If the farm-house where Wordsworth spent the evening before this memorable morning walk was either at Elterwater or High Arnside, and the homeward pathway led across the ridge of Ironkeld, either by the old mountain road (now almost disused), or over the pathless fells, there are two points from either of which the sea might be seen in the distance.  The one is from the heights looking down to the Duddon estuary, across the Coniston valley; the other is from a spot nearer Hawkshead, where Morecambe Bay is visible.  In the former case “the meadows and the lower grounds” would be those in Yewdale; in the latter case, they would be those between Latterbarrow and Hawkshead; and, on either alternative, the “solid mountains” would be those of the Coniston group—­the Old Man and Wetherlam.  It is also possible that the course of the walk was over the Latterbarrow fells, or heights of Colthouse; but, from the reference to the sunrise “not unseen” from the copse and field, through which the “homeward pathway wound,” it may be supposed that the course was south-east, and therefore not over these fells, when his back would have been to the sun.  Dr. Cradock’s note [Footnote T to book iv] to the text (p. 197) sums up all that can “be safely said”; but Mr. Rawnsley has supplied me with the following interesting remarks: 

“After a careful reading of the passage describing the poet’s return from a festal night, spent in some farm-house beyond the hills, I am quite unable to say that the path from High Arnside over the Ironkeld range entirely suits the description.  Is it not possible that the lad had school-fellows whose parents lived in Yewdale?  If he had, and was returning from the party in one of the Yewdale farms, he would, as he ascended towards Tarn Howes, and faced about south, to gain the main Coniston road, by traversing the meadows between Berwick ground and the top of the Hawkshead and Coniston Hill, command a view of the sea that ‘lay laughing at a distance’; and ’near, the solid mountains’—­Wetherlam and Coniston Old Man—­would shine ’bright as the clouds.’  I think this is likely to have been the poet’s track, because he speaks of labourers going forth to till the fields; and the Yewdale valley is one that is (at its head) chiefly arable, so that he would be likelier to have gazed on them there than in the vale of Hawkshead itself.  One is here, however—­as in a former passage, when we fixed on Yewdale as the one described as being a ’cultured vale’—­obliged to remember that in Wordsworth’s boyhood wheat was grown more extensively than is now the case in these parts.  Of course, the Furness Fell, above Colthouse, might have been the scene.  It is eminently suited to the description.”

Ed.

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NOTE IV.—­DOROTHY WORDSWORTH AT CAMBRIDGE IN 1808.  THE ASH TREE AT ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE

(See p. 224, ‘The Prelude’, book vi. ll. 76-94)