book vii

. ll. 110-115 (see vol. iii. p. 251).--ED.]

[Footnote IK: The chapel of Wytheburn, at the northern or Cumberland side of Dunmail Raise.--ED.]

[Footnote IL: This house, in which Mr. Sympson lived, and which--though no longer the parsonage--still belongs to Wytheburn church, is easily identified. The "blue slabs of mountain-stone," common to all old houses in the vale, remain just as they were, when the old pastor lived, and Wordsworth was his frequent guest. The windows, too, "by shutters weather-fended," are described with minute fidelity.--ED.]

[Footnote IM: Mrs. Sympson was twelve years her husband's junior, and she pre-deceased him by a year and a half.

Compare--

"She, far behind him in the race of years" (l. 226).

And

"Not twice had summer," etc. (l. 247). ED. ]

[Footnote IN: Old Mr. Sympson was found dead in his garden on the opposite side of the road from the cottage, in 1807, in his ninety-second year. There is now a new door into the garden, but the posts are old enough to have been there in Sympson's time.--ED.]

[Footnote IO: The Sympsons are all buried at Grasmere. Their gravestone stands about ten yards north-west from that of their poet, not far from the monument erected in memory of Arthur Hugh Clough. There is only one stone, a low one, with a pointed top. The following is the inscription on it:--"Here lie the remains of the Reverend Jos. Sympson, Minister of Wytheburn for more than 50 years. He died June 27, 1807, aged 92; also of Mary, his wife, who died Jan. 24, 1806, aged 81; also of Eliz. Jane, their youngest Dr., who died Sep. 11, 1801, aged 37."--ED.]

[Footnote IP: The Duddon valley.--ED.]

[Footnote IQ: See the notes to the Duddon sonnets.--ED.]

[Footnote IR: The chapelry of Seathwaite. The reference to "yon hill" suggests that the conversation is carried on at Hackett (rather than Grasmere), whence Wetherlam--which concealed the Duddon valley--would be visible.--ED.]

[Footnote IS: It is so. In the churchyard of Seathwaite a plain stone slab records the fact that he died on the 25th June 1802, in the ninety-third year of his age.--ED.]

[Footnote IT: "The Deaf Man, whose epitaph may be seen in the churchyard at the head of Hawes Water, and whose qualities of mind and heart, and their benign influence in conjunction with his privation, I had from his relatives on the spot."--I. F.

Thomas Holme of Chapel Hill was his name. On his epitaph it is said "he was deprived of the sense of hearing in his youth, and lived about 58 years without the comfort of hearing one word. He reconciled himself to his misfortune by reading, and useful employment." He died in 1773, "aged 67 years."

From this it is clear that we must not look for the "tall pine" or the "plain blue stone" in Grasmere churchyard! and that the localities as well as the narratives of _The Excursion_ are at times composite.--ED.]

[Footnote IU: For another reference to the streams in the Grasmere Vale, compare the _Lines composed at Grasmere_, when Mr. Fox's death was hourly expected (vol. iv. p. 47)--

Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up With which she speaks when storms are gone, A mighty unison of streams! Of all her Voices, One. ED. ]

[Footnote IV: Either Stone Arthur, or Loughrigg. Compare the lines _To the Clouds_, suggested by their appearance on Nab Scar--

Army of Clouds! ye wingéd Host in troops Ascending from behind the motionless brow Of that tall rock, etc. ED. ]

[Footnote IW: "The Blind Man was John Gough, of Kendal, a man known, far beyond his neighbourhood, for his talents and attainments in natural history and science."--I.F. For an account of John Gough, see Appendix, and note [IX] p. 304.--ED.]

[Footnote IX: This John Gough, a friend of Wordsworth's, was one of the first mathematicians of his time, and a most successful teacher. Whewell and King (senior wranglers) were amongst his pupils. So was Dalton. Gough had been deprived of sight by an attack of small-pox, when he was between two and three years of age. He was a great botanist, as is mentioned in the text; and the following remarkable circumstance is recorded of him, showing at once his marvellous memory, and the extreme delicacy of his sense of _touch_. In the _Elegiac Verses_ on his brother John, Wordsworth had described the moss campion, _Silene acaulis_--

It grows upon its native bed Beside our Parting-place; There, cleaving to the ground, it lies With multitude of purple eyes, Spangling a cushion green like moss.

This poem was read to Gough in 1805 (it was not published till 1845), and twelve years afterwards, in 1817, a specimen of the moss campion was placed in his hand, and he said at once, "I have never examined this plant before, but it is _Silene acaulis_." Compare Atkinson's _Worthies of Cumberland_ and note E in the Appendix to this volume, p. 398.--ED.]

[Footnote IY: Compare _Paradise Lost_,