No More Learning

And then, . . . 1807. ]


[Variant 10:

1836.

. . . she'd lost . . . 1807. ]



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FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: There was no sub-title in the edition of 1807. --Ed. ]



Charles Lamb wrote to Wordsworth in 1815, referring to
the revisions of this and other poems:

"I am glad that you have not sacrificed a verse to those scoundrels.
I
would not have had you offer up the poorest rag that lingered upon the
stript shoulders of little Alice Fell, to have atoned all their
malice; I would not have given 'em a red cloak to save their souls. "

See 'Letters of Charles Lamb' (Ainger), vol. i. p. 283. --Ed.





* * * * *





BEGGARS


Composed March 13th and 14th, 1802. --Published 1807


[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. Met, and described to me by my sister,
near the quarry at the head of Rydal Lake, [A] a place still a chosen
resort of vagrants travelling with their families. --I. F. ]

The following are Dorothy Wordsworth's references to this poem in her
Grasmere Journal. They justify the remark of the late Bishop of Lincoln,

"his poems are sometimes little more than poetical versions of her
descriptions of the objects which she had seen, _and he treated them
as seen by himself_. "

(See
'Memoirs of Wordsworth', vol. i. pp.