road is now used only as a footpath; but, fifty or sixty years ago it was the highroad to Isel, a hamlet on the Derwent, about three and a half miles from Cockermouth, in the direction of Bassenthwaite Lake.  The hill is locally called ‘the Hay,’ but on the Ordnance map it is marked ’Watch Hill.’”

There can be little doubt as to the accuracy of this suggestion.  No other hill-road is visible from the house or garden at Cockermouth.  The view from the front of the old mansion is limited by houses, doubtless more so now than in last century; but there is no hill towards the Lorton Fells on the south or south-east, with a road over it, visible from any part of the town.  Besides, as this was a very early experience of Wordsworth’s—­it was in “the morn of childhood” that the road was “daily present to his sight”—­it must have been seen, either from the house or from the garden.  It is almost certain that he refers to the path over the Hay or Watch Hill, which he and his “sister Emmeline” could see daily from the high terrace, at the foot of their garden in Cockermouth, where they used to “chase the butterfly” and visit the “sparrow’s nest” in the “impervious shelter” of privet and roses.

Dr. Cradock wrote to me (January 1886),

“an old map of the county round about Keswick, including Cockermouth, dated 1789, entirely confirms Dr. Dodgson’s statement.  The road over ‘Hay Hill’ is marked clearly as a carriage road to Isel.  The miles are marked on the map.  The ‘summit’ of the hill is ‘naked’:  for the map marks woods, where they existed, and none are marked on Hay Hill.”—­Ed.]

[Footnote D:  A part of the following paragraph is written with sundry variations of text, in Dorothy Wordsworth’s MS. book, dated May to December 1802.—­Ed.]

[Footnote E:  In the summer of 1793, on his return from the Isle of Wight, and before proceeding to Bristol and Wales, he wandered with his friend William Calvert over Salisbury plain for three days.—­Ed.]

[Footnote F:  Compare the reference to “Sarum’s naked plain” in the third book of ‘The Excursion’, l. 148.—­Ed.]

[Footnote G:  The reference is to ‘Guilt and Sorrow’.  See the introductory, and the Fenwick, note to this poem, in vol. i. pp. 77-79.—­Ed.]

[Footnote H:  Coleridge read ‘Descriptive Sketches’ when an undergraduate at Cambridge in 1793—­before the two men had met—­and wrote thus of them: 

  “Seldom, if ever, was the emergence of a great and original poetic
  genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced.”

See ‘Biographia Literaria’, i. p. 25 (edition 1842).—­Ed.]

* * * * *

BOOK FOURTEENTH

CONCLUSION