“The Summit”
“The Summit” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Ruskin lists this title in his Plan for Continuation of the Account of a Tour on the Continent on the back endpapers of MS VIII. The positioning of this poem in the Plan (presumably as part of a projected composite section to be entitled “The Summit”) reflects the influence of the poet, Samuel Rogers (1763–1855). Ruskinʼs borrowings from Rogersʼs Italy are especially prominent in treating the trope of mountain crossing. See, in the apparatus for the “Account”, Sources and Influences—Rogersʼs Poetry; and see also the contextual glosses for “Passing the Alps”.
In Ruskinʼs Plan, the title “The Summit” is the fourth in what can be interpreted as a definable cluster, which constructs the experience of crossing the Alps:
While Ruskin did not subdivide his Plan into clusters of titles, his intention is evident in his drafting poems, with titles corresponding to those in the Plan, as an identically ordered sequence in MS VIII. The poem corresponding to the first title in this conjectural cluster, “Passing the Alps”, was drafted elsewhere, in MS IA, g.2, probably prior to the drafts of the other poems in MS VIII; and Ruskin based this poem on Rogersʼs “The Alps” in Italy, applying themes and structure in Rogersʼs poem to his own cluster.


“I thought as, by the cross I past / Of far Helvellyns dreary waste / Mid my own hills, and legend strange” (MS VIII; Works [1903])—The Alpine memorial crosses, which were erected in memory of travelers who met with accidents, put Ruskin in mind of a Lake District tourist, Charles Gough, who fell to his death in 1805, when attempting to traverse Mount Helvellyn. He apparently lost his footing when attempting to cross Striding Edge, and his body ended among the rocks below, near Red Tarn, where his remains were found three months later, still being watched over by his terrier, Foxey. The incident achieved near legendary status owing to the dogʼs perceived loyalty. Poems in the epitaph tradition were composed about the story by William Wordsworth (“Fidelity”) and by Walter Scott (“Hellvellyn”). See Ruskin, Works, 1:416 n. 2; 340.
Ruskinʼs contribution participates in the growing sentiment centered on the perceived fidelity of the dog. See the anthology of reactions to the incident collected in Morley, The Unfortunate Tourist of Helvellyn. Whereas letters and newspaper accounts near in time to the discovery of Goughʼs remains speculated about the circumstance of the accident—mentioning the dog mainly to remark on the bizarre coincidence of her having given birth to a litter while remaining near the body, and to debate whether she or other scavengers had eaten away the flesh of the corpse—William Wordsworthʼs and Walter Scottʼs poems shifted responses to admiration of the dogʼs tenacious loyalty. In 1829, Edwin Landseer (1802–73) painted Attachment, a composition that mixes the pathos of the terrier pawing at her fallen masterʼs breast (in the manner of the romantic image of a lover lying prostrate on the lifeless body of the beloved) and the sublime terror of the looming heights from which Gough fell (see Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, 102).
As an available source for Scottʼs version of the story, Ruskin could have found the poem “Hellvellyn” in volume six (1833) of the twelve‐volume Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott (pp. 370–73), published by Cadell, with illustrations by Turner, as an extension of the Magnum Opus edition (see Millgate, Scottʼs Last Edition, 47–48; see also Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 309 [no. 2428]). Wordsworthʼs “Fidelity” was available in volume four of the five‐volume Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (pp. 254–56), included among the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection” (see Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 168; see also Dearden, The Library of John Ruskin, 366 [no. 2916]). As for Landseerʼs painting, while widely reviewed when shown at the Royal Academy in 1830, apparently no engravings were made, so it is unlikely that Ruskin was familiar with the image (see Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, 102).
Unusually, in this case, Ruskin shares octosyllabic couplets with Wordsworth rather than with Scott, whose lines are alexandrines, rhymed in an octave pattern of ABABCCCB, a stanza more commonly credited to Algernon Swinburne (e.g., in “The Garden of Proserpine”; I am grateful to my colleague, Alison Pelegrin, for help identifying this verse form). However, Ruskinʼs narrator seems indebted less to Wordsworth than to Scott, in swerving to a meditative voice (“I thought as, by the cross I past”). Scottʼs speaker similarly pauses atop Helvellyn to contemplate the spot where the traveler fell: “I climbʼd the dark brow of the mighty Hellvellyn / . . . / When I markʼd the sad spot where the wanderer had died” (Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, 6:370). Possible lexical borrowings from both Scottʼs and Wordsworthʼs poems are noted in the textual glosses.
In his version of the “Account”, W. G. Collingwood omitted the entire second half of Ruskinʼs holograph poem containing the story of Gough and his faithful dog. Collingwood neither acknowledged nor provided a rationale for the omission, but one can infer that the presence of a story set in the English lakes would have jarred with the editorʼs conception of the “Account” as a poetic, topographical account of the Tour of 1833. Collingwood omitted all prose except what he interpolated himself, in the form of epigraphs quoting Ruskinʼs narrative version of the tour written a half‐century later for Praeterita. Given this emphasis, Collingwood would have been particularly put off by the inclusion of a tale set in the Lake District, rather than in the Alps. In this decision, however, Collingwood eliminated evidence of one of Ruskinʼs most telling debts to the influence of Samuel Rogersʼs Italy, which uses narrative to plot emotions defining the stages of a mountain crossing. See, in the apparatus for the “Account”, Sources and Influences—Rogersʼs Poetry; and see the contextual glosses for “Passing the Alps”.


“Stridens ridgy range” (MS VIII; Works [1903])—Striding Edge, a ridge flanking Helvellyn.


“And died, beside a small dark tarn” (MS VIII; Works [1903])—Red Tarn, a small lake on the eastern flank of Helvellyn, below Striding Edge. In “Fidelity”, Wordsworth glosses tarn as “a small Mere or Lake, mostly high up in the mountains” (Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, 4:255n).