At all events, I am here called upon freely to acknowledge that the character I have represented in his person is chiefly an idea of what I fancied my own character might have become in his circumstances.
Nevertheless much of what he says and does had an external existence, that fell under my own youthful and subsequent observation.
An individual, named Patrick, by birth and education a Scotchman, followed this humble occupation for many years, and afterwards settled in the town of Kendal.

He married a kinswoman of my wife's, and her sister Sarah was brought up from early childhood under this good man's eye.[13] My own imaginations I was happy to find clothed in reality, and fresh ones suggested, by what she reported of this man's tenderness of heart, his strong and pure imagination, and his solid attainments in literature, chiefly religious, whether in prose or verse.

At Hawkshead also, while I was a school-boy, there occasionally resided a packman (the name then generally given to this calling), with whom I had frequent conversations upon what had befallen him, and what he had observed during his wandering life, and, as was natural, we took much to each other; and upon the subject of Pedlarism in general, as _then_ followed, and its favourableness to an intimate knowledge of human concerns, not merely among the humbler classes of society, I need say nothing here in addition to what is to be found in 'The Excursion,' and a note attached to it.
[13] In pencil on opposite page--Sarah went to Kendal on our mother's death, but Mr.P.died in the course of a year or two.

M.W.
Now for the _Solitary_.

Of him I have much less to say.