[In the cottage, Town-end, Grasmere, one afternoon in 1801, my sister read to me the sonnets of Milton. I had long been well acquainted with them, but I was particularly struck on that occasion with the dignified simplicity and majestic harmony that runs through most of them,--in character so totally different from the Italian, and still more so from Shakspeare's fine sonnets. I took fire, if I may be allowed to say so, and produced three sonnets the same afternoon, the first I ever wrote, except an irregular one at school. Of these three, the only one I distinctly remember is--"I grieved for Buonaparté." One was never written down; the third, which was, I believe, preserved, I cannot particularise.--I. F.] From 1807 to 1820 this was named _Prefatory Sonnet_, as introducing the series of "Miscellaneous Sonnets" in these editions. In 1827 it took its place as the first in that series, following the Dedication _To ----_.--ED. Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, 5 High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is:[A] and hence for me,[1] In sundry moods,'twas pastime to be bound 10 Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground; Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,[B] Should find brief[2] solace there, as I have found. In Wordsworth's time "Furness-fells" was a generic phrase for all the hills east of the Duddon, south of the Brathay, and west of Windermere; including the Coniston group, Wetherlam, with the Yewdale and Tilberthwaite fells. The district of Furness, like that of Craven in Yorkshire, being originally ecclesiastical, had a wide area, of which the abbey of Furness was the centre. In the Fenwick note prefixed to this sonnet, Wordsworth refers to his earliest attempt at sonnet writing. He says he wrote an irregular one at school, and the next were three sonnets written one afternoon in Dove Cottage in the year 1801, after his sister had read the sonnets of Milton. This note is not, however, to be trusted. It was not in 1801, but on the 21st of May 1802, that his sister read to him these sonnets of Milton; and he afterwards wrote not one but two sonnets on Buonaparte. What the irregular sonnet written at school was it is impossible to say, unless he refers to the one entitled, in 1807 and subsequent editions, _Written in Very Early Youth_; and beginning-- Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.