WORDSWORTH A GEOGRAPHER 229 



Earth, then the objection that the description of 

 its Natural Beauty is outside the scope of Geography 

 is not a valid objection. The picture and the poem 

 are as legitimate a part of Geography as the map. 



Some years ago in lecturing to the Royal 

 Geographical Society I said that the Society ought 

 to have given Wordsworth the Gold Medal. I 

 meant that the poet by his vision had taught us 

 more about the Lake District than any ordinary 

 geographer had been able to see. With his finer 

 sensibility he had been able to see deeper. He had 

 been able to reveal to us truths about the district 

 which no mere ordnance surveyor was able to dis- 

 close. He was a true discoverer — a geographical 

 discoverer — a geographer of the highest type. He 

 had helped us really to know and understand the 

 district. 



Be it noted, too, that he did not, as some would 

 think, put into the lakes and hills and valleys some- 

 thing from within himself which was not really in 

 those natural features. The particular beauty that 

 he saw there was there waiting to be revealed. The 

 natural features aroused emotions in his sensitive 

 soul, and his soul being aroused saw the beauty in 

 them. If the district had been of billiard-table 

 flatness, with no lakes, no hills, no valleys, then 

 even he, with all his poetic feeling and imagination, 

 could not have put into the district what it did not 

 possess. The beauty that he saw was really there, 

 only it required a poetic soul to discover and reveal 

 it. The spirit of the poet put itself in touch with 

 the spirit of the district and elicited from the district 

 what was already in it. The spirit of Wordsworth 



17 



