n094
The friend is Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwath, a local antiquary. See Owen and Smyser
for more details on Wilkinson and the story Wordsworth tells here.
n093
Wordsworth quotes from Thomas West’s The Antiquities of Furness (1774).
n092
John Brown (1715-1766). Praising him as “the first who led the way to a worthy admiration
of this country,” Wordsworth probably recalls Brown’s A Description of the Lake at Keswick (1767), a book mentioned by name later in the Guide. Brown’s “Now Sunk the Sun” first appeared in Richard Cumberland’s Odes (1776) and was reprinted in West’s Guide, editions 2–11, where Wordsworth may have encountered it (Wu, Wordsworth’s Reading, 1770–1799, 19). The poem also appeared in various contemporary anthologies, identified as a
“rhapsody” inspired by the Westmorland lakes.
n091
Wordsworth alludes to the opening chapter of Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759): “The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence
of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley…surrounded on every side by mountains,
of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could
be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock.”
n090
Paradise Lost, IV.606-07.
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).
n087
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.
