NOTES TO THE POEMS
In that year he issued " Lyrical Ballads," in collaboration
with Coleridge. The book is a turning-point in literary
history. Wordsworth discarded the artificial style of Pope
and Johnson, and wrote of ordinary men and their prim-
ary emotions in the natural language of everyday life.
Both emotions and language he found in their purest
state in the country : hence his poems deal almost
entirely with incidents and characters taken from
country life.
P. 29, 1. i. Wensley Moor : in the Pennines round the
head-waters of the River Ure.
1. 13. Rout: company.
P. 30, 1. 15. Teaned : weaned.
p. 31, 11. 19-20. Swale, Ure : tributaries of the Ouse, in
Yorkshire.
P. 32, 1. 13. Hawes : a town near the source of the River
Ure.
Richmond : a town on the River Swale.
The Destruction of Sennacherib.
George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), was born
in London and^ educated at Harrow and Trinity
College, Cambridge. He travelled much on the
Continent, settling first in Switzerland, and afterwards
in Italy. His travels are recorded in " Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage." A rebel by personal and social cir-
cumstances, he favoured the French ideas of liberty
and attacked fiercely the restrictions then imposed in
England on social and political freedom. In 1823
he put his ideals into practice by fitting out a ship to
help the Greeks in their war of liberation against the
Turks. He was seized with fever and died at Mis-
solonghi. His bravery in the cause of freedom,
his resolute and romantic personality, as much as the
force and romantic gloom of his poetry, made and
have long kept him a European hero.
" Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did
Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the
fenced cities of Judah, and took them. . . . And the
king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-
shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great
host against Jerusalem. Ajad. they went up and
came to Jerusalem. . . . And it came to pass that night,
that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the
camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five