| Romantic Circles

n089

The poet is George Buchanan (1506–1582), the poem “Calendae Maiae.” De Selincourt
gives the Latin lines and supplies this translation from Peter Hume Brown’s 1890 Buchanan
biography:

When, still rejoicing in her birth,
Spring brightened all the new-made earth
And in that happy golden age
Men knew no lawless passions rage,
Thy train of joys embraced the year:
Soft breezes wooed the untilled field
Its blessings all unforced to yield.
Even in such mildest atmosphere
For ever bask those happy isles,
Those blessèd Plains, that never know
Life’s slow decay, or poisoned flow.
Thus ‘mid the still abodes of death
Should steal the soft air’s softest breath,
And gently stir the solemn wood
That glooms o’er Lethe’s dreamless flood.
And, haply when made pure of stain
By cleansing fire, the earth renewed
Shall know her ancient joys again,
Even such mild air shall o’er her brood.

n088

During Wordsworth’s time this bon mot was widely attributed to Rousseau. See, for
instance, The Poetical Works of Anna Seward, II.101 (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1810).

The Lake District is in fact England’s wettest region. Precipitation varies within
its boundaries—Penrith, located in the Eden Valley, receives just 30-35 inches annually,
whereas Seathwaite in Borrowdale receives an average of 130-40—but the region overall
averages more than 80 inches. England as a whole averages around 33 inches per year,
so Wordsworth’s statement is essentially accurate.

n086

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure III.i.9.

n085

Photo: A line of golden Scotch broom shrubs in Cumbria (Roger Darlington, wildflower.org.uk).

n084

The bilberry is a low-growing shrub with edible berries, known in English by many
local names.

n083

From “Fidelity,” first published in the 1807 Poems (vol. 1). The story Wordsworth recalls in the poem, mentioned earlier in the Guide, also inspired Walter Scott’s “Helvellyn.” Scott climbed Helvellyn, England’s third-highest mountain, with Wordsworth in the autumn of 1805. Illustration: Gough monument at the summit of Helvellyn, erected in 1891 (postcard, Rowe Wordsworth Collection, Brigham Young University). The inscription mentions both Scott and Wordsworth.

n082

Jonathan Carver (1732-1780) was an American explorer and travel writer. Wordsworth
has in mind a description from Carver’s Travels through the Interior Parts of North America (1778) in which the author reports on exploring the shore of Lake Superior (pp. 132-33).

n081

The phrase comes from Virgil’s Georgics II.469 and suggests natural lakes of fresh water (as opposed to artificial reservoirs
or ponds). Other writers on landscape, including Gilpin, use this locution as well.

n080

Wordsworth quotes from Walter Savage Landor’s Idyllia Heroica Decem, Librum Phaleuciorum Unum (Heroic Idylls), first published in Pisa in 1820. Owen and Smyser report that Landor had recently
published an essay defending Wordsworth from his critics, so it appears that Wordsworth
was returning a favor by praising Landor’s work from the 1823 Guide forward. The passage, as loosely translated by John Talbot, reads: “You really ought
to visit the fields of Tivoli, and the lake of Albunea, with its leafy floating islands.”
The lake of Albunea is the Lago Albano.