Climbing the heights, however, he finds that the light proceeds from a lantern, held out by a woman to guide her husband homewards from the distant slate quarry. The poet proceeds to tell of his hospitable reception, the husband’s arrival, and the unusual beauty of the good-man’s face, adding—
“From a fount
Lost, thought I, in the obscurities of time,
But honoured once, those features and that mien
May have descended, though I see them here.
In such a man, so gentle and subdued,
Withal so graceful in his gentleness,
A race illustrious for heroic deeds,
Humbled, but not degraded, may expire.”
Thus much for Jonathan Yewdale. His wife, Betty, is made to speak for herself—but to speak in language very different from that she really used, as may be seen in a still more remarkable work than that I quote from—The Doctor, namely, by Robert Southey, wherein Betty Yewdale, in her “oan mak’ o’ toke,” relates “The true story of the terrible knitters of Dent.” In The Excursion, however, she is made to speak thus—