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·WORDSWORTH
DY
F.W. II, MYERS
S1C: 11L.LISASI) CO., LIMIT 1)
ST. .1. KIIS'S SORII I, 10, DOS
1945

·COPYRIGHT
First published 2880
Nou rocket Edition 1925
Reprinted 1929, 1935
PRINTED IY GREAT BRITAI:
DY F. * R, CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH

·COXTEXTS.
CITAITEX I.
DIXIN AND ortation-CaxiIDGE
COSITER II.
BUT ICE 1X Lordox ax is 'XCE.
12
CHAITER IIL
Ares RocorroKTK - LreTec Racuor- SETTEKTONY AT
OMILI
CHAITER IS.
TAE Eun LALE
sy
CHAITERS
HA1x11os-boxiri-110XLAXD Tot
CI141TEK 91,
Bir Grote Bratov Ist GI JOEN KOUD OLIN

·CONTEXTS.
si
PAOX
75
CHAPTER VII.
<<
"Happy WARRIOR" AND PATRIOTIC POEMS
CHAPTER VIII.
CHILDREYLIFE AT RIDAL MOUSI" THE EXCURSION"
104
CHAPTER IX.
" EVENING ODE."
POETIC DICTION-LAODAJIA
12
CHAPTER X
NATURAL RELIGION ,
CHAPTER XI.
16+
ITALIAN TOUR-"ECCLESIASTICAL Soxxers"--POLITICAL Viens
LAUREATESHIP.
CIAPTER XII.
109
.
WINDERJERE RAILWAY
LETTERS OX THE KENDAL AND
CoxCLUSION,
. 185
INDEX

·WORDSTVORTE.

·No text on this page.

·WORDSTVORTE. CHAITER I. TITIL AND INTCA7104-CAMBRIM. I CAXXOT, I-shaxs, more litly lwyzn this short biomapiliy than with Mume words in which is ruljert 1:24 liin own feeling a to the fint in which wuch a look houlil 1. apjuclical "Silenter," sasa l'onlawortli, "usa innie dl the 75C, a nilit of the departed lot dem. therefore, win infringes that nelit lig prakıma grublicly of, for, at inil, then wlın cinnot oprak fut throwlrea lake limul that bir opens not his mouth without a sufficient ainction. Onls to plumplut entialitetne lig te afection doma it Irluna justly to mlinzir idir clums of the dream! on the one hand, and of the fiteen en anii futurr fanera tions on tlir oshirt, anil linke alaliser le wirn them. Such philophy mini a rok of Lincominn eitthr! Amaring ug if the car intrwone into the present, the game Immachra u on the kinetiting of domeste life, fo wlucli e lavo licly barn more and monim accuslemrul, att en la file us indicatiunt of a tigris slate of sul·lic ferlir Tie ir anilgel treguet, a one of the pollmt chun terials of Eurluell, that joslours of familiar apainali ·2 WORDSWORTI. [CHAY. which, whilc it contributes to the maintenance of private dignity, is one of the most efficacious guardians of rational public freedom." In accordance with these view's the poet entrusted to his nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln, the task of composing memoirs of his life, in the just confidence that nothing would by such liands be given to the world which was inconsistent with the dignity either of the living or of the dead. From those incmoirs the facts contained in the present work have been for the most part drawn. It has, however, been my fortune, through hereditary friendships, to have access to many manuscript letters and much oml tradition bearing upon the poet's private life;' and some details and soine passages of letters hitherto unpub. lislied, will appear in these pages. It would seem, however, that there is but little of public interest in Worlsworth's life which has not already been given to the world, and I have shrunk from narrating such minor personal incidents as he would himself have thought it needless to dwell upon. I have endeavoured, in short, to writo as though the Subject of this biograplıy were himself its Auditor, listening, indeed, from some region where all of truth is discerned and nothing but truth desired, but chocking by his venerable presence any such revelation is public advantage does not call for, and private delicacy would condemn, As regards the critical remarks which these pages contain, I have only to say that I have carefully congulted such notices of the poet ns his personal friends have left 07 'I take this opportunity of thanking Jr. Willian Worilsworth, the son (now deceased), and Mr. William Worlswortlı, the grandson, of the poet, for lielp thost valuable in enabling me to give a true im. pression of the poet's personality, ·L) DIPTII AND EDUCATION, c), and alm, I leliese, nearly every criticism of inte aner which l. *frum og his wurls. I find with pleasure tha: muitoolide anderesent of opinion erist, thouzl lexi among you focus of crilirs, than anong Barn of eminence in oilier departments of thought of artina wine altcntarın has been dicind to onliwortli's meme. And althoz! I lure felt it right to express in Mch caw risu*n Vera with exstars, I larr been allo do frel that I am 50vltroiling on the grader any merely funciful riimtr in which leilet accredital judge woull Tow to conrur Without further per fare I now begin my story of Windyworth's life, in wonde wurhlım hirulf dichial to his intrnilal blommapilier. "1 #25 born,“ lie kaull"at Cockermill, in Curulcrlanıl, on April ith, liin, the con:I min of John Wordlerorth, attorney at-las-As fuwyrus of thin clws were then callos-anil langere to Sir James Lowther, afterwants Farl of Lonelle. My toothırs was Anne, only daughter of Willium ('oukron, momet, of l'antlı, anıl of Dorotlıy, Lom (rarlantlon of the ancient family of tluat name, who from the times of Elwani tho Thurd had lived in Newborn II:ll, Westmoreland. Vygrinlfather was the first of the nanir of Wanlıworth who carne into Westmorelanıl, where hen grerebound the small rate of Sorblinier TIR was de womilalimma family whalu Innrithe attention, in Yorkshirr, near the watert of the Don, pitulalily Irfor the Xerman Camuel Their names arrest on different cccanion in all thr tranesciunas perminal and public, con nicial with that qurish, and I sees, tirough the 110 fint of Colonel Iriurent, en almery, male in 1995, .! llon expense of William Worleworth, as jors med in . lalin inkriptkin ritel pr , while cutie tl..

·WORDS FORTH. [CHAY. pedigree of the family back four generations from himself, The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother's parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold, in consequence of being put, at a friend's house in London, in what used to be called ' a best bedroom.' My father norer recovered his usunl cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and diod when I was in my fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I liad been sent with my elder brother Richard, in ny ninth year. "I remember iny mother only in some few situations, one of which was her pinning & nosegay to my breast, klien I was going to say the catechism in the church, as tras customary before Easter, An intimate friend of hers told me that she once said to her, that the only one of her five children about whose future life she was anxious tas William; and he, she said, would be remarkable, cither for good or for cril. The cause of this was, that I was of a stiff, moody, nnd violent temper; so much so that I remember going once into the attics of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon somo indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils, which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in hand, but my heart failed. Upon another occasion, while I was at my grandfather's house at Penrith, along with my eldest brother, Richard, wo vero whipping tops together in the large drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid clown upon particular occasions. The walls were hung round with family pictures, and I said to my brother, Dare you strike your whip through that old lady's petticoat ?' He replied, 'Yo, I won't.' Then, said I, hero goes!' and I struck my lash through her ·BIETU AYD EDCCATIOX. 5 hooped petticoat ; for which, no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished. But, possibly from gome want of judgment in panishments inflicted, I wl becoce perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise. "Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty then, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked. For example, I read all Fielding's works, Don Quirote, Gil Blar, and any part of Swift that I liked- Gullirer's Travels, and the Tale of the Tul, being both much to my taste. It may be, perhaps, as well to mention, that the first verses which I wrote were a task imposed by: my master; the subject, The Summer Vacation, and of my own arcord I added others upon Return to School. There was nothing remarkable in either poem; but I was called upon, among other scholars, to write verses upon the completion of the second centenary from the foundation of the school in 1585 by Archbishop Saddys. These verses were much adiaired - Lor more than they deserved, for they were but a tume imitation of Pope's versification, and a little in his style." But it was not from exercises of this kind that Words worth's school-days drew their inspiration, of his life, perhaps, were richer in strong impressions ; but they were impressions derived neither from books nor from companions, but from the majesty and loveliness of the scenes around him,- from Nature, his life-long mistress, loved with the first beats of youth. To her influence we shall again recur, it will be most convenient first to trace Wordsworth's progress through the curriculum of ordinary education. It was due to the liberality of Wordsworth's two No years!

·TORDSTFORTH. [CRAP. pedigree of the family back fuur generations from himself. The time of my infancy and carly boyhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother's parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778, clied of a decline, brought on by a cold, in consequence of being put, at a friend's house in London, in what used to be called 'a best bedroon.' My father never recovered bis usual cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year. "I remember my mother only in somo few situations, one of which was her pinning a nosegay to my breast, when I was going to say the catechism in the church, as was customary before Easter. An intimate friend of lers told me that she once said to her, that the only one of her five children about whose future life she was anxious was Williain ; and he, she said, would be remarkable, either for good or for cril. The cause of this was, that I was of a stiff, moody, and violent teniper; so much so that I remember going once into thc attics of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils, which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in liand, but my heart failed. Upon another occasion, while I was at my grandfather's house at Penrith, along with my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops togetlier in the large dmwing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down upon particular occasions. The walls irerc hung round with family pictures, and I said to my brother, Daro you strike your whip through that old lady's petticoat?' He replied, Yo, I won't.' Then, said I, here goes !' and I struck my lash through her ·BIRTH AND EDUOATION. hooped petticoat; for wluch, no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punislınt, Ilut, pesilily fropi some want of julgraent in punishment inflictel, 1 Ind becomo purvorso and obstinute in defying phoneti ***, and rather piroul of it than otherwisu. "Of my enrliest days at rchoul I have little 11) Miny, lut that they wery very limply ones, clintly lueruntman I wilt left at liberty then, and in the vacations, lo wa whatever bopha I likel. For example, I minilall Fielding's work, Don Quixote, Gil Blue, anul any purt of Swilt tiut I like Gulliver's Travels, and the im u the ruly belog lioth much to my tasto. It may lw, porhinji, 11x well to mention, that the first yorucs which I wrote were a truh injuomuulliy my master; the subject, The Mummy trend son, au of my own arconi i ako others topion Arturn to Show There was nothing remarkalilo in cithor port; "I want called upon, among otlier Acholar, to write VN MUA penn the completion of the recom ccntutinty toum the foun tion of the achool in 1583 lıy Areluhishup Simulyn. The verscs were much silinired-litr inore tloun they demiryod, for they wero but n lumo imitation of l'upu'n vuutmilientams and a little in his Atyle." But it was not froin exOTCIAOM OS Dil kind tot Worth worthi's school-daye draw their infalion). No your of his life, qwrlingin, weru richt in atrouix imorralona; Lut they were imprensione derival titlurt for bokn tur from companione, lut from this maty ami luweh 101 the scenes around hitn;– fruin Nature, loin life forly, 101-tfrxx, Wrert with the first ficals of youth. To her mdm Wh it will not copyrnitat fitel to trivit Norleworl's progtes through the Mirriculum of ondoty education, shall agnin frcur; It was due to the liberality of Wordlawuetl' 1** ·WORDSTVORTH. (char, uncles, Richard Wordsworth and Chris:opher Crackanthorp (under whose care he and his brothers were placed at their father's death, in 1783), that his education was prolonged beyond his school-days. For Sir James Lowther, afterwards Lord Lonsdale, -whose agent Wordsworth's father, Wr. John Wordsworth, was--becoming aware that his agent had about 50001. at the bank, and wishing, partly on political grounds, to make his power over him absolute, had forcibly borrowed this sum of him, and then refused to repay it. After Mr. John Vordsworth's death much of the romaining fortune which he left behind him was wasted in efforts to compel Lord Lonsdale to refund this sum; but it was never recovered till his death in 1801, when Iris successor repaid $5001, to the Wordsworths, being a full acquittal, with interest, of the original debt. The fortunes of the Wordsworth-family were, thereforc, nt a low cbb in 1787, and much crcdit is due to the uncles who discerned the talents of William and Christopher, and bestowed a Cambridge education on the future Poet Laureate, and the future Master of Trinity. In October, 1787, then, Wordsworth went up as an undergraduate to St. Jolin's College, Cambridge. The first court of this College, in the south-yestern corner of which were Wordstorth's rooms, is divided only by a narrow lane from the Chapel of Trinity College, and his first memories are of the Trinity clock, telling the hours "twico over, with a male and female voice," of the pealing organ, and of the prospect when From my pillou looking forth, up light Or moon or foronring stars I could behold Thc antechapel, where the statue stood or Verton with his prisin and filent fnce, The marble index of a mind for crer Popoging throngh stmngo seas of Thought, alono.

·1.) CEXSIDST For the most peribe Rexiss which month brought arista Catalize as d als found expressida some iba case is En literature; for it has bees the future of it aceat l'aire sitr to receire in her bosom most of the loaz lise ci pots who form the peculiar glory of or English sech Sperri, Ben Jonson, and Warlore; Dryden, Cowley, ani Waller; Milton, George Herbert, and Grap-to mention only the inost familiar names-haul owed allegiance to that mother who received Wordsworth now, and Coleridge and Byron immediately after him. "Not obrious, pot obtresire, she;" but yet her sober dignity has often seemed to unworthy setting for minds, like Wordsworth's, meditative without languor, and energies adrarcing without shock or storm. Nerer, perhaps, has the spirit of Cambridge been more truly caught than in Milton's Penceroso ; for this poem obyiously_reflects the seat o7 learning wluch the 11 who, in his Installation Ole, introduces Multon among the bards and sages who lean from heaven, To bless the place where, on their opening soal, First the genuine ardour stole "T'was Milton struck the deep-toned shell," and invoked with the old affection the scenes which witnessed his best and early years : Ye brown d'er-arching groves, That contemplation loves, Where wallowy Camus lingers with delight: Oft at the blash of dawn ·[сп TTORDSITORTI. Imad sont lerel lain, Oft Tooed the gleam of Conthia silrer.bright In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly, TTith Freedom by my side, and soft-ered Jelancholr. And Fondsworth also on the dry smooth-shaven green paced on solitary erenings " to the far-off' curfer's sound," beneath those grores of forest-trees among which "Philo. mel still deigns a song" and the spirit of contemplation lingers still; thether the silent avennes stand in the summer twilight filled with fragrance of the lime, or the g rors of chestnut engirdle the autumn river-lawns th walls of golden glow, or the tall clms cluster in arden or Wilderness into towering citadels of green. Beneath one exquisite ash-tree, wreathed with ivy, and hung in autumn with yellow tassels from overy spray, Wordsworth used to linger long. " Scarcely Sponsor's self," he tells us, Could have more tranquil visions in his youth, Or could more bright appearances cronto Of hunan furms with suporhuman powers, Than I behold loitering on calm clcar nights Alonc, bonenth this fniry work of carth. And there was another element in Wordsworth's life nt Cambridge more peculiarly his own--that exultation which a boy born among the mountains may feel when he perceives that the delight in the external world which the mountains have taught him has not perished by uprooting, nor wancd for want of nourishıment in field or fon; thint. even here, where nature is unadorned, and scenery, is it were, reduced to its clements --where the prospect in bu the plain surface of the earth, stretched willo beneath it open heaven, - even here ho can still feel the enrly glo ·CAMBRIDGE 1 can take delight in that broad and tranquil greenness, and in the august procession of the day. A, if awakened, antimoped, rogued, constrained, I looked for adirerual thudzs; perayed Tlo common comptensace of earth and sky- Earth, nowhere upembellished by Bobo trace or that first Paradise whence 15 was unren; And sky, whose beauty and bounts are expressed By the prond came the bears, the name of Ilesren. Yor is it only in these open air scenes that Wurls worth has alded to the long tradition a memory of his own. The "stored triadows nichly diglit," which have passed into a proverb in Milton's song, cast in King's College Chapel the same "soft chequering" upon their framework of stone while onlsworth watched through the pauses of the anthem the inter afternoon's departing glow: Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite, Whoe'er ye be that thos, yourselves ansees, Imbue your prison-lars with solemn sheen, Shide on, until yo fade with coming Night From those shadowy seats wbence Milton had beard "the pealing organ blow to the full-voiced choir below," Wordsworth too gazed upon That branching roof Sell-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells There light and shade repose, where munc dwells Lingering, and wandening on as lotb to die Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were boro for immortality Thins much, and more, there has of ennobling and nr changealle in the very aspect and structure of that ancier Unirersity, by which Wordsworth's mind was bent toward ·10 TORDSTVORTH. [char. a kindred greatness. But of active momal and intellectual life there was at that tiine little to be found within her walls. Tho floodtide of her new life had not yet set in: she was still slumbering, as she had slumbered long, content to add to her majesty by the merc lajise of generations, and increment of her ancestral calm. Even had the intellectual life of the place been more stirring, it is doubtful how far Wordsworth would have been welcomed, or deserred to be welcomed, by authorities or students. He began residence at seventeen, and his northern nature was late to flower. There seems, in fact, to have been even loss of visiblo promise about him than we should have expected; but rather something untamed and insubordinate, something heads and self-confident; an independence that seemed only rusticity, and an indolent ignorance which assumed too readily the tones of scorn. · Ho was as yet a creature of the lakes and mountains, and love for Nature was only slowly leading him to love and roverence for man. Nny, such attraction as he had hitherto felt for the human mce liad been interwoven with her influence in a way so stmnge that to many min is it will seem a childish fancy not worth recounting, The objects of his boyish idealization had been Cumbrian shepherlsad race whoso personality seems to melt into Nature's---who aro united ns intimately with moor and mountain as the petrel with the sea. drambling schoolboy, tbus I felt his presence in his own domnin As of a lord and master - or a power, Or geninis, under Saturc, under Goul, Presiding; and screrest solitude linii moro commanding looks when he was therc. When up tho loncis bruoka (in rainy drys Angling I foot, or trod the tracklose hills ·CAIBRIDGE 1L By mists bewijderel, suddenly mint eyes Hare glanced opon him distant a few sters Ja size a gant, stalling through thick fig, Flia theep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow, His furm hath flashed apon me, glorified By the deep radiance of the setting aan; Or hun have I descried in dıstant sky, A solitary object and sublime, Above all hergbt! like an anal cross Stationed alone ap on a spiry rock Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus has man Ennobled oatwardly before my sight; And thus my heart was early introduced To an anconscious love and reverence Of human nature; hence the human form To me became an index of delight, Ot grace and honour, power and worthiness "This sanctity of Nature given to man," "__this interfusion of human interest with the sublimits of moor anu hill,- formed a typical introduction to the manner in which Wordsworth regarded inankind to the end - lepicting him B9 eet, as it were, amid impersonal influences, which make his passion and struggle but a little thing; us when psinters give but a strip of their canvas to the fields and cities of men, and overhang the narrowed landscape with the space and screnity of heaven. To this distant perception of man-of man "punfiol, removed, and to a distance that was fit"-was added, in his first gummer vacation, a sonewhat closer interest in the small joys and sorrows of the villagers of Ilav kahead, -a new bympathy for the old Dame in whose louso the poct still lolged, for “the quiet voolman in the wools," and even for the "frank-hearted mands of rocky Cumberland," with whom lie now delighted to spend an occa910nual evening in dancing and country mirth. And ·12 HURUSNURI, LCHAP events in this poet's life are for the most part inward and unseen, and depend upon some shock and coincidence between the operations of his spirit and the costuorama of the external world, he has recorded with especinl eniphasis & certain sunrise which met him as he walked homewards from one of these scenes of rustic gaiety..a sunrise which may be said to have begun that poetic carcer which a sunset was to close; Al! Deed I say, dear Friend! that to the brim Jy heart was full ; I made no pows, but Tots Were then made for me ; bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be, else sinniug greatly, A dedicated Spirit, 3 His second long vacation brought him a further gain in human affections. His sister, of whom he had seen little for some years, was with him once more at Penrith, and with her another maiden, By her oxulting outside look of youth And placid under.countenance, first endearca ; irhose presence noir laid the foundation of a lovo which was to be renewed and perfected when his need for it was full, and was to be his support and solace to his life's end. His third long vacation he spent in a walking tour in Switzerland. Of this, now the commonest relaxation of studiuus youth, lic speaks as of an "unprecedented course," indicating "a hardy slight of college studing and their set rewards." And it seems, indeed, probable that Wordsworth and his friend Jones were actually the first undergraduntes who ever spent their summer in this way. The pages of the Prelude srhich narrate this excursion, and especially the description of the crossing of the Siinplon, 22 ·L) CAMBRIDGE. 13 The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, Defer to be decased, form one of the most impressive parts of that singular autobiographical poem, which, at first sight so tedious and insipid, seems to gather force and meaning with each fresh perusal. These pages, which carry up to the verge of manhood the story of Wordswortli's career, contain, perhape, as strong and simple a picture as we shall any. where find of hardy English youth,—its proud self-sufficingness and careless independence of all human things. Excitement, and thought, and joy, scem to come at once at its bidding; and the chequered and strugeling existence of adult men seems something which it riced never enter, and hanlly deigns to comprehench Worlsworth and lis friend encountered on this tour miny a stirring symbol of tlio expectancy that was running through the nations of Europe. They landed at Calais "on the very eve of that great federal day" when the Trees of Liberty were planted all over France. They met on their return The Brabant armies on the fret For battle in the cause of liberty. But the exulting pulso that ran through tho poet's reins could harilly yet pause to sympathize decply even with what in the workel's life appealed most directly to ardent youth. as touched, but with po intimate concern. I seemed to move along them as a bird Moren through the air-Or Rs & fish purses Its sport, or feeds in its proper element.

·12 WORDSWORTIT. [CHAT. events in this port's life are for the most part in wari and unseen, and depend upon some shock nn coincidence between the operations of his spirit 2x the cosmorama of the external vorlil, hic lis recorded with especial eniphasis a certain sunrise which met him as lic walked homowards from one of these scenes of rustic gniety? sunrise which may be said to live begun that poetic career which a sunsct was to closo : All soul I say, dear friend! that to the brim Mş bicart eng full; I made no youn, but YOWA Wero then maile for me ; bond unknown to me Wns given, tlint I should bo, oro kinning srently, A delicato Spirit.. 3 llis second long vacation brought him a further gain in human nflections. His sister, of whom he lind seen little for some years, was with him once more at Penrith, and with her another maiden, Ny her exulting outsiile look of youth Ani placiil under.countenance, firat endlonreal; whose presence 110w Inid tho foundntion of lovo which was to be renewed and perfected when his need for it was full, and wns to be his support and solnce to his life's endl. His third long vncation ho spent in a walking tour in Switzerland. Of this, now the commonest relaxation of studions youth, he speaks as of an "unprecedented course," indicating “harly slight of college studies and their sul rivants." And it spoms, indeed, probable tnt Worlsworth and his friend Jones were actunlly tho first undergruluntes who ever spent their summer in this wayThues pages of the Prolule which narmto this cxcursion, and especially the description of the crossing of the Simplon, ·CATAIF زه , ntiirhitit مf -:رابط ۱۱ ۴۲ Inv , hib ما ؟؟ ا.. دا، 10 1 1 1 for e I die a : infiltraf1 ۹۱۱۰ ۰ و ۱ 19, M4 ,4 * ,مnimum r: منت ۱۰۰۰۱ . 41 -r fi11 A11,2 دا 3 ,ni!! ع ۰۱۱ : 10481 whill * او یا د 1 ۲۰۰۰۰ :۱۱۰۰۱ ۱۱۱ ۱۱۱ ۱۷۱ ، ۲ ۰ -رriعد ع ۱۱۱۱۰۰و ۱۹۱(14) و در 141 114 ه :: n ." ۱۰۰۰ ۱۱۱۰۰ Alx ,۱۱۱۱۱۱) رادار است. که ت به ( ۰۱ ,۱۲۰۰۰۰۹۱ ۱۱۹ ۱۱۱ ۱۹۱، ولا موسیه ! تا یک ۸۱۰۱ ۱۰۰۰، ۱۰ ، ۱۱۱ ۱۰۱ ۲۱۰۰ ۱۰ ده م ده متن 11/11 ، « ره ره ومی مه ده مع ۱۹۲۴۶ ۱۱۰۱ ۱۱۹۹ ۱۱۱۱۱۱۱۱۱۱) راه وره در: ۲۲ و ۲۰۱۷ * ۲ ۸۹ (۹۱۲۶۸ ۱۱۱ ۱۱۱۱۱۱۱ اره مداوم ، دل ، رii :: ۱۱۱۱۱۱ ۱۹۱ ،۱۰،۱۱ او !!! اراه اره ۱۱۰ ۱۰ : ۲۰ 4 مترا (۱۱۰ ۱۱۱۱۱۱۱۱۱ ۱۰۲ ۱۱، ا ، اراده ای ۲۰۰۰۰ امه ام ر له

·WORDSWORTII.
(C1,
I ssanted not tunt joy, I did not necel
Such help. The ever-living unirerse,
Turn truere I might, was opening out its glorics ;
And the independent spirit of pure yonth
Called forth at crery scason nevr delights,
Spread round my stops like bunshine o'rr rern ficlds.

