The Fairy Queen

, book I. canto iii. stanza 4.—Ed.

[return]

[Footnote U:]

Compare Dr. John Brown:

But the soft murmur of swift-gushing rills,
Forth issuing from the mountain's distant steep
(Unheard till now, and now scarce heard), proclaim'd
All things at rest.

This Dr. John Brown—a singularly versatile English divine (1717-1766)—was one of the first, as Wordsworth pointed put, to lead the way to a true estimate of the English Lakes. His description of the Vale of Keswick, in a letter to a friend, is as fine as anything in Gray's

Journal

. Wordsworth himself quotes the lines given in this footnote in the first section of his

Guide through the District of the Lakes