"One cannot but believe that Wordsworth, as he wrote Sonnets IX., X., had in his mind the third series of stepping-stones opposite Seathwaite, and under Wallabarrow Crag.
None of the others are fitly described as
a zone chosen for ornament.
Is it not possible that the word 'struggling,' as applied to rill,—when viewed in connection with the words 'without restraint,' in line 8 of Sonnet IX.—points with great definiteness to the localising of the Sonnet at these Seathwaite stones?
Certainly the stream as it has descended through the 'deep chasm' of Sonnet XV. between the Pen and Wallabarrow, is well described as having grown after a struggle into a brook of loud and stately march at this point. There are no likelier spots for the children to have put
Their budding courage to the proof
than here, for there are several houses and farms on the wayside, whose younger inmates would have come down to these stepping-stones, in order to get to the village school, that 'Wonderful Walker' kept with so much honour at Seathwaite in olden time." (H. D. Rawnsley.)
[441] Whellan's History and Topography of Westmoreland and Cumberland, 4to, Pontefract, 1860, p. 56.
[442] Good Words, vol. xxiv. p. 579.