And round us all the thicket rang
To many a flute of Arcady.
[DF] The end sought by Epicurus, the summum bonum of the Epicurean school, was ἀταραξία, repose or peace of mind. This was to be obtained by freedom from pain of body or distraction of mind; but it consisted in the harmony or equilibrium that resulted, when disturbing influences were withdrawn. To attain to it, little was needed—mental enjoyments being superior to bodily ones, and the social joys of friendship the highest of all. Public life was renounced, and private friendship became the bond of union amongst the members of the Epicurean confraternity: but the root principle of the system was emotional, not intellectual.—ED.
[DG] Rational self-control being regarded as the chief good by the Stoics, the emotion of happiness was looked upon as an interruption of the equilibrium in which the wise man should live. All the emotions were diseases, or disturbances of human nature less or more. They had therefore to be uprooted, rather than regulated: and virtue consisted in being emotionless, passionless, apathetic, with life conformed to the laws of the pure reason, so that one came to be
A reasoning self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual all-in-all.
[DH] Compare the No. vi. Sonnet on The Trosachs (ll. 1-5), in "Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems" (1831).—ED.
[DI] These are reminiscences of Wordsworth's life at Racedown and Alfoxden. His sister wrote thus of their residence at Alfoxden:—"We are three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered over with trees. The hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak woods, which are cut for charcoal.... Walks extend for miles over the hill-tops; the great beauty of which is their wild simplicity: they are perfectly smooth, without rocks."—Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by his nephew Christopher Wordsworth, late Bishop of Lincoln, vol. i. p. 103.—ED.
[DJ] See the note on the preceding page.—ED.
[DK] Wordsworth's own children, Catherine and Thomas, were removed by death, in a manner very similar to this, in June and December 1812, while they were living in the Grasmere Parsonage. Compare the two sonnets—