FOOTNOTE ON THE TEXT
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Footnote A: Compare two references to Mary Wordsworth in 'The Prelude': 'Another maid there was, who also shedA gladness o'er that season, then to me,By her exulting outside look of youthAnd placid under-countenance, first endeared;' (Book vi. l. 224). 'She came, no more a phantom to adornA moment, but an inmate of the heart,And yet a spirit, there for me enshrinedTo penetrate the lofty and the low;' (Book xiv, l. 268).--Ed.] It is not easy to say what were the "four lines composed as a part ofthe verses on the 'Highland Girl'" which the Fenwick note tells us was"the germ of this poem." They may be lines now incorporated in those 'Toa Highland Girl', vol. ii. p. 389, or they may be lines in the presentpoem, which Wordsworth wrote at first for the 'Highland Girl', butafterwards transferred to this one. They _may_ have been the first fourlines of the later poem. The two should be read consecutively, andcompared. After Wordsworth's death, a writer in the 'Daily News', January1859--then understood to be Miss Harriet Martineau--wrote thus: "In the 'Memoirs', by the nephew of the poet, it is said that theseverses refer to Mrs. Wordsworth; but for half of Wordsworth's life itwas always understood that they referred to some other phantom which'gleamed upon his sight' before Mary Hutchinson." This statement is much more than improbable; it is, I think, disprovedby the Fenwick note. They cannot refer to the "Lucy" of the Goslarpoems; and Wordsworth indicates, as plainly as he chose, to whom theyactually do refer. Compare the Hon. Justice Coleridge's account of aconversation with Wordsworth ('Memoirs', vol. ii. p. 306), in which thepoet expressly said that the lines were written on his wife. Thequestion was, however, set at rest in a conversation of Wordsworth withHenry Crabb Robinson, who wrote in his 'Diary' on "May 12 (1842).--Wordsworth said that the poems 'Our walk was faramong the ancient trees' [vol. ii. p. 167], then 'She was a Phantom ofdelight,' [B] and finally the two sonnets 'To a Painter', should beread in succession as exhibiting the different phases of his affectionto his wife." ('Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson',vol. iii. p. 197.) The use of the word "machine," in the third stanza of the poem, has beenmuch criticised, but for a similar use of the term, see the sequel to'The Waggoner' (p. 107): 'Forgive me, then; for I had beenOn friendly terms with this Machine.'
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