. The trio became fast friends,
and William and Dorothy moved to Alfoxden (near Nether Stowey) to enjoy
the companionship. What one would give for some adequate account of
their walks and talks together over the Quantocks. They planned a little
walking trip into Devonshire that autumn (1797) and "The Ancient
Mariner" was written in the hope of defraying the expenses of the
adventure.

De Quincey himself, who tells us so much jovial gossip about Wordsworth
and Coleridge, was no mean pedestrian. He describes a forty-mile
all-night walk from Bridgewater to Bristol, on the evening after first
meeting Coleridge. He could not sleep after the intellectual excitement
of the day, and through a summer night "divinely calm" he busied himself
with meditation on the sad spectacle he had witnessed: a great mind
hastening to decay.

I have always fancied that walking as a fine art was not much practised
before the eighteenth century. We know from Ambassador Jusserand's
famous book how many wayfarers were on the roads in the fourteenth
century, but none of these were abroad for the pleasures of moving
meditation and scenery. We can gather from Mr. Tristram's "Coaching Days
and Coaching Ways" that the highroads were by no means safe for solitary
travellers even so late as 1750. In "Joseph Andrews" (1742) whenever any
of the characters proceed afoot they are almost certain to be held up.
Mr. Isaac Walton, it is true, was a considerable rambler a century
earlier than this, and in his Derbyshire hills must have passed many
lonely gullies; but footpads were more likely to ambush the main roads.
It would be a hardhearted bandit who would despoil the gentle angler of
his basket of trouts. Goldsmith, too, was a lusty walker, and tramped it
over the Continent for two years (1754-6) with little more baggage than
a flute: he might have written "The Handy Guide for Beggars" long
before Vachel Lindsay. But generally speaking, it is true that
cross-country walks for the pure delight of rhythmically placing one
foot before the other were rare before Wordsworth. I always think of him
as one of the first to employ his legs as an instrument of philosophy.

After Wordsworth they come thick and fast. Hazlitt, of course--have you
paid the tax that R.L.S. imposes on all who have not read Hazlitt's "On
Going A Journey?" Then Keats: never was there more fruitful walk than
the early morning stroll from Clerkenwell to the Poultry in October,
1816, that produ