No More Learning

" What Wordsworth
said to the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge in reference to 'The Brothers'
has been quoted in the note to that poem, p. 203. On the same occasion
he remarked, in reference to 'Michael':

"'Michael' was founded on the son of an old couple having become
dissolute, and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd
having been seven years in building up a sheep-fold in a solitary
valley. "

('Memoirs of Wordsworth', by the late Bishop of Lincoln, vol. ii. p.
305. )

The following extracts from Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, show
the carefulness with which the poem 'Michael' was composed, and the
frequent revisions which it underwent:

'Oct. 11 [1800. ] "We walked up Green-head ghyll in search of a
sheepfold. . . .
The sheepfold is falling away. It is built nearly in the
form of a heart unequally divided. "

13. "William composing in the evening. "

15. "W. composed a little. " . . . "W. again composed at the sheepfold
after dinner. "

18. "W. worked all the morning at the sheepfold, but in vain. He lay
down till 7 o'clock, but did not sleep.