As year by year the labourer tills
   His wonted glebe, or lops the glades,

the memories of the poet of the Somersby Wold had ’faded from off the circle of the hills’—­had, indeed, been astonished to note how little real interest was taken in him or his fame, and how seldom his works were met with in the houses of the rich or poor in the very neighbourhood.  Accordingly, when he came to reside in the Lake Country, he endeavoured to find out what of Wordsworth’s memory among the men of the Dales still lingered on—­how far he was still a moving presence among them—­how far his works had made their way into the cottages and farmhouses of the valleys.  He also tried to discover how far the race of Westmoreland and Cumberland farm-folk—­the ‘Matthews’ and the ‘Michaels’ of the poet, as described by him—­were real or fancy pictures, or how far the characters of the Dalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by tourist influences during the thirty-two years that have passed since the Lake poet was laid to rest.

With regard to the latter point, it will be remembered that Mr. Ruskin, writing in 1876, said that ’the Border peasantry, painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Wordsworth,’ are, as hitherto, a scarcely injured race; that in his fields at Coniston he had men who might have fought with Henry V. at Agincourt without being distinguished from any of his knights; that he could take his tradesmen’s word for a thousand pounds, and need never latch his garden gate; and that he did not fear molestation, in wood or on moor, for his girl guests.  Mr. Rawnsley, however, found that a certain beauty had vanished which the simple retirement of old valley days fifty years ago gave to the men among whom Wordsworth lived.  ‘The strangers,’ he says, ’with their gifts of gold, their vulgarity, and their requirements, have much to answer for.’  As for their impressions of Wordsworth, to understand them one must understand the vernacular of the Lake District.  ’What was Mr. Wordsworth like in personal appearance?’ said Mr. Rawnsley once to an old retainer, who still lives not far from Rydal Mount.  ’He was a ugly-faaced man, and a mean liver,’ was the answer; but all that was really meant was that he was a man of marked features, and led a very simple life in matters of food and raiment.  Another old man, who believed that Wordsworth ’got most of his poetry out of Hartley,’ spoke of the poet’s wife as ’a very onpleasant woman, very onpleasant indeed.  A close-fisted woman, that’s what she was.’  This, however, seems to have been merely a tribute to Mrs. Wordsworth’s admirable housekeeping qualities.