Note CT — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 (continued 2)
Reading edition
The local allusions in this passage, and in what follows, are most exact and literal. The three men are supposed to leave the cottage, and to cross to the west side of the tarn, just a little to the north of the fir-wood which overshadows it. The "barrier of steep rock" is the low perpendicular crag to the west of the tarn, immediately below the fir-wood, and the "semicirque of turf-clad ground" is apparent at a glance, whether seen from below the rock or from above it. There are many fragments of ice-borne rock, high up the flank of Blake Rigg to the west, and on the slopes of Lingmoor to the east, which might at first sight be mistaken for the stone, like
A stranded ship, with keel upturned, that rests Fearless of winds and waves,
or the
fragment, like an altar;
but this particular mass of rock lay
Right at the foot of that moist precipice,
and there it still lies, obvious enough even to the casual eye. The "semicirque" is the cup-shaped recess between the fir-wood and the cliff; and on entering it, the mass of rock is seen lying north-west to north-east. It is not ice-borne, but a fragment dislodged from the crag above it. It is now broken into three smaller fragments, by the weathering of many years. Cracked probably when it fell, the rents have widened, and the fragments are separated by the frosts of many winters. A sycamore of average size is now growing at its side; its root being in the cleft, where the stone is broken. Holly grows luxuriantly all along the face of the crag above; so that the existence of the bush, described as growing in the stone which resembled an altar, is easily explained. The brook is a short one, flowing through the meadow-pastures of the wood, and after a hundred yards is lost in the turfy slope, but is seen again upon the face of the "moist precipice," "softly creeping"—precisely as described in the poem. The "three several stones" that "stand near" are, I think, the one to the front, in a line with the keel of the ship; and the other two to the right and left respectively. The "pair," with the "fragment like an altar, flat and smooth," are to the left, and close at hand.
In connection with all this a remark of Southey's to J. Neville White may be quoted. "Keswick, September 7, 1814.... Have you read Wordsworth's poem? If not, read it, if you can, before you see the author. You will see him with the more pleasure, and look with more interest at the scenery he describes." (Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, vol. ii. p. 376.)—ED.