[P. 211], ll. 24-5. Verse-quotation from Cowper: more accurately it reads:
'The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.'
('The Task,' b. i. ll. 205-6.)
IV. DESCRIPTIVE.
(a) A Guide through the District of the Lakes.
[P. 217]. It seems somewhat remarkable that Wordsworth nowhere mentions the following work: 'Remarks made in a Tour from London to the Lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland in the Summer of MDCCXCI., originally published in the Whitehall Evening Post, and now reprinted with additions and corrections.... By A. Walker, Lecturer,' &c. 1792, 8vo. Wordsworth could not have failed to be interested in the descriptions of this overlooked book. They are open-eyed, open-eared, and vivid. I would refer especially to the Letters on Windermere, pp. 58-60, and indeed all on the Lakes. Space can only be found for a short quotation on Ambleside (Letter xiii., August 18, 1791): 'We now leave Low Wood, and along the verge of the Lake have a pleasing couple of miles to Ambleside. This is a straggling little market-town, made up of rough-cast white houses, but charmingly situated in the centre of three radiant vallies, i.e. all issuing from the town as from a centre. This shows the propriety of the Roman station situated near the west end of this place, called Amboglana, commanding one of the most difficult passes in England.... Beautiful woods rise half-way up the sides of the mountains from Ambleside, and seem wishful to cover the naked asperities of the country; but the Iron Works calling for them in the character of charcoal every fourteen or fifteen years, exposes the nakedness of the country. Among these woods and mountains are many frightful precipices and roaring cascades. In a still evening several are heard at once, in various keys, forming a kind of savage music; one, half a mile above the town in a wood, seems upwards of a hundred feet fall.—About as much water as is in the New River precipitates itself over a perpendicular rock into a natural bason, where it seems to recover from its fall before it takes a second and a third tumble over huge stones that break it into a number of streams. It suffers not this outrage quietly, for it grumbles through hollow glens and stone cavities all the way, till it meets the Rothay, when it quietly enters the Lake' (pp. 71-3). It is odd that a book so matterful, and containing many descriptions equal to this of Ambleside, should be so absolutely gone out of sight. It is a considerable volume, and pp. 1-114 are devoted to the Lake region. Walker, in 1787, issued anonymously 'An Hasty Sketch of a Tour through Part of the Austrian Netherlands, &c.... By an English Gentleman.'
[P. 264]. Quotation from (eheu! eheu!) the still unpublished poem of 'Grasmere.'
[P. 274]. Quotation from Spenser, 'Fairy Queen,' b. iii. c. v. st. 39-40. In st. 39, l. 8, 'puny' is a misprint for 'pumy' = pumice; in st. 40, l. 3, 'sang' similarly misreads 'song' = sung, or were singing.
[P. 284]. Verse-quotation. From 'Sonnet on Needpath Castle,' as ante.
[P. 296], footnote A. Lucretius, ii. 772 seq.; and cf. v. 482 seq.