1. 252. By the Colonade is meant an avenue of fine chestnut trees, leading up to the Rustic Bridge.

1. 260. The word umbrella (a little shade'-dimin.; from Latin umbra) as used here and in Bk. iv. 552, seems to denote a sun-shade or parasol. Umbrellas have been used for this purpose in the East from time immemorial; and they are found carved on the bas-reliefs at Persepolis. But the common use of them by men in this country, as a protection from rain, dates from Cowper's own days. The old dictionaries of Florio, Phillips, and Bailey show us that the umbrella '-otherwise called ' umbrel,' or ' umbrello' -was imported from Italy for the use of women, as a defence against both sun and rain, in the seventeenth century, or even the latter part of the sixteenth. Swift's Description of a City Shower, in The Tatler, No. 238 (Oct. 1710), informs us that even

'The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with halting strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides;' but that its use was still confined to women appears from Gay's Trivia (1712), Bk. i. 217:

'Britain in winter only knows its aid,

To guard from chilly showers the walking maid.'

Jonas Hanway, the philanthropic founder of the Magdalen Hospital (born 1712, died 1786) is said to have been the first man who carried an umbrella for rain, in the streets of London. He was a Russia merchant, and published an account of his Travels in Persia in 1753; and it was probably about this date that he introduced this adaptation of the Oriental custom to our climate. Horace Walpole, describing the punishment of Dr. Shebbeare for libel, Dec. 5, 1758, says,' The man stood in the pillory, having a footman holding an umbrella to keep off the rain.' (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, iii. 153). This umbrella was specially noticed by Mr. Justice Dennison, in the judgment which he pronounced against Arthur Beardmore, the Under-Sheriff, of Middlesex, for contempt of court in remitting a part of the Doctor's sentence. The first umbrella seen in Bristol was red, and came from Leghorn in 1780 (Notes and Queries, Ist ser., ii. 491); and the first in Glasgow was brought from Paris by Dr. Jamieson in 1782 (Ibid. I. ii. 25).

1. 262. Benevolus ;- John Courtenay Throckmorton, Esq., of Weston Underwood'-C. He succeeded his grandfather Sir Robert, as fifth Baronet of Coughton Court, co. Warwick, in 1791; and dying without issue in 1819, was succeeded by his brother Sir George, sixth Baronet, 'You say well, that in Mr. Throckmorton we have a peerless neighbour; we have so. In point of information upon all important subjects, in respect too of expression and address, and in short, everything that enters into the idea of a gentleman, I have not found his equal.'-To Lady Hesketh, Dec. 4, 1787. Weston came to this family through the marriage of Thomas Throckmorton, High Sheriff of Warwick and Leicester in 5 Edw. IV., with Margaret, daughter and coheir of Sir Robert Olney of Weston, Knight.

1. 267. The Bridge spanned a brook, which, after winding through the park, crossed the road leading from Olney to Northampton, at a place called Overs-Bridge.

1. 268. Cp. Hamlet, iv. 7:

'There is a willow grows ascant the brook,' &c.

1. 278. Ascending from the Rustic Bridge, along the northern boundary of the park, a walk under oaks and elms' through which is seen 'the embattled tower' of Emberton Church (see Bk. vi. 57-82), leads up to the Alcove. This was a covered seat or summer-house, which crowned the summit. It had six sides or compartments, of which three were left open for the purpose of viewing the surrounding scenery.

1. 283. Cp. Gray's Elegy, 1. 81:

'Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply."

1. 289. By a speculative height' Cowper seems to mean one from which the spectator commands an extensive view ;—such a height as that described by Virgil, Aen. i. 180:

'Aeneas scopulum interea conscendit, et omnem

Prospectum late pelago petit.'

This meaning of the word is not precisely recognised in our dictionaries; though they commonly define it as belonging to speculation,' whether in its literal sense of observation by the sight,' or in its (now more common) metaphorical one of 'examination by the mind.' Othello (Act i. 3) speaks of the liability of his 'speculative and active instruments' to be 'sealed with wanton dulness.' The commentators take these words to mean his eyes and limbs, as the instruments of speculation and action. Hooke in his History of the Royal Society, iv. 30, applies the term 'speculative glasses' to telescopes. 1. 313. Lord of the Wood. Cp. Spenser's Fairy Queene, I. i. 8: 'The builder oake, sole king of forrests all.'

