No More Learning

or by the . . . 1800. ]



* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: In an early MS. the title of this poem is 'Description of a
Beggar', and in the editions 1800 to 1820 the title was 'The Old
Cumberland Beggar, a Description'. --Ed. ]


[Footnote B: Wordsworth went to Racedown in 1795, when he was
twenty-five years of age; and was at Alfoxden in his twenty-eighth
year. --Ed. ]


[Footnote C: Compare Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' I. 84:

Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque videre
Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

Ed. ]


[Footnote D: With this poem compare Frederick William Faber's "Hymn,"
which he called 'The Old Labourer', beginning:

What end doth he fulfil!
He seems without a will.
Ed.
]


[Footnote E: In January 1801 Charles Lamb thus wrote to Wordsworth of
his 'Old Cumberland Beggar':

"It appears to me a fault that the instructions conveyed in it are too
direct, and like a lecture: they don't slide into the mind of the
reader while he is imagining no such matter,"

At the same time he refers to

"the delicate and curious feeling in the wish of the Beggar that he
may have about him the melody of birds, although he hears them not. "

('The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p.
163. )--Ed. ]





* * * * *





ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY


Composed 1798. --Published 1798.


[If I recollect right, these verses were an overflowing from 'The Old
Cumberland Beggar'. --I. F. ]

They were published in the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads" (1798),
but 'The Old Cumberland Beggar' was not published till 1800. In an early
MS. , however, the two are incorporated.

In the edition of 1798, the poem was called, 'Old Man Travelling; Animal
Tranquillity and Decay, a Sketch'. In 1800, the title was 'Animal
Tranquillity and Decay.