They had planned a great tour through the Lakes and the North two years
before, but were stopped at Plymouth by the news of Mrs. Richardson's
death. At last the plan was carried out. A prose diary was written
alternately by John and Mary, one carrying it on when the other tired,
with rather curious effect of unequally-yoked collaboration. We read how
they "set off from London at seven o'clock on Tuesday morning, the 18th
May," and thenceforward we are spared no detail: the furniture of the
inns; the bills of fare; when they got out of the carriage and walked;
how they lost their luggage; what they thought of colleges and chapels,
music and May races at Oxford, of Shakespeare's tomb, and the
pin-factory at Birmingham; we have a complete guide-book to Blenheim and
Warwick Castle, to Haddon and Chatsworth, and the full itinerary of
Derbyshire. "Matlock Bath," we read, "is a most delightful place"; but
after an enthusiastic description of High Tor, John reacts into bathos
with a minute description of wetting their shoes in a puddle. The cavern
with a Bengal light was fairyland to him, and among the minerals he was
quite at home.

Then they hurried north to Windermere. Once at Lowwood, the excitement
thickens, with storms and rainbows, mountains and waterfalls, boats on
the lake and coaching on the steep roads. This journey through Lakeland
is described in the galloping anapæsts of the "Iteriad," which was
simply the prose journal versified on his return, one of the few
enterprises of the sort which were really completed.

To readers who know the country it is interesting as giving a detailed
account in the days when this "nook of English ground" was "secure from
rash assault." One learns that, even then, there were jarring sights at
Bowness Bay and along Derwentwater shore, elements unkind and bills