Note GT — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814 (continued 3)

Silver How is the only "dark mountain" visible to the west from the moss-grown seat in the Grasmere Churchyard; but here again the realism of the narrative gives way, and not Silver How but Lingmoor is described, with Hackett Cottage at its south-eastern foot. The Fenwick note is here explicit. "First for the one picture given by the Wanderer of the living. In this nothing is introduced but what was taken from nature and real life. The cottage was called Hackett, and stands, as described, on the southern extremity of the ridge which separates the two Langdales. The pair who inhabited it were called Jonathan and Betty Yewdale." Later on, in book vi. p. 250, Wordsworth describes the blue roofs of Hawkshead village as ornamenting

Unless, therefore, he is speaking in the vague, Hackett and not Grasmere is the place described. The Fenwick note to the Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, however, decides the question (see vol. iv. p. 256). "The house (Hackett) and its inmates are referred to in the fifth book of The Excursion, in the passage beginning—