I begin with lodging a complaint against Mr. Ferguson, namely, that he has ignored me--me, that in some measure may be described as having broken ground originally in this interesting field of research. Me, the undoubted parent of such studies--_i. e._ the person who first solemnly proclaimed the Danish language to be the master-key for unlocking the peculiarities of the Lake dialect--me, has this undutiful son never noticed, except incidentally, and then only with some reserve, or even with a distinct scruple, as regards the particular point of information for which I am cited. Seriously, however, this very passage, which offers me the affront of utter exclusion from what I had regarded as my own peculiar territory, my own Danish ring-fence, shows clearly that no affront had been designed. Mr. Ferguson had found occasion, at p. 80, to mention that _Fairfield_, the most distinguished[50] of the Grasmere boundaries, and 'next neighbour to Helvellyn' (next also in magnitude, being above three thousand feet high), had, as regarded its name, 'been derived from the Scandinavian _faar_, sheep, in allusion to the peculiar fertility of its pastures.' He goes on thus--'This mountain' (says De Quincey) 'has large, smooth pastoral savannahs, to which the sheep resort when all its rocky or barren neighbours are left desolate.' In thus referring to myself for the character of the mountain, he does not at all suppose that he is referring to the author of the etymology. On the contrary, the very next sentence says--'I do not know who is the author of this etymology, which has been quoted by several writers; but it appears to me to be open to considerable doubt'; and this for two separate reasons, which he assigns, and which I will notice a little further on. [Footnote 50: 'And mighty Fairfield, with its chime Of echoes, still was keeping time.' WORDSWORTH--_The Waggoner_.]