ntioned by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Grasmere Journal--as the day
on which she read Milton's sonnets to her brother, and on which he wrote
the two on Buonaparte--he had written others, the existence of which he
had evidently forgotten. On the 6th of May 1792, his sister wrote thus
from Forncett Rectory in Norfolk to her friend, Miss Jane Pollard:--"I
promised to transcribe some of William's compositions. As I made the
promise, I will give you a little sonnet.... I take the first that
offers. It is very valuable to me, because the cause which gave birth to
it was the favourite evening walk of William and me.... I have not
chosen this sonnet from any particular beauty it has. _It was the first
I laid my hands upon._" From the clause I have italicised, it would
almost seem that other sonnets belong to that period, viz. before 1793,
when _An Evening Walk_ appeared. She would hardly have spoken of it as
she did, if this was the only sonnet her brother had then written.
Though very inferior to his later work, this sonnet may be preserved as
a specimen of Wordsworth's earlier manner, before he had broken away,
by the force of his own imagination, from the trammels of the
conventional style, which he inherited. It is printed in the Appendix to
volume viii.

It will be seen that Wordsworth's memory cannot be always relied upon,
in reference to dates, and similar details, in the Fenwick
memoranda.--ED.

VARIANTS:

[1] 1849.

... to me, 1807.

[2] 1827.

... short ... 1807.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Compare in Lovelace's poem, _To Althea from Prison_--

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage. ED.

[B] Compare the line in the _Ode to Duty_ vol. iii. p. 40--

Me this unchartered freedom tires. ED.

PERSONAL TALK

Composed 1806.--Published 1807

[Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The last line but two stood, at first,
better and more characteristically, thus:--

"By my half-kitchen and half-parlour fire."

My sister and I were in the habit of having the tea-kettle in our little
sitting room; and we toasted the bread ourselves, which reminds me of a
little circumstance not unworthy to be set down among these minutiae.
Happening both of us to be engaged a few minutes one mor