18, 19.

souls;

Mercury (Hermes, the Greek name) is the conductor of

the wand with which he summons and dismisses souls is mentioned

in the Æneid, IV, 242.

27. Compare the Æneid, II, 794, and VI, 699.

58. Thou should'st elude replaced in 1845 the less dignified “That thou should'st cheat."

65. Parcæ, the Fates.

68.

Replaced in 1836 the earlier "Know, virtue were not virtue if

the joys."

71. Erebus, a region of the lower world.

76. In 1815: "The fervor not the impotence of love."

79-81.

This is the subject of the "Alcestis" of Euripides, rendered by R. Browning in "Balaustion's Adventure." Compare Milton's sonnet On his deceased Wife."

82. Vernal in 1827 replaced " beauty's."

83, 84. See Ovid's Metamorphoses, VII, 159-293. Æson, father of Jason, was restored to youth by Medea's art. Compare " Merchant of Venice," V, i, 12.

go. This line and also 1. 157 are alexandrines.
IOI, 102.
Replaced in 1827 the following:

Spake, as a witness, of a second birth
For all that is most perfect upon earth.

Landor had objected to "witness" and "second birth" as savouring of the conventicle. Wordsworth would not admit the objection, but in the next edition he altered the lines. Compare Virgil's Eneid, VI, 637-665.

105. Compare Æneid, VI, 639:

Largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit

Purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera novunt.

115-120. This stanza was added while the poem was going through

the press.

Aulis was a port in Boeotia where the Greek fleet was detained until Artemis was appeased by the sacrifice of Iphigenia.

146. Until 1836 the reading was " Towards a higher object." In his earlier texts Wordsworth treats towards" as a dissyllable, from 1836 onward as a monosyllable. See The Academy, Dec. 2, 1893, p. 487.

147. That end replaced in 1827" this end," probably because "this" occurs in the next line.

160. "We think of Virgil's tender line in a similar passage about Orpheus and Eurydice, Georg. IV, 488 :

Quum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem,

Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes.

To be pardoned indeed, if the fates knew how to pardon.' - W. A. Heard (quoted in Knight's "Wordsworth ").

164-174. The metre changes to distinguish the reflection and the narration of the sequel from the main narrative.

YARROW VISITED ("And is this," etc.).

Written in 1814 and published in 1815. "As mentioned in my verses on the death of the Ettrick Shepherd " (see p. 304), said Wordsworth, "my first visit to Yarrow was in his company. We had lodged the night before at Traquhair, where Hogg had joined us, and also Dr. Anderson, the Editor of the British Poets, who was on a visit to the Manse. Dr. A. walked with us till we came in view of the vale of Yarrow, and, being advanced in life, he then turned back." Wordsworth's wife and her sister Sara Hutchinson were his travelling companions. "I seldom read or think of this poem,” he said, "without regretting that my dear sister was not of the party, as she would have had so much delight in recalling the time when, travelling together in Scotland, we declined going in search of this celebrated stream, not altogether, I will frankly confess, for the reasons assigned in the poem on the occasion."

13. St. Mary's Lake. See notes on "Yarrow Unvisited."

25. The famous Flower. Principal Shairp in his "Aspects of Poetry" ("The Three Yarrows") says that here Wordsworth fell into an inaccuracy; for Mary Scott of Dryhope, the real "Flower of Yarrow," never did lie bleeding on Yarrow, but became the wife of Wat of Harden and the mother of a wide-branching race. Yet Wordsworth speaks of his bed, evidently confounding the lady "Flower of Yarrow" with that "slaughtered youth" for whom so many ballads have sung lament. But doubtless Wordsworth had Logan's "Braes of Yarrow' in his mind, where the lady laments her lover and names him " the flower of Yarrow."

31. The Water-wraith ascended thrice, from Logan's "Braes of Yarrow":

Thrice did the water-wraith ascend,

And gave a doleful groan through Yarrow.

55. Newark's Tower, on the banks of Yarrow, about three miles from Selkirk. Here Scott's "Last Minstrel" sang his "Lay":

He pass'd where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower.

62-64. These lines date from 1827; in 1815:

In 1820:

It promises protection

To studious ease and generous cares,
And every chaste affection!

To all the nestling brood of thoughts
Sustained by chaste affection!

