Wordsworth's Excursion Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES. Book I.?The Wanderer. 2 Southward the landscape indistinctly glared, sq. Cf. the following lines from the Evening Walh, written between 1787 and 1789, some twenty-five years before the publication of the Excursion, of which the first book was, however, written about the same date :? "When in the south the wan noon, brooding still, Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill, And shades of deep-embattled clouds were seen, Spotting the northern cliffs with lights between." Landscape, Germ, landschaft, a word we have borrowed from the Dutch artists : scape, or schap, is the Dutch form of the English affix, ship, from the Saxon scapan, to shape. 3 Downs. This is the same word as dunes. The meaning seems to be 'high flats.' A 'dune' is used by the Dutch and on the east coast of England for a sand-bank by the sea side ; hence ' the Downs,' the well-known anchorage off the Kentish coast. For the meaning of flat, Cf. "Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed." ?M1lton, P. L., bk. iv. 252. For the meaning of height, Cf. " Thei gon the downes and the dales With weppyng and with wofull tales." ?Gower, Confessio Am., bk. iv. The word appears in Dun-hirh. 4 Ascending. Express this idea in prose. 5 Dappled. The connection of this word with apple seems very doubtful, although the variegated colour of the fruit has given to the French pommele' a similar meaning. 6 Brooding, Sax. bredan, to cherish or nourish, as a bird her young, so to hang constantly over a thing. Brood is connected with bread (Germ, brod) and breed. 7 Determined, i.e. clearly defined. Lat. terminus, a boundary. 10 Extends his careless limbs. Cf. "Jacentes sic temere."?Horace, Odes, II. ii. 14. Is careless an epithet here ? ...Read More