P.  S.—­When we came to examine the rock, we found the area for the panel less than we had hoped for, owing to certain rock fissures, which, by acting as drains for the rainwater on the surface, would have much interfered with the durability of the inscription.  The available space for the panel remains 3 feet 7 in length by 1 foot 9 inches in depth.  Owing to the fineness of the grain of the stone, it may be quite possible to letter the native rock; but it has been difficult to fix on a style of lettering for the inscription that shall be at once in good taste, forcible, and plain.  It was proposed that the Script type of letter which was made use of in the inscription cut on the rock, in the late Mr. Ball’s garden grounds below the Mount at Rydal, should be adopted; but a final decision has been given in favour of a style of lettering which Mrs. Rawnsley has designed.  The panel is, from its position, certain to attract the eye of the wanderer from Patterdale up to the Grisedale Pass.

  H. D. R.”

See the note to ‘The Waggoner’, p. 112, referring to the Rock of Names, on the shore of Thirlmere.

The following extract from ’Recollections from 1803 to 1837, with a Conclusion in 1868, by the Hon. Amelia Murray’ (London:  Longmans, Green, and Co. 1868)—­refers to the loss of the ‘Abergavenny’: 

“One morning, coming down early, I saw what I thought was a great big ship without any hull.  This was the ‘Abergavenny’, East Indiaman, which had sunk with all sails set, hardly three miles from the shore, and all on board perished.

Had any of the crew taken refuge in the main-top, they might have been saved; but the bowsprit, which was crowded with human beings, gave a lurch into the sea as the ship settled down, and thus all were washed off—­though the timber appeared again above water when the ‘Abergavenny’ touched the ground.  The ship had sprung a leak off St. Alban’s Head; and in spite of pumps, she went to the bottom just within reach of safety.”  Pp. 12, 13.

A ’Narrative of the loss of the “Earl of Abergavenny” East Indiaman, off Portland, Feb. 5, 1805’, was published in pamphlet form (8vo, 1805), by Hamilton and Bird, 21 High Street, Islington.

For much in reference to John Wordsworth, which illustrates both these ‘Elegiac Verses’, and the poem “On the Naming of Places” which follows them, I must refer to his ‘Life’ to be published in another volume of this series; but there is one letter of Dorothy Wordsworth’s, written to her friend Miss Jane Pollard (afterwards Mrs. Marshall), in reference to her brother’s death, which may find a place here.  For the use of it I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Marshall’s daughter, the Dowager Lady Monteagle: 

  “March 16th, 1805.  Grasmere.