1. 316. dewy eve;-from Par. Lost, i. 742:

'From morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.'

1. 320. the woods in scarlet honours. Cp. Hor. Epod. xi. 6:

'December

And Virgil, Georg. ii. :

'Frigidus et sylvis aquilo decussit honorem.'

1. 323. At Olney the Ouse changes its character, and its course becomes so winding that the distance from that place to St. Nest's, which is about twenty miles by land is about seventy by the stream.'-S. i. 140; where Southey proceeds to quote from Drayton: (Polyolbion Song 22).

'Ouse having Oulney past, as she were waxed mad

From her first stayder course immediately doth gad,
And in meandered gyres doth whirl herself about,

That, this way, here and there, back, forward, in and out;

And like a wanton girl, oft doubling in her gait,

In labyrinth like turns and twinings intricate,

Through those rich fields doth run.'

1. 328. The Naiades were (in the Greek and Roman mythology) the nymphs presiding over fountains, wells, and rivulets; and were generally represented as lovely virgins leaning upon an urn, whence issued a stream of water. They had their name from Gr. váw, to flow. Between the short and sharp declivity' leading down from the Alcove, and the 'reascent,' is a narrow channel cut for the purpose of draining the hollow, and which is generally dry in the summer. This the poet has personified as the Naiad or Nymph of the Rill. Cp. Table Talk, 1. 693; and Keble's Christian Year, Monday in Easter Week:

'Some sister nymph, beside her urn

Reclining night and day,

'Mid reeds and mountain fern.'

1. 331. the lord;-see note on 1. 262. When Mr. Throckmorton succeeded to Weston Underwood in 1782, he allowed Cowper (though then personally unknown to him) to retain the key of the park; to which he afterwards added that of his private pleasure-grounds, and finally that of his valuable library.

6

11. 332-4. Cp. Bk. iii. 719-24.

1. 342. Cp. Pope's Imit. of Cowley; The Garden,' 1. 13:

'Here aged trees cathedral walks compose.'

Wordsworth; Labourers' Hymns:

An altar is in each man's cot,

A church in every grove that spreads

Its living roof above our heads.'

We have scenes at Weston worthy of description. One of them has been much improved; I mean the lime walk. By the help of the axe and the woodbill, which have of late been constantly employed in cutting out all straggling branches that intercepted the arch, Mr. Throckmorton has now defined it with such exactness, that no cathedral in the world can show one of more magnificence and beauty.'-To Lady Hesketh, July 28, 1788. Warburton writes in his Itinerarium Curiosum, p. 68 (apud S. vi. 13): The cloisters in this Cathedral [at Gloucester] are beautiful beyond anything I ever saw . . The idea of it is taken from a walk of trees, whose branching heads are curiously imitated by the roof.'

1. 364. Cp. Shakspeare's primal eldest curse,' Hamlet iii. 3; and see Genesis iii. 19.

1. 365. Cp. Par. Lost, x. 1053:

'On me the curse aslope

Glanced on the ground: with labour I must earn
My bread; what harm? idleness had been worse.'

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11. 367-71. Cp. Pascal, Pensées, xxv. 67: Notre nature est dans le mouvement, le repos entier est la mort.'

11. 377-82. Yardley Oak. See the poem of that name, p. 204. Virgil, Aeneid iv. 443 :

'Consternunt terram concusso stipite frondes ;

Ipsa haeret scopulis, et quantum vertice ad auras
Aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.'

Cp.

11. 389-95. Cp. Table Talk, 1. 744; Task, i. 755; iv. 207; v. 181, (where see note). Cp. too Pope's Dunciad, iv. 341:

Thee too, my Paridel! she marked thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair,

And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The pains and penalties of idleness.'

Matthew Green, The Spleen, 1. 600:

And pleasures fled to, to redress
The sad fatigue of idleness.'