·CITATER II. RESIDENCE IN LONDOV ASD IY FRANCF. WORDSWORTI took liis B A. degree in January, 1791, and quitiril Cambrulge with no fixed intentions as to his futuro career. "He did not feel lnniself," lic sau long afterwards, "good cnouglı for the Church, ho felt that Jiis mund was not properly disciplined for that holy oſlice, and that the struggle between luis conscience and lng impulses would have made life a torture. Ilo also slırank froni the law. IIo liad sludied military history with great Interest, nail the strategy of war, and ho nlways fanciel that lic lal talents for command, and he at one time thought of a military life, but then he was without connexions, and lie felt if he wero ordered to the Weat Indice his talents would not save him from the yellow ſever, and lie give that up." lo therefore repaired to London, anl live there for a time on a small allowance and with no definite aim Ilis relations with the great city were of a very slight and external kind Ilo had few shequrittances, and spent his time mainly in mmiling about the streete. Ilis descriptions of this phase of his 1.fo line httle interest 'There 19 some flatness in an enuneration of the nationalities olisersable in a London crowd, concluding thus :- Malaya, Lascars, the Tartar, the Chinese, And Xezro Ladies in white muslin goos ·16 FORDSIORTH. {c{AP. But TVordstorth’s limitations were insepambly connected with his strength. And just as the flat scenery of Cambridgeshire had only served to intensify his love for such elements of beauty and grandeur as still were present in sky and fen, even so the bewilderinent of Londoa taught him to recognize with an intensor joy such fragments of things rustic, such aspects of things eternal, as were to be found amidst that rush and roar. To the frailer spirit of Hartley Coleridge the weight of London might seem a load impossible to shake ofl. "And what bath Nature," he plaintively asked, - Aud what hath Sature but the blank void sky And the thronged river toiling to the main ? But Wordsworth saw inore than this. He became, as one may say, the poet not of London considered as London, but of London considered as a part of the country: Like his own Furmer of Tilbury Valce Ta the throng of tho Town like a Stranger is lio, Liko ono whose own Country's for over the ser; Am Yaturc, while through tho great city le hics, Full ten times a day takes his beart by surprisc. Among the poems describing these sudden shocks of vision and memory nuno is more exquisite than the Reucric of Poor Susun: at the corner of voll Street, when daylight appears, Inoga a Thrush that sings loul, it has sung for three years Poor Susun has passed by the spot, and how hcard In tho silence of morning tho song of the Bird. 'Tis a note of enchantinen); what aily hier? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Briglit volumes of vapour through Lothbors glidc, and a rirer Qows on through the ralc of Chonpsido ·II.) RESIDENCE IN LONDOX AND IN FBAXCE. 17 The picture is one of those which come home to many 1 country heart with one of thoze Budden "revulsions into the natural" which philosophers assert to be the cssence of luiaan joy. But noblest and best known o. all theu poems is the Smnet on fl’estminster Bridge "Birth bath not anything to show more fau," in which naturo lias rasserted her dominion ofer the worka of al the multitudo of men; and in the early clearness the poe beholds the great City--23 Sterling imagined it on hi dying.led — not its full of noise and dust and confusion but as something silent, grand and everlasting." An even in later life, when Wordsworth was often in Londor and was welcomo in any society, he never lost this ex ternal manner of regarding it. He was always of th same nind as the group of listeners in his Porrer Juric. Now, Coaches and Chariots' roar on like a stream! Hrro aro twenty Souls bapry as souls in a dream They are deaf to your murmurs, they coro not for you, Nor what yo are flying, bor what ye parsoo ! 0 lle never made the attempt,vul anzeil by 80 mmy "{whionable novelist," and in welt no port has sur cecdel yet, - to disentangle from that turmoil at* clement of romance and of greatness; to enter that realnı emotion where Nature's aspects become the scarcely note accessory of vicissitudes that transcenil her own, to trac the passion of the anguish shich whıri along some luri Tista towarl a sun that sets in storm, or gizo acron allen guares by summer moonlight amid a sinell of dust and lowers. Lat although Wordsworth passed thus through Londo tokolified and indiferent, the content of things ! tweeping him on to mingle is a fiercer tumult,-lo fue 0 ·18 WORDSJTORTU. [CHAP. caught in the tides of a more violent and feverish life. In November 1791 he landed in Fmnce, meaning to pass the winter at Orleans and learn French. Up to this date the French Revolution had impressed him in a rather unusual manner,lamely, as being a matter of coursc. The explanation of this view is a somewhat singular one. Worilsworth's was an old family, and his connexions were some of them wealthy and well placed in the world; but the chances of his education had been such that he could scarcely realize to himself any other than a democratic type of society. Scarcely once, he tells us, in his school days had he seen boy or man who claimed respect on the score of wealth and blood; and the manly atmo. sphere of Cambridge preserved even in her losest days a society Where all stood thus far Opon equal ground; that we were brothers all In honour, as in onc community, Scholars and gentlemen; while the teachings of nature and the dignity of Cumbrian peasant life had confirmed his high opinion of the essen tial worth of man. The upheaval of the French people, therefore, and the downfall of privilege, seemed to him no portent for good or evil, but rather the tardy return of a society to its stable equilibrium He passed through revolutionized Paris with satisfaction and sympathy, but with little active emotion, and proceeded first to Orleans, and then to Blois, between which places he spent nearly a year. At Orleans he became intimately acquainted with the nobly-born but republican general Beanpuis, ao inspiring example of all in the Revolution that was self-devoted and chivalrous and had compassion on the wretchel poor. In conversation with him Words- ·11.) RESIDENCE IN LONDON AND IN FRAYCE. 19 worth learnt with what new force the well.worn adages of the momlist fall from tho lips of one tha is called upon to put them at once in action, and to Blake lifo itself on the rcrits of his naxims of honour The poct's heart burned within him as he listened. IIo could not indeed help mourning sometimes at the sight of a dismantled chapel, or peopling in imagination the forest-glaces in which they eat with the chivalry of a bygone day. But lie became increasingly absorbed in his friend's ardour, and the Herolution-ulurr formon superne-Beetud to him big with all the hopes of man. Ilo returned to Paris in October 1792-a month after the missacrua of September; and he has described his agitation and dismay at the siglt of such world-wide destinies swayed by the hands of such men. In a pargage which curiously illustrates that reasoned Belfconfidenco and deliberato boldness which for the most part de slowed only in the peaceful incidents of a literary career, he has told us how he was on the point of putting himself fortfard as a leader of the Girondist party, in the conviction that his singleliearteilne89 of aim would mako him, in spite of foreign birth and imperfect speech, a point round which the confused instincts of the multitudo might not impoaibly rally Such a coure of action, Thich, whatever its other meulte, would undoubtally hate conducted him to the guillotine with liis political friends in May 1793,---was rendered impossible by a somewhat undignified hindrance l'ordsworth, thue in his own eyes "& patriot of the torld," was in the eyes of others a young man of twenty. two, travelling on a small allowance, and running his head into unnecessary dangers. Ilis funds were stopped, and he reluctantiy mlurnal to England at the close of 1792 ·20 WORDSFORTH. (char. And now to ordsworth, as to many other English patriots, there came, on a great scale, that form of sorrom which in private life is one of the most agonizing of all.mthen two beloved beings, each of them erring greatly, Become involved in bitter hate. The new-born Republic dung down to Europe as her battle-gage the head of a king. England, in an hour of horror that was almost panic, accepted the deliance, and war was declared between the two countries carly in 1793. “No shock," say's Wordsworth, Giren to my moral natnre had I known Down to tunt very moment; neither Inpsc Nor tum of sentiment that might bc pamed A rerolation, saro at this one time; and the sound of the crening gun-fire at Portsmouth sccmed at once the embodiment and the premonition of England's guilt and woc. Yet his listracted spirit could find no comfort in the thought of Fmnce. For in France the worst came to the worst; and everything vanished of liberty except tho crimes committed in lier name, Most inelancholy at that time, o Friend! Were my day thoughts, my nights wero miserable. Through montlis, through fearg long after the Inst bcat Of those atrocities, the honr of sleep To me came mrely charged with natnrl gifts- Such ghastis visions had l of despair, And tyranus, nnd implements of death; And lerits in dungeons, where the dinst Was laid with tmra. Then suddenly the sceno Changed, and the anbroken dream entangled me in long ortions, which I strore to plead Before nnjust tribunals-Sith a voice Lakuriny, a brain confounded, and a scose, Dentlı.like, of treacherous desertion, felt In the last place of reforemny dyn sopl.

·IL) P.ESIDENCE IS LOSDOS AND IS TRANCE These years of perplexits and disappointment, follow. 1 ing on a miun of orenstrained and riolent hones, were the sharpest trial through which Wenisrorth erer passerl. The course of airs in France, indend, a fuch as grmed by an imny of fate to drive the noblest and firmest hearts into the worst aberrations. For first of all in that Revolation, Pessoa hal apparel as it were in visible sluage, and hand in lisad with Pity and Virtae; thon, 29 the welfare of the opprezzerl phasıntry Legan to be lost right of amid the branks of the factions of Paris, all that was attractive an enthu-124ic in the great more. ment pel to disappear, but yet Person might atill le thotglt to find a closer realization here than atong scenes more serene ani fsir; ani, lustly, Peason at in blood and tyranns and there was no more hope from France. But than who, like Worlsworth, had been Laoghit by that great convalsion to duslain the fetters of Mntiment apd truition and to look on Rerson as supreme were not wüling to relinquish their belief because rio- Jence 131 conqurrel ber in one more battle. Hather they clang with the greater tenacity.—"adhereil," in Wordsworth's wordla, fire firmly to wld fedete, and to prore Tżeir (mapor, strained these more, cast of more decisirely than eser the influences of trulition, and in their l'topan tulons eren krbel to see the férfectel mice severed in its perfection from the memones of humanity, and from finsłup with the struggling Jat Through s moal of this kind Wordsworth 1.2 to travel now. Anul his nature, formed for pertaling attachments and stealy memones, suured glerosis from the prra.

·TORDSFORTU. [cat. And now to Wordsworth, ns to many other English patriots, there came, on a great scale, that form of sorroir which in private life is one of the most ngonizing of all when to beloved beings, cach of them crring grently, lrcome involved in bitter late. The new-born Republic fung down to Europe as her battle-gage the head of a king. Englanu, in an hour of horror that was almost panic, accepted the detiance, and war was declared between the two countries carly in 1793. "No shock," says Wordsa wortli, Giren to my morni nnduro lad I known Down to that very moinent; ncitcr lapsc Yor turn of fentiment that might be nauca Aronlution, savent this one time; and the sound of the evening gun-fire at Portsmouth seemed at once the embodiment and the premonition of England's guilt ant voc. Pot his districted spirit could find no confort in the thought of France, For in Franco tho worst came to tho worst; an everything ranislıcıl of liberty cxcept tho crimes committed in ker namc. Most melancholy at that time, O Friend! Were my day thoughts, my nights were miserable. Thmugh anoths, thronglı years, lovg nfter the Inst beat Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep To me came mnly clingne with natumi gifts- Such gliantly visions lind I of despair, And tymnus, and implements of death; And Irsity in dungeons, where the dust Wns laid with tear. Then suddenly the scene Changyu), and the unbroken olmam entangled mo Ir long ortions, which I store to plead Before unjust trilums, with a voice lakarink, a brain ronfoumed, nud a fons, Dansh.likr, of treacherons lesertion, felt In the last plaer ni mfugemy oirn foal. R ·II.] RESIDENCE IN LONDON AXD IN FRANCE, Giring wsy TO A comparison of cene with scene, Dedt overmuch on superficial things, Pampering myect with meaçto norelties Of colour and proportion to the moods of time and season, to the moral power, The affections, and the spirit of the plare, Insctisiblo. Sach cold fits are common to all religions: they haunt the artist, the philantlır pist, the philosopher, the saint. Often they are due to some strain of egoism or ambition which has intermixed itself with the impersonal desire; sometimes, as in Wordswortli's case, to the persistent tension of a mind which has been bent to Anlently lowords an weal scarce possible to man And in this cage, when the objects of a man's habitual admiration aro true and noble, they will ever be found to suggest som antidote to the fatigues of their pursuit We shall see as we proceed how's deepening inught into the lives of the peasıntry around him,—the happiness and virtue of simpia Cumbnan homes,-restored to the poti & serener confidence in human nature, amid all the eliame and downfall of_sucl. hopes in France. And that still profoundler loss of delight in Vaturo Jierrell,--tlint riewing of all things "in disconnection dull and spintless," wheli, as it lies been well sul, is_tho triest definition of Atheisn Inasmuch con thout not y can He apprehended in power a9 well as in glory zanu Worlo! worth's mind, "sinking in wani uwon itself from thought to thought," found rest for the tune in that andere legion, - Jebrer at once anlsientific, common to a denton and a ·NORDSTVORTE, (cnar. tion of much which cren the coldest and calmest temper cannot forego without detriment and pain. For it is not with impunity that men commit themselves to the sole guidance of either of the two great elenients of their being. The penalties of trusting to the emotions alone are notorious; and every day affords sone instance of a character that has degenerated into a bundle of impulses, of a will that has become caprice. But the conscquences of making Reason our tyrant instead of our king are almost cqunlly disastrous. There is so little which Reason, divested of all emotional or instinctivo supports, is able to prove to our satisfaction that a sceptical aridity is likely to take possession of the soul. It was thus with Wordsworth; he was driveu to a perpetual questioning of all beliefs and analysis of all notives-- Till, demanding formal proof, And scekivg it in crerything, I lost All feeling of conviction; and, in fine, Sick, rearied out with contrarietics, Yielded up momi questions in despair, In this mood' all those great generalized conceptions wiich are the food of our love, our reverence, our roligion, dissolve away; and Wordsworth tells us that at this time Eren the visiblo unirersc Fell ander the dominion of a tasto Less spiritunl, titli microscopic rio Was scanncd, as I had scanned the moral torld. $ Ile lookes on the operations of nature "in disconnection dull and spiritless;" he could no longer apprehend her unity nor feel lier charm. He retained indeed his cmring for natural beauty, but in an uncasy and fast us mood, ·II.) RESIDENCE IN LONDOX AXD IN FRANCE. 03 Giring way To a comparison of scene with aceae, Teat orermuch on superficial things, J'ampering myself with menyro noreltica Of colour and proportion to the mooie of time and kann, ta tho motal power, The affectus, and the spirit of the place, Ipspa:blo, Such cold fits are common to all religions : they haunt the artist, the plulanthropist, the poliilougher, the saint. Often they are clue to somno strain of egoiui or nmbition which lins intermixed itself with tho impersonal desiro; sometimes, as in Worleworth's case, to the pursistent tension of a man which has been bent tim anlently towards an den scorco possible to man. And in this case, when the objects of a hian's fiabitual admimtion aro truc and noble, they will ever bo fotend to suggest some antidoto to the filiguca of their parauit We shall neo an Trogirocceed how a deepening insight into the lives of the perenntry around him.--tho liappineag anl virtuo of imple Cambrian homes, -restored to the port a arren's confidenco in human nature, amid all the slimo nnd downfall of such horms in France. J Anel that still profoniler Inaq_of delight in Nature Sorruelf. llint viewing of all things "in disconnection dull and spiritiera," KB, as it Jiny lwrn well midl, i, tho truest definition of Atlicum, innamuch as a unity in the universo 19 the lint eleroont in our con. ception of Civil - this dark pathway nim was nº without its outlet into the day for tho Gol in Natur 19 not only a God of Beauty, but a fiol of Law, lius unity Call be apprehendel in power as well as in glory; and World worth's mind, "einking in xant un tall from thought to thought," found rest for this time in that autrer pollinn,- Hebrer at oureanu Lecientific, common tus Sunston nudu ·21 WORDSITORTH. (cn. U. Job-lich is foztercil by the prolongei contenuplation of the meie Orier of the sum of things. Not in rain I had been taught to rorerenco a Power Tint is the risible quality and sbapo And image of right reason. Yot, indeel, in vais! For he felt now that there is no side of truth, howover remote from lauman interests, no aspect of the universe, however awful and impersonal, which may not liave power at some season to guide and support the spirit of man. When Goodness is obscured, when Beauty wearies, there are some souls which still can cling and grapplo to the conception of cternal Law, Of such stern consolations the poct spenks as liaving restored him in his hour of need. But he gratefully acknowleges also another solace of a gentler kind. It was about this time (1795) that Wordsworth was blessed with the permanent companionship of his sister, to whom he sas tenilerly attached, but whom, since childhood, he had fous only nt long intervals. Viss Wordsworth, after her father's death, had lived mainly with her maternal grandfather, Mr. Cookson, at Penrith, occasionally at Ilalifax with other relations, or at Forncett with her uncle Dr. Coulson, Canon of Winisor. Slie was now able to join hier fixourite brother; and in this gifted woman Wordsyurtlı found a gentler and sunnier likeness of himsell; cilis found a love which never rearied, and a sympathy. fiusvid sithout blindness, Worc suggestions lay so directly in liis mini's natural course that they suemed to spring froin the same individuality, and to form at once a portion of his inmost being. The opening of this new em of domestic happiness demands a sepamte chapter.

·CHATTEN JII. 31199 WORDS WORTII-LYRICAL BALLADS -- SETTLEMENT AT GRASWERE From among tanny letters of Wriss Wordsworth's to a beloved friend, (M18 Jane Polland, afterwards Vro. Varshall, of lIallstcads), which have been kindly place! nt my diapneal, I may without impropriety quote a few rzesages winch illustmte the chamcter and the affection of brother and sister alihe. And first, in a letter (Forricett February 1792), comparing her brothers Christopher and William, she says. "Clinstopher is steady and sincere in bus attachments William luas both these virtues in on Aminent degree, and a sort of violence of affection, if I nay ko term it, which demonstmtes itself every nioment of the day, when the objects of his affection are present with him, in a thousand almost imperceptible attentions, to tlicir wishes, in a sort of restless watchfulness which I know not how to describe, a tenderness that never slecne, nnil at the same tune ench a delicacy of manner as I have, - ubeerred in few inch And again (Forncett, June 1793), she writes to the same frenit "[bre strolled into a neighbourin, toendon, aliere I am enjoying the melous of binda, and the busy sounds of a fine summer's evening. Dut oh! how imperfect 1 my plerzuro whilst I am alone i Whis ar sou not reated with inet and my dear Williatu, ·20 WORDSWORTU. omar. why is he not here also? I could almost fancy that I sce you both near me. I hear you point out a spot, where if we could erect a little cottage and call it our own tro should be the liappiest of human beings. I see my brother fired with the idea of leading his sister to such a retreat. Our parlour is in a moment furnished, our garden is adorned by magic; the roses and honeysuckles spring at our command; the wood behind the house lifts its head, and furnishes us with a winter's shelter and a summer's noonday shade. Aly dear friend, I trust that cre long you will be, without the aid of imagination, the companion of my ralks, and my dear (Villiam may be of our party. ... He is now going upon a tour in the west of England, with a gentleman who was formerly a schoolfellow, - a man of fortune, who is to bear all the expenses of the journey, and only requests the favour of William's company. He is perfectly at liberty to quit this companion as soon as anything more advantageous offers. But it is cnongh to say that I am likely to have the happiness of introducing you to my beloved brother. You must forgive me for talking so much of him; my affection hurries inc on, and makes me forget that you cannot be so much interested in the subject as I am. You do not know bim; you do not know lios amiable he is. Perhaps you teply, • But I know how blinded you are.' Well, my dearest, I plearl guilty at once; I must be blind; he cannot be 50 pleasing as any fondness makes liin. I am willing to allow that half the virtues mith which I fancy him endowed are the creation of my love; but surely I may de excuscu! lle was never tired of comforting his sister; he never left hier in anger; he always met her with joy; le preferred lins society to cvery other pleasun? ;-or mtbcr, wlion we were so lank as lo be within each other's rencli, ·AL] MISS FOLDSTORTH. trotect Le Lad no pleasare when we were not gw Ilmi to u Srided. Do not the expect too each from this looibar of wLom I base delighted so to talk to you. lo ttErr: plice, you 24 le with him more than once kore te will be perfectly ezz5 in coasersation in the mood Floe, his persa is not in his laro sa: lex: I samal. think do:; but I soon ceased to dissore: this may, I almost thought that the opinion waich I 1.22 formoed was He is, hoperer, certainly rather plin; though otherwise has an extremely thoughtfal courier20%, bat wzea le speaks it us often uabled up by a smile which I think very pleasing Bat egoach, he is my booler; why should I describe him! I thall be lacuchinz asin inta pasentric." The brother's Lommelege to his sister 13 equals afectionat. "low bach do I wish," be writes in 1793, that each ention of pleasure or pain tha: ruits pour leart about excite a similar pleasure of a similar pain witia ca, bT dass sympathy which will alwa repufy as wea we bare stolen to our litle colime... I will write to my cocle, and tell him tha: I apar: think of golegastwbere before I hare tren with you. Walerer answer he gives kre, I certainly will make a point of once core minglin my transports with yours. Alis' my dear nier, tox kon test this Lappiness expire, yet there are time worth Andain: ia the same year be wries, or dms. dear asier' with ls! transport shall I 27.9 Cees ro with what aptare shall I sin wear out the day in your I see you in a count on, or nailer Esion, to mp3." Wonisworth was in all this fortale, but hinr more fortunase than in thus, this tsizse ght!...

·2S YORDSTTORTI. [CRAP. shoukl luare been ready to derote herself to him with an affection wholly free from egntism orjealouss,-an affection that yearned only to satisfy his subtlest neeils, and to transfuse all that was best in herself into his Duryer being. And indecil that fortunate adinixture or influence, whencesocver derired, wliichi misol the race of Wordsworth to poctic fame, was almost more dominant and conspicuous in Dorothy Wordsworth than in the poet himself. “The shooting lights of her wild eyes" reflecteil to the full the stmin of imaginative emotion which was mingled in the poct's nature with that spirit of steadfast and conservative virtne which lias already given to the family a Master of Trinity, tvo Bishops, and other divines and scholars of weight and consideration. In the poct himself the conservative and ccclesiastical tendencies of his character Trecame more and more apparent as advancing years stiffenest the movements of the mind. In his sister the aniont clement was less restmined; it showed itself in a most innocent direction, but it brought with it a henry punishment. Her passion for nature and her affection for her brother leal hier into mountain rambles which were beyond lier strength, and her last years were spent in a condition of physical and mental decay. But at the time of which we are now speaking there was, perhapa, no one in the world who could have been to the pract such a companion as his sister became. She bine! 1101, of course, lis grasp of mind or his poetic power; but her sensitiveness to nature was quite as keen as his, ind hier disposition resembled his "with sunshine added to dny. light." 1 Birls in the latter, anıl lanlis in the green field, Could tries hare known her, would bare lnrel; methonglit Her very presence soch a girectness breathed, ·ms m.] MISS TORDSTORTTI. That nowers, and trees, and tra the best to And everything she looked ca, sbould are An intimatrog how she bore here! Towards thrm, and to all creatures. ller journal of a tour in Scotland, and her de of a week on Ullswater, affised to Monizon's Gri ie Cakes-liaries not written for publication let cool to communicate her own delight to intimate friezis 2 distance. --are surely idilescribably attractire in the miz anil tender feeling, combidel rith a delicacy of it into natural beauty which was almost o perthimb! history of the world. If we compare, for instante, es her descriptions of the Lakes with Souther's, we set difference between hiere literary slul, which the rivalled in many quarters, and that serbest which comes of love alone. Even if we eek Gray, whose short notice of Coubedund ums ETIKET pago the stamp of a true poet, we are a TV in whichi Miss Wonistrorth's tenderness 125 ET thing girps chararter and pathos to Lernze.pl erohes from the wildest solitude som DEAL heart, She fire me eset, be firem And bumble cares, and delica: ray; A besrt the fountain of Iseet taas; And love, and thought, cdys. جمع: The cottage life in her bro:ber's OSA ST. hascreen Miss Wordsworth pietaring tuzili arlour, 3% destined to he realized a los 772, Lanks to the unlooked-for outcome of atter friends If the poet's sister was his first almirar, Padley Calvert may fairly claim the second place Calrert 723 the pain of the texal of the Dite of Sorfolk, wts poseeee ·co WORDSWORTH. cuar. lurge estates in Cumberland. He attached himself to Fordsworth, and in 1793 and 1794 the friends sero nuch together, Calvert was then attacked by consumption, and Won's worth nursed him with patient care, It Tras found at his death that he had left his frieni a legacy of 9001. "The act," says Wordsworth. was done entirely from a confidence on his part that I fiad porrers and attainments hich might be of use to mankinil. Upon the interest of the 9001.-4001. being Inid out in annuity-with 2001. deducted from the principal, and 1001. a legacy to my sister, and 1007. more which the Lyricnl Ballads have brought inc, my sister and I contrived to live seven years, nearly eight." Trusting in this small capital, and with nothing to look to in the future except the uncertain prospect of the payment of Lord Lonsdale's debt to the family, Wordswortly settled with his sister at Racedown, near-Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire, in the autumn of 1795, the choice of this locality being apparently determined by the offer of a cottage on casy torms. Here, in the first home which uc hind possessed, Vordstrorth's steady devotion to poctry began. He had already, in 1792,' published two littic pooms, the Erening Full and Descriptive Sketches, which Viss Worlsworth (to whom the Erening Wall: was nildressed) criticiscs with candour in a letter to the same friend (Forneett, February 1792) "The scenes arhich he describes have been viered with B poct's cyc, and are portrayed with a poct's pencil; and the poems contain many passages exquisitely beautiful; but they also contain many faults, tho chiof of which are obscurity and a too frequent use of some particular expres- : The Yemerx say in 1793, but the following JS, letter of 1792 speaks of them as already pablished.

·LYRICAL RALLID sions and uncommon wonis; for inte, vi 1.c applies in a gente, if not nex, ai ka ordinary one. By 'moreless' when another toeans that sort of motion which is screen tion; it is a very beautifal epitke, ki been cautiously used. The word circius 13- duced far too often. I remet exceelings that submit the works to the inspection of the their publication, and he also jaiet vi Magnet | Thicse poems slow a careful anil in nature, but their versification-31 cm imitators of Pope-bas little original:rcers IT attracted the admiration of Colerist! success At Racelown tonis urth firish Gria. Se a poen gloomy in tone and written painly = Ls of depression and unrest, mis atd. 12 Burderers, of which only a few lines ab amic future excellence. He then wmde The Prise Ctir. now incorported in the First Look others ta. poeru, ona sutject thoroughly suited to be on T his first work of merit; and Coleride, S. quiet household in June 1797, for "superior, I hesitate not to T, - - our language which in as my wo: July 1797 the Wordsworth 7: LEI lange liouse in Somersele, sz Sim Coleridge was at tha: LED TV Alded to his incomebs taken hiero of the trifan Asmitali Em2 V. Mr. Lusil Montaniwir." smaller piece He 125 Essen ·32 TORDSTORTI. [char Ancient Mariner and the Lyrical Bullads in a well-known passage, part of which I must here repeat:- << In the autumn of 1797, Nr. Coleridge, my sister, and my. self started from Alfusden pretty late in the afternoon, with a ricer to visit Linton, ird the Valley of Stones near to it; and our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the pense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the Nero Sonthly Magazine. In the course of this walk was planned e poem of the Ancient Mariner, founded on a dream, as Mr. pleridge said, of his friend Jr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest irt of the story was Jr. Coleridge's invention ; but certain rts I suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed hich was to bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterards delighted to call him, the spectral persecation, as a con. quence of that crime and his own wanderings. I lind been ading in Shelrocke's loyages, a day or two before, that, while subling Cape Horn ther frequently saw albatrosses in that titude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings relve or thirteen feet. 'Suppose,' said I, you represent him ; having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea. ad that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them > arenge the crime. The incident was thought fit for the urpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigaon of the ship by the dead man, but do not recollect that I ad anything more to do with the scheine of the poein. We prin the composition together, on that to me memomble ereng. I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the oem, in particular And listened like a three years' chili; The Mariner bad his will. is we endearoured to proceed conjointly our respective man. ers proved to widely different, that it would have been quite resumptuons in me to do anything but separate froin an under. aking upon which I could only have been a clog. The Ancient fariner ger and gress, till it became too important for our irst object, which was limited to onr expectation of fire pounds;

·33 ttl) LYRICAL BALLADS aud we began to think of a volume, which was to consist, an Str. Colendge bas told the world, of poems chiefly og super. bateral subjects, then from commor life, but looked at, 13 mach as might be, through an imaginative mediano." Tha yolume of Lyrical Bullads, whose first beginnings bare bere ben traced, was published in the autumn of 1795, by Mr. Cottle, at Bristol This volume_contained sestral poems which have been justis blamed for triviality, -as The Thom, Goody Blue, The Iliot Boy; sereral in which, as is Simon Lee, triviality_is_mingled with much_real_matlog, and come, as Erpostulation and Reply 191 The Tables Turnel, which are of the very essence of Worlsworth's nature. It is hardly too much to say, that if these two last-named poems—to the careless eye 80 light and trifling-were all that had remained from Worloworth's land, they would have "epoken to the comprehending" of a new individuality, as distinct and, unmistakeable in its way as that which Sappho has left-heade engraven on the world for ever in words even letrer than fighting these. And the volume ended with a poem which Words worth composed in 1998, in one day, during a tour with his ruter to 'Tintem and Chepstow The Lines sritten alkre Tinten Alley, have become, 29 it were, the locus cluericue or consecratel formulary of the Wordsworthian faith. They Bay in brief what it is the work of the poet's Linnaplieclans in detail As soon as this rolure was pnblished Wordsworth and fais sister raitel for llambury in the hope that the imjerfect acquaintance with the German language might le improrel by the heroic remedy of a winter at Goslar. Bat at Goslar they do not seem to have bade any acquainlacces, and their self-improvement consisted mainly in reulicy German books to themselves. The four months D ·31 Ytter WORDSWORTH. (Cuar, spent at Goslar, howerer, were the Yory bloom of Words. worth's poetic career. Through none of his poems has the peculiar loveliness of English scenery and English girl. hood shone more delicately than through those whicle came to him as lie paced the frozen gardens of that desolate city. IIere it was that he wroto Lucy Gray, and Nuth, and Nutting, and the Poet's Epitaplı; and other poems knowa now to most mon as possessing in its full fragrance his especial charm. And here it was that the memory of some emotion prompted the lines on Lucy. Of the history of that emotion he has told us nothing; I forhcar, therefore, to inquire concerning it, or even to speculate. That it was to the poet's honour I do not doubt; but who ever learned such secrets rightly? or who should wish to learn? It is best to leave the sanctuary of all hearts in violate, and to respect the reserve not only of the living but of the dead. Of these poems, almost alone, Wordsworth in his autobiographical notes has said nothing whatever. One of them he suppressed for years, and printed only in a later volume. One can, indeed, well imagine that there may be pocius which a man mny bo willing to give to the world only in the hope that their pathos will be, as it were, protected by its own intensity, and that those who are worthiest to comprehend will be least disposed to discuss them. The autobiographical notes on his own works above allude to were dictated by the poet to his friend Miss Isabella Fenwick, at her urgent request, in 1843, and presurve many interesting particulars as to the circumstances under which each poem was composed. They are to bo found printed cntire among Worlsworth's prose works, and I shall therefore cite them only occasionally. Of Lucy Gray, for instance, he says.com ·LYRICAL BALLADS. 33 - It was funnded on a circumstance told me by my sister, of little girl who, not far from llalifax, in Yorksbire, was bewildered in a snowstorm. Her filatepe vero tracked by ber parents to the iniddle of the lock of a canal, and no other vertige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body, however, ** found in the canal The way in which the inci. dent was trented, and the spiritualizing of the character, might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginatire indgences which I hare endenvoured to throw over common life, with Crabbe's tratter-of.fact style of bandling sulijacts of the same kind." And of the Linre irition in Germany, 1798-1, - "A bitter winter it was when these verses were composed by the side of my sister, in our lodgings, at a draper's house, in the romantic imperial town of Goslar, on the edge of the Hartz format So severe was the cold of tbi* winter, that when we passed out of the parlour warmed by the store our cheeks mere strack by the air as by cold son. I slept in a room over a panage that was not ceiled. The people of the house used to nay, rather unfeelingly, that they expected I should be frozen to death rome night, but with the protection of a pelissn lined with fur, and a dog's-ekin bonnet, such as was worn by the pleasants, I walked daily on the ramperts or on a sort of pablic ground or garden, in which was a pond Here I had no rompanion but a kingfisher, a beautiful creature that used to glance by me. I consequently became much attached to it. During theac walks I composed The Poet's Epitaph." Sellom has there bech a more impressivo instance of the contrast, familiar to biographers, between the apparent in. significance and the real importance of their hero in undistinguished south. To any one considering Worllsworth as he then was,--a rough and somewhat stubborn young man, who, in nearly thirty years of hfe, Niad seemned alternately to idle without grace and to studly without advantago, it might well have seemed incredible that he could have anything new or valuable to communicate to mankind.

·IONNSWORTII. (Cuar. Where laul linea luix experienco) or where was the indicattion of thnt wealth of mine nous emotion which ini guichin Baluire ao Konts' 1"mis almost to dispense with experience dd to give novelty by giving vividness to such passions as are dinown in ull? If Wordswortli were to impress mankind it must love, crne might have thought, by travelling ont of himself altogetherly revealing fomo sutch energy of imagination is can create merkel of romance and adventure in the rhyest bart. But this was not so to be, Alreadly Worlswortli's minor poems hind dealt almost on. linely with lyin ows Proings, and with the objects actunlly before his eyes; and it was at Goslar that he planned, and on the iny of his quitting Goslar thnt he began, much longer groom, whose subject was to 180 still more intimntoly {**somal, lwing the development of his own mind. This furum, celicalei to Coleridge, and written in the form of n contienen bestowed on an intimnte friend, was finished in 1805, lil way lind publisher till aftor this poctir death. Mr. Wordsworth the named it The Prelucele, inklicating thus thin relations which it liars 10 the Browsinn. rathr, ter the projected poem of the produse, of which the wrsion was to form only the Second out of three Divisione, (ne Book of the first Division of the Marius was written, int ju of published; the ''hin Division Was never avon lwgun, and the materins," we are toll, "of ishirle it would have been formod have lucu incorporate, rove the 130 l part, in tlim mutluor's other publication." Voritereve this clinnye of plau lo segna: dilnetic poems mit csily o milution; nu all tlint can lie called filet in this fories of work is contained in the Prolair, in which we pen Wordswilla arriving ni thogo convirtions wlochi in lle Errursion he patises to expound. It would lw fous much to buy that Wordsworth line ·11.) KETTLEMT AT GRASIERT. ben wholly successful in the attemps-for such ilir Prelule virtually is--to write an epic form on his owi education. Such a jm*m mut almo-t necessarily app: telious and egoistic, and Wordsworth's minner har no! tact enough to prerent these defects from brinz felt to the full. On the contrary, in lit conitant Jerire frugalis u extract, 19 it were, its fall teaching from the minutex event which h29 befallen him, lie fupplements the kell complacency of the autohtographer with the conscientious exactness of the moralist, and lapt to insist on tribe! such as lolge in the corners of ercry man's memory, as i they were uniquc Icaeng rouclsafeel to lumalf alonc. Yet it follows from this very temper of mind that there is Kircely ang sulobro raphy which we can read with #ucl implicit confidence as the Preluila In the case of this, 24 0 no many of Wordsworth's productions, our first dresatus fac tion at the form which the poem suomes yields to a recogni tion of its fitness to express pirecicls Flat the poet intends Xor are there many inen who, in treounting the story o their own lives, could combine a candour so aleolute with so much of dimits—who conhl treat their freonal liistory so impartially as a meas of conveying lessons of general truth--or who, while chronicling sucha ertall tungs, could remain so great. The Prelude sa bouk of good augung for human nature. We feel in realing it as if the stock of mankind were round. The soul seems going on from trebgth to strength by the pere development of her And the scene with which the gym at once opros and concludes.--the return to the Lole country us to a gurmanent anıl satisfying home-places the pict at lut amid bus trae surrounilings, and learnt us to contemplate bim as completed by a liarinony without liim, which be of all men most neered to erokc the harmony within. introm power ·CHAPTER IV. TUL. ESGLISII LAKES. Tur lakes and mountains of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, are singularly fitted to supply such clemnents of moral sustenance as Nature's aspects can afford to man. There nte, inced, many mountain regions of greater as fulness; but prospects of ice and terror should be a mn stimulant rather than an habitual food; and the physical dilliculties inscparable from immense elevations lepress the inhabitant and preoccupy the imveller. There are many lakes under a more lustrous sky; but the healthy actirities of life demand a scene brilliant without linguor, and a beauty which can refresh and satisfy mother than Iull or overpower, Without advancing any untenable claim to British pre-eminence in the matter of scenery, we may, perhaps, follow on both these points the judgment which Wordsworth has expresscil in his Grille fr thr Lates, a work which condenses the results of many rears of intimate observation. *Our tricts of trond and water," lie says, are almost sliminutive in comparison (wit)Switzerland); therefore, as far as sublimity is dependent upon absolute bulk and heighi, and atmosphericnt influences in connexion with these, it is obvious that there can be no rivalship. Het a short residence among the British mountains will furnish ·CM. 17.) TUE ESGLISTI LAKES. 89 Abanılant prof, that, after a certain point of eleration, riz, that which allows of cumpact and fleecy clouds retiling upon, or greeping orer, the fummile, the prize of sublimity Jerenils morc upon form and relation of objecta to cach other than upon their actual magnitule; and that an elevation of 3000 feet is sufficient to call forth in a must impressive degree the creative, and magnifying, and softening powers of the atmosphere And again, as to climate ; "The rain," he says, "here come down heartily, and 14 frequently slicccedel by clear bright weather, wlirn every brook is vocal, and crery torrent sonorous, brooks and torrents which are never muldy cien in the licariest floods Days of unsettled wcather, with partial showers, are very fryquent; but the shower, darhering or brightening a thry fly from hill to full, are not legs grateful to the eye than finely interwosen paaragng of 615 ani sad music are touching to the ear Vapours cxhaling from the lakes and meallows after sunne in a hot scamn, or in moist weather Brooling upon the heiglite, or descending towards the valleys with inaudible notion, gire a visionary clue ractor to everything around them, and are in themselves M Leautiful as to diagnose na to enter into the feelings of tlicar simple nation (nucli as tho Laplanders of tlus day) by whom they are taken for guinlan derties of the mountains, or to my tupathize with others who haro fan. cicl these delicate appartions to By the spints of their departel ancestors. Akın to these are fancy clouilt testinz upon the lul tops ; thus are not evily managed in picture, with their accompaniments of blue sky, but how slutions are they in nature' bun pregnant with imagina tion for the pront! An the fieight of the Cumbrian moun. tuin ka sufficint to exlubit iluly and hourly instance of

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·01.11.) THE ENGLISH LAKES. 89 abundant proof, that, after a certain point of elevation, riz., that wich allows of compact anil fleecy clouds settling upon, or sweeping orer, the summits, the sense of sublimity depends more upon form and relation of objects tn cach other than upon their actual magnitule; anul thnt an elevation of 3000 fect is sufficient to call forth in a trost impressive degree the creatire, and magnifying, and foftening powers of the atmosphere And again, as to climato ; "The main," he says, "here comes down lcartily, and is frequently succeeded by clear briulit weather, when every brook is vocal, and every torrent-eonorous; brooks and torrents which are never muddy even in the licaviest flood Days of unsettled wenther, with partial slowers, are very frequent; but the showers, darkening or brightening they fly from hill to bull, are not less grateful to the eye than fincly interwoien passages of sny and sad music aro touching to the car Vapours exhalıng from the lakes and mendows after sunrise in a liot scaron, or in moret weather brooling upon the height, or descending towards llic valleys withi inaudible nuotion, give a sielunary chamcter to everything around them, and are in themelres en bicautiful ns to diaposo us to enter into the feelings of thoar simple nations (such as the Laplanders of this day) loy whom they are taken for guarlian dcitics of tho mountsing; or to sympathize with others who have fan. cial these delicate apparitions to be tho spirits of their drmartel ancestors, thin to these are ficecy clourls resting upon the buil-tops, they are not easily m** in picture, with their accoinpiniments of blue al glorious are they in nature i hor pregnant tion for the poet! And the height of the Cum tains is sufficient to exhibit daily and hourly in.

·WORDSWORTU. Icrar those mysterious attachments. Such clouds, cleaving to their stations, or lifting up suldenly their glittering heads from behiml rocky barriers, or hurrying out of sight with speed of the sharpest edge, will often tempt an inhabitant to congratulate himself on belonging to a country of mists and clouds and storms, and make him think of the blank sky of Egypt, and of the cerulean vacaney of Italy, as an unanimatel and cren a sad spectacle." The consciousness of a preceding turmoil brings homo to is liest the sense of perfect peace; and a climate accustomeil in storm-cloul anil tempest can melt sometimes into "a day as still as learen" with a benignant tranquillity which calmer regions can scarcely know. Such a day ll onlsworth lins described in langunge of such delicate truth and beauty as only a long and intimate love can inspire: worth ages. "It lias been said that in fiuman life there are moments In a inore subdued tone of sympathy may we affirm, that in the climate of England there are, for the lorer of Nature, slave trlich are worth mrhole months, I might say, cren years. One of these favoured days sometimes occurs in spring. time, when that sort air is breathing orer the blossoms and news bern verdure which inspired Buchanan with his beautiful Ode In the first of May; the air which, in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens in that of the gollen agh-to that which gives motion in the funeral cypresses on the banks of Lethe; to the air mlich is to salute beatified spirits erben cspiatory fires shall have consumed the cartli rith all her habitations. But it is in autumn that days of such affecting influence most frequently intestine. The atmospliere seems refined, and the sky rundend nori crystalline, as the rivitring heat of the year abates; the liglits and shadloos are more delicate; the colouring is richer and mon finely larmonized; and, in this foison of illness, the ear ling incupied, or only gently excitel, the sense of rining turime 10m -septible of its appropriate enjorinents ·11.) TUE ENGLISH LIKES. 11 A resident in a country like this which we are treatioz of will agree with me that the presence of a late is indipensable to exhibit in perfection the bestts of one of these days; and he most bare esperienced, while looking on the bored waters, that the imagination by their aid is carried iz!o rereken of frelios otherwise impunetrable. The reason of this is, that the bearers are not only brought down into the bows of the earth, but that the earth is mainly looked at, and thought of, through the mediam of a parer element. The happiest time is when the equinoctial gales are departal; but their fory may probably be called to mind by the right of a few shattered boogba, whose leares do not differ in colour from the ladel foliage of the ately oaks from which these relics of the storm depend: all elu peaks of tranquillity: not a breath of air, ao restlessness of insects, and not a moring object perceptible-except the clouds gliding in the depths of the lake, or the traveller passing along, an interted image, whose motion seems governed by the quiet of a time to which its archetype, the lirios person, is presliapa iosensible; or it may happen that the figure of one of the larger bırds, a raren or heron, is crossing silently atong the reflected clouds, while the voice of the real bird, from the element alo, gently awakens in the spectator the recollection of appetiten and instincts, puruits and occupations, that deform und agitate the world, yet bare no power to preren: aature from putting on an aspect capable of satisfying the most intense craving for the tranquil, the lorely, and the perfect, to wbuch tan, the noblent of ber creatures, is subja!" The scene descnbed here is ons as exquisite in detail as majestic in general effect. And it is characteristic of the region to which Worlsworth's love was given that there 19 no corner of it without a mocaning and a charm, that the op«en record of its immemorial pzet tells us at eren turn that all agencing larre consul for lovelinest ansl ruin itself liza bwen benign. A passage of Wonisworthin describing the character of the lake shores illustr fact with Inuing minuto treat ·TORDSTORTI. [CHAP. "Sublimity is the result of natnre's first great dealings with the superficies of the Earth; but the general tendency of her subsequent operations is towards the production of beauty, by a multiplicity of syrumctrical parts uniting in a consistent thole. This is everywhere exemplified along the margins of these lakes. Hlasses of rock, that lare been precipitated from the heights into the area of waters, lie in some places like siriinded ships, or hare acquired the compact structure of jutting piers, or project in little peninsulas crested with natire wood. The smallest rivulet, one whose silent influr is scarcely noticeable in a searen or dry weather, so faint is the dimple made by it on the surface of the smooth lake, will be found to hare been not useless in shaping, by its deposits of gravel and soil in time of flool, i curve that would not otherwise lave existed. But the more powerful brooks, cncroaching upon the level of the figlie, liave, in course of time, given birth to emple pronontories of sweeping outline, that contrast boldly with the longitudinal base of the steegis on the opposite shore; while their fat or gently-sloping surfaces nerer fail to introduce, into the inidst of desolation and barrenness, the elements of fertility, even where the habitations of men may not have been raised." With this we may contrast, as a companion picture, the proct's description of the tarns, or lonely bodies of water, klich lic liere and there among tho lills: ar', "They are difficult of access and nnked; yet some of them in their permanent forms, very grand, and there are accidents of things which would make the meanest of them interesting At all crents, one of these pools is an acceptable sight to the mountain wanderer, not merely as an incident that direrxifies the proapeet, but as forming in his mind a centre or con. spuíctioue point to which objects, otherwise disconnected or insubordinated, may be referred. Some furs have a varied outline, with bald heath-clad promontories; and as they mostly lie at the fruit ofarleep precipice, the water, where the sun is not shining upon it, appears lilack and sullen, and ronnd the margin huge owned and masses of rock are scattered, some defying conjecture ·THE DSGLES LUIS. et to the ears by w: SIC , less chrity on the estabas! It c=;'nr: ses i. ! to this pas, 2! Lese icirc! -1; viele goca e clitssc! pere vixi. und wib H 25. 1x disegt with kes va is pret caz, ale to give fortement to the ingredies 2 tenke de reabire jare te's Fafci, & dress the Delizia il tour" To the wLolorets dels the character of appletion from the chą olika re ad modeling the pastry of Cans:121 Waterland fran aitractive there. Dara in pes: gert frco the one Scanlinariin tk, the dwell in a luz wlos an1 Imate 25 Sorry it, ts: Verway's ro ang rury, acd with sul Lka and L7PT rivers irri of Sorway' is not relanchols ses They are a coal- Lin folk; let their m'sir 2. precipices cf is. faralle en.)", each 24 kepike dwells in some Swiss Harlet shot in imor31.ce and maticz ist. pliori The larrers dirile cols to concentrate, sol eztiron only to ender; :-:raislarzhip is liai esorch gire an Iml unity to each map of ku.dred home. Ari thics it is that the Cambrian dalcancen wie words 5923; as desta realization as lutan latas luare re: al wel of the raral cels which eiermen desire for their country's teatnes. They have rea aa elample of rattantial comfort trenirals mon; cf Lorde afec tions intrasiſm by cleppdent strength; of izolation without interance, and of a shrewd fimplicity; of an l-realitry virtue which is a sp;ort from (spainita, ADI to which bongur is more than lam. The school of political ecopomists, coregrer, who crgo lle auranlage of a fitant proutstars-of all in ·WORDSWONTI. CHAŁ. pendent holdings,--as at once mwing from the land the fullest produce and rearing upon it the most vigorous and provident population, this school, as is well knoirn, finds in the statesmcu of Cuinberland onc of its favourite cxamples. In tlic days of border-wars, then the first ohject was to secure the existence of as many armcd non as possible, in readiness to repel the Scot, tho abboys and great proprietors in the north readily gmnted small estates on military tenure, which tenure, wlien personnl service in the field was 110 longer necded, became in most cases an absolute ownership. Tlc attachment of thicsc states. urn to their licreditary estates, the heroic cſſorts which they would make to avoid parting with them, formed an impressive penomenon in the little work-- world at once of cquality and of conservatism-which was the fcene of Wordsworth's childish years, and which remained his manhool's ideal. The growth of large fortunes in England, and the increased competition for land, has swallowed up many of these small independent holdings in the extensive properties of wealthy men. And nt the same timo the spread of muration, and the improved poor-inw's and other legislation, by mising the condition of other parts of England, lave teniled to obliternte tho contrast which was to marked in Wordsworth's day. How marked that contrast was, A comparison of Crabbe's poems with Wordsworthi's will sufliciently indicate. Both arc true painters; lmt while in the one we eco poverty as some. thing ytusa anel legriding, and the Tales of the Village and out froin a backgrous of pauperism and crime; in the oiler picture poverty nicans nothing worse than privation, and the pinet in the presence of the most tragic outcast of fortune could still ·rr. THE ENGLISH LAKES. Flare l'alim Il en kom, tn In that decrezit saam Erat cin. Say, even when s slate far below the Ink Gather's ta been reached, and mind and Enis alike are in their lar decay, the life of the 0:1 Cumberland Inggr, at one re more from nothingness, has yet a dignity and a cseful nces of its own. llis faling days are fassel in no mar 29 lum of sirious or gloomy_azsLat_smil neightour! Tininegecs, and in the ranits of the grea air; and a life that is reduced to its barest clement, sunset a hold on the lilcrality of nature and the affections of haman hearts So long as the inhabitants of a region thus solitary an beautiful hare neither many aris nor manr wishe", 1977 nach 11 the Nature which they know has amael, an their own handiwork can stify, ions are their progreso and fubitations likely to be in barneay with the orde around them. Sag, man's prenor is loo: al war Daruled to draw out the fall meaning of Xatir, to illustra! boy lounty by his glul well-being an ito hint by his con triranor of precaution at her might and trrror. World worth's description of the cottages of Camlırlan.I dr; ict this gaconscivas adaptation of tesn's abode to his sartono:1 ins with an eye which may be allmi at plejeart that o raicter or of poet Tłe dwelling-bogus, and continenci otthowers, a la tran icelaners of the colour of the native rok out of which they bir brea bailt; bat fregantly the drelliroor Fire-Locke, as it i eri carily alle-lus been distinguished from the bard or byr by ma beut und weiterub, «bich, - tbe ishare! Are DO Lussy in recering it, in a few years amures by the increce o Tether a lint at one poter and variegated. As the Lost Lare lors, from father to kn, inkalited by pocs rud i: to atapatrons, met de exertily michango a la ·WORDSISORTII. (CNAP. circumstances, they have receired without incongruity addi. tions and accominodations adapted to the needs of each successive occupant, who, being for the most part proprietor, was at liberty to follow his on fancy, so that these humble dwellings remind the contemplatise spectator of a production of Xature, and may (using a strong expression) rather be said to have growi than to have been crected-to hare risen, by an instinct of their om, out of the native rock-so little is there in them of formality, such is their wildness and beauty. " These dwellings, mostly built, as has been said, ofrough unliewn stone, are roofed with slates, which were rudely taken from the quarry before the present art of splitting them was underston, and are therefore rough and uneren in their surface, so that both the curerings and sides of the houses have furnished places of rest for the seeds of lichens, mosses, ferns and flowers, llence buildings, which in their very forin call to mind the processes of Nature, do thus, clothed in part with a vegetable gorb, appear to be received into the bosom of the living principle of things, as it acts and crists among the woods and fields, and by their colour and their shape affectingly direct the thoughts In that tranquil coure of nature and simplicity along which the humble-minded inhabitants bare through so many generations been led. Add the little garden with its shed for bee-lives, its small bel of putherus, and its borders and patches of flowers for Sundar posies, with sometimes a choice fes too much prized tu be polueked; an orchard of proportioned size; a cheesepress, ofen supported by foune tree near the door; a cluster of embowering mycamores for summer shade, with a tall fir througlı mhich the winds sing when other trees are leasless; the little rill or household spout murmuring in all seasons ---coinbine these incidents and images together, and you hare the representative idea of a mount in cottage in this country-so beautifully formed in it-elf, and so richly adorned by the hand of Nature." Tiesa brief descriptions may suffice to indicate the poneral character of a district which in Worlsworth's carly days had a listinctive unity which he was the first fully to appreciate, which was at its best during his long ·m.] THE ENGLISU LAKES. 47 lifetime, and which has alrady begun to disappear. The mountains had waited long for a full adoration, an intelligent worship. At last " they were enough beloreil." And it now the changes wrought around them recall too often the poet's warning, hot ✓ All tbat pow delights tbee, from the day On which it should be touched, shall melt, and melt away. yet they have gained something which cannot be taken from them. Not mines, nor mall ways, nor monster excursions, nor reservoirs, nor Manchester herself, toute entière à 82 prose attachéc," can deprise like and bill of Worulsworth's memory, and the love thich once they know. Wordswortli's life tras from the very first so ordered as lo gire him the most complete and intimate knowledge Woll of district and people There was scarcely a mile of ground in the Lake country over which he had not wandered ; scarcely a prospect such was not linked with his life by sotuc tic of memory Born at Cockermouth, on the outskirts of the district, his mind was gradually lel on to its beauls, and his first recollections were of Derwenta grassy holms and rocky falls, with Skiddaw, "bronzed with deepest reliance," towenng in the eastern shy. Sent to school at Hawksheadl at eight years old, Won gworth's scene was transferred to the other extremils of the lake district. It was in this quaint old lown, on the lanhs of Esthwaite Water, that the "fair secu time of his soul" was passed, it was here that his boyish delight ia exercise and adventare grew, and melted ia its turn into a more impersonal yearumg, a deeper alwortion into the beauty and the wonder of the trorid. And even the records of his boyish amusements come ·IYORDSWORTII. [crar. to us each on a lackstound of Sature's majesty and calu. Setting sprinus for wouilcock on the missy moors at night, nt nine years old, he feels himself "a trouble to the peaco" that dwells anuong the moon and stars overlicad; and when he has appropriated a woodcock caught by somebody else, "sounds of undistinguishable motion" embody the viewless pursuit of Nonnesis among the solitary hills. In the perilous search for the rren's nest, as ho hangs on the face of the naked crays of Yewdale, he feels for the first time that sense of detachment from external things which a position of strange unreality will often force on the mind. Oli, at that time When on the perilous ridge I lung alone, With whint strange uttemuco did tho loud dry wind Blow through my ear! the sky ecemed not a sky Of carthani rith whnt motion mored the clouds ! The innocent rapine of nutting taught him to feel that there is a spirit in the woods presence which too rude a touch of ours will dlesecrate and destroy. The neighbouring lakes of Coniston, Esthwaite, Winderinerc, have left siinilar traces of the gmdual upbuilding of liis spirit. It was on a promontory on Coniston that the siin's last mys, gilding the castern hills above which die had first appeared, suggested the boy's first impulso of spontaneous poetry, in the resolve that, wherever life shoull lead him, his last thoughts should fall on the scenes where his childhool was passing now It was on Esthwaite that the huge peak" of Wetherlam, Tollowing lim (as it scomel) as he towed across the starlit water, suggested the dit conception of "unknown modes of being," and a life that is rintours. It was found Listhwaite that the boy used to wander with a friend at early dawn, rejoicing in tho 7 ·IT.] THE ENGLISH LAKES. charm of words in tuneful order, and repeating together their furourite verses, till "sounds of exultation echoel through the groves." It was on Esthwaite that the band of skaters "hissed along the polished ice in games coufederate," from phich Wordsworth would sometimes withdraw himself and pause suddenly in full career, to feel in that dizzy silence the mystery of a rolling world. A passage, less frequently quoted, in describing a boating excursion on Windermere illustrates the effect of somo small point of human interest in concentrating and realising the diffused emotion which radiates from a scene of beauty : But, ere nightfall, Then in our piadace we returned at lergura Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach of some small and steered our course with one, The mustrel of the troop, and left him there, And rowed off gently, while he blew bis date Alone apon tbe rock-oh, then the calm Abd dead still water lay apoy my mind Eren with & weight of pleasure, and the sky, Never before so beautiful, sapk doro Into my heart, and held me uke a dream The passage whuch describes the schoolboy's call to the owls—the lines of which Coleridge said that he should have exclaimed " Yordstorth » af he had met them running wild in the deserts of Arabia,- paint a somewhat similar rush of feeling with a still deeper charm. The "gentle shock of mill surprise" bich in the pauses of the burds' jocund din carries far into his heart the sound of mountain tertents the very mingling of the grotesque and the majestic-brings home the contrast betteen our transitory energies and the mystery around us which returns eper the same to the moments when we pause and are at peace.

·IYORDSTTORTI. [спAP It is found the two small lakes oi Grasmere ani • Ryclal that the memories of Wordsworth are most thickly clusterei, On one or other of these lakes he lived fo: fifty years - the first half of the present century; ani there is not in all that region a hillside walk or winding valley which las not }lcard hin murmuring out his verse: as they slowly rose from his heart. Tho cottage at 'Town end, Gusmere, where he first settled, is now surrounde by the out-buildings of a busy hotel; and the noisy strean of traffic, and the sight of the many villas which spot thu valley, give a new pathos to the sonnct in irhich Words worth deplores the alteration which cven his own resi lence might make in the simplicity of the lonely scene. Well mas'st thou halt, and gonzo with brightening eye! The lovely Cottage in the guardinn pook Inth ftirred the deeply; with its own dear brook, Its own small misturc, almost its own Bky! But coret nnt the Aloe : forbcar to sigh, As many do, repining while they look; Intrudera-lo would tear from Nature's book This precious leaf with horslı inipiety, Think what the home must be if it were thine, Even thing, thougls fess thy wants! Hoof, window, door, Tlie rery flurrers aro sacred to the l'oor, The roses to the porch which they entwine : Yo, all that nass enchants thec, from the day On which it should be touclied, would melt, nnd melt away. Tho l'orms on the Numing of Pinces belong for th most part to this neiglibourliond. Emma's Dell on Easdul Beck, Print Nush-Judgmout on the eastern shore of me mere, Vary's Purlin Ryoal Park, William's Peak on Ston Mithur, Jonnu'r Ruck on the banks of Rothir, and Jolin (rule ar lite oc: Common, have been identifica b thr loving search of those to whom every memoria) that simple-leartel family group has still a charm.

·14.] THE ENGLISH LAKES. 51 It is on Greenhead Ghyll" upon the forest-side in Grasmaere Vale"--that the poet has laid thé scene of Michael, the poem which paints with soch detailed fidelity both the inner and the outward life of a typical Westmoreland "statesman." And the upper road from Grasmere to Rydal, superseded now by the road along the lake side, and left as a winding footpath among rock and fern, was one of his most habitual haunta. Of another such haupt bis frend Lady Richardson says, "The Prelude ras chiefly composed in a green mountain terrace, on the Easdale side of Helm Crag, known by the name of Under Lancrigg, a place which he used to say he knew by heart The ladies sat at their work on the hill side, while he walked to and fro on the emooth green mountain turf, humming out bis verses to himself, and then repeating them to his sympathising and ready scribes, to be noted down on the spot, and transcribed at home." The neighbourhood of the poet's later home at Rydal Mount is equally full of associations. Two of the Ecening Voluntaries were composed by the side of Rydal Mere. The trild Duck's Nest was on one of the Rydal islands. It was on the fells of Loughrigg that the poet's fancy loved to plant an impenal castle And Wanafells green slope still answers with many a change of glow and shadow to the radiance of the sinking sun. Hawkshead and Rydal, then, may be considered as the poet's principal centres, and the scenery in their neighbourhoud his received his most frequent attention. The Duddon, a seldom-visited stream on the south-west border of the Lake-district, has been traced by him from source to outfall in a series of sonnets Langdale, and Little Langdale with Blea Tam lying in it, form the principal scene of the discourses in the Excursion. The more ·WORDSWORTA. (CAAT. distant lakes and mountains were often visited and are often alluderl to. The scene of The Brothers, for example, is laid in Innerdale; and the index of the minor poems will supply other instances. But it is chiefly round two lines of road leading from Grasinere that Wordsworth's associations cluster - the route over Dunnilmisc, which led him to Keswick, to Coleridge and Southey at Greta llall, and to other friends in that neighbourhond; and the route over Kirkstone, which led him to Ollswater, and the friendly louses of Patterdalc, llallsteads, and lowther Castle. The first of these two routes was that over which the l'aggoner plied; it skirts the lovely shore of Thirlinere, - a lonely sheet of water, of exquisite irregularity of outline, and fringed with delicate Yerlure, which the Corporation of Manchester has Intely bought to embank it into a reservoir. Dedecorum pre- Sinsus emptor! Tlvis lalie was a favourite haunt of Worlswortli's ; and upon a rock ou its margin, where he and Coleriilge, coming from Keswick and Grasmere, would often medt, the two poets, with the other members of Wordswortli's loving houschuld group, inscribed the initial letters of their namncs. To the "monumental power of this Rock of Names Wordssorth appeals, in lines written when the happy coinpany who engraved then had already Byeen severed by distance and death; 0 tuonglt of min, Tlint would impair it or profane! And fail not. Thou, love Rock, to keep The charge when roaro laill asleep. The rock may still be feen, but is to be submergel in the most reserpnir. In the Tale of Keswick itsell, applethwaite, Skildaw, St. llerbert's Island, Lolore, ·633 TILE ENGLISH LAKES. nrc commemoratel in sonnets or inscriptions And the Borrowdale yew-trees lave inspired some of the poet's noblest lines,-lines breathing all the strange forlornness of Glaramara's solitude, and the withering vault of shade. The route from Rydal to Ullswater is still more thickly studded with poetic allusions. The Pass of Kirkstone is the thenie of a characteristic ode; Grisdale Tarn and Helvellyn recur again and again; and Air Force was one of the spots which the poet best loved to describe, as well as to visit. It was on the shores of Further Gow- Larrow that the Dafodils danced beneath the trees. These references might be much further multiplied ; and the loving diligence of disciples has set before us "the Lake-district as interpreted by Wordsworth through a multitude of details. But enough has been said to show how completely the poet had absorbed the influences of his dwelling place, how unique a representative he had become of the lovely district of liis birth , low he had made it subject to him by comprehending it, and his own by love. Ile visited other countries and described other scenes. Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, have all a place in hu works Hus faniiliarity with other scenery helped hum, doubtless, to a better appreciation of the lake country than he could have gained had lie neser left it. And, on the other hand, like Cesar in Gaul, or Wellington in the Pemnsula, it was because he had go completo a grasp of this chosen base of operations that he was able to come, to see, and to make his own, 80 swiftly and unfailingly clsewhere. Happy are those whose deeprooted memories cling like his about some stable home! whose notion of the world around then has expanded from some prospect of happy tranquillity, instead of being drawn

·(CA. 18.
WORDSWORTH.
51
at random from the confusing city's roar! Happier still if
that cirly picture be of one of those rare scenes which
have inspired poets and prophets with the retrospective
day-dream of a patriarchal, or a golden, age; of some plot
of ground like the Ithaca of Odysseus, tpyxci, all' dyan
Korpotpo$os, "ronglı, but a nurse of men;" of some life
liko that which a poet of kindred spirit to Wordsworth's
sat half in vision, half in reality, among the husbandmeu
of the Italian hills:
thos;
Pace, peace is thicirs, and life no fmud that knows,
Wealth as they will, and slicn they will, repose:
On inany a hill the happs homesteads stand,
The living lakes through many a ralo espaud;
Cool glons are there, and shadowy caves dirinc,
Deep sleep, nod far-off voice of the kine;
From moor to moor the exulting wild decr stray;
The strenons youth are strong and found as
One rrrerence still the untainted mace inspires,
Gol their first thought, and after Gol their sires ;--
These last discernal Astren's flying hem,
And Virtue's latest footsteps walked with them.

·CHAPTER V. BEARRIAGE - SOCIETY-FIGHLAND TOUR With Wordsworth's settlement at Townend, Grasmere, i the closing days of the last century, the external events his life may be sard to come to an end. Even his mas riage to Miss Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith, on October 4 1802, was not so much an importation into his existenc of new emotion, as a development and intensification c feelings which had long been there. This marriage wa the crowning stroke of Wordsworth's felicity--the poets recompense for his steady advocacy of all simple and nobl things. When he wished to Justrate the true dignity and delicacy of rustic lives he was always accustomed to refer to the Cumbrian folk. And now It seemed tha Cumberland requited him for liis praises with her choices boon; found for him in the country town of Leonth, ani from the small and obscure circle of his connexions and acquaintance,-nay, from the same dame's school in which he was taught to read, --1 wife such as neither rank 1101 young beauty nor glowing genius enabled his brother barils to win. J[rs. Wordsworth's poetic appreciativeness, manifest to all who kner her, is attested by the poet's assertion that two of the best lines in the poem of The Daffodils 2 ·WORDSWORTH. [спAR. 7 Ther flash upon that in tard ego Which is the bliss of solitude, were of lier composition. And in all other matters, from the highest to the lovest, slie was to him a true helpmatc, a companion "dearer for than life and liglit are dear," and able "in his step march to uphold him to the end," Devoted to her husband, she nevertheless welcomed not only without jealousy but with delight the houseliold companionship through life of the sister who formed 80 large an clement in his lcing. Admiring the poct's genins to the full, and following the workings of his inind with a sympathy that never tired, slie nevertheless was able to discern, and with unobtrusive care to hide or avert, thosc crrors of manner into which retirement and selfabsorption will betmy even the gentlest spirit. It speaks, perhaps, equally well for Wordsworth's chometer that this tendency to a lengthy insistence, in general conversation, on his own feelings and ideas is the worst charge that can be brought against him; and for Mrs. Wordsworth's, that her simple and rustic upbringing had gifted her with a manner so gracious and a tact ro ready that in hier firesence all things coull not but go well. Tlic life which the young couplo led was onu of primitive simplicity. In some respects it was even less luxurious than that of the peasants around tlıcm. They drank water, and at the simplest faro. Viss Wordsworth liau long rendered existence possible for her brother on tho narrotrest of means by her unselfish energy and skill in househol management; and "plain living and high thinking " were equally congenial to the new inmate of the frugal home. Wordsworth garlenal; and all together, or oftanest the poet and his sister, wandereil alniost daily over the neighbouring hills. Narrow means tlid not fire ·BIARRIAGE, 57 rent them from offering a generous trelcome to their few friends, especially Coleridge and his family, who repeatedly stayed for months under Wordsworth's roof. Miss Wordsworth's unpublished letters breathe the very spirit of hospitality in their naive details of the little sacrifices gladly made for the sake of the presence of these honoured guests. But for the most part their life was solilary and upeventful. Books they had few; neighbours almost none; and Miss Wordsworth's diary of these early years describes a lile seldom paralleled in its intimate depebdence on external nature I take, almost at random, ber account of a single day “Sovember 24, 1801. Read Chaucer. We talked by Gell's cottage. As we were going along we were stopped at once, at the distance, per- Leaps, of fifty yards from our favourite birch-tree; it was yielding to the gust of wind, with all its tender twins; the sun shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a Asing sunshins shower. It was a tree in shape, with stem and branches ; but it was like a spint of water. After our return William read Spenser to us, and then walked to John's Grove. Went to meet 11." And from an nopublished letter of Miss Wordsworth's, of about the same period (September 10, 1800), I extract ber descrip. tion of the new borne. "We are dauy more delighted with Graemere and its neighbourhood. Our walks are perpetually raned, and tre are more fond of the mountains 43 our acquaintance with them increases. We hare a bort apon the lake, and a small orchard and smaller finden, which, 29 at 29 the frork of oor own bands, we regant with pride and partiality. Our cottage is quite large enough for us, though rery small; and we have made it neat and comfortable tritbin doon; and it looks very nice on the outside, for those the roses and honeysuckles which w. ܫܤܟ ·60 [CAT. VORDSTVORTH. and from regret to regret; to construct around him a world of ideal beings, who crumble into dust at his touch; to hope from them what they can neither understand nor 'accomplish, to lavish on them what they can never repay. Such pain, indeed, may become a discipline; and the close contact with many lives may teach to the poetic nature lessons of courage, of self-suppression, of resolute goodwill, and may transform into an added dignity the tumult of emotions which might else have run riot in his heart. Yet it is less often from moods of self-control than from moods of self-abandonment that the fount of poetry springs; and herein it was that Wordsworth's especial felicity lay--that there was no one feeling in him which the world had either repressed or tainted; that he had no joy which might not be the harmless joy of all, and that therefore it was when he was most unreservedly himself that he was most profoundly human. All that was needful for him was to strike down into the deep of his heart. Or, using his own words, we may compare his tranquil existence to A crystal river, Diaphanous because it trarels slowly, and in which poetic thoughts rose unimpeded to the surface, like bubbles throngh the pellucid stream. The first hint of many of his briefer poems is to be found in his sister's diary: April 16, 1802. When we were in the roods belor Gox. barrow Park we sar a fess daffodils close to the water side. As we went along there were more, and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, se sase there was a long belt of them along the sliore. I never sat daffodils so beautiful. They grer among the inossy stones about them; sonje rested their hends on the stones as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and reclel. and ·UIGILAND TOOR. Janced, and seemed as if they rerily danced with the wiwl, they fooked so gay and glancing" July 30, 1802. Leſt London between five and six o'clock of the morning, outside the Daper coach. A beautiful forsing, The city, St. Paul's, with the river, a inultitude of littlo bonin, made a beautiful sight as we crowded Westminster Bridge: the houses not overliung by their clouds of smoke, were pred] oat endlessly: get the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, tbat there was something like the purity of one of Nature's own grand spectacles Arrived at Culaix at four in the morning of July 31st Delightful walks in the eren. ings, Beeing far off in the west the coast of England like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening atnr, and the glory of the sky. The reflections in the water wero morr beautiful than the sky itself; purple water brighter than precious stones for ever toelting away upon the sands." Hor simple are the elements of these delighte! 1?erc is nothing here, except fraternal affection, a sunrinr, a mn. set, a flock of bright wild flowers; and yet thn monucts on 1Westminster Bridge and Calais Svends, and the lanza un the Daffolils, hare taken their place among the priuanent recorls of the profoundeet boman jºy. Another tour,--this time througla Scotlan), -unterlaken is August 1803, inspired Wordsworth with wteral of his Lest pieces. 153 Wordsworth's diary of tiny tour luar been lately published, and shooli kr familiar to all forn of Nature. The sister's journal is idler the last intro daction to the brother's joms. It flaz most cannot come b3 Te-their dizuty and looty, bat it eImraplifin the same method of marlinz Satare, the rame kell.idwifir. tion with hre rolin aprel and epiranc. io le foto) founder charm. It is inter in action the man impression striker with cinli 2! want. it is quickly and ia words of Igavir. Day 41/ esplicis; is the kite's is civis, a: art.

·NORDSITORTI. (cular. it may be months or years afterwarıls, as the nucleus of a macs of thought and feeling which has grown round it in his musing soul. The travellers' encounter with two lligh- Ian girls on the shore of Loch Lomond is a goorl instance of this. "One of the girls," writes Miss Wordsworth, " was exceedingly beautiful; and the figures of both of thein, in grey plaitls falling to their feet, their faces only being uncovercl, excited our attention before we spoke to thein; but they answered us to sweetly that we were quito delighted, at the saine time that they stared at us with an innocent look of ronder. I think I never heari the English innguage sound more sweetly than from the mouth of the elder of these girls, while she stood at the gato answering our inquiries, her face flushed with the min; her pronunciation was clear and distinct, without diffi culty, yet slow, as if like a foreign specch." A face with gladnega orersprend! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred! And secmlincas complete, that stays Thy courtesies, about thee plago; With no restraint, but such as springs Fror quick and cager risitings Of thoughts thint lic beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech : A bondinge erectly brooked, a strifo That gires the gestures grace and life! So harc I, not unmored in mind, Scen birils of tempost-loving kind Thus beating up agninst the wind. Tho invollers Fw more of this girl, and Miss Wordswortli's opinion was confirmed. But to Wordsworth his glimpse of her became a veritable romance. llo coininemomted it in his proem of The Iliyhlund Girl, soon after his return from Scotloni; le narrated it once more in liis ·HIGHLAND TODE poent of The Three Cottage Girls, written Dearly twenty Seart afterwards; and the sort of prophecy," lie says in 1843, "with which the terska conclude, bas, through God's goodness, tren realized; and dox, approaching the close of my seventy-third gear, I hare a most sirii rememtrance of her, and the beautiful objects with which she *a9 surrounded." Xay, more; he bus ekzewbere informed 0%, with some naiveté, that the first few lines of his exquisite poem to his wife, She was a phantom of delight, were originally composed as a description of this Highland mard, who would seem almost to have formed for him ever afterwards a kind of type and image of loveliness That such a meeting as this should have formed so long remembered an incident in the poet's life will appear perhaps, equally ridiculous to the plulosopher and to the man of the world. The one would have given less, the cther would have demanded more. And yet the quest of beauty, like the quest of truth, reaps its sturest reward when it is disinterested as well as keen, and the true lover of humankind will often drawy lue most exquisite moments from what to most men seems but the shadow of ajoy. Especially, as in this case, his heart will be prodiend of the impulses of that protecting tenderness which it is the blessing of early girlhood to draw forth unwsttrols, su to enjoy unknown,-affections which lead to no declaration, and desire to return, which are thsodtaneous Mlvence of the very Spirit of Love in mas, and ubicl play and horer around winning innocence like the Coriscations round the head of the unconst2011s lulus, a soft and unconsuming flame It was Tell, perhaps, that Wordsworth's romance slould Come to hire in this remote and fleeting fashion. For to the Priest of Nature it was fitting that all things ·WORIISITORTII. (C1. v. else should be harmonious, indeed, but accessory; that joy should not bo so keen, nor sorrow bo desolnting, nor love itself so wildly strong, is to prevent him from going out upon the mountains with a heart at peace, and receiving "in a wise passiveness" the voices of cartha and lieaven, ·CHAPTER VI. 81R GEORGE LEACXOST-DEATH OF JOUR WORDSWORT:I. The year 1803 say the begioning of a friendship wheli formed & valuable element in Wordstportl's life. Sir George Beaumont, of Coleorton Hall, Leicestershuure, a descendant of the dramatist, and representative of a family long distinguished for talent and culture, was staying with Coleridge at Greta Hail, Keswick, when, hearing of Coleridge's affection for Wordsworth, he wa3 struck with the web to bring Wordsworth also to Keswick, and bought and presented to him a beautiful piece of land at Applethwaite, ander Skiddaw, in the hope that he might be induced to settle there. Colendge was soon afterwarls obliged to leave England in search of health, and the plan fell through a characteristic letter of Wordsworth's records bis feelings on the occasion “Dear Su George," he writes, "ut any person were to be informed of the par tk ulars of your kindness to me, if it were described to him . aut w you one word of thanks or ach nowledgment, be Foull deem it a thing absolutely imposible. It is neverthelees true "Owing to a set of painful and uneasy Eensations 7 ·WORDSWORTH. [cap. which I have, more or less, at all times about my chest, I deferred writing to you, being at first inade still mora uncomfortable by travelling, and loathing to do violence to myself in what ought to be an act of pure pleasure and enjoyment, viz. the expression of my deep sense of your goodness. This feeling was indeed so strong in me, as to make me look upon the act of writing to you as a thing not to be done but in my best, my purest, and my happiest moments. Many of these I had, but then I liad not my pen, ink, and paper before me, ruy conveniences, my appliances and means to boot;' all which, the moment that I thought of them, seemed to disturb and impair the sanctity of my pleasure. I contented myself with thinking over my complacent feelings, and breathing forth solitary gratulatious and thanksgivings, which I did in many a sweet and many a wild place, during my lato tour." The friendship of which this act of delicate generosity was the beginning was maintained till Sir George Beaumont's death in 1827, and formed for many years Wordstrortli's closest link with the world of art and culture. Sir George wns himself a painter as well as a connoisscur, and his landscapes are not without indications of the strong feeling for nature which he undoubtedly possessed, Wordsworth, who had seen very few pictures, but was a penctrating critic of those which he knew, discerned this vein of true feeling in his friend's work, and has idealized a small landscape which Sir George had given him, in a sonnet which reproduces the sense of happy pause and voluntary fixation with rhich the miud throws itself into some scene whore Art has giren To one bricſ momcut caught iron flecting timo The appropriate calm of blest ctornity.

