It was Easter Monday, and I knew that the one-time gardener's lad at Rydal Mount had grown into a valerenowned keeper of a vale-renowned beerhouse. I had doubts as to calling on this particular day, for Easter Monday and beer go much together in our Lake country. But I was half reassured by a friend who said, 'Well, he gets drunk three times a day, but takes the air between whiles, and if you catch him airing he will be very civil, but it's a bad day to find him sober, this.' I explained that I wanted to talk with him of old Wordsworthian days. 'Aw, it's Wudsworth you're a gaan to see about? If that's the game, you're reet enuff, for, drunk or sober, he can crack away a deal upon Mr Wudsworth. An' I'se not so varry seuer but what he's best drunk a li'le bit.' I was reassured, and soon found myself sitting on the stone ale-bench outside the public-house, the best of friends with a man who had been apparently grossly libelled—for he was as sober as a judge-and whose eye fairly twinkled as he spoke of the Rydal garden days.

'You see, blessed barn, it's a lock o' daäys sin', but I remember them daäys, for I was put by my master to the Rydal Mount as gardener-boy to keep me fra bad waays. And I remember one John Wudsworth, Mr Wudsworth's nevi, parson he was, dead, like enough, afore this. Well, he was stayin' there along o' his missus, first week as I was boy there, and I was ter❜ble curious, and was like enough to hev bin drowned, for they had a bath, filled regular o' nights, up above, ya kna, with a sort of curtainment all round it. And blowed if I didn't watch butler fill it, and then goa in and pull string, and down came watter, and I was 'maazed as owt, and I screamed, and Mr John come and fun' me and saäved my life. Eh, blessed barn, them was daäys long sin'.

I asked whether Mr Wordsworth was much thought of.

He replied, 'Latterly, but we thowt li'le enough of him. He Li'le Hartley was a philosopher,

was nowt to li'le Hartley.
you see; Wudsworth was
betwixt them two ways, ye
ever found that poems of Mr Wordsworth were read in the
cottages, whether he had read them himself. 'Well, you
see, blessed barn, there's pomes and pomes, and Wudsworth's
was not for sich as us. I never did see his pomes-not as
I can speak to in any man's house in these parts, but,' he
added, 'ye kna there's bits in the paapers fra time to time
bearing his naame.'

a poet.
a poet. Ter❜ble girt difference
kna.' I asked whether he had

This unpopularity of Wordsworth's poems among the peasantry was strangely corroborated that very same day by an old man whom I met on the road, who said he had often seen the poet, and had once been present and heard him make a long speech, and that was at the laying of the foundation of Boys' Schoolroom at Bowness, which was built by one Mr Bolton of Storrs Hall.

On that occasion Mr Wudsworth talked long and weel enough,' and he remembered that he had put a pome he had written into a bottle wi' some coins in the hollow of the foundation-stone.'

I asked him whether he had ever seen or read any of the poet's works, and he had answered, 'No, not likely; for Wudsworth wasn't a man as wrote on separate bits, saäme as Hartley Coleridge, and was niver a frequenter of publichouses, or owt of that sort.' But he added, He was a good writer, he supposed, and he was a man folks thowt a deal of in the dale: he was such a well-meaning, decent, quiet man.'

But to return to my host at the public. Wordsworth, in his opinion, was not fond of children, nor animals. He would come round the garden, but never say nowt.' Sometimes, but this was seldom, he would say, 'Oh! you're

planting peas?' or, 'Where are you setting onions?' but only as a master would ask a question of a servant. He had, he said, never seen him out of temper once, neither in the garden, nor when he was along o' Miss Dorothy in her invalid chair. But he added, 'What went on in the house I can't speak to;' meaning that as an outdoor servant he had no sufficiently accurate knowledge of the indoor life to warrant his speaking of it. Wordsworth was not an early riser, had no particular flower he was fondest of that he could speak to; never was heard to sing or whistle a tune in his life; there was no two words about that, though he bummed a deal;'-of this more presently.

