“The tree in outline expanded towards the root considerably:  then, at about two feet from the ground, the trunk began to separate into huge limbs, spreading in all directions.  I once measured this trunk at its least circumference, and found it 23 feet 10 inches.  For the last 50 or 60 years the branches have been gradually dying on the S. E. side, and about 25 years ago a strong S. E. gale, coming with accumulated force down Hope Gill, and—­owing to the tree being so open on that side—­taking it laterally at a disadvantage, wrenched off one of the great side branches down to the ground, carrying away nearly a third of the tree.  This event led to farther peril; for, the second portion having been sold to a cabinetmaker at Whitehaven for L15, this gave the impression that the wood was very valuable (owing to the celebrity of the tree); and a local woodmonger bought the remainder.  Two men worked half a day to grub it up; but a Cockermouth medical gentleman, hearing what was going on, made representations to the owner, and it ended in the woodmen sparing the remainder of the tree, which was not much the worse for what had been done.  Many large dead branches have also been cut off, and now we have to regret that the ’pride of Lorton Vale,’ shorn of its ancient dignity, is but a ruin, much more venerable than picturesque.”

The “fraternal Four of Borrowdale” are certainly “worthier still of note.”  The “trunk” described in the Fenwick note, as on the road between Rosthwaite and Stonethwaite, has disappeared long ago; but the “solemn and capacious grove” existed till 1883 in its integrity.  The description in the poem is realistic throughout, while the visible scene suggests

“an ideal grove, in which the ghostly masters of mankind meet, and sleep, and offer worship to the Destiny that abides above them, while the mountain flood, as if from another world, makes music to which they dimly listen.”

(Stopford A. Brooke, in ‘Theology in the English Poets’, p. 259.) With the first part of the poem Wordsworth’s ‘Sonnet composed at——­Castle’ during the Scotch Tour of 1803 may be compared (p. 410).  For a critical estimate of the poem see ‘Modern Painters’, part III. sec.  II, chap. iv.  Ruskin alludes to “the real and high action of the imagination in Wordsworth’s ‘Yew-trees’ (perhaps the most vigorous and solemn bit of forest landscape ever painted).  It is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it:  let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch of colour, ‘by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged.’” See also Coleridge’s criticism in ‘Biographia Literaria’, vol. ii. p. 177, edition 1847, and his daughter Sara’s comment on her father’s note.  There can be little doubt that, as Professor Dowden has suggested, the lines 23 to 28 were suggested to Wordsworth by Virgil’s lines in the Sixth Book of the ‘AEneid’, 273-284—­