it not possible that the lad had school-fellows whose parents lived in Yewdale ? If he had, and was returning from the party in one of the Yewdale farms, he would, as he ascended towards Tarn Howes, and faced about south, to gain the main Coniston road, by traversing the meadows between Borwick ground and the top of the Hawkshead and Coniston Hill, command a view of the sea that lay laughing at a distance;' and 'near, the solid mountains-Wetherlam and Coniston Old Man-would shine bright as the clouds.' I think this is likely to have been the poet's track, because he speaks of labourers going forth to till the fields; and the Yewdale valley is one that is (at its head) chiefly arable, so that he would be likelier to have gazed on them there than in the vale of Hawkshead itself. One is here, however—as in a former passage, when we fixed on Yewdale as the one described as being a 'cultured vale'-obliged to remember that in Wordsworth's boyhood wheat was grown more extensively than is now the case in these parts. Of course, the Furness Fell, above Colthouse, might have been the scene. It is eminently suited to the description."

NOTE V.-DOROTHY WORDSWORTH AT CAMBRIDGE IN 1808. THE ASH TREE AT ST JOHN'S COLLEGE. (See p. 232.)

The following is an extract from a letter of Dorothy Wordsworth's to Lady Beaumont at Coleorton, dated "14th August," probably in 1808:

"We reached Cambridge at half-past nine. In our way to the Inn we stopped at the gate of St John's College to set down one of our passengers. The stopping of the carriage roused me from a sleepy musing, and I was awe-stricken with the solemnity of the old gateway, and the light from a great distance within streaming along the pavement. When they told me it was the entrance to St John's College, I was still more affected by the gloomy yet beautiful sight before me, for I thought of my dearest brother in his youthful days passing through that gateway to his home, and I could have believed that I saw him there even then, as I had seen him in the first year of his residence. I