[6] Woodhouse Transcripts (Poetry II) in Crewe MS. These verses are only to be found in the latest editions of Keats. They are not good, but interesting as containing in embryo ideas which afterwards grew into great poetry in the nightingale ode, the first book of Endymion, and the Ode to Melancholy.
[7] The ‘Enchanted Castle,’ which Keats explicitly names, belonged at this date to Mr Wells of Redleaf, and was not exhibited until 1819, so that he probably knew it only through the engraving by Vivarès and Woollett.
CHAPTER IX
JUNE-AUGUST 1818: THE SCOTTISH TOUR
First sight of Windermere—Ambleside, Rydal, Keswick—Attitude towards scenery—Ascent of Skiddaw—A country dancing-school—Dumfries—The Galloway coast—Meg Merrilies—Flying visit to Belfast—Contrasts and reflections—The Duchess of Dunghill—The Ayrshire coast—In Burns’s cottage—Lines on his pilgrimage—Through Glasgow to Loch Lomond—A confession—Loch Awe to the coast—Hardships—Kerre a and Mull—Staffa—A sea cathedral—Ben Nevis—Tour cut short—Return to Hampstead.
The farewells at Liverpool over, Keats and Brown went on by coach to Lancaster, thence to begin their tour on foot. Keats took for his reading one book only, the miniature three-volume edition of Cary’s Dante. Brown, it would appear, carried a pocket Milton. They found the town of Lancaster in an uproar with the preparations for a contested election and were glad to leave it. Rising at four in the morning (June 25th) to make a start before breakfast, they were detained by a downpour, during which Brown preached patience from Samson Agonistes; at seven they set out in a still dripping mist; breakfasted at Bolton-le-Sands; stopped to dine at the village of Burton-in-Kendal, and found the inns crowded, to their hosts’ distraction, with soldiers summoned by the Lowther interest to keep order at the election. This was the famous contest where Brougham had the effrontery, as his opponents considered it, to go down and challenge for the first time the power of that great family in their own country. The same state of things prevailed farther down the road. Hearing that they could not hope to find a bed at Kendal, they slept in a mean roadside inn at End Moor, taking interested note of a sad old dog of a drunkard, fallen from better days, whom they found there; and the next morning walked on, passing Kendal on their way, as far as Bowness on Windermere. As they dropped down the hill and came in sight of the lake the weather yielded fine effects of clearance after rain; and Brown, in the account compiled twenty years later from his diaries written at the time,[1] expatiates in full romantic vein on the joy and amazement with which Keats and he drank in the beauties of the varied and shifting scene before them:—
On the next morning, after reaching Kendal, we had our first really joyous walk of nine miles towards the lake of Windermere. The country was mild and romantic, the weather fine, though not sunny, while the fresh mountain air, and many larks about us, gave us unbounded delight. As we approached the lake the scenery became more and more grand and beautiful, and from time to time we stayed our steps, gazing intently on it. Hitherto, Keats had witnessed nothing superior to Devonshire; but, beautiful as that is, he was now tempted to speak of it with indifference. At the first turn from the road, before descending to the hamlet of Bowness, we both simultaneously came to a full stop. The lake lay before us. His bright eyes darted on a mountain-peak, beneath which was gently floating on a silver cloud; thence to a very small island, adorned with the foliage of trees, that lay beneath us, and surrounded by water of ? glorious hue, when he exclaimed—‘How can I believe in that a—surely it cannot be!’ He warmly asserted that no view in the world could equal this—that it must beat all Italy—yet, having moved onward but a hundred yards—catching the further extremity of the lake, he thought it ‘more and more wonderfully beautiful!’ The trees far and near, the grass immediately around us, the fern and the furze in their most luxuriant growth, all added to the charm. Not a mist, but an imperceptible vapour bestowed a mellow, softened tint over the immense mountains on the opposite side and at the further end of the lake.