85. Woodhouselee was on the bank of the Esk, near Auchendinny. The final syllable is lea a meadow. 87. hearths. Obs. the plural. 89. wan, wane, want, the negative prefix un, Lat. vanus, are all of the same family. 91. sate. Perhaps this e was originally added to shew that the chief vowel was long. The A.S. pret. is sæt. We now pronounce the a short, and have dropped the final e. 94. See Introduction. Bothwellhaugh had been pardoned for his part taken at Langside, but amerced of his property. The lands so forfeited were bestowed upon one of the Regent's favourites. 151. 101. wildered bewildered; but this word is scarcely ever now used in its strict sense 108. Arran brand. 110. resistless. Less (=A. S. los, connected with our loss, lose, not with our less) is not often compounded with verbs. Besides resistless occur ceaseless, and hireless; Gower has haveless. See Stud. Man. Eng. Lang., Lect. vi. 110. headlong. See note to D. Vill. 29. 111. poniard Fr. poignard = It. pugnale = Lat. pugio. steed is akin to stud, A. S. stod. 117. selle, the Fr. selle. See Faerie Q. II. ii. 11, &c. 120. carbine Fr. carabine, old Fr. calabrin, from calabre, an old stone-hurling engine, whose name was afterwards transferred to the musket. So musket originally denoted a sparrow-hawk. 124. drink. So bibere aure in Latin, as Hor. Od. II. xvii. 32: "Sed magis Pugnas et exactos tyrannos Densum humeris bibit aure vulgus." 125. quarry. Fr. curée, Lat. corata, "viscères et poumons d'un animal, de cor cœur; la curée étant proprement les poumons et les entrailles du cerf que l'on donne aux chiens après la chasse." (Brachet). Quarrel, a dispute, is a quite distinct word-from Lat. querela. o'er dale and down. A favourite phrase in the old Metrical Romances. 127. base-born bastard. See apud Wedgwood, who derives from the Gael. baos, lust, fornication, a bast ibore" (Rob. Gl. 516), “begetin o bast" (Arthur and Merlin), "born in baste" (Hall). 129. [Linlithgow. Where exactly is this town?] [What is meant by side here?] 131. bigot. Derived by some from Visigoth (see Taylor's Words and Places); by others, from Span. bigote moustache (hombre de bigote = man of spirit and vigour); by others it is held to be pretty much identical with the Flem. beguin, the common stem being the Ital. bigio= = grey, the word referring originally to the dress worn by certain religionists in the 13th century (see Wedgwood's Etym. Dict.). 152. 135. [Explain settled.] 137. hackbut or hagbut="the arquebus with a hooked stock." (Fairholt's Costume in England, Gloss.) "Arquebus is said to be derived from the Italian arca-bonza (corrupted from bocca) signifying a bow with a mouth. Hackbut, or hagbush, is perhaps from the old German hakenbüsche, a hook and gun, or any cylindrical vessel." (Eccleston's Eng. Antiq.) bent = cocked. A word, properly applying to a bow, is here transferred to a gun. Many terms of the old artillery were transferred to the new. See note on carbine, l. 120. The carbine with which the Regent was shot is still preserved at Hamilton 140. Scottish pikes and English bows. "In all ages the bow was the English weapon of victory, and though the Scots, and perhaps the French, were superior in the use of the Palace. spear, yet this weapon was useless, after the distant bow had decided the combat." (Scott's "Advertisement" to Halidon Hill.) 141. Morton, James Douglas, Earl of Morton, was the chief of Darnley's accomplices in the murder of Rizzio. note.) 1 141. 144. [What part of the sentence is clan ?] Macfarlanes. Lennox Highlanders. 145 Glencairn Earl of Glencairn, "a steady adherent of the Regent." (Scott's Parkhead George Douglas of Parkhead, a natural brother of Morton. Cf. 147. Lindesay = Lord Lindsay of the Byres, "the most ferocious and brutal of the Regent's faction, and as such was employed to extort Mary's signature to the deed of resignation presented to her in Lochleven Castle." So Scott's note. See also Tales of a Grandfather, chap. xxxii. and the Abbot, chap. xxii. holt). 149. pennon'd spears. "Pennon, a small flag at the head of a knight's lance" (FairPennant is a various form. 150. [Explain plumage.] 153. vizor="the moveable face-guard of a helmet" (Fairholt). From the Fr. visiere, which is of course ultimately from video. Visard is cognate. 155. truncheon is the Fr. tronçon, from tronc, Lat. truncus. The termination is dim., as in bâton, musketoon, &c. 157. sadden'd made serious. Comp. Rosalind's "sad brow and true maid," As you Like it, III. ii. 228. 161. parts. See Gray's Elegy, l. 1. 166. [What part of the sentence is love here?] 167. As Llewellyn in the Welsh version of one of the oldest tales of the Indo-European It had been recently told in English in a pleasing manner by the Hon. W. R. Spencer : race. "Hell-hound! my child's by thee devoured,' The frantic father cried; And to the hilt his vengeful sword He plunged in Gelert's side." See the whole version in Chambers' Cycl. of Eng. Lit. ii. 380-1. foreign versions, see Dasent's Popular Tales from the Norse. broaches. Brooch is cognate. 