"It was the custom of the ancients not only to offer their own hair, but likewise to consecrate that of their children to the river-gods of their country. This is what Pausanias shews in his Attics; Before you pass the Cephisa, says he, you find the tomb of Theodorus, who was the most excellent actor of his time for tragedy; and, on the banks you see two statues, one of Mnesimachus, and the other of his son, who cut off his hair in honour of the rivers; for that this was in all ages the custom of the Greeks, may be inferred from Homer's poetry, where Peleus promises by a solemn vow to consecrate to the river Sperchius the hair of his son, if he returns safe from the Trojan war. This custom was likewise in Egypt, where Philostratus tells us that Memnon consecrated his hair to the Nile. This practice of Achilles was imitated by Alexander at the funeral of Hephæstion."
It is likely that Wordsworth had read this note to the annotated edition (1763) of Pope's Homer; but it is also probable that he was familiar with the passage in Pausanias.
(See p. [303])
Many particulars regarding John Gough may be found in Cornelius Nicholson's Annals of Kendal, pp. 355-368 (Whitaker and Coy., 1861). He was born in 1757 and died in 1825. "Before the completion of his third year, he was attacked with small-pox, which deprived him of his sight. The whole globe of the left eye was destroyed: the damage done to the other was not so extensive: for, though the greater part of the cornea was rendered opaque, there was a minute pellucid speck to the right of the pupil, which permitted a ray of light to fall upon the verge of the retina, and thus he was enabled to distinguish between day and night: but he had no perception of the form or colour of objects around him; so that, for all useful purposes, vision was completely lost." But his marvellous sense of touch, as described by Wordsworth, was in no degree exaggerated. In his eighth summer, he began the study of botany; and pursued it systematically in his thirteenth year. "His method of examining plants must be briefly told. Systems of classification were but little valued, except so far as they aided him in recognising individual form. The plant to be examined was held by the root or base in one hand, while the fingers of the other travelled slowly upwards, over the stem, branches, and leaves, till they reached the flower. If the species had been already met with, this procedure was sufficient for its recognition; if it proved to be a novelty, its class was first determined by the insertion of the tip of his tongue within the flower: thus he discovered the number and arrangement of the stamens and pistils. When the flower was small he requested his reader to ascertain these points with a lens. The class and order being determined, the genus was next worked out, word by word of the description, so far at least as the state of the specimen would allow. But his perceptive power over form was most conspicuous in the analysis of species. It was truly wonderful to witness the rapidity with which his fingers ran among the leaves, taking cognizance of their divisions, shape, serratures, and of the presence or absence of hairs. The finest down was detected, by a stem or leaf being drawn gently across the border of his lower lip; so fine, indeed, that a young eye often required a lens to verify the truth of the perception. Another peculiarity is worthy of notice. Repeated perusal of descriptions had enabled him to prefigure in his mind's eye, the form without the presence of specimens; so that, when a species for the first time came within his touch, he at once named it from memory.... It was, probably, on one of these occasions, that Mr. Wordsworth, while describing the little cushion-like plant, with white roots and purple flowers, growing near Grisedale Tarn, caught the first glimpse of that conception which was afterwards expanded into the beautiful picture given of Mr. Gough in The Excursion."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his Essay on The Soul and its Organs of Sense, refers to him as "not only an excellent mathematician, but an infallible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently, at first feel, corrected the mistakes of the most experienced sportsmen, with regard to the birds or vermin which they had killed, when it chanced to be a variety or rare species, so completely resembling the common one, that it required great steadiness of observation to detect the difference, even after it had been pointed out." "Good heavens!" added Coleridge, "why his face sees all over!"
Gough died in the 69th year of his age; and he was buried, not (as Wordsworth puts it in The Excursion) at Grasmere, but in the churchyard of Kendal. What is more remarkable is that he lived for ten years after The Excursion was printed; and Wordsworth must have written the passage in the Seventh Book referring to Gough in anticipation of his death, probably 13 years before he died.
Mr. John Watson of Kendal tells me that he has had put into his hands a MS. autobiography of Gough. Mr. Watson has himself written an interesting sketch of the blind botanist.
See the passage in The Excursion, book vii. l. 492, etc., referring to Gough.—ED.
END OF VOL. V