"I spent a week there (the Swan Inn) early in the fifties, and well
remember the sign over the door distinguishable from afar: the inn,
little more than a cottage (the only one), with clean well-sanded
floor, and rush-bottomed chairs: the landlady, good old soul, one day
afraid of burdening me with some old coppers, insisted on retaining
them till I should return from an uphill walk, when they were duly tendered
to me.
William Wordsworth
"
...
"Brutus will start a Spirit as soon as Caesar!"
London, etc. etc., 1819,--Ed.]
[Footnote B: See 'The Seasons' (Summer), ll. 977-79.--Ed.]
[Footnote C: Such is the progress of refinement, this rude piece of
self-taught art has been supplanted by a professional production.--W. W.
1819.
Mr.
William Davies writes to me,
"I spent a week there (the Swan Inn) early in the fifties, and well
remember the sign over the door distinguishable from afar: the inn,
little more than a cottage (the only one), with clean well-sanded
floor, and rush-bottomed chairs: the landlady, good old soul, one day
afraid of burdening me with some old coppers, insisted on retaining
them till I should return from an uphill walk, when they were duly tendered
to me.
Here I learnt many particulars of Hartley Coleridge,
dead shortly before, who had been a great favourite with the host and
hostess. The grave of Wordsworth was at that time barely grassed
over."--Ed.]
[Footnote D: See Wordsworth's note [Note I to this poem, below], p.
109.--Ed.]
[Footnote E: A mountain of Grasmere, the broken summit of which presents
two figures, full as distinctly shaped as that of the famous cobler,
near Arracher, in Scotland.--W. W. 1819.]
[Footnote F: A term well known in the North of England, as applied to
rural Festivals, where young persons meet in the evening for the purpose
of dancing.--W. W. 1819.]
[Footnote G: At the close of each strathspey, or jig, a particular note
from the fiddle summons the Rustic to the agreeable duty of saluting his
Partner.