Of this poem Professor Veitch says (" History and Poetry of the Scottish Border," II, 316): "We have there the true Yarrow, the truest Yarrow that ever was pictured; real yet not literal - Yarrow as it is for the spiritual sense made keen, quick, sensitive, and deep through the brooding over the stories of the years and living communion with the heart of things."

DION.

" Dion is dated by Wordsworth 1816; it was first published in

1820.

Dion was a disciple of Plato when the philosopher visited Syracuse; he seems to have been naturally austere of character. When banished from Syracuse by political intrigue he retired to Athens, and lived in

close intercourse with Plato.

He subsequently became master of Syracuse, and put to death his chief opponent Heracleides. One of his followers, Callippus, conspired against Dion, and caused him to be assassinated, B.C. 353.

We print, immediately after the poem, in accordance with a suggestion of Wordsworth's, a stanza rejected in 1837, which originally opened "Dion." It was rejected, Wordsworth says, because it detained the reader too long from the subject, and rather precluded than prepared for the due effect of the allusion to the genius of Plato.

1, 2. Following until 1837 the rejected stanza, the lines ran thus:

So pure, so bright, so fitted to embrace,
Where'er he turned, a natural grace

and until the same date 11. 7, 8 were:

Nor less the homage that was seen to wait

On Dion's virtues, when the lunar beam

Mr. Heard contributed to Knight's edition of Wordsworth notes illustrating Wordsworth's obligations to Plutarch, from which some extracts are here given.

10.

Grove of Academe. The Academus was the grove in the suburbs of Athens in which Plato taught, so called after a hero Academus, to whom it was said to have belonged.

II. Plutarch writes: "Plato being anxious that Dion's disposition should be sweetened by mingling with society of a pleasant kind, and not aloof on proper occasions from well-bred raillery.” — Heard.

12, 13. 'Arrogance," said Plato, "is the house-mate of solitude." Heard.

19. "Seeing Dion wearing a garland," says Plutarch, on account of the sacrifice, those that were present with one impulse put on garlands one and all." Heard.

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20. Poorly armed," says Plutarch, as chance enabled them." Heard.

24, 25. "Now they could discern," says Plutarch, "Dion himself advancing at their head, clad in gleaming armour and wearing a garland." - Heard.

28-30.

"The Syracusans," says Plutarch, "receiving them as a holy procession beseeming the Gods, escorting freedom and democracy back to the city after an exile of forty-seven years.” — Heard.

32, 33. Derived from Plutarch.

35-37. In 1820 (only) these lines stood:

And, wheresoe'er the great Deliverer passed,
Fruits were strewn before his eye,

And flowers upon

his person cast.

At the same time in 1. 39 " doth " replaced "did."

42. Ilissus, one of the principal rivers of Attica.

50, 51. In a celebrated utterance Kant, in like manner, brings together the sublimities of the starry heavens without and the moral law within.

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52. Sublime delight. The word "sublime" was added in 1837. 65-70. "He happened," writes Plutarch, to be sitting late in the evening in a corridor of the house in solitary meditation: suddenly a sound was heard in the further end of the portico, and, looking up, he saw in the lingering light the form of a majestic woman, in dress and face like the Fury as she appears in tragedy — sweeping the house with a brush." Mr. Heard notes that in Plutarch the apparition is simply ominous of coming evil; the moral significance is Wordsworth's interpretation.

71. Auster, the south wind; Boreas, in l. 73, the north wind. 75. Mænalus, a mountain in Arcadia.

82. Exclaimed the Chieftain in 1827 replaced the earlier " Intrusive Presence!"

106. Matchless perfidy. Callippus, the friend of Dion, had taken a solemn oath that he had no thought of treason.

IIO. Marble city. A marble quarry, near Syracuse, added to the magnificence of the city.

115-117. Dion declared that he was willing to die a thousand deaths. . . if life were only to be had by guarding against friends as well as foes."-Plutarch, quoted by Heard.

The moral of "Dion," that our means should be as spotless as our ends, is enforced also in "The Happy Warrior":

He labours good on good to fix, and owes

To virtue every triumph that he knows.

Lamb wrote to Mrs. Wordsworth (May 25, 1820): "The story of Dion is divine - the genius of Plato falling on him like moonlight — the finest thing ever expressed."