Of that tall rock, etc.
[IW] "The Blind Man was John Gough, of Kendal, a man known, far beyond his neighbourhood, for his talents and attainments in natural history and science."—I.F. For an account of John Gough, see Appendix, and note [IX] p. [304].—ED.
[IX] This John Gough, a friend of Wordsworth's, was one of the first mathematicians of his time, and a most successful teacher. Whewell and King (senior wranglers) were amongst his pupils. So was Dalton. Gough had been deprived of sight by an attack of small-pox, when he was between two and three years of age. He was a great botanist, as is mentioned in the text; and the following remarkable circumstance is recorded of him, showing at once his marvellous memory, and the extreme delicacy of his sense of touch. In the Elegiac Verses on his brother John, Wordsworth had described the moss campion, Silene acaulis—
It grows upon its native bed
Beside our Parting-place;
There, cleaving to the ground, it lies
With multitude of purple eyes,
Spangling a cushion green like moss.
This poem was read to Gough in 1805 (it was not published till 1845), and twelve years afterwards, in 1817, a specimen of the moss campion was placed in his hand, and he said at once, "I have never examined this plant before, but it is Silene acaulis." Compare Atkinson's Worthies of Cumberland and [note E] in the Appendix to this volume, p. [398].—ED.
[IY] Compare Paradise Lost, book vi. l. 752.—ED.