Lake Country Sketches #226304

But if a certain love of the humorous induced me to enter into or follow up con versations with the few still living among the peasants who were in the habit of seeing Wordsworth in the flesh, there was also a genuine wish to endeavour to find out how far the race of Westmoreland and Cumber land farm-folk the 'matthews' and the 'michaels' of the poet as described by him — were real or fancy pictures, or how far the Characters of the dalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by tourist influences during the thirty-two years that have passed since the aged poet was laid to rest.