No More Learning

"

(p. 121. ) Ed. ]


[Footnote B: Note the meaning, as well as the 'curiosa felicitas', of
this phrase. --Ed. ]


[Footnote C: His Cambridge studies were very miscellaneous, partly owing
to his strong natural disinclination to work by rule, partly to
unmethodic training at Hawkshead, and to the fact that he had already
mastered so much of Euclid and Algebra as to have a twelvemonth's start
of the freshmen of his year.

"Accordingly," he tells us, "I got into rather an idle way, reading
nothing but Classic authors, according to my fancy, and Italian
poetry. As I took to these studies with much interest my Italian
master was proud of the progress I made. Under his correction I
translated the Vision of Mirza, and two or three other papers of the
'Spectator' into Italian. "

Speaking of her brother Christopher, then at Cambridge, Dorothy
Wordsworth wrote thus in 1793:

"He is not so ardent in any of his pursuits as William is, but he is
yet particularly attached to the same pursuits which have so
irresistible an influence over William, _and deprive him of the power
of chaining his attention to others discordant to his feelings. _"

Ed. ]


[Footnote D: April 1804. --Ed. ]


[Footnote E: There is no ash tree now in the grove of St. John's
College, Cambridge, and no tradition as to where it stood.
Covered as it
was--trunk and branch--with "clustering ivy" in 1787, it survived till
1808 at any rate. See Note IV. in the Appendix to this volume, p.
390. --Ed. ]


[Footnote F: See notes on pp. 210 [Footnote F to Book V] and 223
Footnote C to this Book, above]. --Ed. ]


[Footnote G: Before leaving Hawkshead he had mastered five books of
Euclid, and in Algebra, simple and quadratic equations. See note, p. 223
[Footnote C to this Book, above]. --Ed. ]


[Footnote H: Compare the second stanza of the 'Ode to Lycoris':

'Then, Twilight is preferred to Dawn,
And Autumn to the Spring. '

Ed. ]


[Footnote I: Thomson. See the 'Castle of Indolence', canto I.