He adds,

  “The above is part of a little poem which I have written on a Highland
  story told me by an eye-witness ...”

This is the nearest clue we have to the date of the composition of the poem.—­Ed.]

It is recorded in Dampier’s Voyages that a Boy, the Son of a Captain of a Man of War, seated himself in a Turtle-shell and floated in it from the shore to his Father’s Ship, which lay at anchor at the distance of half a mile.  Upon the suggestion of a Friend, I have substituted such a Shell for that less elegant vessel in which my blind voyager did actually intrust himself to the dangerous current of Loch Levin, as was related to me by an Eye-witness.—­W.  W. 1815.

This note varies slightly in later editions.

The Loch Leven referred to is a sea-loch in Argyllshire, into which the tidal water flows with some force from Loch Linnhe at Ballachulish.

            ’By night and day
  The great Sea-water finds its way
  Through long, long windings of the hills.’

The friend referred to in the note of 1815, who urged Wordsworth to give his blind voyager a Shell, instead of a washing-tub to sail in, was Coleridge.  The original tale of the tub was not more unfortunate than the lines in praise of Wilkinson’s spade, and several of Wordsworth’s friends, notably Charles Lamb and Barren Field, objected to the change.  Lamb wrote to Wordsworth in 1815,

“I am afraid lest that substitution of a shell (a flat falsification of the history) for the household implement, as it stood at first, was a kind of tub thrown out to the beast” [i. e. the reviewer!] “or rather thrown out for him.  The tub was a good honest tub in its place, and nothing could fairly be said against it.  You say you made the alteration for the ‘friendly reader,’ but the ‘malicious’ will take it to himself.”

(’The Letters of Charles Lamb’, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p. 283.) Wordsworth could not be induced to “undo his work,” and go back to his own original; although he evidently agreed with what Lamb had said (as is seen in a letter to Barren Field, Oct. 24, 1828).—­Ed.

* * * * *

OCTOBER, 1803

Composed October 1803.—­Published 1807

Included among the “Sonnets dedicated to Liberty”; renamed in 1845,
“Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.”—­Ed.

  One might believe that natural miseries
  Had blasted France, and made of it a land
  Unfit for men; and that in one great band
  Her sons were bursting forth, to dwell at ease. 
  But ’tis a chosen soil, where sun and breeze 5
  Shed gentle favours:  rural works are there,
  And ordinary business without care;
  Spot rich in all things that can soothe and please! 
  How piteous then that there should be such dearth
  Of knowledge; that whole myriads should unite 10
  To work against themselves such fell despite: 
  Should come in phrensy and in drunken mirth,
  Impatient to put out the only light
  Of Liberty that yet remains on earth!