in the Appendix to this volume, p.
386 .-- Ed.] [Footnote M: Not wholly so .-- Ed.] [Footnote N: See note on preceding page .-- Ed.] [Footnote O: Compare the sonnet in vol.iv.: 'Beloved Vale!' I said, 'when I shall con ...
By doubts and thousand petty fancies crost.' There can be little doubt that it is to the "famous brook" of 'The Prelude' that reference is made in the later sonnet, and still more significantly in the earlier poem 'The Fountain', vol.ii.p.

91.
Compare the MS.

variants of that poem, printed as footnotes, from Lord Coleridge's copy of the Poems: 'Down to the vale with eager speed Behold this streamlet run, From subterranean bondage freed, And glittering in the sun.' with the lines in 'The Prelude': 'The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed Within our garden, found himself at once, ...
Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down, etc.' This is doubtless the streamlet called Town Beck; and it is perhaps the most interesting of all the spots alluded to by Wordsworth which can be traced out in the Hawkshead district, I am indebted to Mr.Rawnsley for the following note: "From the village, nay, from the poet's very door when he lived at Anne Tyson's, a good path leads on, past the vicarage, quite to its upland place of birth.

It has eaten its way deeply into the soil; in one place there is a series of still pools, that overflow and fall into others, with quiet sound; at other spots, it is bustling and busy.

Fine timber is found on either side of it, the roots of the trees often laid bare by the passing current.