The long walks over fell and moor gave way to pony-back, and pony-back gave way to a carriage. It was clear to all who knew that delicately chiselled face and noble brow of the yeoman poet and naturalist, that with all his mental powers clear and his eye undimmed, his natural strength was abating. In the spring of 1856 the Winster folk noticed that though he visited, as was his wont, all the orchards for miles round, he visited them in his gig, and men knew by his constant cough that his old enemy, bronchitis, was pressing him sore. But every sunny day found him sitting with his book under the shadow of the famous ash tree at Borderside, and still at night time, if the stars were clear, they saw a tall figure wrapped in a plaid, and stick in hand, pacing slowly the garden path, before the door was shut and lights went out.
As for his own light, that went out, painlessly almost as it seemed, on December 16th. A day or two before, he had gone to the window of his sick room, and said, 'In another month the snowdrops will be here.' The snowdrops came, but alas! for eyes of others almost too dim for tears to see them. On the day of his death, or more properly, his falling on sleep, the sunset brightened in the west, and the dying man with the instinct of an observer keen to the last, turned his face to the window to see the glory grow. Then he sighed and passed to other glory beyond all sunsetting.
Of his work that remains, little need be said. It is always thoughtful, accurate of observation, pure in style, refined in diction, and delicate in poetic appreciation. One much regrets that he who had in 1808 espoused the 'Terza Rima' should have so soon quitted the sonnet's scanty plot of ground and left so few examples of his work. Amongst the miscellaneous papers and letters on natural history that remain are three which we of this county cannot be too thankful for. One is a paper 'On certain changes that have taken place of late years in a part of the Lake District,' with its notes of 'pack-horse-routes,' 'implements of primitive husbandry,' 'the introduction of larch planting,' 'commons enclosure,' and with its interesting account of the ancient Lythe Marsh.
Another is a paper in form of six letters to Thomas Gough containing 'notes on a few subjects in the natural history of Crosthwaite and Lythe, and the valley of Winster.' He prefaced this series of letters with an apparent quotation which really was his own saying and which, as a lover of St. Francis and of all his true followers, I dare to repeat.—'These lonely denizens of the earth, our fellow pilgrims on the journey of life, have their appointed tasks as we have, set out by the great Creator.' There spoke the heart of the wise old Winster estatesman, who long had known the bond of love that binds the travailing creation into one, who as he moved among his brother birds and flowers, and felt the glory of his brother sun, or of his sister the homeside fire, also then
'With bliss ineffable
Could feel the sentiment of Being spread
O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still
O'er all that leaps and runs and shouts and sings
Or beats the gladsome air, or all that glides
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself
And mighty depth of waters.'
The last two papers to be mentioned are 'The Sketches of some of the existing and recent Superstitions of Westmoreland': most valuable these are, as written just in the nick of time. The two generations that have passed since he collected his material and penned his notes, have ceased to hand on the traditional sayings and become too matter of fact to be 'boddered wid sic things as Charms or Boggles or Dobbies or Barguests or Wisemen or Witches.'
There is no one in the county of Westmoreland to-day who would care to take their children when plagued with the kink-cough up to Cartmel-fell, on chance of clipping a hair from the cross on an ass's back and then tying it round the bairn's neck as a sovereign remedy for the troublesome whoop.
But if it had not been for William Pearson I doubt if we should have known that the Winster dalesfolk, notwithstanding that the Cross was set here in the clearing so many centuries ago, were actually fire-worshippers and carrying on the rites of Baal with their Beltane-fires as late as the year of Our Lord 1840. Pearson tells us he talked with a farmer who had actually been present at the sacrifice by fire of a calf in this neighbourhood, and that there were two places within the memory of men then living, Fell Side in Crosthwaite and Hodge Hill on Cartmel-fell, where, to prevent the death of calves after birth, large fires were kindled in the open air near to the farm house and a living calf laid upon them and burnt to death.
As for the reality of this superstitious relic of sun-worship, in the year 1840, William Pearson actually witnessed it here in Crosthwaite, and, with a quotation from his paper upon this point, I will close this notice of his life and work: