Lake Poets was mostly a prose writer and did not particularly subscribe to the Wordsworthian vision of the Lakes. Southey, like Wordsworth, started out on the republican left, but, by the time the threat from Napoleon had dwindled, he had become the embodiment of a Tory extolling the virtues of nation and patriotism, and using the Lakes as a touchstone, and as "the symbol of the nation's covenant with God." Letitia Elizabeth Landon's sketch, "Grasmere Lake, A Sketch by a Cockney", in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834, is a spoof on the Lake Poets, whom she admired (especially Wordsworth) but regarded
Lake Coleridge the difference in altitude between the lake and river (the lake is 150 metres higher). Both the Harper and Wilberforce Rivers have had some of their flow diverted into the lake, with up to 100% of the Harper's flow diverted for the Lake Coleridge Power Station. The Lake was named by the chief surveyor of the Canterbury Association, Joseph Thomas, on a sketch map prepared in early 1849. It commemorates Edward Coleridge and William Coleridge, who were first cousins and both nephews of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, two early members of the Canterbury Association. Two further members of the Coleridge family