1 Rapin, vol. i. p. 106.
2 See the exquisite description in It is Never too Lute to
Mend, p. 359.
The trees, beneath whose melancholy boughs we had our meal and music, had been disgracefully hacked! and more foul copies of “the Initials” were to be found here (with woodcuts, calf, lettered) than in all Mr. Mudie's Library. If I had my will, I would teach those trenchant snobs, who, wherever they go, dishonour England, to sing their “Through the Wood, Laddie,” to a much more doleful tune, made fast for a few hours in the stocks; or I would endeavour so far to revive in their breasts (if they have any breasts), that Druidical veneration for Baal, which once prevailed in Ireland, and which would induce them to cut themselves with their knives, and to worship the trees instead of whittling them. Or, in illustration of another Druidical tenet, metempsychosis, it would be gratifying to see their transmigration into woodpeckers, condemned for ever, like the bird in the fable, to seek their food between bark and bole.
We would fain have lingered among these pleasant isles, green with their abundant foliage, and contrasting admirably with the stern hills, towering over them, and so encircling this Upper Lake, that you see no place of egress, until you are close upon it. As for comparing it with the other lakes, or with Derwent-Water, as the fashion is,1 it ever appears to me the most ungrateful folly, to depreciate or to extol one scene of beauty by commending or condemning another; and when a man begins with, “Ah, but you should see so-and-so,” or “I assure you, my dear fellow, this is dreadfully inferior to what-d'ye-call-it,” I always most heartily wish him at the locality which he affects to admire. What nasty, niggardly, uncomfortable minds there are in this bilious world! How many men, who, forgetting that excellent round-hand copy, “Comparisons are odious,” are never happy but in detecting infelicities, and only strong when carping at weaknesses. Show them a pretty girl,—“she wants animation,” or “she wants repose,”—“she is overdressed,” or “her clothes, poor thing, must have been made in the village, and put on with a fork.”
1 Any one who takes delight in such comparisons may consult
Forbes's Ireland, vol. i., p. 229, or Mr. Curwen, whose
conclusion is, “Killarney for a landscape, Windermere for a
home.”
“You should see the youngest Miss Thingembob.” Tell them of a good day's covert-shooting you have had in my Lord's preserves,—out comes a note from their friend the Duke, who has beaten you by sixteen woodcocks. Trot out your new hunter, and “Oh, yes, he's a nice little horse, but will never carry you with those forelegs. You must come over and look at an animal I've just got down from Tattersall's, by Snarler out of a Humbug mare, and well up to twenty stone, sir.”
It would perplex even these censorious gentlemen to find any fault with the Long Range (which has nothing to do with Sir William Armstrong's Guns,—except that the Cannon Rock at the entrance and the Gun Rock by Brickeen Island have some resemblance to artillery)—that beautiful river, which leads from the Upper to the Middle and Lower Lakes. To float between its banks of dark grey stone, from which the green trees droop their glossy foliage, though, like the Alpine tannen,
“Rooted in barrenness, where nought below
Of soil supports them;”
and the purple heath and the Royal Osmund, “half fountain and half tree,” lean over the brimming waters, to greet the lily and the pale lobelia, was a dream of happiness such as the Laureate dreamed, when—
“Anight his shallop, rustling thro'
The low and bloomed foliage, drove
The fragrant glistening deeps, and clove
The citron-shadows in the blue.”
You enter the Long Range at Colmans Eye, and shortly afterwards come to Colmans Leap. This Colman, once upon a time, was the lord of the Upper Lake, and, instead of following the example of his namesake, who, as a saint and peacemaker, assisted St. Patrick in converting Ireland to Christianity, spent most of his time in quarrelling with the O'Donoghue, and in provoking him to single combat. Being in a minority at one of these divisions, it appeared to him a prudential course to “hook it,” and, closely pursued by his adversary, he took this celebrated jump over the river, which goes by the name of Colmans Leap. The guides show you his footprints on the rock, and they narrate, moreover, that the O'Donoghue, being a little out of condition (dropsical, perhaps, from his long residence under water), came up to the stream a good deal blown, and would not have it at any price.