And Young's Love of Fame, Satire, v. (S. vi. 15):

With anxious care they labour to be glad :
What bodily fatigue is half so bad?'

11. 447-54. Cp. Truth, ll. 1-6; and Swift's description of a calenture, in his South Sea Project, (Works, ed. Scott, vol. xiv. p. 148):

So by a calenture misled,

The mariner with rapture sees,
On the smooth ocean's azure bed,
Enamell'd fields and verdant trees.
With eager haste he longs to rove
In that fantastic scene, and thinks
It must be some enchanted grove;

And in he leaps, and down he sinks.'

1. 455. The Spleen used to be regarded as the reservoir of all the peccant humours of the body; and just as the liver was supposed to be the seat of erotic passions, and the heart is still spoken of as that of the affections, so

the spleen' came to mean anger, ill-humour, discontent, or melancholy. Spleen-wort, a fern of the genus Asplenium, was so named because it was thought to be a sovereign remedy for affections of this nature. French writers are fond of attributing' le spleen' to the English as a nation. 1. 465. A pedlar's pack. Cp. Persius, Satire iv. 24:

'Sed, praecedenti spectatur mantica tergo.'

1. 493. Cp. Truth, 1. 176, and Spenser's Epitaph on Sir P. Sidney:

And farewell merry hearts,

The gift of guiltless minds.'

1. 516. Cp. Par. Lost, ix. 247:

But if much converse perhaps

Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield;
For solitude sometimes is best society,

And short retirement urges sweet return.'

1. 524. Around his waist are forests braced:' Byron.

1. 527. goss; the reading of ed. 1785 and 1786. Gorse (to which the word was altered in 1787) is still pronounced goss in Norfolk. Shakspeare has Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns' (Tempest, iv. 1). Deform;-(ed. 1785, 1786). Milton uses this adjective, Par. Lost, ii. 706. Altered to deform'd' in ed. 1787. (Cp. Yardley Oak, 1. 5, p. 204).

1. 531. We have a scent in the fields about Olney which, even after attentive examination, I have never been able to account for. It proceeds, as far as I can find, neither from herb, nor tree, nor shrub: I suppose therefore that it is in the soil. It is exactly the scent of amber, when it has been rubbed hard, only more potent. I have never observed it except in hot weather, or in places where the sun shines powerfully, and from which the air is excluded. I had a strong poetical desire to describe it, when I was writing the Common scene in the Task, but feared lest the unfrequency of such a singular property in the earth, should have tempted the reader to ascribe it to a fanciful nose at least [if not] to have suspected it for a deliberate fiction.'-To Lady Hesketh, Dec. 6, 1785.

1. 556. After thanking Hill for two excellent prints,' Cowper writes (May 24, 1788): 'I cannot say that poor Kate resembles much the original, who was neither so young nor so handsome as the pencil has represented her.'

1. 569. the pedigree they claim;—viz. from Egypt. The English name 'Gypsy,' and the Hungarian Pharaoh-nepet' (Pharaoh's people), applied to this race, testify to the popular (but erroneous) belief that they are of Egyptian origin. They were proscribed by Stat. 22 Hen. VIII. c. 10 (1530) as the 'outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians.' There is a legend that they were expelled for having refused hospitality to Joseph and Mary, with the infant Saviour, on the banks of the Nile; and it is stated that when they first appeared in Europe, circ. 1418, they were led by one who styled himself 'Duke Michael of Little Egypt.' But in Egypt itself, where they are numerous, they are regarded as strangers quite as much as in Europe; and their language affords ample proof that they are in reality of Indian origin. One of their names for themselves is Sinte, as coming from Sind, i. e. India; and the Turks call them Tchingani,' from a tribe still existing near the mouth of the Indus (Tshin-calo, black Indians). They much resemble the Nuls or Bazegurs, a wandering race in Hindustan, of very low repute amongst the other Hindoos; and it is conjectured that they belonged to the Soudras, a very low Indian caste, and were expelled by Timour Beg, c. 1390. In February 1856 Sir H. Rawlinson read before the Royal Geographical Society of London a paper on the migrations of the