[Footnote F:  The name in the original MS. was “Wilfred Evans.”—­Ed.]

[Footnote G:  The great Gavel, so called I imagine, from its resemblance to the Gable end of a house, is one of the highest of the Cumberland mountains.  It stands at the head of the several vales of Ennerdale, Wastdale, and Borrowdale.

The Leeza is a River which flows into the Lake of Ennerdale:  on issuing from the Lake, it changes its name, and is called the End, Eyne, or Enna.  It falls into the sea a little below Egremont—­W.  W. 1800.]

[Footnote H:  See Coleridge’s criticism of these lines in a note to chapter xviii. of ‘Biographia Literaria’ (vol. ii. p. 83 of the edition of 1817).—­Ed.]

This poem illustrates the way in which Wordsworth’s imagination worked upon a minimum of fact, idealizing a simple story, and adding

                               ’the gleam,
  The light that never was, on sea or land,
  The consecration, and the Poet’s dream.’

It is the only poem of his referring to Ennerdale; but perhaps the chief association with that dale, to those who visit it after becoming acquainted with this poem, will be the fact that the brothers Ewbank were supposed to have spent their youth under the shadow of the Pillar, and Leonard to have had this conversation, on his return from sea, with the venerable priest of Ennerdale.  The district is described with all that local accuracy which Wordsworth invariably showed in idealization.  The height whence James Ewbank is supposed to have fallen is not the Pillar-Rock—­a crag somewhat difficult to ascend, except by practised climbers, and which has only been accessible since mountaineering became an art and a passion to Englishmen.  But, if we suppose the conversation with the priest of Ennerdale to have taken place at the Bridge, below the Lake—­as that is the only place where there is both a hamlet and “a churchyard”—­the “precipice” will refer to the Pillar “Mountain.”  Both are alluded to in the poem.  The lines,

  ’You see yon precipice;—­it wears the shape
  Of a vast building made of many crags;
  And in the midst is one particular rock
  That rises like a column from the vale,
  Whence by our shepherds it is called, The Pillar,’

are definite enough.  The great mass of the Pillar Mountain is first referred to, and then the Rock which is a characteristic spur, halfway up the mountain on its northern side.  The “aery summit crowned with heath,” however, on which “the loiterer” “lay stretched at ease,” could neither be the top of this “rock” nor the summit of the “mountain”:  not the former, because there is no heath on it, and it would be impossible for a weary man, loitering behind his companions, to ascend it to rest; not the latter, because no one resting on the summit of the mountain could be “not unnoticed by his comrades,” and they would not pass that way over the top of the mountain “on their return” to Ennerdale.  This is an instance, therefore, in which precise localization is impossible.  Probably Wordsworth did not know either that the pillar “rock” was bare on the summit, or that it had never been ascended in 1800; and he idealised it to suit his imaginative purpose.  In connection with this poem, a remark he made to the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge may be recalled.