'UPON SMOOTH QUANTOCK'S AIRY RIDGE WE ROVED'

WORDSWORTH (WILLIAM, 1770-1850, poet) IMPORTANT UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, reminiscing about haunts shared with Coleridge at Alfoxden where they had written the Lyrical Ballads, to [?Thomas Hartree] Cornish, reporting that while in the West country for his daughter [Dora's] wedding he has visited 'twice the old haunts of Mr Coleridge and myself more than 40 years ago when I lived at Allfoxden under the Quantock Hills, on their Northern side...'), but regretting that he has no time to call on Cornish ('...Our travels westward are limited to Plymouth, by engagements which make it impossible for us to extend them further...'), giving details of his itinerary ('...On Saturday we proceed to Exeter with our friend Miss Fenwick then to Plymouth, and mean to return along the coast to Lyme and by Salisbury and Winchester to London for a short stay...'), and emphasising that he would be pleased to renew his acquaintance with Cornish ('...in any part of England, which I say not without a hope that our beautiful district in the North may tempt you to visit it...'), he sends his compliments to Mrs Cornish and his brother, 4 pages, octavo, small section of blank area missing from the second leaf at the foot of the inner margin, slight trace of former mounting, Bagborough [House, the home of Isabella Fenwick's sister Susan Popham], near Taunton, 20 May [1841]

The twelve months spent by Wordsworth and Coleridge (with Dorothy Wordsworth) in 1797-1798 at Alfoxden, are recognised as their annus mirabilis, the golden period of their greatest creativity and friendship, the product being the Lyrical Ballads, which changed the course of English poetry, and while marking the beginning of English Romanticism, was also one of its supreme achievements.

It is especially moving that, seven years after Coleridge's death, Wordsworth should specifically make the point that he has revisited their old haunts twice. This poignant detail, which emphasises quite how important the visit was to Wordsworth, is not made in any other source. Isabella Fenwick, in her account of the visit, does not make it ('He was delighted to see again those scenes...where he had been so happy -- where he had felt and thought so much. He pointed out the spots where he had written many of his early poems, and told us how they had been suggested'); nor is it mentioned in the published letters, and the present letter has remained unpublished (not in The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, second edition, edited by Alan Hill, vol. vii part iv, 1988; also see The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth, edited by Jared Curtis, 1993, p. x). Alan Hill refers to Thomas Hartree Cornish, born 1799, a barrister and author of The Thames; a descriptive poem, 1842, in op. cit. p. 313.

Both poets were soon aware of how special the Alfoxden days had been. Seven years later, in The Prelude, his great autobiographical poem addressed to Coleridge, Wordsworth recalled:

'Beloved Friend! / When, looking back, thou seest, in clearer view / Than any liveliest sight of yesterday, / That summer, under whose indulgent skies / Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved / Unchecked, or loitered 'mid her sylvan coombs, / Thou, in bewitching words, with happy heart, / Didst chaunt the vision of that Ancient Man, / The bright-eyed Mariner, and rueful woes / Didst utter of the Lady Christabel... / The buoyant spirits / That were our daily portion when we first / Together wantoned in wild poesy...'

On his last visit to Stowey in 1807, the same year in which he heard Wordworth reading The Prelude, Coleridge retraced the 'dear old walks, of Quantock & Alfoxden' and recalled the Alfoxden year in Biographia Literaria and in The Wanderings of Cain.

£2,000††