One end at least hath been attained; my mind Hath been revived, and if this genial mood Desert me not, forthwith shall be brought down Through later years the story of my life. The road lies plain before me;--'tis a theme 640 Single and of determined bounds; and hence I choose it rather at this time, than work Of ampler or more varied argument, Where I might be discomfited and lost: And certain hopes are with me, that to thee 645 This labour will be welcome, honoured Friend! * * * * * FOOTNOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST [Footnote A: On the authority of the poet's nephew, and others, the "city" here referred to has invariably been supposed to be Goslar, where he spent the winter of 1799. Goslar, however, is as unlike a "vast city" as it is possible to conceive. Wordsworth could have walked from end to end of it in ten minutes. One would think he was rather referring to London, but there is no evidence to show that he visited the metropolis in the spring of 1799. The lines which follow about "the open fields" (l. 50) are certainly more appropriate to a journey from London to Sockburn, than from Goslar to Gottingen; and what follows, the "green shady place" of l. 62, the "known Vale" and the "cottage" of ll. 72 and 74, certainly refer to English soil.--Ed.] [Footnote B: Compare 'Paradise Lost', xii. l. 646. 'The world was all before them, where to choose.' Ed.] [Footnote C: Compare 'Lines composed above Tintern Abbey', II. 52-5 (vol. ii. p. 53.)--Ed.] [Footnote D: S. T. Coleridge.--Ed.] [Footnote E: At Sockburn-on-Tees, county Durham, seven miles south-east of Darlington.--Ed.] [Footnote F: Grasmere.--Ed.] [Footnote G: Dove Cottage at Town-end.--Ed.] [Footnote H: This quotation I am unable to trace.--Ed.] [Footnote I: Wordsworth spent most of the year 1799 (from March to December) at Sockburn with the Hutchinsons. With Coleridge and his brother John he went to Windermere, Rydal, Grasmere, etc., in the autumn, returning afterwards to Sockburn. He left it again, with his sister, on Dec. 19, to settle at Grasmere, and they reached Dove Cottage on Dec. 21, 1799.--Ed.] [Footnote K: See Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, _passim._--Ed.] [Footnote L: Compare the 2nd and 3rd of the 'Stanzas written in my pocket-copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence', vol. ii. p. 306, and the note appended to that poem.--Ed.] [Footnote M: Mithridates (the Great) of Pontus, 131 B.C. to 63 B.C. Vanquished by Pompey, B.C. 65, he fled to his son-in-law, Tigranes, in Armenia. Being refused an asylum, he committed suicide. I cannot trace the legend of Mithridates becoming Odin. Probably Wordsworth means that he would invent, rather than "relate," the story. Gibbon ('Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', chap. x.) says,