[Footnote E: Writing to Walter Scott, from Coleorton, on Jan. 20, 1807, Wordsworth sent him this stanza of the poem, and asked "Could you furnish me, by application to any of your Gaelic friends, a phrase in that language which could take its place in the following verse of eight syllables, and have the following meaning." 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.