·67 TI.) SIR GEORGE BEAUVONT. There was another puruit in which Sir George Beau. mont wag much interested, and in which painter and poet were well fitted to onite. The landscape-gardener, as Wordsworth says, should work in the spirit of Nature, with an invisible hand of art." And he shows how any real success can only be achieved when the designer is willing to incorporate himself with the scenery around him; to postpone to its indications the promptings of his own pride or caprice; to interpret Xature to herself by completing touchrg; to correct her with deference, and as it were to caress her withont importunity. And rising to that aspect of the question which connects it with human Bociety, he is strenuous in condemnation of that taste, not to much for solitude as for isolation, which can tolcrate no neighbourhood, and finds its only enjoyment in the sense of monopoly "Laging out grounds, as it is called, may be considered as a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and painting, its object ought to be to move the affections under the control of good sense; and surely the aflections of those who have the deepest A liberal art aims merely at the gratification of an individual or a class; the painler or poet is degraded in proportion as be does 80. The true servanta of the arts pay homage to the human kind as impersonated in anwarped and enlightened minds If this be so when we are merely putting together words or colours, how much more ought the feeling to prevail when the midst of the realities of things, of the beauty and barmony, of the joy and happiness, of loving creatures ; of men and children, of birds and beasts, of hills and streams, and trees and flowers; with the changes of night and day, eyeg. ing and morning, sammer and winter, and all their unwearied actions and energies, as benign in the spint that animates them we are ·TTORDSTTORTI. 68 as they are beautiful and grand in that form of clothing which is giren to them for the delight of our senses ! What then shall we say of many great mansions, with their unqualified expulsion of human creatures from their neighbourhood, happy or not; houses which do what is fabled of the upas tree-breathe ont death and desolation! For my part, strip my neighbourhood of human beings, and I should think it one of the greatest privations I could undergo. You have all the porerty of solitude, nothing of its cleration." This passage is from a letter of Wordsworth's to Sir George Beaumont, who was engaged at the time in icbuilding and laying out Coleorton. The poet himself planned and superintended some of these improvements, and wrote for various points of interest in the grounds inscriptions which form dignified examples of that kind of composition, Nor was Sir George Beaumont the only friend whor the poet's taste assisted in the choico of a sito or tho di, position of pleasure-grounds. More than one scat in the Lake-country-among them one home of pre-eminent beauty-have owed to Wordsworth no small part of their ordered charm. In this way, too, the poct is with us still; his presence has a strange reality as we look on somo majestic prospect of intervinding lake and mountain which his design has made more beautifully visible to the children's children of thoso he loved ; as we stand, pierhaps, in some shadowed garden-ground where his will has had its way,_has framed Helvellyn's far-off summit in an arch of tossing green, and embayed in towering foresttrees the long lawns of a silent Valley,--fit haunt for lofty aspiration and for brooding calm. But of all woodland ways which Wordsworth's skill designed or his fect frequented, not ono was dearer to him, i ·DEATH OF JOHX WORDSWORTI. (if I may pass thus by a gentle transition to another of the strong affections of his life), than & Ortow path through a friood near his cottage, which " tas known to the poet's household by the name of John's Grore." For in the year 1800 his brother, John Wordsworth, a few years younger than himself, and captain of an Erst Indiaman, had spent eight months in the poet's cottage at Grasmere. The two brothers had been littlo of each other since childhood, and the poet had now the delight of discovering in the sailor a character congenial to his own, and an appreciation of poetry-and of the Lyrical Bullails especially—hich was intense and delicate in an unusual degree. In both brothers, too, there was the same love of nature; and after Jolin's departure, the poet pleasee himself with imagining the visions of Grismere which beguiled the watches of many a night at sea, or with tracing the pathway which the sailor's instinct had planned and trodden amid trees so thickly planted as to Luffle a less practised skill. John Wordsworth, on the other hand, looked forward to Grasmere as the final goal of his wanderings, and intended to use his own savings to set the poet free from worldly cares. Two more voyages the sailor made with such liopes as these, and amid a frequent interchange of books and letters with his brother at home. Then, in February 1805, he set sail from Portsmouth, in command of the "Alergarenny" East Indiawan, bound for India and Chin. Through the incompetence of the pilot who was taking her out of the Channel, the ship struck on the Shambles off the Bill of Portland, on February 5, 1805. "She struck," 8348 Wordsworth, "at 5 pm. Guns were fired immediately, and were continued to be fired She 33 gotten off the rock at lalf.past seven, but had taken in ·70 WORDSWORTI. [CHA. + so much wafer, in spite of constant pumping, as to be water-logged. They had, however, hope that she might still be run upon Weymouth sands, and with this view continued pumping and baling till cleven, when she went down. ... A few minutes before the ship went dorn ny brother vas seen talking to the first niate, with apparent cheerfulness; and he was standing on the lencoop, which is the point from which he could overlook the whole ship, the moment she went down-dying, as he had lived in the very place and point where his duty stationed himn." “For myself," he continues clsewhere, “I feel that there is something cut out of my life which cannot be restored. I nerer thought of him but with hope and delight. We looked forward to the time, not distant, as ve thought, when he would settle near us----When the task of his life would be over, and he would have nothing to do but reap his reward. By that time I hoped also that the chief part of my Inbours would be executed, and that I shonld be able to show him that lic had not placed a false confidence in me. I nover rote a line without a thought of giving him pleasure; iny writings, printed and manuscript, were his delight, and ono of the chief sulaces of his long voyages. But let inc slop. I will not be cast down; were it only for his sake I will not be dejected. I have much yet to do, and pray God to give me strength and power: his part of the agreement between us is brought to an end, mine continues; and I hope when I shall be able to think of him with a calmer mind, that the remeinbrance of him dead will even animate ine moro than the joy which I hnd in him living." In these and the following reflections there is nothing of novelty; yet there is an interest in the spectacle of ·21] DEATH OF JOLIX WORDSWORTH. this strong apil simple mind confronted with the universal problems, and taking refuge in the thoughts whiclı hare satisfied, or scarcely satisfied, 80 many generations of mouring men. "A thousand times harc I 39ked myself, as your tender sympathy led me to do, 'Why as he taken away l'and I hare answered the question as yon bare done. In fact there is no other answer which can mtisfy, and lay the mind at rest. Why lure we a choice, and a will, and a notion of justice and injustice, enabling us to be moral agents? Why have we sympathics that make the best of us so afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet Tesco dealt about so larisłıly by the Supreme Governor Why should onr notions of right towarls each other, and to all sentient being within our indnence, diller Ro widely from what appears to be His notion and rule, if etery thing irers to end bere? Would it not ho hlaspbemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principla being destroyed by death, howerer inferior we may be to the great Canse and Ruler of things wo have more of lore in our nature than lle has? The thought is mopstrous; and yet low to get rid of it, except upon the supposition of another and a better corld, I do not see." From this calamity, as from all the lessons of life, Wordswortli drew all the benefit which it was empowered to bring "A deep distress hath humanized my soul," — what lover of poetry does not know the pathetic lines in which he bears witness to the teaching of sorrow! Other grief, too, he had tho loss of two children m 1812, kus rister's chronic illness, beginning in 1832, luis daughter's death in 1817. All these he felt to the full, and yot, until his daughter's death, which has more then luis fail. ing energies could lear, these berrarements were but the ·HORDSWONTII. Thinlycattered clone" in a retrof blin".Seot of morning for and there among ara which never lost tłwir lul en fence; whiclı kursy na stiane and 110 37** 11083165, 1re clevelation and foar; whines dayu were l'g'rur long with wearinnsr, mor tirir nichts lirukes at the touch of woe. Even when we speak of his tribulations, it is tuis Inppines which rises in our minda. Am inasumteli ng this folicity is the treat fort, of Wordsworthi's limosinico hria hinosy is for the most man Dout the history of honleyou calm" find ourselves forced upon the 1980stion whether ucha licu ja to be Brelil desirable or na, lass with honour was the ideal of Solan; is it nlro outry? To the morn spirit, to the Christinn, in whose can comsels of perfection have oft.in presence that is not to be at ly," this questin, at which it Grook would have smilei, is of no nucli anya tilation To 11:9, perhaps, in computing the forlumni of any on whom we lioli clear, it may till morn momful to inquiry 30t whether han har fundemomgh of joy, hmt whether lo long haid pel of virrat; whetlises the son of circu. sagen lara wholly lagu hir character from the nuck: whether his soul has taken lustry and purity in the ty Sinop'a fimNur in it only (14 nome might say) for violent 111faulty sinun tut MurW is lle funt Aline liye sorrowly can the headstrong and presumpt110111 spirit ?lembrann inte frontleness and solemnized into lumility. Hlut sorrow jo useil also boy 10 lower abort $19 in to wo wo men would have shrunk in bairror (349311 kill runted loveli. Valin's that won'alrenly sos no Portwie mi-111***, +1f lilillike purity, luxv 1'? riliselt retro mo* by mniels upon agniali, Wow after wrong on height of holinese which we may lware that they ·73 Tt.) DEATH OF JONIX WORDSFORTH. could have reached by no other road. Wiy should it not be rot since there is no limit to the soul's possible elevation, why should her purifying trials have any assignable enll She is of a metal which can grow for ever brighter in the fiercening flame And if, then, we would still pronounce the true Beatitudes not on the rejoicing, the satisficu, the highly honoured, but aftur an ancient and sterner pattern, wliat account are we to give of Wordstrorth's long years of blissful calm 1 In the first place, we may say that his happiness was 29 wholly free from vulgar or transitory elements as a man's can be. It Liy in a life which most men would have found austers and blank indeed; a life froin which not Crosus only, but Solon would have turned in scorn, a life of poverty and retirement, of long apparent failure, and honour that came tardily at the close; it was a liappi. ness nourished on no sacrifice of other men, on no eager appropriation of the goods of carth, but springing from a single eye and a loving spint, and wrought from those primary emotions which are the innocent birthright of all And if it be answered that however truly philosophuc, however bacredly pure, hie happiness may have been, yet its wisdom and its holiness were without an effort, and, that it is effort which makes the philosopher and the Rint: then we must use in answer his own Platonic scheme of things, to express a thought which we can but dimly apprehend, and we must say that though progress Le inevitably linked in our minds with struggle, yet neither do we conceive of etruggle as without a pause; there must be prospect places in the long ascent of souls ; and the whole of thus eartlıly hfe-this one existence, standing re know tiot there among the ingrial that have been for us or shall be—may not be too much to occur.!

·72 VORDSITORTI. cuar. Scasons thinly-scattered clous "in a great sea of bluc". of mourning birre and there among years which never lost their hold on pieace; which kner no shame and no remorse, no desolation and no fear; whose days were never long with trariness, nor their nights broken at the touch of voc. Eren wien to speak of his tribulations, it is his happiness which rises in our minds. And inasınuch as this felicity is the great fact of Wordsworth's life-since his history is for the most part but the history of a halcyon calom-re find ourselves forced upon the question whether such a life is to be held desirable or no. Happiness with honour was the ideal of Solon; is it also ours? To the modern spirit,- to the Christian, in whose cars counsels of perfection larc left"a presence that is not to be put by," this question, at which a Greek would have smiled, is of no such easy solution. To us, perhaps, in computing the fortuno of any one whom we lold dear, it may scein morc needful to inquiro not whether he has had enough of joy, but whother ho lias had enough of sorros; whether the blows of circumstance have wholly shaped his character from the rock; whether fris soul has taken lustro and purity in the refiner's fire. Vor is it only (ns somo might say) for violent and faulty natures that sorroir is the best It is truc that by sorroir only can the headstrong and presumptuous spirit lic shained into gentleness and solemnized into humility. But sorrow is used also by the Power above as in cases where re men would have shrunk in horror from so rough a touch. Yatures that were already of a heroic unselfishness, of a childlike purity, have been raised cre now big anguisl: upon anguish, roc after rroc, to a height of holiness which we may believe that they ·73 DEATI OF JOUN YORDSWORTN. could have reached by no other road. Why blould it not Beso? since there is no limit to the soul's possible elcva. tion, why should her purifying trials have any assignable enil? She is of a metal which can grow for ever brighter in the fiercening firme. And if, then, we wonll still pro. nounce the true Beatituleg not on the rejoicing, thic satisficel, the highly honoured, but after an ancient and sterner pattern, what account are we to give of Wordsworth's long years of blissful calm In the first place, wo may say that Ine happiness was B9 wholly free from vulgar or transitory elements as a man's can be it lay in a life wbich most men would have found austere and blank indeed, a life froin which not Craesus only, but Solon would have turni in scorn, a life of poverty and retirement, of long arparent failure, aml lonour that came tardily at the closp; it was a happyness nourished on no sacrifice of other men, on no eager appropriation of the goods of carth, but springing from A single eye and a loving spirit, and wrought from thom primairy emotions which are the innocent birthrighit of all And if it ba angwered that however truly philosopluc, however sacredly parc, kote happiness may have bren, et its míston and its holiness were without an effort, and, that it is effost which makes the philosophicr and the mint: then tre must 199 in ansver his own Platonic scheme of things, to express a thought which we can but dimly apprehend, and we must say that though progress be inevitably linked in our minds with strurile, yet frither do we conceive of struggle 29 without a psuse; there must le prospect-places in the lov: ascent of souls; and the role of this earthly vie--they uſio txistence, standing we knol not sphere among the inpirl that has went for us of giall Lyxmay ant to tun mul

·NORDSIYORTH.
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with one of those outlooks of vision and of prophecy,
Then
In a season of calm treather
Thongth inland far rc ,
Our souls laro sight of that immortal sca
Which brought us lither;
Can in a moment trrel thitler,
And see the children sport upon the short,
And hear thio mighty raters rolling crermore.

·CHATTER VII. "HAPPY WARRIOR," AND PATRIOTIC POEMS Tue year 1805, which bereft Wordsworth of a beloved brother, brooght with it also another death, which was felt by the whole English nation like a private calamity. The emotion which lordsworth felt at the news of Trafalgar,--the way in which he managed to intertwine the memories of Nelson and of his own brother in his heart,--may remind us fitly at this point of our story of the distress and perplexity of nations which for 80 many years surrounded the quiet Grasmere home, and of the stroug responsive emotion with which the poet met each shock of European fates. When England first took up arms against the French revolution, Wordsworth's feeling, as we have seen, liad been one of unmixed sorrow and shame. Bloody and terrible as the revolution had become, it was still in some Bort representative of human freedom; at any rate it might still secm to contain possibilities of progress such as the retrograde despotism, with which England allied herself could never know But the conditions of the contest changed before long. France had not the wisdom, the courage, the constancy to play to the end the part for which she had seemed chosen among the nations her conduct towards Switzerland which decisirely altered It was ·76 NORDSWORTH. [CHAP. Wordsırorth's view. He saw her valiant spirit of selfdefence corrupted into lust of glory; her eagerness for the abolition of unjust privilege turned into a contentment with equality of degradation under a despot's heel. “One man, of men the meanest too," for such the First Consul pust needs appear to the moralist's eye, was Raised up to sway the world to do, undo; With mighty nations for bis underlivgs. And history herself seemned vulgarized by the repetition of her ancient tales of war and overthrow on a scale of such apparent magnitude, but with no glamour of distance to hide the haseness of the agencies by which the destinies of Europe were shaped anew. This was an occasion that tried the hearts of men; it was not easy to remain through all those years at once undazzled and untempted, and never in the blackest hour to despair of human virtue. In his tract on The Convention of Cintra, 1808, Wordsworth has given the fullest expression to this undaunted temper: "Oppression, its own blind and predestined enemy, has poured this of blessedness upon Spain--that the enormity of the outrages which she has been the victim has created an object of love and of hatred, of apprehensions and of wishes, adequate (if tbat be possible) to the utmost demands of the human spirit. The heart that serves in this cause, if it languish, must languish from its own constitutional wenkness, and not through vant of nourishinent from without. But it is a belief propagated in books, and which passes currently among talking ipen as part of their familiar wisdom, that the hearts of the many are constitutionally weak, that, they do languish, and are slow to anstrer to the requisitions of things. I entreat those who are in this delusion to look behind them and ·711.) "HAPPY WARRIOR," AND PATRIOTIC TOF 318.77 about them for the evidence of esperience. Now this, rightly understood, not only gives to support to any such belief, but proves that the truth is in direct opposition to it. The history of a)) ages—tumalts alter tumultu, wars foreign or civil, with short or with no breathing places from generation to generation; the senselens wearing and interweaving of fuctions, vonishing, and revising, and piercing erch other like the Northern Lights; public commotions, and those in the breast of the individanl; the long calenture to which the Lover is subject; the blast, like the blast of the desert, which sweepe peren. nially through a frightful solitude of its own making in the mind of the Gameater; the slowls quickening, but erer quicken. ing, dercent of appetite down wbich the Miser is propelled; the Agony and cleaving oppression of grief, the ghost-like hauntings of shame; the incubus of revenge; the life-distemper of ambia tion ... these demonstrate incontestably that the passions of men, (I mean the soul of sensibility in the heart of man), in all quarrela, in all contests, in all quests, in all delights, in all employments which are either sought by men or thrast upon them, do immeasurably transcend their objects. The truc Lorrow of bumanity consists in this-not that the mind of man fails, but that the cause and demands of action and of life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of buman desirea; and hence, that which is slow to languish in too casily turned aside and abused. But, with the remerabrance of what has been dove, and in the face of the interminable evils which are threatened, a Spaniard can never have cause to com. plain of this while a follower of the tyrant remains in arms upon the Peningula." It was passages such as thia, perhapa, which lcd Can. ning to declare that ordsworth's pamphlet was the finest piece of political cloquence sbieh hail apprand since Burko. And if we compare it with lurke, or with the great Greek exemplar of all those who would give speech the cogency of act, --1rc seo at once the causes of its practical failure In Demosthenes the ·WORDSWORTH. 78 thoughts and principles are often as lofty as any patriot can express; but their loftiness, in his speech, as in the very truth of things, seemed but to add to their immediate reality. They were beaten and inwoven into the facts of the hour ; action seemed to turn on them as on its only possible pivot; it was as though Virtue and Freedom hung armed in heaven above the assembly, and in the visible likeness of immortal ancestors beckoned upon an urgent way. Wordsworth's mood of mind, on the other hand, as he has depicted it in two sonnets written at the same time as his tract, explains why it was that that appeal was rather a solemn protest than an effective exhortation. In the first sopnet he describes the sur roundings of his task,--the dark wood and rocky cave, "the hollow vale which foaming torrents fill with omnisent murmur :"- Here mighty Nature ! in this school sublime I weigh the hopes and fears of suffering Spain; For her consult the auguries of time, And through the human heart explore my way, And look and listen, gathering whence I may Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain. And then he proceeds to conjecture what effect his tract will produce :- I dropped my per, and listened to the wind, That sang of trees uptorn and vessels tost; A midnight harmony, and wholly lost To the general souse of men, by chains confined Of business, care, or pleasure, or resigned To timely sleep. Thought I, the impassioned strain Which withont aid of numbers I sustain Like acceptation from the world will find. This deliberate and lonely emotion was fitter to i ·VII.) "HAPPY VARRIOR" AND PATRIOTIC POEUS 79 grare poetry than a pamphlet appealing to an immediate crisis. And the sonnets dedicated To Liberty (1803-16) are the outcome of many moods like these. It is little to say of these sonnets that they are the tpost permanent record in our literature of the Napoleonic war. For that distinction they have fer competitors. Two magnificent songs of Campbell'e, an ode of Coleridge's a fer spirited stanzas of Byron'a--Etrangeis enough there is little lesides these that lives in the national memory, till are come to the ode trich summed up the lung contest a generation later, when its great captain passed away. But these Sonnets to Liberty are worthy of comparison with the noblest passages of patriotic versc or proso which all our history lias inspired--the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on "this carth, this realm, this England," -or s here the dread of national disisonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,- or where Milton risca from the polemic into tho proplict, and Burko from the partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed, was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible knights of old." llo had not stayed senates, nor directed policies, nor gntlicrcu into one erlent bosom all the spirit of a lerosc age. Blut ho haul deeply felt what it is that makes tho greatpong of nations; in that extremity no man was more staunch than ho; no man more unwaveringly disdained unrighteous empire, or kept the might of mom forces thoro atearl. fastly in view. Not Stein could placo a manlicr reliance on "a few strong instincts and a few pilnin rulrx;" 101 Fichte could invoke more convincingly the "great allic" which work with "Yan's unconquerable mind." Hero and there, indeel, throughout threo sonnets are kattered strokes of higla petic admiration or scots which ·80 could hardly be overmatched in Æschylus. Such is the indignant correction- Call not tho royal Swede unfortunate, Who never did to Fortune bend the knee! or the stern touch which closes a description of Flami. ninus' proclamation at the Isthmian games, according liberty to Greece, A gift of that which is not to be given By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven! Space forbids me to dwell in detail on these noble poenus on the well-known sonnets to Venice, to Milton, &c.; on the generous tributes to the heroes of the contest,-- Schill, Hoffer, Toussaint, Palafox ; or on the series which contrast the instinctive greatness of the Spanish people at bay, with Napoleon's lying promises and inhuman pride. But if Napoleon's career afforded to Wordsworth a poetic example, impressive as that of Xerxes to the Greeks, of lawless and intoxicated power, there was need of some contrasted figure more notable than Hoffer or Palafox from which to draw the lessons which great contests can teach of unselfish valour. Tas there then any man, by land or sea, who might serve as the poet's type of the ideal hero? To an Englishman, at least, this question carries its own reply. For by a singular destiny England, with a thousand years of noble history behind her, has chosen for her best-loved, for her national hero, not an Arminius from the age of legend, not a Henri Quatre from the age of chivalry, but a man whom men still living have seen and known. For indeed England and all the world as to this man were of one accord; and when in victory, on his ship Victory, Nelson passed $ ·TIL] "HAPPY WARRIOR," AND PATRIOTIC POESIS. 81 away, the Llirill which shook mankind was of a nature such as perhaps tras never felt at any other death, --30 ananimous was the feeling of friends and foes that earth had lost her crowning examplo of impassioned selfdevotedness and of lieroic lionour, And yet it might have seemed that between Nelson's nature and Wordsworth's there was little in common. The obvious limitations of the great Admiral's culture and character were likely to be strongly felt by the philosophic poct. Anda serious crime, of which Nelson tras commonly, though, as now appears, erroneously,' supposed to be guilty, was sure to be judged by Wordsworth with greit severity. Wordsworth was, in fact, hampered by some such feelings of disapproval. lle even tells us, with that naive affectionateness which often makes us smile, that he has hul recourse to the character of his own brother John for the qualities in which the great Admiral appeared to him to have been deficient. Dut on these hesitations it would be unjust to dwell I mention them only to bring out the fact that between these two men, 80 different in outward fates, - between "the adored, the incomparable Nelson" and the homely poet, "retired as noontide dew, there was a moral likeness so profound that the ideal of the recluse was realized in the public life of the hero, and, on the other hand, the hero himself 13 only seen as completely heroic when his impetuous lite stands oat for us from the solemn background of the poet's calm. And surely these two natures taken together make tho perfect Englishman. Xor is there any portrait fitter than that of 1 The researches of Sir Nicholas Nicolas, (Letters and De. spatches of Lord Nelson, vol ni. Appendix), bare placed Lord Veloon's congesion with Laily Hamiltos in an Edespected light. 0 ·82 WORDSWORTH. {CHAP. The Ilappy Marrior to go forth to all lands as representing the English character at its heightmaa figure not ill-matching with " Plutarch's men." For indeed this short poem is in itself a manual of greatness; there is a Ronian majesty in its simple and weighty speech. And what enlogy was ever nobler than that passage where, without definite allusion or quoted name, the poet depicts, as it were, the very summit of glory in the well-reinembered aspect of the Admiral in his last and greatest hour? Whose powers shed round him, in the common strife, Or inild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace; But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Beaved bas joined Great issues, good or bad for humau kind, as a Loter, and attired TVith sudden brightness, like a Nan inspired. Or again, where the hidden thought of Nelson's womanly tenderness, of his constant craving for the green earth and home affections in the midst of storm and war, melts the stern verses into a sudden change of tone: Is happ He who, though tbus endued as with a sense And faculty for storm and turbulence, Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt picasures and to gentle scenes; Sweet images which, wheresoe'er bo be, Are at his heart; and such fidelity It is his darling passion to approre;- More hrure for this, that he bath much to love. Compare with this the end of the song at Brougham Castle, where, at the words "alas ! the fervent harper did Dot know--" the strain changes from the very spirit of chivalry to the gentleness of Nature's calm. Nothing ·63 TI) "HAPPT TARRIOR, AND PATRIOTIC POESIA, can be more characteristic of Wordstorth than contmsts like this. They teach as to pomembno that his accustomed miliness is the fruit of no indolent or sentimental peaco; and that, on the other band, when his counsels are steriest, and "his voice is still for rar," this jy no roico of banl. ness or of rainglory, but the reluctant resolution of a heart which fain would yield itself to other energie, and have no message but of love. There is one more point in which the character of Melson has fallen in with one of the lessons which Words worth is nerer tired of enforcing, the lesson that virtue growa by the strennousness of its crercise, that it gains strength as it wrestles with pain and difficulty, and converts the shocks of circumstanco into an energy of its proper glow. The Happy Warrior is onc, Who, doomed to go is company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train Turns bis necessity to glorious gains In face of these doth exercis a power Which is oor baman natpro's highest dower; Controls them and snbdaer, transmiten, bereares of their bnd infoence, and their good receiTCH : By objects which might force the soul to slnte Her feeling, renderrel moro compassionate, and so further, in worls which recall the womanls tender. ners, the almost exagerated feeling for others' pain, which showed itself mcmombly in face of the ulazing Orient, and in the barbour at Tenerife, and in the cockpit at Trafalgar. In such lessons as these, --Buch lessons as The Ilarry l'arrior or the Patriotic Sonnets teach, there 18, of course, little that is absolutely novel. We were alrculy awam that the ileal hero should be as gentle 19 he is brire, that ·At IYORDAIYOITII. (cil. ". ho should not always from the highest motives, nor greatly curo for any reward save the consciousness of frying dono hvis suly. We were aware that the truo ulrength of it mation is morn) and not miferinl; thint dominion which rosta on more military force iu destinel quickly to deony; that the lyrant, lowoyer almired and prosperoun, iu in reality clespicable, and miserable, and alone; that the true man should face dienth itself rather than parley with disa honour, Thono truths nro aulmilled in all nger; yol it in Horrcoly strotching Inngungo to my that thoy aro linonen to but fow men. Ornt lent, thongh in a grent nation there bo mny who will act on them instinctively, an approve thom by n self-hurrondloring fnith, thoro are fow who can 80 pm thein forth in apeech 13 to bring them liomo with e frcali conviction and an added glow; who can mum 12]}, like Aschylu9, the contrast Notwoon llullenic frcoilom anul Inrbirinn despotism in "ono crump'r pent that not all Grecka nilamo;" can thrill, liko Virgil, a world-wido ompiro with the rocital of the angust simplicitics of curly Nomo. To those who would know there things with a vital knowlodge-a conviction which would romain imalikoni worn tho whole world in arms for wrong-il is before all things nocessary to strengthen the inner monitious by tho companionship of these noblo souls. And if s poct, by atrong concoutention of thought, by alriving in all Wings along tho upuan way, cau lonvo up in a row pagos ng it woro a stimmary of patriotism, a manunl of nntionn! honour, le curely ling his place among his country's bonefactors not only ly that kind of courtesy which tho mntion externa lo mon of lottora of whom her magner lako little bed, lnut with a litla ng tsiral 18 any warrior or atatesman, mul with no losy direct ir rims.

