Note IX — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 (continued 4)
Reading edition
This John Gough, a friend of Wordsworth's, was one of the first mathematicians of his time, and a most successful teacher. Whewell and King (senior wranglers) were amongst his pupils. So was Dalton. Gough had been deprived of sight by an attack of small-pox, when he was between two and three years of age. He was a great botanist, as is mentioned in the text; and the following remarkable circumstance is recorded of him, showing at once his marvellous memory, and the extreme delicacy of his sense of touch. In the Elegiac Verses on his brother John, Wordsworth had described the moss campion, Silene acaulis—
It grows upon its native bed Beside our Parting-place; There, cleaving to the ground, it lies With multitude of purple eyes, Spangling a cushion green like moss.
This poem was read to Gough in 1805 (it was not published till 1845), and twelve years afterwards, in 1817, a specimen of the moss campion was placed in his hand, and he said at once, "I have never examined this plant before, but it is Silene acaulis." Compare Atkinson's Worthies of Cumberland and note E in the Appendix to this volume, p. 398.—ED.