Literary Associations of the English Lakes (Volume 2); Westmoreland, Windermere and the Haunts of Wordsworth

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 Excerpt: ...one can but suppose that he was wearied of his sixteen miles' walk. Luckily for us old Gilpin, the lover of the rough woodland, has seen Rydal Park and described it with a feeling heart, and one English Laureate has wandered amongst its ancient trees, has sung of its time-dismantled oaks, its ivy tods, and has felt that here, amid the sweep of endless woods, Blue pomp of lakes, high cliffs, and falling floods, Not undelightful are the simplest charms, Found by the grassy door of mountain farms.1 Here listening in the upper Rydal Park, when The song of mountain-streams, unheard by day, Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way,2 he has caught The distant forge's swinging thump profound; Or yell, in the deep woods, of lonely hound.3 1 Evening Walk, p. 6. 2 Idem, p. 9. 3 Idem. Nor has that poet forgotten, how where above the Fall the huddling rill Brightens with water-breaks the hollow ghyll,1 suddenly, In rocky basin its wild waves repose,2 and that there, Inverted shrubs, and moss of gloomy green, Cling from the rocks, with pale wood weeds between; And its own twilight softens the whole scene.3 But we are thinking of the Literary Associations of the Lakes; and what had the owner of Rydal Hall to do with them? Daniel, the nineteenth Le Fleming in descent, who was created baronet, was more than a county magnate, a terror of evil-doers, or evil voters, or the wickedly unorthodox--as he would call poor Fox the Quaker, the Papists, and Romanists of his day--he was by way of being a litterateur as well. It is but quite lately that the manuscripts of Sir Daniel, who took a very active part in county affairs during the reigns of Charles II., James II., and William III., ...