"DEAR SIR-I have failed to find the exact word used by Wordsworth-muccawiss. The nearest to it is 'moshkaois,' which signifies 'bittern,' a water-fowl of the diver class, to which the name has reference, it being a derivative from a verb meaning to rise to the surface of the water. The word is no doubt of Algonkin origin, and I would suggest that you write to the Algonkin scholar, par excellence, of our country, Colonel J. Hammond Trumbull, Hartford, Conn., who is both able and willing to solve all the enigmas of that difficult tongue.— Very truly yours, D. G. BRINTON." Henry Reed, Esq.” "No. 400 CHEstnut Street, PHILADELPHIA, "October 2nd, 1883. "MY DEAR Mr. Knight-I enclose a letter from Colonel Trumbull, which I think you will find satisfactory.-Yours very sincerely, HENRY REED." 'HARTFORD, CONN., September 29th, 1883. " HENRY REED, Esq., Philadelphia. "DEAR SIR-Wordsworth's Muccawis' was, certainly, a Whip-poor-will, and he must have taken the Indian name, directly or at second-hand, from Carver's Travels. Among the birds found in the interior parts of North America,' Carver (chap. 18) describes the Whipper-will, or, as it is termed by the Indians, the Muckawis. . . . As soon as night comes on, these birds will place themselves on the fences, stumps, or stones that lie near some house, and repeat their melancholy notes without any variation till midnight,' etc. So Wordsworth's Melancholy muccawis Repeated, o'er and o'er, his plaintive cry. "I have an impression-which I have not just now leisure to verify that Carver's description of this and some other American birds was reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine. Two or three English editions of the Travels had been printed before The Excursion was written. "I find no other authority for this 'Indian' name. The Chippeway name for the Whip-poor-will is (as given by Tanner or Dr. E. James) Wawonaissa. Nuttall states, the Delaware name was Wecoális: Zeisberger wrote it Wecoolis. — Yours sincerely, J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL." "P.S.-Carver did not name 'the merry mocking-bird 'which Wordsworth makes the companion of the 'Muccawis'; but Campbell had heard of the merry mock-bird's song,' and copied a description of it from Ashe's Travels in America, in a note to Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), pt. i. st. 3." Since receiving these letters I have ascertained that Wordsworth had in his library at Rydal Mount-whether he had it at Allan Bank I cannot say—a copy of one of the English editions of Carver's Travels. Compare Wanderings in South America, etc., by Charles Waterton-a work which was also in Wordsworth's library at Rydal. I quote from a recent edition (1879). See pp. 99, III, 199, and 488 :— "When in thy hammock, should the thought of thy little crosses and disappointments, in thy ups and downs through life, break in upon thee, and throw thee into a pensive mood, the owl will bear thee company. She will tell thee that hard has been her fate too; and at intervals 'Whip-poor-will' and 'Willy-come-go' will take up the tale of sorrow. Ovid has told thee how the owl once boasted the human form, and lost it for a very small offence; and were the poet alive now, he would inform thee, that Whip-poor-will' and 'Willy-comego' are the shades of these poor African and Indian slaves, who died worn out and broken-hearted. They wail and cry, 'Whip-poor-will' and 'Willy-come-go' all night long; and often, when the moon shines, you see them sitting on the green turf, near the houses of those whose ancestors tore them from the bosom of their helpless families, which all probably perished through grief and want, after their support was gone" (p. 99). "The Caprimulgus wheels in busy flight around the canoe, while Whip-poor-will' sits on the broken stump near the water's edge, complaining as the shades of night set in" (p. III). The following is from Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of America, vol. i. p. 422, by John James Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831. "Whip-poor-will, Caprimulgus vociferus, a species of Night-jar. Immediately after the arrival of these birds their notes are heard in the dusk and through the evening, in every part of the thickets, and along the skirts of the woods. They are clear and loud, and to me are more interesting than those of the Nightingale. The Whip-poor-will continues its lively song for several hours after sunset, and then remains silent until the first dawn of day, when its notes echo through every vale, and along the declivities of the mountains, until the beams of the rising sun scatter the darkness that overhung the face of Nature. Hundreds are often heard at the same time in different parts of the wood, each trying to outdo the others. . . . The cry consists of three distinct notes, the first and last of which are emphatical and sonorous, the intermediate one less so. These three notes are preceded by a low cluck, which seems preparatory to the others. A fancied resemblance which its notes have to the syllables whip-poor-will has given rise to the common name of the bird.” text. NOTE D (See p. 173) A translation of the passage from Pausanias is quoted in the I append extracts from some letters I have received on the subject. The first are from Mr. Heard, Fettes College, Edinburgh. October 5th. I send you a rather suspect "I cannot find a reference to Cephisus; but passage in point from Homer, Iliad, 23, 140. Wordsworth had this passage in mind, for no commentator I have quotes a parallel; in which case he has either forgotten Spercheius as the river, or substituted, on purpose, the better known Attic river. 