Note BH — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814
Reading edition
"The scene of the first book of the poem is, I must own, laid in a tract of country not sufficiently near to that which soon comes into view in the second book, to agree with the fact. All that relates to Margaret, and the ruined cottage, etc., was taken from observations made in the south-west of England; and certainly it would require more than seven-league boots to stretch in one morning, from a common in Somersetshire, or Dorsetshire, to the heights of Furness Fells, and the deep valleys they embosom."—I. F.
Compare with the first book of The Excursion the first three books of The Prelude.—ED.