170. [What part of the verb, and what of the sentence, is roll?] 153. 173. This is a strange use of groan for groan out, groan away. felon's is virtually an adj. here. [Quote similar phrases.] 189. [What is the meaning of for here ?] For references to old WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. (1) 1770-1791. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, April 7, 1770, the son of the law agent to Sir James Lowther. He was educated at Hawkshead School, Lancashire; whence, in 1787, he proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge. The University seems to have had few attractions for him; he was in Cambridge, by no means of it; see Books III.-VI. of the Prelude. The better part of his nature was not stirred at all there. Neither the studies of the place nor the society excited interest or admiration. He lived his own life, read the books of his own choice-Spenser, Chaucer, Milton (see Prelude, Bk. III.)-enjoyed much his vacations, feeling always that he "was not for that hour, nor for that place." In the summer of 1790 he made his first continental tour, passing through France, then in the first wild hopes of the Revolution, to Switzerland. Early in 1791 he passed his examination for the degree of B.A., for which ordeal he had prepared himself, it seems, by reading Richardson's novels; with so litttle respect was he inspired for the rites of the University. (2) 1791-1797. Released from Cambridge, he led for some years a somewhat unsettled life, but a life of steady observation, and thought, and development. He travelled in Wales, in France, in South England, in Yorkshire, and the Lake country. His most important sojourn was in France. In the aspirations and hopes of the Revolutionists he was an ardent sharer; he thought that the world's great age was beginning anew; and with all his soul he hailed so splendid an æra, see his lines on the French Revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its Commencement, a passage from the Prelude, (printed separately in Coleridge's Friend): "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, The ultimate degradation of that great movement by wild lawlessness, and then by most selfish ambition, alienated Wordsworth's sympathy from it; in its earlier progress it awoke and aroused him infinitely more than any event of the age; it was the chief external event of his life. He returned to England with reluctance towards the close of 1792. In 1795 a friend, by name Calvert, dying, left him some £900-a very memorable bequest, as it left Wordsworth, a plain liver, and a high thinker (see Sonnet Written in London, Sep. 1802), in a position to obey his lofty nature, free from sordid cares. With help in addition of £1000 from his father's estate, his sister, to whom had come a legacy of £100, and he set up house together at Racedown, Dorsetshire. This sister was to the end a most congenial and inspiring presence; see his poems passim, especially Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, &c., July 13, 1798. From Racedown they removed in 1797 to Alfoxden near Nether-Stowey, Somerset, to be near Coleridge, then residing at the latter village. It must be mentioned that Wordsworth had published in 1793 two little volumes of poetry, entitled Descriptive Sketches and The Evening Walk; but they cannot be called Wordsworthian. The poet's formation was only then beginning. (3) 1797-1814. In the influential sympathetic companionship of his sister, and of his new-found friend Coleridge, Wordsworth's spirit soon began to express its real self. With 1797 begins the prime poetic period of his life, culminating with the publication of the Excursion in 1814. To this period belong His share of the Lyrical Ballads, 1st Ed. 1798, 2nd 1800. Peter Bell, written 1798, not published till 1819. The Waggoner, written 1805, not published till 1819. Ode on Intimations of Immortality from recollections of Early Childhood, written 1803-1806. Ode to Duty, written 1805. The White Doe of Rylstone, written 1807. Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, written 1807. Nearly all his noble Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty. The Excursion, published 1814. The three years 1798, 1799, 1800 were by far the most productive lyrically of Wordsworth's life. From 1799 to 1814, he was mainly busy with his great philosophical poem, to be called The Recluse, "containing views of Man, Nature, and Society," of which the Prelude is the "ante-chapel," the Excursion the Second Part of the main work. (Of the First and Third Parts only one book was ever written, and this has never yet been published!) See Preface to the Excursion. Around this magnum opus his minor pieces, "properly arranged,” 'will be found by the attentive Reader to have such connection with" it "as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinary included in" "Gothic churches.' " 99 66 As a theorist, Wordsworth set himself to overthrow the narrow