66 'Achilles offers to the dead Patroclus the locks which his father had vowed to Spercheius, if ever he returned to his native land: ἔνθ ̓ αὖτ ̓ ἄλλ ̓ ἐνόησε ποδάρκης διος ̓Αχιλλεύς· ὀχθήσας δ' ἄρα εἶπεν ἰδὼν ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον Σπερχεί ̓, ἄλλως σοίγε πατὴρ ἠρήατο Πηλεὺς κεῖσέ με νοστήσαντα φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαϊαν σοί τε κόμην κερέειν. October 13th. "I have discovered the reference to the Cephisus. It is from Pausanias, 1, 37, 3. I transcribe the passage: you will notice the reference to the Spercheius of the Iliad. “ πρὶν δὲ διαβῆναι τὸν Κηφισόν, Θεοδώρου μνῆμά ἐστι τραγῳσίαν ὑποκριναμένου τῶν καθ ̓ αὑτὸν ἄριστα. ἀγάλματα δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ ποταμῷ Μνησιμάχης, τὸ δὲ ἑτερον ἀνάθημα κειρομένου οἱ τὴν κόμην τοῦ παιδὸς ἐπὶ τῷ Κηφισῷ. καθεστάναι δὲ ἐκ παλαιοῦ καὶ τοῖς πᾶσι τοῦτο Ἕλλησι τῇ Ομήρου τις ἂν τεκμαίροιτο ποιήσει, ὃς τὸν Πηλέα εὔξασθαί φησι τῷ Σπερχειῷ κερεῖν ἀνασωθέντος ἐκ Τροίας ̓Αχιλλέως τὴν κόμην. "There can be little doubt that Wordsworth had this passage in mind. The Cephisus is the Attic one; this is a statue, which Pausanias saw on the banks of the river, of the son of Mnesimache cutting his locks over the stream." Professor Campbell writes:-"The Homeric passage is Iliad, 23, 140-151, where Achilles cuts off for Patroclus the lock of hair, which his father Peleus had vowed to the river Spercheius in case of his son's safe return. This is referred to by Plato,-Rep. 3, 391 B,-who regards it as an act of impiety to have given that, which was sacred to the river, to a dead body. "Unless the passage in Pausanias is singularly apposite, I should think that this passage must have been in Wordsworth's mind, and that by a perfectly legitimate use of poetic freedom, in speaking of the later Greek civilisation, he had put the Attic in place of the Phthiotic river." Since receiving Mr. Heard's letter, I have found that Wordsworth possessed a copy of Thomas Taylor's translation of Pausanias's Description of Greece, published in 1794, a copy of that work having been sold at the Rydal Mount sale in 1859. Bishop Wordsworth of St. Andrews has also directed my attention to the following note to Pope's translation of the Iliad, a copy of which his uncle possessed. Book xxiii. 175. "It was the custom of the ancients not only to offer their own hair, but likewise to consecrate that of their children to the river-gods of their country. This is what Pausanias shews in his Attics; Before you pass the Cephisa, says he, you find the tomb of Theodorus, who was the most excellent actor of his time for tragedy; and, on the banks you see two statues, one of Mnesimachus, and the other of his son, who cut off his hair in honour of the rivers; for that this was in all ages the custom of the Greeks, may be inferred from Homer's poetry, where Peleus promises by a solemn vow to consecrate to the river Sperchius the hair of his son, if he returns safe from the Trojan war. This custom was likewise in Egypt, where Philostratus tells us that Memnon consecrated his hair to the Nile. This practice of Achilles was imitated by Alexander at the funeral of Hephæstion." It is likely that Wordsworth had read this note to the annotated edition (1763) of Pope's Homer; but it is also probable that he was familiar with the passage in Pausanias. NOTE E (See p. 303) Many particulars regarding John Gough may be found in Cornelius Nicholson's Annals of Kendal, pp. 355-368 (Whitaker and Coy., 1861). He was born in 1757 and died in 1825. "Before the completion of his third year, he was attacked with small-pox, which deprived him of his sight. The whole globe of the left eye was destroyed: the damage done to the other was not so extensive: for, though the greater part of the cornea was rendered opaque, there was a minute pellucid speck to the right of the pupil, which permitted a ray of light to fall upon the verge of the retina, and thus he was enabled to distinguish between day and night: but he had no perception of the form or colour of objects around him; so that, for all useful purposes, vision was completely lost." But his marvellous sense of touch, as described by Wordsworth, was in no degree exaggerated. In his eighth summer, he began the study of botany; and pursued it systematically in his thirteenth year. "His method of examining plants must be briefly told. Systems of classification were but little valued, except so far as they aided him in recognising individual form. The plant to be examined was held by the root or base in one hand, while the fingers of the other travelled slowly upwards, over the stem, branches, and leaves, till they reached the flower. If the species had been already met with, this procedure was sufficient for its recognition; if it proved to be a novelty, its class was first determined by the insertion of the tip of his tongue within the flower: thus he discovered the number and arrangement of the stamens and pistils. When the flower was small he requested his reader to ascertain these points with a lens. The class and order being determined, the genus was next worked out, word by word of the description, so far at least as the state of the specimen would allow. But his perceptive power over form was most conspicuous in the analysis of species. It was truly wonderful to witness the rapidity with which his fingers ran among the |