·CHAPTER VIIL CIIILDREX-LIFE AT RIDAL HOUST" THE EXCCASIOx, It may be well at this point to rtam to the quiet chronicle of the poet's life at Grasmere; where his cottage was becoming too small for an increasing family. His eldest son, Jolin, tras born in 1803, his eldest daughter, Doroths or Dors, in 1804. Then came Thomas, bom 1806; and Catherine, born 1808; and the list is enried by William, born 1810, and now (1880) the only survivor. In tho spring of 1803 Wordsworth left Townend for Allan Bank,--a inore roomy, but an unconfortable house, at the north end of Grastuere. From thience lo removed for a time, in 1811, to the l'arsonage at Grimere. Wordsworth was the most affectionate of fathers, and allusions to his chnldren occur (revjuently in fris poetry. Dom-who was the delight of liis later years—1199 l.cen described at length in This Trim Shorter and simpler, but more completely successful, us the picture of Catherine in the little procin which leans “Loring she is, and tractable, though wald," with its homely simile for childhood - its own existence sufficient to fill it with gladness : As a fagyot farkles on the hearth Xotlou if unattended and lone Than bea both young and old ut gathered tvoud And taka delight in its actinity ·TORDSTFORTH. [CH. . he should act always from the highest motives, nor greatly care for any reward save the consciousness of having done his duty. We were aware that the true strength of a nation is moral and not material; that dominion which rests on mere military force is destined quickly to decay; that the tyrant, however admired and prosperous, is in reality despicable, and miserable, and alone; that the true man should face death itself rather than parley with dis.. honour. These truths are admitted in all ages; yet it is scarcely stretching language to say that they are knoon to but few men, Or at least, though in a great nation there be many who will act on them instinctively, and approve them by a self-surrendering faith, there are few who can so put them forth in speech as to bring them home with a fresh conviction and an added glor; who can sum up, like Æschylus, the contrast between Hellenic freedom and rian despotism in "one trump's peal that set all Greeks aflame;" can thrill, like Virgil, a world-wide empire with the recital of the august simplicities of early Rome. To those who would know these things with a vital knowledge--a conviction which would remain unshaken were the whole world in arms for wrong it is before all things necessary to strengthen the inner monitions by the companionship of these noble souls. And if a poet, by strong concentration of thought, by striving in all things along the upward way, can leave us in a few pages as it were a summary of patriotism, a manual of national honour, be surely has his place among his country's benefactors not only by that kind of courtesy which the nation extends to men of letters of whom her masses take little heed, but with a title as assured as any warrior or statesman, and with no less direct a claim, ·CILAPTEP TUL CHILDRES-UTZ AT PIDAL XOCSI-"THE EXCros. It is te well a: this point to return to the quiet chronicle of the poet's life at Graemere; where his citamente w29 locoming to call for an increasing family. This eldest son, Jolin, was born in 1-03; lis ellest daughter, Dorothy or Dorz, in 1801. Then came Thomas, bom 1006; and Catherine, Lorn 1809; and the list is ended by Wallize, bort 1810, and Bor (1830) the only burritor. In the spring of 1803 Wordsworth left Townend for Allan Link-a more rooms, bat an uncomfortable house, at the north enl of Grete. From thesce he removed fur a limar, in 1811, to the Parsonave at Grmere. Worlsworth was the most affectionate of Lathers, and allavions to his chillren oocar (nquently in his poetry. Don—wbo was the delight of liis later years has been de embalas length in Thu, Tridl. Shorter atul simpler, but more ompletals sucesful, is the picture of Catherine in the little poem which brats "Loving the is, and tractable, thougls will," with its homely simile for chuld loat-its own existence sufficient to fill it with glaulness ; Ausfast parklas on the hearth Vietlosit unatteuded ] alone Tan Len loh young ac] cid sis galbernd rand dud tuale delt is is activity ·EG WORDSIYORTH. CHAP The next notice of this belovedl child is in the sonnet, “Surprised by joy, impatient as the wind," written when she had already been removed from his side. She died in 1812, and was closely followed by her brother Thomas, Words vorth's grief for these children was profound, violent, and lasting, to an extent which those who imagine im as not only calm but passionless might have some ifficulty in believing. "Referring once," says his friend Ir. Aubrey de Vere, " to two young children of his who ad died about forly years previously, he described the etails of their illnesses with an exactness and an imetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might have been xpected if the bereavement had taken place but a few reeks before. The lapse of time seemed to lave left the orrow submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness. [et I afterwards heard that at the time of the illness, at east in the case of one of the two children, it was in. iossible to rouse his attention to the danger. He chanced o be thien under the immediate spell of one of those fits f poetic inspiratiou which descended on him like a cloud. Fill the cloud had drifted, he could see nothing beyond." This anecdote illustrates the fact, which to those who new Wordsworth well was sufficiently obvious, that the haracteristic calm of his writings was the result of no oldness of temperament but of a deliberate philosophy. The pregnant force of his language in dealing with those earest to him-his wife, his sister, his brother-is proof nough of this. The frequent allusions in his correspon- .ence to the physical exhaustion brought on by the act f poetical composition indicate a frame which, though iade robust by exercise and temperance, was by nature xcitable rather than strong. And even in the direction 3 which re should least have expected it, there is reason ·nu.) LIFE AT RYDAL JOUXT. 67 to believe that there wero capacities of feeling in him which noyer broke from his control. "Had I been a writer of love-poetry," he is reported to have said, "it would havo been natural to 100 to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly hare been approred by my principles, and which might have bern undesirable for the reader." Worlsworth'a internal ferlings, ot any rate, were, as hu bren snid, exceptionally strong; and the impossibility of remaining in a house fillol with sorrowful memories rendereel hinı doubly anxious to obtain a permanent homo. "Tho livuse which I have for some time occupied," he write to Lord Lonslalo, in January 1813," is the Parson. Ago of Gimsmcre. It stands close by the churchyard, and I hinvo found it absolutely necessary that we should quit a place which, by recalling to our minds at overy moment thic 11880s wo have Bustained in the courgo of tho last year, woull grievously retard our progress towards thint' tranquillity which it is our duty to aim at." It happened that Rydal Mount became vacant at this moment, and in the spring of 1813 the Wordswortbe migrated to this Llicir favourito and last aboile. Ryla! Mount has probably been oftener described than Any other English poet's liome since Shakespearo; and fow homes, certainly, live been moulded into such clogo nccordanco with their inmates' nature. The house, which has been altereel sinco Wordsworth's day, stands looking Kouthwarl, on the rocky sido of Nab Scar, above Rydal Labc. Thogarlen was dicscribed by Bishop Wordaworth immediately after his uncie's death, while every terracowalk and Rovering alley spoke of tho poet's loving care. llo tells of the "tall asli-tree, in wliich a thruslı hias rung, for liours together, during many years," of the ·88 WORDSTVORTH. [CRAP. m "labarnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung;" of the stone steps "in the interstices of which grow the yellow flowering poppy, and the wild geranium or Poor Robin," Gay With his red stalks upon a sunny day. and then of the terraces--one levelled for Miss Fentrick's use, and welcome to himself in aged years; and one ascending and leading to the "far terrace" on the mountain's side, where the poet was wont to murmur his verses as they came. Within the house were disposed his simple treasures : the ancestral almery, on which the names of unknown Wordsworthis may be deciphered still; Sir Georgo Beau. mont's pictures of "The White Doe of Rylstone" and “The Thorn," and the cuckoo clock which brought vernal thoughts to cheer the sleepless bed of age, and which sounded its noonday summons when his spirit fled. Wordsworth's worldly fortunes, as if by some benignant guardianship of Providence, were at all times proportioned to his successive needs. About the date of his removal to Rydal (in March 1813) he was appointed, through Lord Lonsdale's interest, to the distributorship of stamps for the county of Westmoreland, to which office the same post for Cumberland was afterwards added. He held this post till August 1842, when he resigned it without a retiring pension, and it was conferred on his second son. He was allowed to reside at Rydal, which was counted as a suburb of Ambleside; and as the duties of the place were light, and mainly performed by a most competent and devoted clerk, there was no draw back to the advantage of an increase of income which released hin from anxiety as to the future. A more lucrative office the collectorship of Whitehnven-was subsequently offered to him;

·TIL) LIFE AT BYPAL HOUST. €9 In: he declinel it, "nor mould exchange his Sabine valley for riches and a load of care." Though Worlsworth's life at Rydal 25 a retired one, it was not that of a reciose. As years went on be became more and more reconized as a centre of spiritual strength and illumination, and 24 sought not only by those who were alrearls his neighbours, but by sone who became fo inainly for his sale. Southey at Keswick was & raided friend, though Wordsworth did not greatly estrem him as a poet. De Quincey, originally attracted to the district by admiration for Wordsworth, remained there for many years, and poured forth a criticism strangely compunded of the utterances of the hero worshipper and the ralet-le-chamire Professor Wilson, of the Noctes Am- Lorinnx, never showed, perhaps, to so much adrantage as whien he walked by the side of the master sthose greatness he was one of the first to detect Dr. Amold of Rozby mule the neighbouring home at Fox Iowa focus of warm affections and of intellectual life. And Ilartley Calendge, whose fairy childhoorl had inspired one of Wordsworth's happiest picres, continued to lead among the dales of Westmoreland life which showed how much of genius and grlness a eingle weakness can nullify Other friends there were, too, less known to fame, but of exceptional powers of appreciation and sympathis The nimes of Jirs. Fletcher and her daughters, Laily Richardcon and Jr. Dary, should not be omitted in any record of the poet's life at Rydal. And many humbler neighbours may be recognized in the chancters of the Excursion and other poems. The l'anderer, inileerl, 13 a picture of Wordsworth himself-"an ulea," as he say, "of wliat I ſancind my own character might hare become in his circumslances." But the Slıury Fis samestel by a broken man ·90 IYORDSTTORTII. [CSAP. who took refuge in Grasmere from the world in which he had found no peace; aud the characters described as lying in the churchyard among the mountains are almost all of them portraits. The clergyman and his family described in Book VII. were among the poet's principal associates in the vale of Grasmere. « There was much talent in the family," says Wordsworth in the memoranda dictated to Miss Fenwick; "and the eldest son was distinguished for poetical talent, of which a specimen is given in my Notes to the Sonnets on the Duddon. Once when, in our cottage at Townend, I was talking with him about pootry, in the course of our conversation I presumed to find fault with the versification of Pope, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. He defended him with a warmth. that indicated much irritation; nevertheless I could not abandon my point, and said, 'In compass and variety of sound your own versification surpasses his.' Never shall I forget the change in his countenance and tone of. voice. The storm was laid in a moment; he no longer disputed my judgment; and I passed immediately in his mind, no doubt, for as great a critic as ever lived." It was with personages simple and unromantic as these that Wordsworth filled the canvas of his longest poem. Judged by ordinary standards the Excursion appears an epic without action, and with two heroes, the Pastor and the Wanderer, whose characters are identical. Its form is cumbrous in the extreme, and large tracts of it have little claim to the name of poetry. Wordsworth compares the Excursion to a temple of which his smaller poems form subsidiary shrines; but the reader will more often liken the small poems to gems, and the Excursion to the rock from which they were extracted. The long poem contains, indeed, magnificent passages, but ·91 vin) " TUE EXCURSION." as a whole it is a diffused description of sochers which the poct has clsewhere caught in brighter glimpses; a al diffuseal statement of hopes and beliefs whicb bare crystal. Jizel more exquisitely elsewhere munil moments of in spiring emotion, The Excursion, in short, has the draw lacks of a didactic poem as carapared with lyrical poems but, judged as a didactic poem, it has the advantage of containing teaching of true and permanent raluc. I shall not attempt to deduce a settled scheme of philosophy from these discourses among the mountainz. 1 would urge only that as a gwile to conduct Wordsworth's precepits are not in themselves either unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amenů nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and soinc thing vague in the second Asceticism, quietisn, enthu. siasm, ecstasy--all systems which imply an unnatural repression or an unnatural excitation of our faculties--are ill-suited for the mass of mankind. And on the other Luand, if we are told to follow nature, to develope our original character, we are too often in doubt as to which of our conNicting instincts to follow, what part of our complex nature to accept as our regulating self. But Worlsworth, while impressing on us conformity to nature as the rule of life, suggests a test of such conformity which can be practically applied. "The child 13 father of the man," in the words which stand as introduction to his poetical works, and Wordsworth holds that the instincts and pleasures of a healthy childhood sufficiently indicate the lines on rhich our maturr character should be formed. The joy which began in the were sense of existence should be maintained by hopeful faith, the simplicity wlich began in inexperience should be recovered by medi- ·V WORDSWONTII, Collar 1 Intion ; tho lovo which originated in the family circle shoulil oxpand itself uyor the rnce of men And the calming an olovrling influence of Nnture-Which to Wordsworth's memory socmed tho inseparable concomitant of chillish years-should be constantly invoked through. ont life to keep the heart fresh and the eyes open to tho inysteries discernible through her rodinnt veil. In a word, tho Inmily nilicctione, if suy fosterol, the influences of Nature, if (nly sought, with some knowledge of the beat looks, aro materini onough to " built up our moral being" nud to ontweigh the loss doop-sented impulses which prompt Lo wrong-iloing II, then, surrounding influences mnko 80 decisivo a difloronon in ann's moral lol, whnt nro wo lo Any of those who never love the chance of receiving those influences nright; who are renrel, with little purental supervision, in Amoky cities, and spiend their lives in confine on monotonous labour 1 One of the most impressivo paanges in the Kreursion is an indiyant complaint of the injustice thus done to the inctory child. Wordsworth was no frantical opponent of mannfacturing industry. Ble line intimnto friends among manuncurory; and in one of his Testfers he spronks of promising himself much plonkero from wilncasing the incroneed regnr for the welfare of inctory hands of which one of these friends had not the oxample, But ho novor lust sight of the fact tlmt the liſo of the snill land is an anomalysn lifo not in the order of mature, and which requires lo lo justified by manifest 110- cessity nul by continuous care. The question to whicx- Lent we many requiesce in the continuance of a low orlor of human hoings, existing for our cnjoyment rather than for their own, may be answered with plausibility in very dilleront toner; from the Commumist who camot rest content ·«TIE EXCURSIOX." in tho inferiority of any one man's position to any other's, to the philosopher who holds that mankınd has made the most eminent progress when a fove chosen individuals Lave been supported in easy brilliancy by n population of gerfs or slaves. Wordsworth's answer to this question is at once conservatiro and philanthropic. He holds to the distinction of classes, and thus admits a difference in the fulness and value of human lots. But he will not consent to any social arrangement which implies a necesrary morell inferionty in any section of the body politic; and he estrems if the statesman's first duty to provide that all citizens shall be placed under conditions of life which, however liumble, shall not be unfavourable to virtue. Its views on national education, which at first sight appear to inconsistent, depend on the same conception of national Welfare. Wordsworth was one of the earliest and most cmphatic proclaimers of the duty of the State in this respect. The lines in which he insists that overy child ought to be taught to read are, indeed, often quoted as an cxample of the moralizing baldness of runch of his blank verse. But, on the other hand, when a great impulso was given to education (1820-30) by Bell and Lancaster, by the introduction of what was called the "Madras system" of tuition by pupil-teachers, and the spread of infant schools, Wordsworth was found unexpectedly in the opposite camp. Considering as lie did all mental requirements as entirely subsidiary to moral progress, and in themselves of very little ralue, he objected to a system which, instcad of confining itself to readingthat indispensable channel of morl nutriment-aimel at communicating knowledge as vaned and advanced as time and funds would allow. Ile objected to the dissociation ·9.4 WORDS IVORTE. CELAP. of school and home life-to that relegation of domestic interests and duties to the background, which large and Highly-organized schools, and teachers much above the home level, must necessarily involve. And yet moro strongly, and, as it may still seem to many minds, with convincing reason, he objected to an eleemosynary system, which "precludes the poor mothor from the strongest motive human nature can be actuated by for industry, for forethought, and self-denial." "The Spartan," he said, "and other ancient communities, might disregard domestic tics, because they had the substitution of country, which we cannot liave. Our course is to supplant domestic attachments, without the possibility of substituting others more capacious. What can grow out of it but selfishness?" The half-century which has elapsed since Wordsworth wrote these words has evidently altered the state of the question. It has impressed on us the paramount necessity of national education, for reasons political and social too well known to repeat. But it may be fcared that it has also shifted the incidence of Wordsworth's arguments in a more sinister manner, by vastly increasing the number of those homes where domestic influence of the kind which the poct saw around him at Rydal is altogether wanting and school is the best avenue even to moral well-being. "Heaven and hell," lie writes in 1808, "are scarcely more different from cach other than Sheffield and Manchester, fc, differ from the plains and valleys of Surrey, Essex, Cumberland, or Westmoreland." It is to be feared, inded, that even the plains and valleys of Surrey and Essex" contain many cottages whose spiritual and sanitary conditions fill far short of the poet's ideal. But it is of course in the great and growing centres of population that the dangers Thich he dreads havo me upon us in ·"THE HILLIU.. 11.) their mot amarated forth. And Inng as there are in England so many homes to which farental care and the infdenopy of Yature are alike unknown, no potert in faroar of the paramount importance of these primary gencies in the formation of character can le regarded 23 altogether out of date. With such rerere and almost prossic themes is the greater part of the Frrureion occupiel. Yet the poem is far from being composed throughout in a firastic spirit. "Or its bones is coral made," 118 arguments and theories have lain long in Wordsworth's mind, and have accreted to themselves a nch investiture of observation and feeling. Some of its passages rank among the poet's highest fights. Sach is the passage in Book 1. describing the boy's rapture at sunrise ; and the picture of a fanset at the close of the fimc book. Sach is the opening of Dook IV.; and the past 23ge describing the wild jos of roaming through a mountain storm; and the metaphor in the same book which corn. fare the mind's puwer of transfiguring the obstacles which beset her, with the glory into which the moon incorporates the umbrace that would intercept her lean It would scarceis be possible a: the present day that a work containing such stnking passages, and so much of baletance and eleration-- however out of keeping it might be with the ruling taste of the day-should appear without receiving careful study from many quarters and warn appreciation in some recognized organs of opinion. Criticism in Wordsworth's day 129 both less competent and less conscientious, and the famous " This will nerer ilo" of Jeffrey in the Elinburgh Noricic 29 by no tnrans an extreme specimen of the general tone in which the work was received. The judgment of the reriewers ·96 WORDSWORTH. [CHAP. influenced popular taste; and the book was as decided a pecuniary failure as Wordsworth's previous ventures had been. And here, perhaps, is a fit occasion to speak of that strangely violent detraction and abuse which formed so large an ingredient in Wordsworth's life,-mor rather, of that which is the only element of permanent interest in such a matter, -his manner of receiving and replying to it. No writer, probably, who has afterwards achieved a reputation at all like Wordsworth's, has been so long represented by reviewers as purely ridiculous. And in Wordsworth's manner of acceptance of this fact we may discern all the strength, and something of the stiffness, of his naturo ; we may recognize an almost, but not quite, ideal attitude under the shafts of unmerited obloquy. For he who thus is arrogantly censured should remeinber both the dignity and the frailty of man; he should wholly forgive, and almost wholly forget; but, nevertheless, should retain such serviceable hints as almost any criticism, however harsh or reckless, can afford, and go on his way with no bitter broodings, but yet (to use Wordsworth's expression in another context) “with a melancholy in the soul, a sinking inward into ourselves from thought to thought, a steady remonstrance, and a high resolve." How far his own self-assertion may becomingly be carried in reply, is another and a delicate question. There is almost necessarily something distasteful to us not only in self-praise but even in a thorough self-appreciation. We desire of the ideal character that his faculties of admiration should be, as it were, absorbed in an .eager perception of the merits of others, that a kind of shrinking delicacy should prevent him from appraising his own ·vhievements with similar care, Often, in:leerl, there is mething tuost winning in a touch of humorous blindness: Well, Miss Sophis, and how do you like the Lurly of the Irle!" "Oh, I're not mad it; papa says there's nothing so be.] for young people a9 reading lad poetry." Put there are circumstances tipides shich this graceful aleence of self-consciousness can no longer be maintained. When a man believes that he has a message to deliver that ritally conorrns mankind, and when that message is received with contempt and apatly, he is necessarily driren Lack upon himself; he is forced to consider whether what he bias to say is alter all so important, and wliether his mode of saying it be right and adequate. A Decessity of this kind was forced upon both Shelley and Wordsworth. Shelley—the very type of self.forgetful enthusiann-was driven at Laet by the world's treatment of him into a series of moods sometimes bitter and sometimes relf-distrustfulminto a sense of aloofness and detachment from the mass of men, which the poet who would fain improve apl exall them should do his utmost not to feel On Worlswortli's more stubborn nature the effect prolaced by puany sears of detraction was of a different kird. Naturalis introspective, he res driven by abuso and ridicule into taking stock of himself more frequently abit more laboriously than erer. He formed an estimate of himself and 1113 writing, which 29, on the whole, (as will now be grecalls altmitted,) a just one, and this view hie expressed when occasion offered-in sober language, inddeel, but with calm conriction, and with precisely the same zit of speaking from undoubted knowledge as when le described the beauty of Cumbnan mountains or the Tirtue of Cumbrian hones. " It is impossible," he wrote to Laly Beaumont in 1807. H ·98 IVORDSITORTH. [CHAP. " that any expectations can be lower than mine concerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is called the public. I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any merit from a living poet; but merely think of the pure, absolute, honest ignorance in which all worldlings, of every rank and situation, must be enveloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings, and images on which the life of my poems depends. The things which I have taken, whether from within or without, what have they to do with routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from street to street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul or Sir Francis Burdett, the Westminster election or the borough of Honiton! In a word ---for I cannot stop to make my way through the hurry of images that present themselves to ne-what have they to do with endless talking about things that nobody cares anything for, except as far as their own vanity is concerned, and this with persons they care nothing for, but as their vanity or selfishness is concerned ? What have they to do (to say all at once) with a life without love? In such a life there can be no thought; for we have no thought (save thoughts of pain), but as far as we have love and admiration. " It is an awful truth, that there neither is nor can be any genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the worldmamong those who either are, or are striving to make theinselves, people of consideration in society. This is a truth, and an awful one; because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God.

