Ed.
Many years ago Canon Ainger pointed out to me a parallel between Beattie's description of The Minstrel and Wordsworth's account of himself in this poem. It is somewhat curious that Dorothy Wordsworth, writing to Miss Pollard from Forncett in 1793, quotes the line from The Minstrel, book I. stanza 22,
"In truth he was a strange and wayward wight,"
and adds
"That verse of Beattie's Minstrel always reminds me of him, and indeed the whole character of Edwin resembles much what William was when I first knew him after leaving Halifax."
Mr. T. Hutchinson called the attention of Professor Dowden to the same resemblance between the two pictures. With lines 35, 36, compare in Shelley's Adonais, stanza xxxi.:
'And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.'
Ed.