One of the MS. readings of the ninth line of this sonnet gives the date of the incident as “now seven years gone"; but I leave the date of composition undetermined. If we could know accurately the date of the "first visit " to the district with his sister (referred to in the Fenwick note), and if we could implicitly trust this MS. reading, it might be possible to fix it; but we can do neither. Wordsworth visited the Lake District with his sister as early as 1794, and in December 1799 he took up his abode with her at Dove Cottage. I have no doubt that the sonnet belongs to the year 1806, or was composed at an earlier date. As to the locality of the rill, the late Rev. R. Perceval Graves, of Dublin, wrote to me : "It was in 1843, when quitting the parsonage at Bowness, I went to reside at Dovenest, that, calling one day at Rydal Mount, I was told by both Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth, as a fact in which I should take a special interest, that the 'little unpretending rill' associated by the poet with 'the immortal spirit of one happy day,' was the rill which, rising near High Skelgill at the back of Wansfell, descends steeply down the hill-side, passes behind the house at Dovenest, and crossing beneath the road, enters the lake near the gate of the drive which leads up to Dovenest. "The authority on which I give this information is decisive of the question. I have often traced upwards the course of the rill; and the secluded hollow, which by its source is beautified with fresh herbage and wild straggling bushes, was a favourite haunt of mine."-ED. 1807 In few instances is it more evident that the dates which Wordsworth affixed to his poems, in the editions of 1815, 1820, 1836, and 1845, and those assigned in the Fenwick notes -cannot be absolutely relied upon, than in the case of the poems referring to Coleorton. Trusting to these dates, in the absence of contrary evidence, one would naturally assign the majority of the Coleorton poems to the year 1808. But it is clear that, while the sonnet To Lady Beaumont may have been written in 1806, the "Inscription" For a Seat in the Groves of Coleorton, beginning Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound, was written, not in 1808 (as stated by Wordsworth himself), but in 1811; and that the other "Inscription" designed for a Niche in the Winter-garden at Coleorton, belongs (I think) to the same year; a year in which he also wrote the sonnet on Sir George Beaumont's picture of Bredon Hill and Cloud Hill, beginning Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay. When the dates are so difficult to determine, there is a natural fitness in bringing all the poems referring to Coleorton together, so far as this can be done without seriously interfering with chronological order. The two “ Inscriptions" intended for the Coleorton grounds, which were written at Grasmere in 1811, are therefore printed along with the poems of 1807; the precise date of each being given so far as it can be ascertained -underneath its title. Several political sonnets, and others, were written in 1807; also the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, and the first and larger part of The White Doe of Rylstone, with a few minor fragments. But, for reasons stated in the notes to The White Doe of Rylstone (see p. 191), I have assigned that poem to the year 1808. The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle forms as natural a preface to The White Doe, as The Force of Prayer, a Tradition of Bolton Abbey, is its natural appendix. The latter was written, however, before The White Doe of Rylstone was finished. It would be easier to fix the date of some of the poems written between the years 1806 and 1808, if we knew the exact month in which the two volumes of 1807 were published; but this, I fear, it is impossible to discover now. On November 10th, 1806, Wordsworth wrote to Sir George Beaumont from Coleorton, "In a day or two I mean to send a sheet or two of my intended volume to the press" (evidently referring to the “ Poems" of 1807). On the following day-I Ith November 1806-Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Lady Beaumont, "William has written two other poems, which you will see when they are printed. He composes frequently in the grove. We have not yet received a sheet from the printer." On the 15th November 1806 she again wrote to Lady Beaumont (from Coleorton), "My brother works very hard at his poems, preparing them for the press. Miss Hutchinson is the transcriber." In a subsequent letter from Coleorton, undated, but bearing the post-mark February 18, 1807, she is speaking of her brother's poetical labour, and says, “He must go on, when he begins: and any interruptions (such as attending to the progress of the workmen and planning the garden) are of the greatest use to him; for, after a certain time, the progress is by no means proportioned to the labour in composition; and if he is called from it by other thoughts, he returns to it with ten times the pleasure, and the work goes on proportionately the more rapidly." From this we may infer that the years 1806-7 were productive ones, but it is disappointing that the dates of the composition of the poems are so difficult to determine.-ED. TO LADY BEAUMONT Composed 1807,-Published 1807 [The winter garden of Coleorton, fashioned out of an old quarry, under the superintendence and direction of Mrs. Wordsworth and my sister Dorothy, during the winter and spring we resided there.-I. F.] One of the "Miscellaneous Sonnets."-ED. LADY! the songs of Spring were in the grove 5 A labyrinth, Lady! which your feet shall rove. And all the mighty ravishment of spring. In The title, To Lady Beaumont, was first given in 1845. 1807 it was To the ——; in 1815, To the Lady ; and from 1820 to 1843, To the Lady Beaumont. This winter garden, fashioned by the Wordsworths out of the old quarry at Coleorton, during Sir George and Lady Beaumont's absence in 1807, exists very much as it was at the beginning of the century. The "perennial bowers and murmuring pines" may still be seen, little altered since 1807. The late Sir George Beaumont (whose grandfather was first-cousin to the artist Sir George, Wordsworth's friend), with strong reverence for the past, and for the traditions of literary men which have made the district famous since the days of his ancestor Beaumont the dramatist, and especially for the memorials of Wordsworth's ten months' residence at Coleorton, -took a pleasure in preserving these memorials, very much as they were when he entered in possession of the estates of his ancestors. Such a reverence for the past is not only consistent 1 1827. framing beds of 1807. 1815. with the "improvement of an estate, and its belongings; it is a part of it. Wordsworth, and his wife and sister, were adepts in the laying out of grounds. (See the reference to the poet's joint labour with Wilkinson at Yanwath, p. 2.) It was the Wordsworths also, I believe, who designed the grounds of Fox How- Dr. Arnold's residence, near Ambleside. Similar memorials of the poet survive at Hallsteads, Ullswater. The following is an extract from the letter of Dorothy Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont above referred to, and having the post-mark of February 18, 1807. "For more than a week we have had the most delightful weather. If William had but waited a few days, it would have been no anticipation when he said to you, 'the songs of Spring were in the grove;' for all this week the birds have chanted from morn till evening, larks, blackbirds, thrushes, and far more than I can name, and the busy rooks have joined their happy voices.” Wordsworth, writing to Sir George Beaumont, November 16, 1811, says, “I remember, Mr. Bowles, the poet, objected to the word 'ravishment' at the end of the sonnet to the wintergarden; yet it has the authority of all the first-rate poets, for instance, Milton : 'In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment, " ED. A PROPHECY. FEBRUARY, 1807 Composed 1807. - Published 1807 Included among the "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty," re-named in 1845, "Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."-ED. HIGH deeds, O Germans, are to come from you! * Arminius, or Hermann, the liberator of Germany from the Roman power, A.D. 9-17. Tacitus says of him, "He was without doubt the deliverer of Germany; and, unlike other kings and generals, he attacked the Roman people, not at the commencement, but in the fulness of their power: in battles he was not always successful, but he was invincible in war. He still lives in the songs of the barbarians."-ED. |