"I have never doubted that the Peele Castle of Wordsworth is the Piel off Walney Island. I know that my brother Matthew so believed, and I went with him some years ago from Furness Abbey over to Piel, visiting it as the subject of the picture and the poem."
Ed.
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[Sub-Footnote a:] Many years ago Principal Shairp wrote to me,
"Have you noted how the two lines, 'The light that never was,' etc., stood in the edition of 1827? I know no other such instance of a change from commonplace to perfection of ideality."
The Principal had not remembered at the time that the "perfection of ideality" was in the original edition of 1807. The curious thing is that the prosaic version of 1820 and 1827 ever took its place. Wordsworth's return to his original reading was one of the wisest changes he introduced into the text of 1832.—Ed.
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Note: There is a Peele Castle, on a small rocky island, close to the town of Peele, in the Isle of Man; yet separated from it, much as St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is separated from the mainland. This castle was believed by many to be the one which Sir George painted, and which gave rise to the foregoing lines. I visited it in 1879, being then ignorant that any other Peele Castle existed; and although, the day being calm, and the season summer, I thought Sir George had idealized his subject much—(as I had just left Coleorton, where the picture still exists)—I accepted the customary opinion. [But] I am now convinced, both from the testimony of the Arnold family[B], and as the result of a visit to Piel Castle, near Barrow in Furness, that Wordsworth refers to it. The late Bishop of Lincoln, in his uncle's Memoirs (vol. i. p. 299), quotes the line
"I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile,"
and adds,