Note JG — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 (continued 4)
Reading edition
"This young volunteer bore the name of Dawson.... The premature death of this gallant young man was much lamented, and as an attendant upon the funeral, I myself witnessed the ceremony, and the effect of it as described in the poem."—I. F. See the whole of the note (p. 13).
"In The Excursion, book vii., is an animated account of the life and death of a young volunteer, one of a company of eighty men, which, when England was threatened with a French invasion, was formed in the Lake District, and was named 'Wedgwood's Mountaineers,' having by him in a generous spirit of patriotism been clothed and armed, and this in the completest manner, as riflemen." See Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. (1858), p. 109. The Wedgwood referred to was the Thomas Wedgwood who assisted Coleridge so opportunely.
In 1806 Wordsworth wrote of Dawson: "His calm and dignified manner, united with his tall form and beautiful face, produced in me an impression of sublimity beyond what I ever experienced from the appearance of any other human being."—ED.