[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_, book vi. l. 752.--ED.]
[Footnote JA: Compare _L'Allegro_, l. 137--
[Footnote JB: See Wordsworth's note, p. 389.--ED.]
[Footnote JC: Compare Burger's _Pfarrers Tochter_--
[Footnote JD: "This refers to the Greens, a very ancient Grasmere family, settled for generations at Pavement End, which, with a considerable tract of land, is still their property. The poet describes them as dwelling at Gold-rill side, and I have been told that the name was a pure invention to avoid the realism of 'Grasmere,' or 'Pavement End.' Such, however, is not exactly the case. On enquiry from Mr. Fleming Green, one of the family now residing in Grasmere, I find that a small stream to which Wordsworth himself, from some fancy of his own, had given the name of Gold-rill, ran formerly by the road side, and then turned by the side of the farm at Pavement End towards the Lake. When the road was reconstructed, the rill was covered, and can no more be seen there; but it issues freely from a culvert at the back of the premises, and runs by the hedge-side to the Lake. Mr. Fleming Green remembers the rill as it was, and pointed out its course to me. He is a son of one of the 'seven lusty sons' mentioned in the poem. (Mr. Green would read 'six.') He said 'we stuck to the old home till we could no longer stand up in it.' He is one of a race well termed 'lusty.' The 'hoary grandsire' and many of his descendants lie buried in a long row, a little to the left of the path leading from the Church to the lichgate at the north. Among them is little Margaret (her name and age not unrecorded), but her 'daisied hillock three spans long' is now merged in the larger graves of her more aged kindred." (Dr. Cradock to the Editor.)--ED.]