46 
Such poets as Wordsworth and Shelley cannot be under- 
stood by the unprepared, by the worldly minded, or self- 
absorbed, though to the elect they are very clear. “To reap 
the harvest of a quiet eye ” certain sensibilities are implied, 
and the reader must be able to recognise, feel, and recreate 
for himself, the pictures which the poet presents him. Our 
great representative poets are not all to be read in the study 
or the privacy of our homes ; some should be our companions 
in the woods or the fields, some on the sea shore and others 
in the social circle. Take Wordsworth with you to the 
margin of some rippling stream or lake with blue mountains 
on the horizon and carolling birds overhead, the scenes of 
his own inspirations. Matthew Arnold’s verdict on Words- 
worth’s poems was “ I doubt whether anyone admires Words- 
worth more than I do. I admire him for the simple and solid 
reason that he is an exceedingly great poet. One puts him 
after Shakespeare and Milton. Shakespeare is out of com- 
parison. Milton was, of course, a far greater artist than 
Wordsworth, probably also a greater force. But the spirited 
passion of Wordsworth, his spiritual passion when, as in the 
magnificent sonnet of Farwell to the River Duddon, for 
instance, he is at his highest, and sees into the life of things, 
cannot be matched from Milton. I will not say it is beyond 
Milton, but he has never shown it. To match it one must 
go to the ocean of Shakespeare.” 
In piloting the audience over the classic spots in Lakeland, 
the Lecturer, in a racy and interesting manner, made special 
references to their literary associations. 
It was at Barrow (1825) that Sir Walter Scott and Lockhart 
met Christopher North, the great yellow-haired professor, 
and listened in the old parish church to what Lockhart called 
“ a bad sermon.” There is a house, “ The Briery,” on the 
hill leading from Low Wood to Troutbeck, which in 1850 
was tenanted by Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth. In that 
house Mrs. Gaskell first met Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte) 
whose biography she would one day write. At a house in 
the direction of Grasmere from Ambleside lived Harriet 
Martineau for the last thirty years of her life. In the garden, 
on a stone pillar, stands a sundial dated 1847 with the prayer 
“ Come Light, visit me.” In 1848 Emerson spent two days 
there as the guest of Miss Martineau. Among other dis- 
tinguished guests was John Bright, who was once in Miss 
Martineau’s absence, caught upon his knees measuring the 
study and sitting room for carpets which he was specially 
having made as a pleasant surprise gift to the political econo- 
