with this poem, will be the fact that the brothers Ewbank
were supposed to have spent their youth under the shadow of the Pillar,
and Leonard to have had this conversation, on his return from sea, with
the venerable priest of Ennerdale. The district is described with all
that local accuracy which Wordsworth invariably showed in idealization.
The height whence James Ewbank is supposed to have fallen is not the
Pillar-Rock--a crag somewhat difficult to ascend, except by practised
climbers, and which has only been accessible since mountaineering became
an art and a passion to Englishmen. But, if we suppose the conversation
with the priest of Ennerdale to have taken place at the Bridge, below
the Lake--as that is the only place where there is both a hamlet and "a
churchyard"--the "precipice" will refer to the Pillar "Mountain." Both
are alluded to in the poem. The lines,

'You see yon precipice;--it wears the shape
Of a vast building made of many crags;
And in the midst is one particular rock
That rises like a column from the vale,
Whence by our shepherds it is called, _The Pillar_,'

are definite enough. The great mass of the Pillar Mountain is first
referred to, and then the Rock which is a characteristic spur, halfway
up the mountain on its northern side. The "aery summit crowned with
heath," however, on which "the loiterer" "lay stretched at ease," could
neither be the top of this "rock" nor the summit of the "mountain": not
the former, because there is no heath on it, and it would be impossible
for a weary man, loitering behind his companions, to ascend it to rest;
not the latter, because no one resting on the summit of the mountain
could be "not unnoticed by his comrades," and they would not pass that
way over the top of the mountain "on their return" to Ennerdale. This is
an instance, therefore, in which precise localization is impossible.
Probably Wordsworth did not know either that the pillar "rock" was bare
on the summit, or that it had never been ascended in 1800; and he
idealised it to suit his imaginative purpose. In connection with this
poem, a remark he made to the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge may be
recalled.

"He said there was some foundation in fact, however slight, for every
poem he had written of a narrative kind; ... 'The Brothers' was
founded on a young shepherd, in his sleep, having fallen down a crag,
his staff remaining suspended mid-way."

(See the 'Memoirs of Wordsworth', by