ABSTRACT
I now followd gardening for a while in the Farmers Gardens about the village & workd in the fields when I had no other employment to go to Poetry was a troublesomely pleasant companion annoying & cheering me at my toils I coud not stop my thoughts & often faild to keep them till night so when I fancyd I had hit upon a good image or natural description I usd to steal into a corner of the garden & clap it down but the appearance of my employers often put my fancys to flight & made me loose the thought & the music together for I always felt anxiety to control my scribbling & woud as leave have confessd to be a robber as a ryhmer when I workd in the fields I had more oppertunitys to set down my thoughts & for that reason I liked to work in the fields & bye & bye forsook gardening altogether till I resumd it at Casterton I usd to drop down behind a hedge bush or dyke & write down my things upon the crown of my hat & when I was more in a kip for thinking than usual I usd to stop later at night to make up my lost time in the day thus I went on writing my thoughts down & correcting them at leisure spending my Sundays in the woods or heaths to be alone for that purpose & I got a bad name among the weekly church goers forsaking the67 churchgoing bell & seeking the religion of the fields tho I did it for no dislike to church for I felt uncomfortable very often but my heart burnt over the pleasures of solitude & the restless revels of ryhme that was eternally sapping my memorys like the summer sun over the tinkling brook till it one day shoud leave them dry & unconscious of the thrilling joys busy anxietys & restlessness which it had created & the praises & censures which I shall leave behind me I knew nothing of the poets experience then or I shoud have remaind a labourer & not livd to envy the ignorance of my old companions & fellow clowns I wish I had not known any other tho I was not known as a poet my odd habits did not escape notice they fancyd I kept aloof for some sort of study others believd me crazd & some put more criminal interpretations to my rambles & said I was night-walking associating with the gipseys robbing the woods of the hares & pheasants because I was often in their company & I must confess I found them far more honest than their calumniators whom I knew to be of that description Scandel & Fame are cheaply purchasd in a village the first is a nimble-tongued gossip & the latter a credulous & ready believer who woud not hesitate but believd anything I had got the fame of being a good scholar & in fact I had vanity enough to fancy I was far from a bad one myself while I coud puzzle the village schoolmaster over my quart (for I had no tongue to brag with till I was inspired with ale) with solving algebra questions for I had once struggled hard to get fame in that crabbed wilderness but my brain was not made for it & it woud not reach it tho it was a mystery only half unveild to my capacity yet I made enough of it to astonish their ignorance for a village schoolmaster is one of the most pretending & most ignorant of men […]
