This was more than just a fancy, as the primary purpose for this excursion was to
purchase a property suitable for the growing Wordsworth clan. Thanks to the assistance
of his patron, Lord Lowther, Wordsworth was soon thereafter able to acquire the Broad
How farm near Ullswater. Wordsworth never built a family home on the site and sold
the property in 1834.

While in the Ullswater region, the Wordsworths stayed with their friends Charles and
Letitia Luff.

A self-quotation, as this is a slightly adapted line from The Excursion: “I saw not, but I felt that it was there” (II.872).

Hawkshead.

Wordsworth describes his own role in the village efforts to thin its raven population
in a famous passage of the Prelude (I.334-51).

More commonly known as the chub.

In Part I of The Compleat Angler (1653), Izaac Walton sets out “to recover the lost credit of the poor despised Chub.”

Line 35 of the poem “Loyalty Confined” from Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Percy dates the poem to 1671 and tentatively attributes it to Sir Roger L’Estrange.