Photo by Green Bros., Grasmere.

DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE.
As it was when the Home of the Wordsworths (1799-1808)
andDe Quincey (1808-1830).

Frontispiece.]

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LITERARY CELEBRITIES

OF THE

ENGLISH LAKE-DISTRICT

BY

FREDERICK SESSIONS, F.R.G.S.

AUTHOR OF 'ISAIAH, POET-PROPHET AND REFORMER'

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

'There is scarcely anything so interesting to man as his brother man;
because there is nothing else which so acts on his sympathies; and
sympathy is perhaps the most powerful of forces. We may feel much
interest in a Thing, more in a Truth, but most of all only in a Man.'

Myers' 'Lectures on Great Men'

LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1905

PREFACE

THIS is neither a handbook nor a guide tothe haunts of our Lake Celebrities. Yetit may, perhaps, serve in some sort thepurposes of both.

It is not the result of any fresh or original research.I claim only to have condensed many biographies,and to have provided an index to the literary statusof the men and women of whom I treat, some ofwhose works are scarce, and some too voluminousfor ordinary readers.

These essays were written during leisure hourstowards the close of a busy life. They were publishedfirst in two different newspapers. This willaccount for their form, and for the absence of eitheralphabetical or chronological sequence. The earlierones were written for friends in my old home in theSouth; the later ones for my new friends in theNorth. In bringing them together into book formI have remembered the increasing number oftourists who require food for the mind as well asfor the body, and I have remembered my ownwant, in years past, of some concise account ofthose whose names were perpetually before mewhile moving from place to place in these attractiveregions.

To such tourists especially I respectfully dedicatemy biographic sketches, though not without a hopethat they may reach, and be of use to, a still widercircle of readers.

FREDERICK SESSIONS.

The Brant,
   Kendal.

CONTENTS