conceptions of poetry that prevailed at the close of the last century. The revolutionary spirit was working in him. In poetry, as in society, there was much barren conventionalism; and he was moved to rebel against it. He put forth a famous manifesto in 1800 in the Preface to the Second Edition of the Lyrical Ballads—as famous in its way as the Declaration of Independence. He certainly did well to be angry with the school of Pope; but it cannot be denied that his indignation led him into some strange paradoxes, into which the sounder criticism of Coleridge declined to follow him. While justly attacking the limits within which the language of poetry was confined in the last century, he went so far as to deny there should be any limits at all. See Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria. Happily his practice did not coincide with his theory in its extremest form. Though in one or two of his earlier poems he attempted to make it do so, he grew wiser. His instinct was better than his doctrine. Both his theory and his practice met with a very cold reception, or rather with a very warm one of opposition. It was by very slow degrees that he won for himself an audience. To the end it was, and is, but "few," but then, as now, it was "fit." The finer spirits of the time recognised the excellence of his genius. For the facts of his domestic life: the winter of 1798-1799 he spent in Germany with his sister, part of the time with Coleridge also; see his I travelled among unknown men. In 1799 he settled amongst "his native mountains," living first at Town End, Grasmere, then at Allan Bank, then temporarily at the Parsonage, from 1813 to the end of his life at Rydal Mount. Meanwhile, in 1802, he married his cousin Mary Hutchinson, the Phantom of delight with "Eyes as stars of Twilight fair, Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair. But all things else about her drawn From May time and the cheerful Dawn." In 1803 he visited Scotland (see Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1803), and made the acquaintance of Scott, then known by his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In 1813 he was appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland. His official duties were happily not oppressive; the salary was now extremely welcome, as his wife had borne him two children (a son and a daughter), and his poems brought him but little money. (4) 1814-1850. The last 36 years of Wordsworth's life passed for the most part serenely and calmly. His means enabled him to enjoy what he most dearly loved-various tours at home and abroad, for he was a confirmed "wanderer." He visited Scotland twice more, Holland, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Wales. His merits as a poet were daily more and more truly appreciated. In 1842 he received a pension from the Crown; in the following year upon Southey's death he was appointed Poet-Laureate. To this period belong Laodamia (written 1814). Artegal and Elidure (written 1815). Dion (written 1816). Ode to Lycoris (written 1817). Ecclesiastical Sonnets. The Egyptian Maid, or the Romance of the Water Lily. He died full of years and of honour in 1850. "The moving accident is not my trade, 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, Hart., Cap. Well. Part II. Wordsworth is essentially the poet of reflection and thought. Of dramatic power and of epic he possessed little. Dramatic writing he essayed with but mean success. He vaguely meditated a great epic poem after the manner of Milton, or rather of Spenser; see Prelude, Book 1: "Time, place, and manners do I seek, and these," &c. But he lacked objective faculty. His genius was altogether introspective and interpretative. "Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, The sleep that is among the lonely hills." Everywhere he heard her deep mysterious speech. There was no rock, no flower, no creature in short, human or other, in the wide world, but for him it was one of Nature's words. What he cultivated in himself was a calm quiet mind, vexed by no tumults such as might make that pure refined voice inaudible to him. The utterances of Nature that his ear caught or seemed to catch he expressed for our hearing, always with much dutiful care and profound sincerity, sometimes with a wonderful force and beauty and an exquisite distinctness of thought and of phrase. It is not surprising that the works of one who wrote so much should vary considerably in merit. Perhaps no poet is more unequal than Wordsworth. It may be said that he was instant in season and out of season; he wooed the Muse at all hours, and she was not always in the humour. But it is also true that few poets have left behind so much that is thoroughly excellent. Some of his smaller pieces are simply perfect. Whatever may have been his poetical theories, however vehemently he may have protested against the over-elaborateness and artificiality-the unspontaneity-of the school of Pope, it is certain that he was himself a |