AND ANGLING SONGS. 2 29 



classic bands towards Cumberland and its altar-stones of inspira- 

 tion. Here, at Rydal Mount, not far from Ambleside, lived 

 William Wordsworth. At Grasmere, Hartley Coleridge re- 

 sided. De Quincey also was allied by marriage to this district ; 

 and at Greta Hall, not far from Keswick, dwelt Southey, the 

 most indefatigable in his day of scholars, historians, and versi- 

 fiers. The pass to the then palace-lands of poetry was guarded 

 at Elleray by the athlete in body and limb, as well as in intel- 

 lect, Christopher North ; and no point more appropriate whereon 

 to erect a key to the fairy realm could well have been selected. 

 It brought boldly before the eye the first sweet engaging vision 

 of the Lake territory, and by exciting the mind with agreeable 

 anticipations, directed it beyond the scope of visible objects into 

 the world of the ideal. The Cumberland giants, its mental 

 wrestlers, all are dead. 



In casually mentioning, however, the Lake school, I have no 

 design to wax sentimental, or run away altogether from piscatorial 

 into poetical subjects. My recollections of Cumberland and 

 Elleray almost necessarily lead to a train of associations bearing 

 upon the literature of the district, which somehow I cannot 

 altogether dissever from the angler's pleasures, particularly in this 

 instance, as Elleray was the summer retreat, not of a mere book- 

 worm or scholarly recluse, but of one who took part in the battle 

 of passing events, and, along with severe exercise of mind, 

 blended that of bodily endowments, who, while he excelled in 

 the labours of the closet and professorial chair, stood pre-eminent 

 also as a lover and cultivator of manly sport in all its forms. It 

 was with a classical apprehension that he regarded the exercises of 

 the palcestra, and vindicated the play of fisticuffs, as a remnant 

 of the virtus inculcated by Greek and Roman example. So far 

 from being degrading and brutal, pugilistic contests, properly 

 conducted, were in his estimation a wholesome check on national 

 effeminacy, and to encourage them was to assist, in some measure, 



