Note AL — PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814
Reading edition
In this description of the eagle's birth-place, and the peak "familiar with forgotten years," Wordsworth probably wandered in imagination from the Athole district to Westmoreland, as this part of the poem was in all likelihood written in 1801-2. He visited the Athole country, with his sister, in 1803; going up as far as Blair, and returning: but there is no peak in that district (at least none that he would see) that shows
Inscribed upon its visionary sides, The history of many a winter storm, Or obscure records of the path of fire,
as does, for example, the Stob Dearg in the Buchaile Etive Mor group in Argyll, a peak which he saw in the course of his Scottish tour in that year. —ED.