INTRODUCTION xxi

“Scotland,” he writes (July 17), “is immeasurably inferior to Switzerland in her sponginess. The hills here are never dry; in places here and there, yes, but never for more than a hundred square yards; it is always squash, splash, plash, at every little indentation where morass can form itself.”

And so again in a letter (August 28) referring to Chamouni:-

“There is nothing like it; there is no sensation of mountains here which in the least degree is comparable to or connectable with it. I don’t care the least for the hills here; they are totally without effect upon me. I like the heather and rocks and little lapping pools of lakes, but there is always a sense of smallness and desolation, comfortless diminutiveness, which I cannot get over. Switzerland is so rich as well as so vast, so warm in its majesty, so homely and happy in its sublimity; I never expect to see anything to come near it on the face of the earth.”

But in the end the scenery around Glenfinlas conquered him:-

“October 23.-I am sorry to leave this place. I have grown fonder and fonder of it; the hills seem more beautiful than ever. I was in fact over-tired when I came down, in mind. I find even scenery and other objects, which are quite the mind’s medicine, are not properly enjoyed till it is medicined. I felt the gloom of the wild moorland country oppressive at first; now I begin to look on it with the childish feeling of delight again that I used to have in crossing Shap fells with you and mama in the post-chaise from Kendal. What intense happiness that was! This Scotch scenery has always a powerful effect on me from its association with my strong childish feeling at Glenfarg, and the hills of Moncrieff, never to be forgotten. There is a hill just above the place where Millais is painting me, with pines on it, always putting me in mind of my baby verses:

‘Those trees stand firm upon the rock,

And seem as if they all did lock

Into each other. Tall they stand,

Towering above the whitened land.’¹

¹ The lines are from the “Poetry Discriptive” of 1827 to 1829 (see Vol. II. p. 530). The piece, which is headed “Wales,” consists of nine lines, and is as follows:-

“That rock with waving billows on its side,

That hill with beauteous forests on its top,

That stream that with its rippling waves doth glide,

And oh, what beauties has that mountain got;

That rock stands high against the sky,

Those trees,” etc.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]