writers The beauty of the Lake District has also inspired many other writers over the years, beyond the core Lake Poets. These include their contemporaries Bryan Procter, Felicia Hemans, and Walter Scott, as well as the labouring-class and slightly later John Close, who catered particularly to the growing tourist trade. Other poets include James Payn, Margaret Cropper, and Norman Nicholson. In 1871, aged 48, having visited the Lakes many times, John Ruskin decided to settle down in Brantwood, a house overlooking Coniston Water. Worn out in body and mind, he was looking for a restful escape, and it was this 'weariness and despair' that caught the sympathy of the Lake visitors. They, too, turned to the Lakes for comfort and rest,' rather than for the 'stimulus and excitement that had been the joy of the early travellers.' Ruskin, although he wrote little about the area, ended up taking on the mantle of Wordsworth as the 'new Sage of the Lakes, the Picturesque Figure, the Old Man of Coniston.' Nicholson saw him as the 'Picturesque Figure', 'for in him are combined its three main phases - the aesthetic, the scientific and the moral ...' His scientific approach to the rocks and water of the Lakes, Nicholson argues, was an attempt, not to understand his subject, but to teach people how to react to it in a 'practical and moral' way. References Sources De Quincey, Thomas. Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets. Edited by David Wright; New York, Penguin, 1970. Further reading William Wordsworth - The Lake Poets, 60 min VHS (1994) and DVD (2004), produced by Jule Gammond and directed by Stephen Gammond, contributors: Jonathan Wordsworth, Robert Woof, Pamela Woof, Molly Lefebure, Grevel Lindop and Ted Hughes. Lake Poets Lake Robert Southey Lake Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge William Wordsworth Lake Poets Lake Poets 19th century in England 19th-century British literature Lake District in fiction