110 
had turned grey on the back while on the mountain, and become 
wild.” 
This looked like a determining of the question of the kind of 
dog that had accompanied his master, and had the landlord been 
of the Cherry-tree, and not of the Horse Head, one might have 
been satisfied; but it was at the Cherry-tree, and not at the 
Horse Head, where young Gough usually stayed, as evidenced by 
a writer in “ Hone’s Table-book,” p. 535, under date July 24th, 1827. 
“Opposite Wytheburn Chapel, which is the smallest I ever saw, I 
entered into conversation with a labouring man, who was well 
acquainted with the late Charles Gouche (sic), the gentle ‘pilgrim of 
nature’ who met an untimely death by falling over the precipice of 
Helvellyn. Some time previous to his death he had lodged at the 
Cherry-tree, near Wytheburn. The man related many anecdotes 
of him, but none particularly interesting. Mr. Gouche (sic) was 
an enthusiastic admirer of poetry, which he would frequently recite 
to him and others of his friends.” 
It was at the homely Cherry-tree inn, where, according to Bud- 
worth, at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, a 
breakfast of mutton, ham, eggs, butter-milk whey, tea, bread, and 
butter, and cheese, were served for 7d. a head—that the. young 
arist who loved the poets had his intermittent habitation. Thence 
from time to time, leaving his trunk behind him, he ascended the 
slopes of Helvellyn for a spell of fishing in Patterdale. Thither 
he descended from time to time, sketch-book, bundle, and fishing- 
rod in hand, and doubtless he beguiled many a long evening in 
the humble kitchen parlour with his recitations. The “Waggoner” 
may have seen him and heard him at the famous “merry-neet” 
that he lingered there, on his way from Ambleside to Keswick, for 
the Cherry-tree was “half-way house of call” in those days. 
One had learnt as much as one could learn from records of 
Gough and his dog or dogs, for it was plain that opinion from an 
early date was divided as to the kind of dog that had accompanied 
him. Was it terrier or cocker spaniel that had won immortality 
at the mouths of Scott and Wordsworth ? 
All that Wordsworth had told us was that ‘‘it was not of mountain 
