Note 14 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Dorothy Wordsworth, under date of 1809, writes to her friend, Lady Beaumont—“Surely I have spoken to you of Mr. Wilson, a young man of some fortune, who has built a house in a very fine situation not far from Bowness.… He has from boyhood been a passionate admirer of my brother’s writings. [And again.] We all, including Mr. De Quincey and Coleridge, have been to pay the Bachelor (Wilson) a visit, and we enjoyed ourselves very much in a pleasant mixture of merriment, and thoughtful discourse.… He is now twenty-three years of age.”—Coleorton Letters, vol. ii, p. 91.