·THE EXCCRSION." ** Una this I skill insist eluewlete; st spent let me corfine myelf to my olijat, which is to make you, toy Irat friral, an essg.liearted at tgull with trapret to the foros. Trouble not yourself on their jirer meringan tion. Orxlat moment is that compared with what I trus! is theirdesting 1-to console the aflictel; toall funshine to daylight, lig making the larps Lappier; to Empoli the - yours and the gracious of every age to me, to think, ani ferl, and, therefore, to become more actively and ecurely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faith. fully furfurt, long sher we (that is, all that is mortal of c) are mouldered in our graves." Such wonls as three come with dignits from the mouth cfa min like Wordsworth when he lias been, as it rere, driven to lay-when he is consoling an intimate friend, distrowd at the torrent of ridicule -lich, as ele foars, most tweep his elf-confidence and liis pompa away, fle may le permitted to assure lire that my ean are monedead to this ide luz, anıl toy Cash as insensilla as iron thear; greits stings, and to accompany his sumrance with a praronadalecent of the grounds of his unslaken hoj. Wc ferl, however, tla: such an expression of wellrolianre on the part of a great man ebould be accompanie] with notre proof that no conceit or impatience is mixed with his elfvt calm. I be l«lietes the public to lo trally challe to spirociste hinell, he must show no surpriwwlna thesalnim his initions; be most sprember that the car would be far more if they arimind no one at all. Xor must be deacend from his own enjorular ments on the plra that after caiching the public attention by what in laillir will min it for what is pool. The 19 no fute tl. lc is in the nel! lie an afford to wait and let ·100 TYORDSTORTH. [CHAP. the world come round to him. Wordsworth's conduct satisfies both these tests. It is, indeed, curious to observe how much abuse this inoffensive recluse received, and how absolutely he avoided returning it. Byron, for instance, must have seemed in his eyes guilty of something far more injurious to mankind than "a drowsy frowsy poem, called the Excursion," could possibly appear. But, except in one or two private letters, Wordsworth has never alluded to Byron at all. Shelley's lampoon-a singular instance of the random blows of a noble spirit, striking at what, if better understood, it would eagerly have revered-ordsworth seens never to have read. Nor did the violent attacks of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Reviews provoke him to any rejoinder. To"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers "m-leagued against him as their common prey-he opposed a dignified silence; and the only moral injury which he derived from their assaults lay in that sense of the absence of trustworthy external criticism which led him to treat everything which he had once written down as if it were a special revelation, and to insist with equal earnestness on his most trifing as on his inost important pieces--on Goody Blake and The Idiot Boy as on The Cuckov or The Daffodils. The sense of humour is apt to be the first grace which is lost under persecution; and much of Wordsworth's heaviness and stiff exposition of commonplaces is to be traced to a feeling, rhich he could scarcely avoid, that "all day long he had lifted up his voice to a perverse and gains-uying generation." To the pecuniary loss inflicted on him by these adverse criticisnis he was justly sensible. He was far from expecting, or even desiring, to be widely popular or to make a rapid furtuno ; but lie felt that the labourer was worthy of his hire, and that the devotion of years to ·THE .CENSIOX." 101 literature should have fun fit with Mitula hulinata odmore of the usual form of murnutia which tlir worlal acconls to those who work for it. In 1820 le seals of "the whole of my nturna imm the writing inabot ::: amounting to Retto-econ jupils," anl as latr 1813, when at the height of his fa!nt, le was not salıimal of confering thr importance which her lovl always attached to this particular. " So ensible am I," le says, "of the deficiencing in all that I write, and m far dar estry thing that I alt topt full liort of what I wish it to by, that even private pule lication, it wuch a turun mas be allowal, mquires moro rowlution than I can comiaand. I leare writt n t giro vent to my own mind, and not without lose that, wurde time or othes, kindred minus night berx fit by my Labours; but I am inclinul to bwlieve I should never lave ventured to send furth any Pr* of mine to the world, if it hall not lwen done on the preure of personal (cca nions. Jlal I brenn rich man, ing girluctions, like this Fipill, the Trugrily of the former, &c., would mont likely base lwen continul to manuscript." An intonating fear fruna an unpuble-bed letter of Min Wondsworth's, on that while there of Rylefurir, ein Girms thin slak ment- - 3ly lrother was very much pleseed with gonz frankness in tellows that you dI not ferforiis like bis poern. Ile wil.com to know what your feelings were bether the tale itaelf did not interest you or w/ether you could not enter into the run crption of Emily's character, og tale delight in that runan critamanion wbich jo soppomed to hare en el trimrn fet ad the Die Ih not for to fire hita pain, le 1e far too mu b wanted to be abused to receive fain from it, lat rost #* faz - he himself is concemel) My reason for ark192 Tre three qumtiocu is, that some of our friends who are mual merend ·102 WORDSTVORTH. [CHLAP. the Thite Doe and of my brother's published poems, think that this poem will sell on account of the story; that is, that the story will bear up those points which are above the level of the public taste; whereas the two last volumes-except by a few solitary individuals, who are passionately devoted to my brother's srorks are abused by wholesale. “Now as his sole object in publishing this poem at present would be for the sake of the money, be tould not publish it if he did not think, from the several judgments of his friends, that it would be likely to bave a sale. He has no pleasure in publishingmie even detests it; and if it were not that he is not over wealthy, he would leare all his works to be published after bis death. William himself is sure that the TPlite Doe will not sell or be admired, except by a very fer, at first; and only yields to Mary's entreaties and mine. We are determined, however, if we are deceived this time, to let kim brve kis owo way in future." These passages must be taken, no doubt, as representing one aspect only of the poct's impulses in the matter. With his deep conviction of the world's real, though wurecognized, need of a pure vein of poetry, we can hardly imagine him as permanently satisfied to defer his own contribution till after his death. Yet we may certainly believe that the need of money helped him to overcome much diffidence as to publication ; and we may discern something dignified in his frank avoval of this when it is taken in connexion with his scrupulous abstinence from any attempt to win the suffrages of the multitude by njeans unworthy of his high vocation. He could never, indeed, have written poems which could have vied in immediate popularity with those of Byron or Scott. But the criticisms on the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads must have shown him that a slight alteration of method, nay even the excision of a few pages in each volume, pages certain to be loudly objected to,--would liave made a 3 ·THE EXCURSIOX." 103 markel difference in the sale and its proceeds. Fmm this point of view, eren poems which wo Inay now feel to haro brcn pecllessly puenle anıl grotesquo acquiro a certain imprensiveness, wlien vo recognize that the thicory which demandal their competion was one which their anthor ras willing to upholl at the cost of somo years of real phyrical privation, and of the postponement for a genera tion of his lcgitimato fimo ·CHAPTER IX, POETIO DICTION- "LAODAMIA EVENING ode.* Tue Excursion appeared in 1814, and in the course of the next year Wordsworth republished his minor poems, so arranged as to indicate the faculty of the inind which he considered to have been predominant in the composition of cach. To most readers this disposition has always seemed somewhat arbitrary; and it was once suggested to Wordsworth that a chronological arrangement would be better. The mannor in which Wordsworth met this proposal indicated the limit of his absorption in hinself-his rcal desire only to dwell on his own feelings in such a way as might make them useful to others. For he rejected the plan as too egotistical-as emphasizing the succession of moods in the poet's mind, rather than the lessons which those moods could teach. His objection points, at any rate, to a real danger which any man's simplicity of character incurs by dwelling too attentively on the changing phases of his own thought. But after the irriter's death the historical spirit will demand that poems, like other artistic products, should be disposed for the most part in the order of time. In a Preface to this edition of 1815, and a Supplementary Essay, lic developed the theory on poetry already set forth in a well-known preface to the second edition of the ·cư. Ix] POETIC DICTIOX. 103 Lyrical Ballads. Much of the matter of these essays, received at the time with contemptuous aversion, is now accepted as truth; and few compositions of equal length con. tain so much of vigorous criticism and sound reflection, It is only when they generalize too confidently that they are in danger of disleading us ; fur all expositions of the art and practice of poetry must necessarily be incomplete. Poetry, like all the arts, is essentially a "mystery." Its charm depends upon qualities which we can neither define accurately nor reduce to rule nor create again at pleasure Mapkin, however, are unwilling to admit this; and they endeavour from time to time to persuade themselves that they have discovered the rules which will enable them to produce the desired effect And so much of the effect can thus be reproduced, that it is often pog. sible to believe for a time that the problem has been solved Pope, to take the instance which was prominent in Wordsworth's mind, was, by general admission, a poet. But his success seemed to depend on imitable peculian ties; and Pope's imitators were so like Pope that it was hard to draw a line and say where they ceased to be poets. At last, however, this imitative school began to prove too much. If all the insipid verses which they wrote were poetry, what was the use of writing poetry at all A reaction succeeded, which asserted that poetry depends on emotion and not on polish, that it consists precisely in those things which frigid imitators lack. Cowper, Burns, and Crabbe, (especially in his Sir Eustace Grey), had preceded Wordsworth as leaders of this reaction But they had acted half unconsciously, or had even at times themselves attempted to copy the very style which they were stiperseding Wantsworth, too, began with a tendency to imita ·. 106 WORDSWORTH. [CHAP. Pope, but only in the school exercises which he wrote as a boy. Poetry soon became to him the expression of his own deep and simple feelings; and then he rebelled against thetoric and unreality and found for himself a directer and truer voice. "I have proposed to myself to imitate and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of nien. I have taken as much pains to avoid what is usually called poetic diction as others ordinarily take to produce it." And he erected this practice into a general principle in the following passagem “I do not doubt that it may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and petrical composition. We are fond of tracing the resemblance between poetry and painting, and, accordingly, we call them sisters; but rhere shall we find bonds of connexion sufficiently strict to typify the affivity between metrical and prose composition? It it be affirmed that rhyme and metrical arrangement of themselves constitute a distinction which orerturns what I have been saying on the strict affinity of metrical language with that of prose, and other artificiul distinctions wbich the mind voluntarily admits, Innster that the language of such poetry as I am recommending is, as far as is possible, a selection of the language really spoken by men; that this selection, therever it is made with true taste and feeling, will of itself form a distinction far greater tban rould at first be imagined, and will entirely separate the composition from the sulgarity and meanness of ordinary life: and if metre be superadded thereto, I believe that a dissimilitude will be produced altogether sufficient for the gratification of a mational mind. What other distinction vould we bave? whence is it to come and where is it to exist?" paves the way for There is a definiteness and simplicity about this description of poetry which may well make us wonder why this precious thing (producible, apparently, as easily as Pope's ·POETIC DICTION. 107 imitators supposed, although by means different from theirs) is not offered to us by more persons, and of better quality. And it will not be hard to show that a good poetical style must possess certain characteristics, which, although something like them must exist in a good prose style, are carried in poetry to a pitch so much higher as virtually to need a specific faculty for their successful production. To illustrate the inadequacy of Wordsworth's theory to explain the merits of his own poetry, I select a stanza from one of his simplest and most characteristic poems The Afliction of Margaret Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan, Marmed, mangled by inhuman men, Or thon upon a Desert thrown Inhertest the lon's Den, Or hast been smmoned to the Deep. Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep An 1000mmunicable sleep. These lines, supposed to be uttered by " a poor widow at Penrith," afford a fair illustration of what Wordsworth calls " the language really spoken by men," with "metre superadded " " What other distinction from prose," he asks, "would we have?" We may answer that we would have what he has actually given us, viz, an appropriato and attractive music, lying both in the rhythm and in the actual sound of the words used,-& music whose com. plexity may be indicated here by drawing out some of its elements in detail, at the risk of appearing pedantic and technical. We observe, then (a), that the general movement of the lines is unusually slow. They contain a very large proportion of strong accents and long vowels, to suit the tone of deep and despairing sorrow. In six places ·103 WORDSWORTII. [CHAN only out of twenty-cight is the accent weak where i might be expected to lo strong (in the second syllables namely, of the Inmbic foot), and in cach of these case the omission of a possible accent throw's greater weight oi the noxt succeeding accent--on the accents, that is to say contained in the words inluiman, desert, lion, summoned cleep, and sleep. (0) The first four lines contain subt? alliterations of the letters , l, m, and th. In thi connexion it should bo remeilored that when consonant nro thus repental nt the beginning of syllables, thos syllables need not bo at the beginning of words; an further, that repetitions scarcely more numerous tha chance nlone would lave occasioned, may be so placed b the pract as to produce & strongly-felt cffcct. If any or doubts the effectiveness of thio unobvious alliteration hero insisted on, lot him read (1) "junglo" for "desort (2) "maybe" for "perlinps," (3) * tortured" for gled," (4) "blown" for "thrown," and lic will becon sensible of the lack of thic mctrical support which ti cxisting consonants give one another. The thirco Inst lin contain ono or two similar alliterations on which I need }} dwell. (c) The words inheritest and summoncil aro by i means such as "a poor widow," oven at Penrith, would Claploy; they are used to intensify the imagined relation which connects the missing man with (1) tho will bcasts who surround him, and (2) thic invisible Power which leads; 60 that something mysterious and awful is added to his fatc, (11) This impression is heightened by the use of the word incommunicable in an unusual senso, "incapable of being communicated toith," instead of "incapable of being communicated;" while (e) the expression "to keep an incommunicable sleep" for "to lie deadl," gives dignity to the occasion by carrying the mind back along a train of MAI ·POETIC DICTION. 103 literary associations of which the well-known átéppora virypetov ým oy of lioschus may be taken as the tyre. We must not, of course, suppose that Wordsworth consciously sought these alliterations, armnged these accents, resolved to introduce an unusunl word in the last line, or hunted for a classical allusion But what the poet's brain does not do consciously it does unconsciously : a selective action is going on in its recesscg simultaneously with the overt train of thought, and on the degree of this unconscious suggestiveness the richness and melody of the poetry will depende No rules can occure the attainment of these effects, and the very same artifices which are delightful when uscd by one man seem mechanical and offensive when used by another. Nor is it by any means always the case that the man who can most delicately appreciate the melody of the poetry of others will be able to produce bimilar melody himself. Nay, even if he can produce it one year it by Do means follows that he will be able to produce it the next. Of all qualifications for writing poetry this inventive music is the most arbitranly distributed, and tho most evanescent. But it is the more important to dwell on its necessity, inasmuch as both good and bad pocts are tempted to ignore it. The good poet prefers to ascribe his success to higher qualitics, to his imagination, elevation of thought, descriptive faculty. The bad poet can more easily urge that his thoughts are too advanced for mankind to appreciate than that his melody is too sweet for their cars to catch. And when the gift varishies no poet is willing to confess that it is gone, 80 humiliating is it to lose power over mankind by the 1998 of something which seems quite independent of intellect or character And yet so it is. For some twenty years at mingt (1798.

·110 YORDSWORTH. CRAP. are 1818), Wordsworth possessed this gift of melody. During those years he wrote works which profoundly influenced mankind. The gift then left him ; he continued as wise and as earnest as ever, but his poems had no longer any potency, nor his existence much public importance. Humiliating as such reflections may seem, they are in accordance with actual experience in all branches of art. . The fact is that the pleasures which art gives us are complex in the extreme. We are always disposed to dwell on such of their elements as are explicable and can in some way be traced to moral or intellectual sources. But they contain also other elements wliicli inexplicable, non-moral, and non intellectual, and which render most of our attempted explanations of artistic merit so incomplete as to be practically misleading. Among such incomplete explanations Wordsworth's essays must certainly be ranked. It would not be safe for any man to believe that he had produced true poetry because he had fulfilled the conditions which Wordsworth lays down. But the essays effected what is perhaps 29 much as the writer on art can fairly hope to accomplish, They placed in a striking light that side of the subject which had been too long ignored; they aided in recalling an art which had become conventional and fantastic into the normal curront of Englislı thought and speech. It may be added that both in doctrine and practice Wordsworth exhibits a progressive reaction from the extreme views with which he starts towards that common vein of good sense and sound judgment which may be traced back to Horace, Longinus, and Aristotle. His first preface is violently polemic. He attacks with reason that conception of the sublime and beautiful which is repre. sented by Dryden's picture of “ Cortes alone in his night- ·IX.] ** LAODAMA." 111 gown," remarking that "the mountains seem to pod their drowsy heads." But the only exaunple of true poetry which he sees fit to adduce in contrast consists in a stanza from the Babes in the wood. In his preface of 1815 he is not less severe on false sentiment and false observation. But his views of the complexity and dignity of poetry have been much deseloped, and he is willing not to dmw his favourable instances from Shakespeare, Vilton, Virgil, and himself. His own practice underwent a corresponding change. It is only to a few poems of his earlier years that the famous parody of the Rejected Addresses fairly applies. My father's walls are made of brick, But not so tall and not so thick As these ; and goodness me! My fatber's beams are made of wood, But nerer, never half so good As those that now I see! Lines something like thesc might have occurred in The Thorn or The Idiot Boy Sothung could be more different from the style of the sonnets, or of the Ode to Duty, or of Laodamia. And yet both the simplicity of the earlier and the pomp of the later poerus were almost always noble ; nor is the transition from the one style to the other a perplexing or abnormal thing. For all sincere styles are congruous to one another, whether they be adorned or no, as all laigh natures are congruous to one another, whether in the mrb of peasant or of prince. What is incongruous to both is affectation, yulgants, egoism, and while the noble style can be interchangeably childlike or magnificent, as its theme requires, the ignoble can neither simplify itself into purity nor deck itself into grandeur.

·112 YORDSWORTH. [CHAP. It need not, therefore, surprise us to find the classical models becoming more and more dominant in Wordsworth's mind, till the poet of Poor Susun and The Cuckoo spends months over the attempt to translate the neid, to win the secret of that style which he placed at the head of all poetic styles, and of those verses which "wind," as he says, "with the majesty of the Conscript Fathers entering the Senate-house in solemn procession," and envelope in their imperial melancholy all the sorrows and the fates of man. And, indeed, so tranquil and uniform was the life which We are now retracing, and at the same time so receptive of any noble influence which opportunity might bring, that a real epoch is marked in Wordsworth's poetical career by the mere rc-reading of some Latin authors iv 1814-16 with a view to preparing his eldest son for the University. Among the poets whom be thus studied as one in whom lie might seem to discern his own spirit endowed with grander proportions, and meditating on sadder fates. Among the poets of the battlefield, of the study, of the boudoir, lie encountered the first Priest of Nature, the first poet in Europe who had deliberately shunned the life of courts and cities for the mere joy in Nature's presence, for "sweet Parthenope and the fields beside Vesevus' hill." There are, indeed, passages in the Georgics so Wordsworthian, as we now call it, in tone, that it is hard to realize what centuries separated them from the Sonnet to Lady Beaumont or from Ruth. Such, for instance, is the picture of the Corycian old man, who had made himself independent of the seasons by bis gardening skill, so that " when gloomy winter was still rending the stones with frost, still curbing with ice the rivers' onward flow, he ·ILJ " LAODAMLA' 113 oven then was plucking the soft hyacinth's bloom, and chid the tardy summer and delaying airs of spring." Such, again, is the passage where the poet breaks from the glories of successful industry into the delight of watching the great processes which nature accomplishes untutored and alone, " the joy of gazing on Cytorus waving with boxwood. and on forests of Narycian pine, on tracts that never felt the harrow, nor know the care of man." Such thoughts as these the Roman and the English poet had in common; the heritage of untarnished souls I asked ; 'twas whisperod ; The device To each and all might well belong : It is the Spirit of Paradise That prompts such work, a Spint strong. That gives to all the soit same bert Where lifo 19 Wise and indocent It is not only in tenderness but in dignity that the "wise and innocent" are wont to be at one. Strong in tranquillity, they can intervene amid great emotions with a master's voice, and project on the storm of passion the clear light of their unclianging calm And thus it was that the study of Virgil, and especially of Virgil's solemn picture of the Underworld, prompted in Wordsworth's ruind the most majestic of his poems, his one great utterance on heroic love. He had as yet written littlo on any such topic as thus. At Goslar he had composed the poems on Lucy to which allusion has already been made And after his happy marriage he had painted in one of the best known of his poems the sweet transitions of wedded love, as it moves on from the first shock and agitation of the en. counter of predestined souls through all tendernesses of intimate affection into a pervading permanency and calm.

·WORDSIVORTII. (char. Scatterol, morcovor, throughout liis pmoms oro several passnges in which the pression is trental with similar force and truth. The proom which begins « 'Tis snid that some have died for lovo" depicts the enduring poignancy of borcavement with an "iron pathos" that is almost too strong for art. And something of the samo power of clinging nttachment is shown in the sonnel whicro ilic pont is stung with the thought that "oven for the last blivision of an hour" lie lius tnkon pleasure in do liſo arouni him, without the nccustomel lacit reference to one who luns passed away. There is a brighter fonch of con. staney in that other sonnet where, after lolling his fruicy play over n glad imngimary past, lio turns to his wife, ashamed thint even in so vagno a vision he could have shaped for himself al solitary joy. Lot Iteys lo comprehended in the fi'n}<3 or those illusions, or they pleano no moro. In later yours this two sonnets on his wifo's picturo set on tint love the consecration of faithful ngo; and thero atro those who can recall his look as ho inzed on the picture and tried to recognize in that nged fnce the 1cloved wh tu him was over young and fnir,- look as of ono dwelling in lifo-long aflections with the unquestioning single-heartalness of a child, And here it might lave been thought ihnt as his oxporienco onded his power of description would live ended too. But it was pot so, Undor to poworſul stimulus of tho sixth oneilmallusions to which perrado Laodamies ? Loodamia alioukl bo rendi (ng it is giron in Mr. Moithow Arnoll'n ndmirallo volumo of selections) with the extrlier cou. clusion: the seconil form is loss satisfiictory, and tho thiril, with Its formonizing tone, "t|1118 nil in vain cxlorted nnil reprovedl," i Word of all.

·LAODAMIA." 118 throughout—with unusual labour, and by a strenuous elfort of the imagination, Wordsworth was enabled to depict his own love in excelsis, to imagine what aspect it might have worn, if it had been its destiny to deny itself at some heroic call, and to confront with noblenes an extreme emergency, and to be victur (as Plato lus it) in an Olympian contest of the soul, For, indeed, the "fervent, not ungovernable, love," which is the ideal tha Protesilaus is sent to teach, is on a great scals the same affection which we have been considering in domesticity It is love considered not as a revolution bu As a consummation; as a self-abandonment not to a laxer but to a sterner law; no longer as an invasive passion, but 19 the deliberate habit of the soul. It is that conception of lovo which springs into being in the last canto of Dante's Purgatory--which finds in English chivalry a noble voice, and peace; I could not love thee, dear, 80 much, Loved I not honor more For, indeed, (even as Plato says that Beauty is the splen. dour of Truth,) so such a Love as this is the splendour of Virtue; it is the unexpected spark that flashes from selfforgetful soul to soul, it is man's standing evidence that he must lose himself to find himself," and that only when the veil of bis personality has lifted from around him can he recognize that he is already in heaven In a second poem inspired by this revived study of classical antiquity Wordsworth has traced the career of Dion,- the worthy pupil of Plato, the philosophic ruler of Symcuse, who allowed himself to shed blood unjustly. though for the public good, and was haunted by a spectro Bymbolical of this fatal error. At last Dion was assassi.

·116 WORDSWORTH. (CEAP. nated, and the words in which the poet tells his fate seem to me to breathe the very triumph of philosophy, to paint with a touch the greatness of a spirit which makes of Death himself a deliverer, and has its strength in the unseen, So were the hopeless troubles, that involved The soul of Dion, instantly dissolved. n only compare these lines to that famous passage ophocles where the lamentations of the dying (Edipus interrupted by the impatient summons of an unseen mpanying god. In both places the effect is the same; resent to us with striking brevity the contrast between visible and the invisible presences that may stand it a man's last hour; for he may feel with the deso- Edipus that "all I am has perished "he may sink Dion through inextricable sadness to a disastrous h, and then in a moment the transitory shall disappear the essential shall be made plain, and from Dion's ight spirit the perplexities shall vanish away, and ipus, in the welcome of that unknown companionship, I find his expiations over and his reward begun. t is true, no doubt, that when Wordsworth wrote these as he had lost something of the young inimitable mu which fills such pieces as the Fountain or the tary Reaper. His language is majestic, but it is no er magical. And yet we cannot but feel that he has into these poems something which he could not hare into the poems which preceded them; that they bear impress of a soul which has added moral effort to Sic inspiration, and is mistress now of the acquired as Las of the innate virtue. For it is words like these ; are the strength and stay of men; nor can their ·11.] “LAODAMA." 117 accent of lofty earnestness be simulated by the writer's art Literary skill may deceive the reader who seeks a literary pleasure alone; and be to whom these strong consolations are a mere imaginative luxury may be uncertain or indifferent out of what heart they come. But those who need them know; spirits that hunger after righteousness discern their proper food; there is no fear lest they confound the sentimental and superficial with those weighty utterances of moral truth which are the most precious legacy that a man can leave to mankind. Thus far, then, I must hold that although much of grace had already vanished there was on the whole a progress and elevation in the mind of lum of whom wo treat. But the culminating point is here. After thiswhatever ripening process may have been at work unseenwhat is chiefly visible is the slow stiffening of the ima. ginative power, the slow withdrawal of the insight into the soul of things, and a descentmåßanypós jára tolos-- “soft as soft can be," to the euthanasy of a death that was like sleep. The impression produced by Wordsworth's reperusal of Virgil in 1814-16 was a deep and lasting one. In 1829-30 he devoted much time and labour to a translation of the first three books of the Ænerd, and it 19 interesting to note the gradual modification of his views as to the truc method of rendering poetry. "I have long been persuaded," he writes to Lord Lonsdale in 1829," that Milton forned his blank verse upon the model of the Georgies and the Æneid, and I am Bo much struck with this resemblance, that I should have attempted Virgil in blank verse, haul I not been persuaded that no ancient author can with advantage be so rendered. Their religion, their warfare, their course of action and ·118 WORDSTYORTH. [CRAP feeling, are too remote from modern interest to allow it. We require every possible help and attraction of sound in our language to smooth the way for the admission of things so remote from our present concerns. Jy own notion of translation is, that it cannot be too literal, provided these faults be avoided : baldness, in which I include all that takes froin dignity ; and strangeness, or uncouthness, including harshness; and lastly, attempts to convey meanings which, as they cannot be given but by languid circumlocutions, cannot in fact be said to be given at all. I feel it, however, to be too probable that my translation is deficient in ornament, because I must unavoidably have lost many of Virgil's, and have never without reluctance attempted a compensation of my own." The truth of this last self-criticism is very apparent from the fragments of the translation which were published in the Philological Museum ; and Coleridge, to whom the whole manuscript was submitted, justly complains of finding "page after page without a single brilliant note;" and adds, " Finally, my conviction is that you undertake an impossibility, and that there is no medium between a pure version and one on the avoved principle of compensution in the widest sense, i.e. manner, genius, total effect; I confine myself to Virgil when I say this." And it appears that Wordsworth himself came round to this view, for in reluctantly sending a specimen of his work to the Philological Museum in 1832, he says, Having been displeased in modern translations with the additions of incongruous matter, I began to translate with a resolve to keep clear of that fault by adding nothing; but I becainc convinced that a spirited translation can scarcely be accomplisbed in the English language sithout admitting a principle of compensation."

·"LLODNL. Te is a cuisson Lexm the enterings of Core 21 Worlator i be war of trucis Warni's to cf Ti 25 prompt to the tial crimexistentlesslity of Drsden as it atith inspired Comper gainst the distorting z o Poze la ech cze the att trzelaio: yre fokis 21 21 tata su bez rien ca talus der than los preken L31 done. But ia cercare plein 291 2. Irrdataina 23 a £210, e de 1.799 and grade the continue to be zdro Webed scene!ade from this that the wild izony cf Pope c Drda roll kue 295 longer er: alle in reb a workBu ca the other hard re may - 1s1tb2: Paling is gained by rendering an ancient pratio rery, at 2!1 ss tha: Teose be of a quality to dre a les independent of the faithfalvess of tbe trizion which it OORTETE. The touristions 221 Lagdinis are not the only indica times of the inner which Tiril elkim oter Words tel. Wether we similarity of fErz, oz from COCOT less comercions rellection, there are freggent pussy is the English which tscall the Pszin poeta WŁO bear Wordsworth dessrike box a pout on the islam ia Graswere Speleolis Eb, wheret kobro, the beer, Putin beresih b borib teiro Lóre pod Lim, e as if they were apart 0: Lis orar: 21 i think of the Etztaly teddersss of Virgil's S* OTEL : voti Dec post tas- 5) the locks of arcal that gather sal in trpathy wil the love on Gallas' cel ·120 YORDSTVORTH, CAF. So again the well-known lines- 3 Not seldom, clad in nadiant vest, Deceitfully goes forth the Morn Not seldom Erening in the west Sinks smilingly forstorn, are almost a translation of Palinurus' remonstrance with " the treachery of tranquil heaven." And when the poet wishes for any link which could bind him closer to the Ilighland maiden who has fitted across his path as a being of a different world from liis own :- Thino elder Brother would I bc, Thy Father, anything to thee! wo hear the echo of the sadder plaint- Atque utinam e vobis unus Then the Roman statesmau longs to be made one with the simple life of shepherd or husbandman, and to know their indistracted joy. Still more impressive is the shock of surprise with which we read in Wordsworth's poem on Ossian the following lines: - Dugaus, stationed with his lyro Snpreme among the Elysian qnire, Is, for tho dwellers upon earth, Dute as a lark cro morning's birth, and perceive that he who wrote them has entered hero no commentator could conduct him into the solemn pathos of Virgil's Nusacum ante omnis; where the singer whose very existence upon earth has become a legend and a mythic name is seen keeping in the underworld his old pre-eminence, and towering above the blessed dead.

·it.] * ETENING ODE" 1:1 This is a stage in Tonis orth's caree's ca whith his bingrapher is temptel unilulr to linger. For we have reached the Indian summer of his genius; it can still shine at moments bright as erer, and with exn a new majesty and calm; but we feel, merertheless, that the meloifis dying from his song; that he is harlening into sell. repetition, into thetoris, into sermonizing common-play and is rigid where he ris onco profound. The Thinkite giring Ole (1816) strikes death to the heart. The accus. tomed patriotic sentiments-tho accustomel virtuous aspirations—these are still there; but tho accent in liko that of a ghost who calls to us in hollow mimicry of a voice that once we loved. And yet Wordsworth's poetic lifo was not to ckaso with out a great symbolical spectacle, a solemn firewell. Sune set anong tho Cuinbran hills, often of remerhablolanty, once or twice, perhaps, in a score of years, renches a pitch of allusion and magnificenco which indeed scoms nothing less than the commingling of carth and heaven. Sucha sight-seen from Rydal Mount in 1818-ntored onca more tho necdoul stimulus, and evohed that "Erening Ole, camposcil on an evening of extruordinary plendour and beauty," which is the last consulerabilo production of Wordsworth's gonius In this odo wo rccognizu tho peculiar gift of reproducing with magical simplicity as it were the inmost virtuo of natural phenomena. No sound is uttered, but a doep And solenn liarmony pervados The hollos valo from step to strop, And penctmtos tho glaides Far distant images draw mig!, Called forth by wondrous plonoy or beamy radiance, that imbuco Wiato'er it strikes, with gem-lika leo!

