[CG] The flat ground on the more level part of the valley near Blea Tarn cottage.—ED.
[CH] Compare Resolution and Independence, stanza xiii. (see vol. ii. p. 319).—ED.
[CI] Compare the note p. 83; also the Fenwick note, in which Wordsworth laments the change in the "manner in which, till lately, every one was borne to the place of sepulture."—ED.
[CJ] The custom of mourners kneeling round the coffin was, till quite lately, in common use. It is still observed in some churches in Cumberland and Westmoreland, but is gradually passing away.—ED.
[CK] Blea Tarn house is a humble cottage, resembling Anne Tyson's house at Hawkshead where Wordsworth lived when at school. On the ground-floor are a parlour, kitchen, and dairy. You ascend by nine stone steps to the upper flat, where there are four small rooms, and the window of one of them faces the north in the direction of the Langdale Pikes. The foundations of an older house may be seen a little lower down, about twenty yards nearer the tarn; but the present house was probably standing at the beginning of this century. As there are two poplars to the north of the cottage, and a sycamore near them, it is not likely that the place was entirely "treeless" in Wordsworth's time. In the Fenwick memoranda he says "the cottage was called Hackett, and stands, as described, on the southern extremity of the ridge which separates the two Langdales." In this he evidently confounds Hackett cottage, near Colwith—which separates the two Langdales as you ascend them from the lower country—with the Blea Tarn cottage, which stands on "the southern extremity of the ridge which separates the Langdale" valleys as you descend them.—ED.
[CL] It is generally supposed that the
two huge Peaks,
That from some other vale peered into this,
are the Langdale Pikes; and it is the most likely supposition. But, if the three were seated, as described, in the upper room of the cottage (which has one small window looking toward the Pikes), they could not possibly see them. Side Pike and Pike o' Blisco alone could be seen. Either then, these are the Peaks referred to; or, what is much more likely, the realism of the narrative here gives way; and the far finer pikes of Langdale are introduced—although they are not visible from the house—because they belong to the district, and can be seen from so many points around. The phrases "from some other vale" and "lusty twins" point unmistakably to those two characteristic pikes which "peer" over the crest of the ridge dividing the Langdale valleys. "Let a man," says Dr. Cradock, "as he approaches Blea Tarn from Little Langdale, see these slowly rising, and peering alone over the depression (or Haws) which divides the Langdales, and he cannot doubt that they are the 'lusty twins.' Let the Haws be in shadow, and the Pikes in sunlight, or the reverse, and the effect is one of the most striking in all the district." Compare the sonnet, November 1, 1815, beginning—
ED.