'

'He was a plain man, plainly dressed, and so was she, ya mun kna. But eh, blessed barn! he was fond o' his own childer, and fond o' Dorothy, especially when she was faculty strucken, poor thing; and as for his wife, there was noa two words about their being truly companionable; and Wudsworth was a silent man wi'out a doubt, but he was not aboon bein' tender and quite monstrable [demonstrative] at times in his own family.'

I asked about Mr Wordsworth's powers of observation. Had he noticed in his garden walks how he stooped down and took this or that flower, or smelt this or that herb ? (I have heard since that the poet's sense of smell was limited.) Na, he wadna speak to that, but Mr Wudsworth was what you might call a vara practical-eyed man, a man as seemed to see aw that was stirrin'.

Perhaps the most interesting bit of information I obtained before our pleasant chat was at an end, was a description of the way in which the poet composed on the grass terrace at Rydal Mount. Eh blessed barn,' my informant continued, I think I can see him at it now. He was ter'ble thrang with visitors and folks, you mun kna, at times, but if he could git away from them for a spell, he

was out upon his gres walk; and then he would set his head a bit forward, and put his hands behint his back. And then he would start a bumming, and it was bum, bum, bum, stop; then bum, bum, bum reet down till t'other end, and then he'd set down and git a bit o' paper out and write a bit; and then he git up, and bum, bum, bum, and goa on bumming for long enough right down and back agean. I suppose, ye kna, the bumming helped him out a bit. However, his lips was always goan' whoale time he was upon the gres walk. walk. He was a kind mon, there's no two words about that: if any one was sick i' the plaace, he wad be off to see til 'em.'

And so ended my Easter Monday talk with the poet's quondam gardener's boy, the now typical beerhouse keeper, who is half pleased, half proud, to remember his old master in such service as he rendered him, in the days when it was judged that to keep a boy out of mischief and from bad company, it was advisable to get him a place at Rydal Mount.

I must ask you next to take a seat with me in a waller's cottage. If tea and bread and butter is offered, you had better take it also, it is almost sure to be pressed upon you, and it is of the best. I will be interrogator, only by way of introduction saying, that our host is a splendid type of the real Westmoreland gentleman labourer, who was in his days a wrestler too, and whose occupation at the building of Foxhow and Fiddler's Farm in the Rydal Valley, often allowed him to see the poet in old times.

'Well, George, what sort o' a man in personal appearance was Mr Wordsworth?'

'He was what you might ca' a ugly man,-mak of John Rigg much, much about same height, 6 feet or 6 feet 2,smaller, but deal rougher in the face.'

I knew John Rigg by sight, and can fancy from the

pictures of the poet that the likeness is striking in the brow and profile.

'But he was,' continued George, 'numbledy in t'kneas, walked numbledy, ye kna, but that might o' wussened with age.' In George's mind age accounted for most of the peculiarities he had noticed in the poet, but George's memory could go back fifty years, and he ought to have remembered Wordsworth as hale and hearty. 'He won't a man as said a deal to common folk. But he talked a Ideal to hissen. I often seead his lips a gaäin', and he'd a deal o' mumblin' to hissel, and 'ud stop short and be a lookin' down upo' the ground, as if he was in a thinkin' waäy. But that might ha' growed on him wi' age, an' aw, ye kna.'

How true, thought 1, must have been the poet's knowledge of himself!

But who is he, with modest looks,

And clad in sober russet brown?

He murmurs near he running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a noon-day grove.

And indeed, in all the reminiscences I have obtained among the peasantry, these lines force themselves upon one as corroborated by their evidence.

'He' [Mr Wordsworth], continued George, 'was a deal upo' the road, would goa most days to L'Ambleside in his cloak and umbrella, and in later times folks would stare and gaum to see him pass, not that we thowt much to him hereabouts, but they was straängers, ye see.'

It is curious, though natural, perhaps, to find a sort of disbelief among the natives in the poet's greatness, owing somewhat to the fact that it was straängers as set such store by him.' They distrust strangers still, almost as much as they did in old Border-times.