The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Iii Part 59

Would'st thou not chide? Yet deem not my pains lost: For Vaudracour and Julia (so were named 565 The ill-fated pair) in that plain tale will draw Tears from the hearts of others, when their own Shall beat no more. Thou, also, there may'st read, At leisure, how the enamoured youth was driven, By public power abased, to fatal crime, 570 Nature's rebellion against monstrous law; How, between heart and heart, oppression thrust Her mandates, severing whom true love had joined, Hara.s.sing both; until he sank and pressed The couch his fate had made for him; supine, 575 Save when the stings of viperous remorse, Trying their strength, enforced him to start up, Aghast and prayerless. Into a deep wood He fled, to shun the haunts of human kind; There dwelt, weakened in spirit more and more; 580 Nor could the voice of Freedom, which through France Full speedily resounded, public hope, Or personal memory of his own worst wrongs, Rouse him; but, hidden in those gloomy shades, His days he wasted,--an imbecile mind. [Z] 585

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: This must either mean a year from the time at which he took his degree at Cambridge, or it is inaccurate as to date. He graduated in January 1791, and left Brighton for Paris in November 1791. In London he only spent four months, the February, March, April, and May of 1791.

Then followed the Welsh tour with Jones, and his return to Cambridge in September 1791.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: With Jones in the previous year, 1790.--Ed.]

[Footnote C: Orleans.--Ed.]

[Footnote D: The Champ de Mars is in the west, the Rue du Faubourg St.

Antoine (the old suburb of St. Antony) in the east, Montmartre in the north, and the dome of St. Genevieve, commonly called the Pantheon, in the south of Paris.--Ed.]

[Footnote E: The clergy, n.o.blesse, and the 'tiers etat' met at Notre Dame on the 4th May 1789. On the following day, at Versailles, the 'tiers etat' a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of the 'National a.s.sembly'--const.i.tuting themselves the sovereign power--and invited others to join them. The club of the Jacobins was inst.i.tuted the same year. It leased for itself the hall of the Jacobins' convent: hence the name.--Ed.]

[Footnote F: The Palais Royal, built by Cardinal Richelieu in 1636, presented by Louis XIV. to his brother, the Duke of Orleans, and thereafter the property of the house of Orleans (hence the name). The "arcades" referred to were removed in 1830, and the brilliant 'Galerie d'Orleans' built in their place.--Ed.]

[Footnote G: On the 14th July 1789, the Bastille was taken, and destroyed by the Revolutionists. The stones were used, for the most part, in the construction of the Pont de la Concorde.--Ed.]

[Footnote H: Charles Lebrun, Court painter to Louis XIV. of France (1619-1690)--Ed.]

[Footnote I: The Republican general, Michel Beaupuy. See p. 302 [Footnote N below], and the note upon him by Mons. Emile Legouis of Lyons, in the appendix [Note VII] to this volume, p. 401.--Ed.]

[Footnote K: Carra and Gorsas were journalist deputies in the first year of the French Republic. Gorsas was the first of the deputies who died on the scaffold. Carlyle thus refers to them, and to the "hundred other names forgotten now," in his 'French Revolution' (vol. iii. book i. chap. 7):

"The convention is getting chosen--really in a decisive spirit. Some two hundred of our best Legislators may be re-elected, the Mountain bodily. Robespierre, with Mayor Petion, Buzot, Curate Gregoire and some threescore Old Const.i.tuents; though we men had only _thirty voices._ All these and along with them friends long known to the Revolutionary fame: Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech, Manuel Tallein and Company; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mersier, Louvet of _Faubias_; Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, Collet d'Herbois, tearing a pa.s.sion to rags; Fahre d'Egalantine Speculative Pamphleteer; Legendre, the solid Butcher; nay Marat though rural France can hardly believe it, or even believe there is a Marat, except in print." Ed.]

[Footnote L: Many of the old French n.o.blesse, and other supporters of Monarchy, fled across the Rhine, and with thousands of emigres formed a special Legion, which co-operated with the German army under the Emperor Leopold and the King of Prussia.--Ed.]

[Footnote M: Compare book vi. l. 345, etc.--Ed.]

[Footnote N: Beaupuy. See p. 297 [Footnote I, above]:

"Save only one, hereafter to be named," [Line 132]

and the note on Beaupuy, in the appendix [Note VII] to this volume, p.

401.--Ed.]

[Footnote O: Compare Wordsworth's poem 'Dion', in volume vi. of this edition.--Ed.]

[Footnote P: When Plato visited Syracuse, in the reign of Dionysius, Dion became his disciple, and induced Dionysius to invite Plato a second time to Syracuse. But neither Plato nor Dion could succeed in their efforts to influence and elevate Dionysius. Dion withdrew to Athens, and lived in close intimacy with Plato, and with Speusippus. The latter urged him to return, and deliver Sicily from the tyrant Dionysius, who had become unpopular in the island. Dion got some of the Syracusan exiles in Greece to join him, and "sailed from Zacynthus," with two merchant s.h.i.+ps, and about 800 troops. He took Syracuse, and became dictator of the district. But--as was the case with the tyrants of the French Revolution who took the place of those of the old regime (record later on in 'The Prelude')--the Syracusans found that they had only exchanged one form of rigour for another. It is thus that Plutarch refers to the occurrence.

"Many statesmen and philosophers a.s.sisted him (_i. e._ Dion); "as for instance, Eudemus, the Cyprian, on whose death Aristotle wrote his dialogue of the Soul, and Timonides the Leucadian."

(See Plutarch's 'Dion'.) Timonides wrote an account of Dion's campaign in Sicily in certain letters to Speusippus, which are referred to both by Plutarch and by Diogenes Laertius,--Ed.]

[Footnote Q: See the previous note [Footnote P directly above].--Ed.]

[Footnote R: See the 'Orlando Furioso' of Ariosto, canto i.:

'La donna il palafreno a dietro volta, E per la selva a tutta briglia il caccia; Ne per la rara piu, che per la folta, La piu sicura e miglior via procaccia.

The lady turned her palfrey round, And through the forest drove him on amain; Nor did she choose the glade before the thickest wood, Riding the safest ever, and the better way.'

Ed.]

[Footnote S: See the 'Gerusalemme Liberata' of Ta.s.so, canto vi. Erminia is the heroine of 'Jerusalem Delivered'. An account of her flight occurs at the opening of the seventh canto.--Ed.]

[Footnote T:

"_Rivus Romentini_, pet.i.te ville du Blaisois, et capitale de la Sologne, aujourd'hui sous-prefecture du depart. de Loir-et-Cher."

It was taken in 1356 and in 1429 by the English, in 1562 by the Catholics, in 1567 by the Calvinists, and in 1589 by the Royalists.

"Henri IV. l'erigea en comte pour sa maitresse Charlotte des Essarts, 1560. Francois I. y rendit un edit celebre qui attribuait aux prelats la connaissance du crime d'heresie, et la repression des a.s.semblees illicites."

('Dictionnaire Historique de la France', par Ludovic Lalaune. Paris, 1872.)--Ed.]

[Footnote U: Blois,

"Louis XII., qui etait ne a Blois, y sejourna souvent, et reconstruisit completement le chateau, ou la cour habita frequemment au XVI'e. siecle."

('Dict. Histor. de la France', Lalaune.) The town is full of historical reminiscences of Louis XII., Francis I., Henry III., and Catherine and Mary de Medici. Wordsworth went from Orleans to Blois, in the spring of 1792.--Ed.]

[Footnote V: Claude, the daughter of Louis XII.--Ed.]