be done; and I may perhaps be allowed to repeat what I wrote on the subject, in 1878.

Many of Wordsworth's allusions to Place are obscure; and the exact localities difficult to identify. It is doubtful if he cared whether they could be afterwards traced out or not; and in reference to one particular rock, referred to in the "Poems on the Naming of Places," when asked by a friend to localise it, he declined; replying to the question, "Yes, that or any other that will suit !" There is no doubt that, in many instances, his allusions to place are intentionally vague; and, in some of his most realistic passages, he avowedly weaves together a description of localities remote from each other.

It is true that poems of places" are not meant to be photographs; and were they simply to reproduce the features of a particular district, and be an exact transcript of reality, they would be literary photographs, and not poems. Poetry cannot, in the nature of things, be a mere register of phenomena appealing to the eye or the ear. No imaginative writer, however, in the whole range of English Literature, is so peculiarly identified with locality as Wordsworth is; and there is not one on the roll of poets, the appreciation of whose writings is more aided by an intimate knowledge of the district in which he lived. The wish to be able to identify his allusions to those places, which he so specially interpreted, is natural to every one who has ever felt the spell of his genius; and it is indispensable to all who would know the special charm of a region, which he described as "a national property," and of which he, beyond all other men, may be said to have effected the literary "conveyance" to posterity.

But it has been asked, and will doubtless be asked again, what is the use of a minute identification of all these places? Is not the general fact that Wordsworth described

this district of mountain, vale, and mere, sufficient without any farther attempt at localization? This question is more important, and has wider bearings, than appears upon the surface.

"1

It must be admitted, on the one hand, that the discovery of the precise point in every local allusion is not necessary to an understanding or appreciation of the poems. But, on the other hand, Wordsworth was never contented with simply copying what he saw in Nature. Of the Evening Walk-written in his eighteenth year-he says that the plan of the poem "was not confined to a particular walk or an individual place; a proof (of which I was unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact, and real circumstance. The country is idealised rather than described in any one of its local aspects.' Again, he says of the Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening: "It was during a solitary walk on the banks of the Cam that I was first struck with this appearance, and applied it to my own feelings in the manner here expressed, changing the scene to the Thames, near Windsor;"2 and of Guilt and Sorrow, he said, "To obviate some distraction in the minds of those who are well acquainted with Salisbury Plain, it may be proper to say, that of the features described as belonging to it, one or two are taken from other desolate parts of England." In The Excursion he passes from Langdale to Grasmere, over to Patterdale, back to Grasmere, and again to Hawes Water, without warning; and even in the case of The Duddon Sonnets he introduces a description taken direct from Rydal. Mr Aubrey de Vere tells of a conversation he had with Wordsworth, in which he passionately condemned the ultra-realistic poet, who goes out into the presence of Nature with "pencil and note-book, and jots down what

1 I. F. MS.

2 I. F. MS.

3 I. F. MS.

ever strikes him most," adding, "Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home; fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Afterwards he would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated. That which remained, the picture surviving in his mind, would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so in large part by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene, many of the most brilliant details are but accidental." The two last sentences of this extract give admirable expression to one feature of Wordsworth's interpretation of Nature. In the deepest poetry, as in the loftiest music,-in Wordsworth's lyrics as in Beethoven's sonatas-it is by what they unerringly suggest far more than by what they exhaustively express that their truth and power are known. "In what he leaves unsaid," wrote Schiller, "I discover the master of style." It depends no doubt upon the power of the " inward eye," and of the reproducing idealizing mind, whether the poetic result is a travestie of Nature, or the embodiment of a truth higher than Nature yields. On the other hand, it is equally certain that the identification of localities in many instances casts a sudden light upon obscure passages in a poem, and is by far the best commentary that can be given. It is much to be able to compare the actual scene, with the ideal creation suggested by it; as the latter was both Wordsworth's reading of the text of Nature, and his interpretation of it. In his seventy-third year, looking back on the Descriptive Sketches,-written chiefly during his first two college vacations,-he said, that there was not an image in the poem which he had not observed, and that he recollected the time and place where most of them were

noted." In the Fenwick notes, we constantly find him saying, “the fact occurred strictly as recorded," “the fact was, as mentioned in the poem ;" and the fact very often involved the accessories of place.

Anyone who has tried to trace out the allusions in the "Poems on the naming of places," or to discover the site of Michael's Sheepfold, to identify Ghimmer Crag, or ThurstonMere, not to speak of the individual "rocks" and "recesses' near Blea Tarn at the head of Little Langdale so minutely described in The Excursion,-will admit that local commentary is an important aid to the understanding of Wordsworth. If to read the Yew Trees in Borrowdale itself,

66

in mute repose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood

Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves,

to read The Brothers in Ennerdale, or The Daffodils by the shore of Ullswater, gives a new significance to these "poems of the imagination," a discovery of the obscurer allusions to place or scene will deepen our appreciation of those passages in which his idealism is most pronounced. Every one knows Kirkstone Pass, Aira Force, Dungeon Ghyll, the Wishing Gate, and Helm Crag: many persons know the Glowworm Rock, and the Rock of Names; but where is Emma's Dell? or the meeting point of two highways," so characteristically described in the twelfth book of The Prelude? and who will fix the site of the pool in Rydal Upper Park, immortalised in the poem to M. H.? or identify Joanna's Rock? Many of the places in that Lake District of England are undergoing change, and every year the local allusions will be more difficult to trace. Such a memorial as the "Rock of Names," on the shore of Thirlmere, is threatened with immersion under the waters of a Manchester reservoir. Others are perishing by the wear and tear of time, the decay of old buildings, the alteration of roads, the cutting down of trees,

and the modernising or "improving" of the district generally. All this is inevitable. But it is well that many of the natural objects, over and around which the light of Wordsworth's genius lingers, are out of the reach of "improvements," and are indestructible even by machinery.

If it be objected that several of the places which we try to identify-and which some would prefer to leave for ever undisturbed in the realm of imagination-were purposely left obscure, it may be replied that Death and Time have probably now removed all reasons for reticence, especially in the case of those poems referring to domestic life and friendly ties. While an author is alive, or while those are alive to whom he has made reference in the course of his allusions to place, it may even be right that works designed for posterity should not be dealt with after the fashion of the modern interviewer.' But greatness has its penalties; and a "fierce light" "beats around the throne" of genius, as well as round that of empire. Moreover, all experience shows that posterity takes a great and a growing interest in exact topographical illustrations of the works of great authors. The labour recently bestowed upon the localities connected with Shakespere and Burns amply attests this.

The localities in Westmoreland, which are most permanently associated with Wordsworth, are these: Grasmere, where he lived during the years of his "poetic prime," and where he is buried; Lower Easdale, where he passed so many days with his sister by the side of the brook, and on the terraces at Lancrigg,-where The Prelude was written; Rydal Mount, where he spent the latter half of his life, and where he found one of the most perfect retreats in England; Great Langdale, and Blea Tarn at the head of Little Langdale, immortalised in The Excursion; the upper end of Ullswater, and Kirkstone Pass; and all the mountain tracks