It is most likely that this walk of William and Dorothy Wordsworth "accompanying Jones," was on the day of Jones's departure from Dove Cottage, viz. 26th September. The Journal continues: "Tuesday, 4th May, 1802.--Though William went to bed nervous and jaded in the extreme, he rose refreshed. I wrote out 'The Leech-Gatherer' for him, which he had begun the night before, and of which he wrote several stanzas in bed this morning...." (They started to walk up the Raise to Wytheburn.) "It was very hot; we rested several times by the way, read, and repeated 'The Leech-Gatherer.'" "Friday, 7th May.--William had slept uncommonly well, so, feeling himself strong, he fell to work at 'The Leech-Gatherer'; he wrote hard at it till dinner time, then he gave over, tired to death--he had finished the poem." "Sunday morning, 9th May.--William worked at 'The Leech-Gatherer' almost incessantly from morning till tea-time. I copied 'The Leech-Gatherer' and other poems for Coleridge. I was oppressed and sick at heart, for he wearied himself to death." "Sunday, 4th July.--... William finished 'The Leech-Gatherer' to-day." "Monday, 5th July.--I copied out 'The Leech-Gatherer' for Coleridge, and for us." From these extracts it is clear that Dorothy Wordsworth considered the poem as "finished" on the 7th of May, and on the 9th she sent a copy to Coleridge; but that it was not till the 4th of July that it was really finished, and then a second copy was forwarded to Coleridge. It is impossible to say from which of the two MSS. sent to him Coleridge transcribed the copy which he forwarded to Sir George Beaumont. From that copy of a copy (which is now amongst the Beaumont MSS. at Coleorton) the various readings given, on Coleridge's authority, in the notes to the poem, were obtained some years ago. The Fenwick note to the poem illustrates Wordsworth's habit of blending in one description details which were originally separate, both as to time and place. The scenery and the incidents of the poem are alike composite. As he tells us that he met the leech-gatherer a few hundred yards from Dove Cottage, the "lonely place" with its "pool, bare to the eye of heaven," at once suggests White Moss Common and its small tarn; but he adds that, in the opening stanzas of the poem, he is describing a state of feeling he was in, when crossing the fells at the foot of Ullswater to Askam, and that the image of the hare "running races in her mirth," with the glittering mist accompanying her, was observed by him, not on White Moss Common, but in one of the ridges of Moor Divock. To H. C. Robinson he said of the "Leech-Gatherer" (Sept. 10, 1816), that "he gave to his poetic character powers of mind which his original did not possess." (Robinson's 'Diary', etc., vol. ii. p. 24.) One of the "Poems of the Imagination."--Ed.