·122 WORDSWORTH. (CEAP. In risinn exquisitoly clear Herds rango along the monntnin sido ; And glistening antlers are descried, And gilded flocks appear. Once more the poet brings liome to us that sense of belonging at once to two worlds, which gives to human life 60 much of mysterious soleninity. Wings at my shouldor scom to play; But, rooted horc, I stand and gazo On those bright stops that heavenward raiso Their practicablo way. And the poem ends-with a deep personal pathos--in an allusion, repeated from the Ode on Immortality, to the light which "lay about him in his infancy,"- the light Full early lost, and fruitlessly doplored; Which at this moment, on my waking sight Appears to blinc, by miracio restored ! My sonl, though yet confinca to carth, Rejoices in a second birth; --Tis past, tho visionary splendour fados; And night approaches rith lıer shades. For those to whom the mission of Wordsworth appears before all things as a religious one there is something solemn in the spectacle of the seer standing at the close of his own apocalypse, with the consciousness thnt iho stiffening brain would novor permit him to drink again that overflowing sense of glory and revelation; never, till he should drink it now in the kingdom of God. Ho lived, in fact, through another generation of men, but the vision came to him no more, Or iſ conio Festigo of thoso gleams Survired, 'ting only in his dreams.

·" EVENING ODE." 123 We look on a man's life for the inost part as forming in itself a completed drama. We love to see the interest maintained to the close, the pathos deepened at the departing hour. To die on the same day is the prayer of lovers, to vanish at Trafalgar is the ideal of lieroic fouls And yet--so wide and various are the issues of lifethere is a solemnity as profound in a quite different lot For if we are moving among eternal emotions we should have time to bear witness that they are eternal. Even Love left desolate may feel with a proud triumph that it could never have rooted itself so immutably amid the joys of a visible return as it can do through the constancies of bereavement, and the lifelong memory which is a lifelong hope. And Vision, Revelation, Ecstasy,--at is not only while these are kindhng our way that we should speak of them to men, but rather when they have passed from us and left us only their record in our souls, whose permanence confirms the fiery finger which wrote it long ago. For as the Greeks would end the first drama of a trilogy with a hush of concentration, and with declining notes of calm, so to us the narrowing receptivity and persistent steadfastness of age suggest not only decay but expectancy, and not death so much as sleep, or seem, as it were, the beginning of operations which are not measured by our hurrying time, nor tested by any achievement to be accom. plished here.

·CHAPTER X. XATURAL RELIGION. It will have been obvious from the preceding pages, o well as from the tone of other criticisms on TVordstorti that his exponents are not content to treat his poems o Nature simply as graceful descriptive pieces, but speakı him in terms usually reserved for the originators of som great religious movement. “The very image of Word worth," says De Quincey, for instance, as I prefigure it to my own planet-struck eye, crushed my faculties before Elijah or St. Paul." How was it that poems & simple in outssard form that the reviewers of the da classed them with the Song of Sixpence, or at best wit the Babes in the Wood, could affect a critic like I Quincey,----I do not say with admiration, but with th exceptional sense of revelation and ave? The explanation of this anomaly lies, as is well know in' something new and individual in the way in whic Fordsworth regarded Nature ; something more or le: discernible in most of his works, and redeeminga eve sone of the slightest of them from insignificance, whi conferring on the more serious and sustained pieces a importance of a different order from that which attaches 1 even the most brilliant productions of his contemporario To define with exactness, horever, what was this ne ·58.3 NATURAL RELIGION. 1:5 element imported by our poct into man's Tiger of Nature is far from easy, and requires some brief coneidertion of the attitude in this respect of his predecessors. There is so much in the external world which is terrible or unfriendly to man, that the first impression male ca him by Nature as a whole, even in temperate dinte, is usually that of arfulness; his admiration being med for the fragments of her which he has stilined for dis own purposes, or adorned with his own baz limot When Homer tells us of a place Where eren god might gaze, and stand and And feel a wondering raptare at the teart, it is of no prospect of sea or mountain that he is smaka ing, but of a garden where everything is plaal ru, and there is a neverending succession of pax az fogs These gentler aspects of Nature will have the in deities to represent them; but the men, of waterer rc they be, whose minds are most absorbed in the problems of man's position and destins will tend fur the most part to donde sterper and more overwhelming conception of the gum of things "Lord, that is man that Thog at midda) of him t" is the cry of Hebrew piety 23 rell as of modern science; and the "majestas compita rerum, "ibe room nizel majesty of the universe teaches Lucretios only the indifference of gods and the misery of men But in a well-known passare, 23 which Lucreties is honoured as he deseryes, we find nevertheless a diferent view hiated, with 88 írogressiveness which it had badly acquired till then. We find Pimil implying that scien. tific knonledge of Nature may not be the only way of arriving at the truth about her; that her loveliness u alz a revelation, and that the soul which is is onicon with ·126 WORDSWORTH. [сна her is justified by its own peace. This is the very su? stance of The Poet's Epitaph also; of the poem in whic Wordsworth at the beginning of his career describi himself as he continued till its close,--the poet wi murmurs near the running brooks a music sweeter tha their own," who scorns the man of science “Tho woul peep and botanize upon his mother's grave." The outrard shots of sky and earth, of hill and ralles, he has viewed ; And.impolses of deeper birth Hare come to lim in solitude. In common things that round us lie Some random truths he cau impart -- The harrest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart. na But he is weak, both man and boy, Hath been an idler in the land; Contonted if he might enjoy The things thich others understand. 1 Like much else in the literature of imperial Rome, t] passage in the second Georgic to which I have referri is in its essence more modern than the Middle Age Medieval Christianity involved a divorce from the natu around us, as well as from the nature within. With ti rise of the modern spirit delight in the external world 1 turns; and from Chaucer downwards through the who course of English poetry are scattered indications of a mo which draws from visible things an intuition of things n scen. When Wither, in words which Wordsworth h fondly quoted, says of his muse, By the mormor of a spring, Or the least bough's rustelling;

·NATURAL RELIGION. 127 By a daisy whose leares spread, Sbat when Titan goes to led, Or a shady bush or tree, She could more infuse in me Than all Nature's beauties can In some other wiser ran,- he felt already, 23 Wordsworth after him, that Nature is no mere collection of phenonena, but infuses into her least approaches some sense of her mysterious whole. Passages like this, buwever, must not be too closely pressed. The mystic element in English literature has run for the most part into other channels; and when, after Pope's reign of artificiality and convention, attention was redirected to the phenomena of Nature by Collins, Beattie, Thomson, Crabbe, Cowper, Burns, and Scott, it was in a spirit of admiring observation rather than of an intimate worship. Sometimes, as for the most part in Thomson, we have mere picturesqueness.--a reproduction of Nature for the mere pleasure of reproducing her,-- kind of stock-taking of her habitual effects Or sometimes, as in Burns, we have a glowing spirit which looks on Nature with a side glance, and uses her as an accessory to the expression of human love and woe. Cowper sometimes contemplated her as a whole, but only as affording a proof of the wisdom and goodness of a personal Creator. To express what is characteristic in Wordsworth we must recur to a more generalized conception of the relations between the natural and the spiritual worlds. We must say with Plato-the lawgiver of all subsequent idealists--that the unknown realities around us, which the philosopher apprehends by the contemplation of abstract truth, become in various ways obscurely perceptible to men under the influence of " dwine mad ·128 WORDSWORTH. (CRAP. ness, "-of an enthusiasm which is in fact inspiration. And further, giving, as he so often does, a half-fanciful expression to a substance of deep meaning, --Plato distinguishes four kinds of this enthusiasm. There is the prophet's glow of revelation; and the prevailing prayer which averts the wrath of heaven; and that philosophy which enters, so to say, unawares into the poet through his art, and into the lover through his love. Each of these stimuli may so exalt the inward faculties as to make a man ένθεος και εκφρων, " bereft of reason but filled with divinity,"– percipient of an intelligence other and larger than liis own. To this list Wordsworth has made an important addition. He has shown by his example and writings that the contemplation of Nature may become a stimulus as inspiring as these; may enable us " to see into the life of things of things"-as far, perhaps, as beatific vision or prophetic rapture can attain. Assertions so impalpable as these must justify themselves by subjective evidence. He who clains to give a message must satisfy us that he has himself received it; and, inasmuch as transcendent things are in themselves inexpressible, ho must convey to us in hints and figures the conviction which we need. Prayer may bring the spiritual world pear to us; but when the eyes of the kneeling Dominic seem to say " Io son venuto a questo," their look must persuade us that the life of worship has indeed attained the reward of vision. Art, too, may be inspired; but the artist, in whatever field he works, must have such a mastery of his mystery" that the fabric of his imagination stands visible in its own light before our eyes Sec it is bailt Of music; therefore perer bnilt at all, And, therefore, built for erer.

·NATURAL RELIGION. 129 Love may open heaven; but when the loser would invite us “thither, where are the eyes of Beatrice," he must make us feel that his individual passion is indeed part and parcel of that love "whicli moves the sun and tho other stars," And so also with Wordsworth. Unless the words wluch describe the intense and sympathetic gaze with which he contemplatex Nature convince us of the reality of "the light which never was on sea or land," of the "Presenco wluch disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts, "--of the authentic vision of those hours When the light of sense Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed The Invisible world ;- unles, his tone awakes a responsive conviction in ourselves, there is no argument by which he can prove to us that he is offering a new insight to mankind. Yet, on the other hand, it need not be unreasonable to see in his message something more than a mere individual fancy. It seems, at least, to be closely correlated with those other messages of which we have spoken, -those other cases where some original element of our nature is capable of being regarded as an inlet of mystic truth For in each of these complex aspects of religion we see, perhaps, the modification of a primeval instinct. There is a point of view from which Revelation seems to be hut trans. figured Sorcery, and Love transfigared Appetite, and Philosophy man's ordered Wonder, and Prayer his softening Fear. And similarly in the natural religion of Wordsworth we may discern the modified outconie of other human impulses hardly less universal of those instincts which ledd our forefathers to people earth and air K ·✓ 130 TORDSITORTH. [CF with deities, or to vivify the whole universe with a size soul. In this view the achievement of Wordsworth of a kind which most of the moral leaders of the r have in some way or other performed. It was that turned a theology back again into a religion; that he vived in a higher and purer form those primitive eleme of reverence for Nature's powers which had diffused tlic selves into speculation, or crystallized into mytholog that for a system of beliefs about Nature, which pagan had allowed to become grotesque.-of rites which ? become unmeaning, -he substituted an admiration Nature so constant, an understanding of her so subtle sympathy 50 profound, that they became a veritable w ship. Such worship, I repeat, is not what we common imply either by paganism or by pantheism. For in pag countries, though the gods may have originally rep sented natural forces, yet the conception of them so becomes anthropomorphic, and they are reverenced transcendent men; and, on the other hand, pantheism generally characterized by an indifference to things in t concrete, to Nature in detail ; so that the Whole, or U Terse, with which the Stoics (for instance) sought to in harmony, was approached not by contemplating ternal objects, but rather by ignoring them. Yet here I would be understood to speak only in t most general manner. So congruous in all ages are t aspirations and the hopes of men that it would rash indeed to attempt to assign the inoment wh any spiritual truth rises for the first time on hun consciousness. But thus much, I think, may be fair said, that the maxims of Wordsworth's form of natus religion were uttered before Wordsworth only in the ser in which the maxims of Christianity were uttered befc ·XATORAL RELIGIOX. 131 To compare small things with great-or rather, - great things with things vastly greater--the spirit of the Lines near Tintem Albey was for purposes as new to mankind as the essential the Sermon on the Vount. Yot the isolated in of moral ideas, but their fusion into a whole in able personality, is that which connects them i.b a single tame. Therefore it is that Wordsenerated; because to so many men-indifferent, , to literary or poetical effects, as such--be his »g the subtle intensity of his own emotion how templation of Nature can be made a rerealing Lore or Prayer,--an opening, if indeed there a, into the transcendent world. trophet with such a message as this will, of course, or the most part to the experience of exceptional -those moments when we see into the life of when the face of Nature sends to us " gleams flashing of a shield,"-bours such as those of the , who, gazing on the lovely distant scene, Would gaze till st became Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain The beauty, still more beauteous. idealist, of whatever school, is seldom content his appeal to us upon these scattered ututions There is a whole epoch of our existence whose les, differing, indeed, immensely in vividness and in the minds of different men, arc yet sufficommon to all men to form a favourite basis for 1 argument "The child is father of the and through the recollection and observation of we may hope to trace our ancestry-in 1 ·132 TORDSTORTE. [CHAT heaven above or on the earth beneath in its most signifi cant manifestation. It is to the workings of the mind of the child that th philosopher appeals who wishes to prove that knowledg is reccllection, and that our recognition of geometrica trutlis-so prompt as to appear instinctive-depends o our having been actually familiar with them in an earlic world. The Christinn mystic invokes with equal copf dence his own memories of a state which seemed as yo to know no sin Happy thoso early days, when I Shined in my angel infancy! Beforo I understood this place Appointed for my second mce, Or taught my soul to funcs auglit But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not talked avoro A mile or two from my first Lore, And looking back at that short spaco Conld sco a glimpse of His bright face; Whica on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul trould dwell an hour, And in those reaker glories epy Soino shadows of eternits ; Reforo I taught my tonguo to wound My conscionce with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A sereral sin to ercry sense, But felt throngłı all this ficshly dress Bright shoots of crerlastingness. And Wordsworth, those recollections were exceptia ally vivid, and whose introspection was exceptiona penetrating, lias drawn from his own childish memor philosophical lessons which are hard to disentanglc ii logical statement, but which will roughly admit classed under tiro hicads. For firstly, he has shorn ·21 XATURAL RELIGIOX. - 133 .. anosual delicacy of analysis in eliciting the "firstborn affinities that fit our new existence to existing things; in tracing the first impact of impressions which are des. tined to give the tuind its earlicst ply, or even, in unreflecting natures, to detenuine the permanent moles of thought. And, secondly, from the halo of pure and vivid emotions with which our childish years are surrounded, and the close connexion of this emotion with external nature, wluch it glorifies and transforms, he infers that the soul has enjoyed elsewhere an existence superior to that of earth, but an existence of which external nature retains for a time the power of reminding her. The first of these lines of thought may be illustrated by a passage in the Prelule, in which the boy's mind is repre. Bepted as passing through precisely the train of emotion which we may imagine to be at the root of the theology of many barbarous peoples. He 13 rowing at night alone on Esthwaite Lake, bils eyes fixed upon a ndge of crags above which nothing 29 visible : 1 dipped my pars into the silent lake, And as I rose upon the stroke my boat Went besving through the water like & swap ;- Whep, from bebind that craggy steep till then The horizon's boood, a hugo peak, black and hogs, As if with volantary power instinct Upreared its head. I struck and strack again And, growing still in statore, the grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still For 89 it seemed, with purpose of 3t8 own, And measured motion like a living thing, Strode afer me. With trembliog dans I turned, And through the silent water stole my way Back to the covert of the willow.tree; There in her mooring-place I left my bark, And throogh the meadowa bomeward went, 10 T And serious mood. But after I had been ·13+ WORDSWORTH. Char. That spectacle, fur inany days, my brain Worked svith a dim and undotermined sense Of unknoin modes of being; o'er my thoughts Thero hung a darkness---call it solitude, Or black descrtion. No familiar slapes Remuined, no pleasant images of trees, Of sea, or sky, no colours of green fields; But bage and mighty forms, that do not livo Like liring men, mored slowly thro' the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. In the controversy as to the origin of the worship of inanimate objects, or of the powers of Nature, this passage might fairly be cited as an example of the manner in which those objects, or those powers, can impress the mind with triat awe wlich is the foundation of savage creeds, while yet they are not identified with any human intelligence, such as the spirits of ancestors or the like, nor even supposed to operate according to any human analogy Up to this point Wordsworth's reminiscences may seem simply to illustrate the conclusions which science reaches by other roads. But he is not content with inerely recording and analyzing his childish impressions ; he implies, or even asserts, that these "fancies from afar are brought that the child's view of the world reveals to him truths which the man with difficulty retains or recovers. This is not the usunl teaching of science, yet it would be hard to assert that it is absolutely impossible. The child's instincts may well be supposed to partake in larger measure of the general instincts of the race, in smaller measure of the special instincts of his own country and century, than is the caso with the man. Now the feelings and beliefs of each successive century will probably be, on the whole, superior to those of any previous century. But this is ·*] NATURAL RELIGION, 135 not universally true; the teaching of cach generation docs not thus sum up the results of the whole past. And thus the child, to whom in a certain sense the past of humanity is present, —Who is living through tho wholo - lifo of the race in little, before he lives the life of his century in largo,-may possibly dimly apprchend something more of truth in certain directions than is visible to the adults around him, But, thus qualified, the intuitions of infancy might Becm scarcely worth insisting on. And Wordsworth, as is well known, has followed Plato in advancing for tho child a nuch holder claim. The child's soul, in this view, has existed before it entered the body-has existed in a world superior to ours, but connected, by the immanence of the same pervading Spirit, with the material universe before our eyes The child begins by feeling tliis material world strange to him. But be sees in it, as it were, what he has been accustomed to see; he discerns in it its kipsbip with the spiritual world wluch he dimly remembers; it is to him "an unsubstantial fairy place"-a scene at once brighter and more unreal than it will appear in his eyes when he has beconie acclinatized to earth. And even when this freshness of insight has passed away, it occasionally happens that sights or sounds of unusual beauty or carrying deep associations-a rainbow, a cuckvo’s cry, a sunset of extraurdinary splendour-wall renew for a while this sense of vision and neainess to the spiritual world sense which never loses its reality, though with advancing years its presence grows briefer and more Tare. Such, then, in prosaic statement is the most characteristic message of Wordsworth And it is to be noted that though Wordsworth at times presents it as a coherent theory, yet ·146 IYORDSIYORTH. [CUAN cduced from Nature rather than addal to her; slo is treated as a mystic text to be deciphercu, rather than 18 a stimulus to roving imagination. This latter mood, indeed, Worlsworth feels occasionally, as in the sonnet where the woodland sights become to him "like a dreamı of the whole worlel ;" but it is checked by the recurring senso that "it is our business to idealize the real, and lot to realize the ideal." Absorbed in adınimation of antastic clouds of sunset, lie feels for a moment asliume o think that they aro urememberable- They are of the sky, And from our curthly menors fadlo nway, But soon ho disclaims this regret, and reasserts the pam. uount interest of the things that we can grasp and love. Grovo, isic, with orory shape of sky-built dowe, Though clad in colours beautiful and pure, Find in the leart of man no nntnral liomo: The immortal Mind crares objects that endure: l'hoso olenro to it; from these it cannot ronm, Nor thos from it: thoir fellowship is sccure. From this temper of Wordsworth's mind, it follows that there will be many mooils in which we shall not retain him as our companion. Moods which are rebellious, which bcat nt tlic bars of foto; moods of passion reckless in its vehemence, and assuming the primncy of all other emotions through the intensity of its delight or pain; moods of mere imaginative phantasy, when we would rain shapo from the well-worn materials of our thought some fabric at once beautiful and new; from all such plinses of our inwani being Wordsworth stands aloof, His poem on the nightingalo and the stockdove illustmtes with half.conscious allegory the contrast between himself and certain other poets.

·X.] NATURAL RELIGION. 117 O Nightingale ! thou surely art A creature of a fiery heart Theso potes of thine-they pierce and pieroo. Tomaltaoss harmony and fierce! Thou sing'st as if the God of mino Had helped thee to a Valentine; A song in mockery and despite Of shades, and dews, and silent Nights And steady bliss, and all the loves Now sleeping in their peaceful groves I heard a Stock-dove sing or gay His homely tale, this very day; Llis voice was buried among trees, Yet to be come at by the breeze He did not cease, but cooed-and cooed, And sonowbat pebbively he wooed. He sang of love with quiet blending, Slow to begin, and never ending: Of serions faith and award glee; That was the long-the Song for me! " His t'oice roas buried among trees," says Wordsworth ; "a metaphor expressing the love of seclusion by which this bird is marked; and characterizing its note as not partaking of the Blırill and the piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade; yet a note so peculiar, and withal so pleasing, that the breeze, gifted with that love of the sound which the poet feels, penetrates the shade in which it is entombed, and convoys it to the ear of the listener." Wordsworth's poetry on the emotional side (as distinguished from its mystical or its patriotic aspects) could hardly be more exactly described than in the above sentence. For while there are few poems of his which could be read to a mixed audience with the certainty of producing an immediate impression, yet on the other hand all the best ones gain is an unusual degree by ·135 WORDSSTORTU, (CRAP repeated study; and this is especially ine case mith those in which some touch of tenderness is ensurined in a scene of beauty, which it seems to interpret while it is itself exalted by it. Such a poem is Stepping Tl'estucard, where the sense of sudden fellowship, and the quaint greeting beneath the glowing sky, seem to link man's momentary vanderings with the cosmic spectacles of heaven. Such are the lines there all the wild romance of Highland scenery, the forlornness of the solitary rules, pours itself through the lips of the maiden singing at her work," as if her song could have no ending," Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And siogs a melancholy strain ; O listen! for the Tale profound Is oreriloing with the sound. Such-and with hor subtle a difference ! - is the Frag. ment in thich a “Spirit of noonday" Tears on his face the silent joy of Nature in her own recesses, undisturbed by beast, or bird, or mat,-- Vor ever was a cloudless sky So steads or eo fair, And such are the poems-- We are Scren, The Pet Lamb,' The Pet Lamb is probably the only poem of Wordsworth's which can be charged with haring done moral injury, and that to a single indiridual alone. "Barbara Lerthtraite," says oris. worth, iu 1813,"as not, id fact, the child whom I bad sced and orerheari as engaged in the poem, I chose the name for reasons implicd in the above," (i. c.ad account of her remarkable beanty), and will here add a Mution against the use of names of living persoas. Tithin a few montlis after tbe publication of this poem I was much Eurprived, and more lurt, to find it in a child's school.boot, which, baring been compiled by Lindley Blurray, hati come into usc at Grasmert School, where Barbara vas a ·NATURAL PELIGIOY. 113 Lomisa, The Two April Mornings—in which the beauty of rustic children melts, as it were, into Yature herself, and the Plooming girl whore hair was wet With points of monung der hecomes the impersonation of the season's early jos. We may apply, indeed, to all these girls Wordstortb's deecription of leverets playing on a lawn, and call them, Separate creatores in their several gifts Abotinding, but so fashioned that in all That Xatore prompts them to display, their looks, Their starts of motion and their fts of rest, An endistingtushable style appears And cbaracter of gladness, as of Spring Lodged in their innocent bosons, and the spirit or the rejoicing Morning were their own My limits forbid me to dwell longer on these points. The passages which I have been citing have been for the most part selected as illustrating the novelty and subtlety of Wordsworth's view of Yature. But it will now be sufficiently clear how continually a strain of human interest is interwoven with the delight derived from impersonal things. Long have I loved what I bebola. Tho Dight that calms, the day that cbeera : The common growth of mother earth Soffices me-ber tears, ber mirth, Her hamblest mirth and teart The poet of the Ilaggones-who, himself a habitu pupil. And, ajas, I had tle mortification of beaning that , was very rain of beiog thay distinguisbed, and in after.life used to say that the remembered the incident, and what I said ber upon the occasion."

·150 NORDSIYORTH. [CHAP. water-drinker, has so glowingly described the glorification which the prospect of nature receives in a half-intoxicated brain---may justly claim that he can enter into all genuine pleasures, eren of an order which he declines for himself. With anything that is false or artificial he cannot sylupathize, nor with such faults as baseness, cruelty, rancour, which seem contrary to human nature itself; but in deal. ing with faults of mere weakness he is far less strait-laced than many less virtuous men. He had, in fact, a reverence for human beings as such which enabled him to face even their frailties without alienation, and there was something in his own happy exemption from such falls which touched him into regarding men less fortunate rather with pity than dis. dain. Because the uostained, the clear, the crystalline, Hare ever in them something of benign. His comment on Bums's Tam o' Shunter will perhaps surprise some readers who are accustomed to think of him only in his didactic attitude. "It is the privilege of poetic genius, he says, to catcli, under certain restrictions of which perhaps at the time of its being cxerted it is but dimly conscious, a spirit of pleasure wliererer it can be found, in the walks of nature, and in the business of men. The poet, trusting to primary instincts, luxuriates among the felicities of love and wine, and is enraptured while he describes the fairer aspects of war, nor does he shrink from the company of the passion of love though immoderate from convivial pleasures though intemperaternor from the presence of war, thougb savage, and recognized as the bandmaid of desulation. Frequently and admirably has Burds giren way to these impulses of nature, both with reference to himself and in describing the condition of others. Who, but some impene.

·NATURAL RELIGION, 151 trable dance or narrow-ininded paritan in works of art, ever read without delight the picture which he has drawn of the convivial exaltation of the rastie adrentarer Tam o'shanter? The poet fears pot to tell the reader in the ontset that his bero was a desperate and soltist drunkard, whose excesses were as frequent as his opportunities This reprobate sits down to his caps while the storm is roaring, and beaven and earth are in confusion; the night is driven on by song and tomultrons noise, isughter and jest thicken as the beverage improves upon the *-:-.-.1..-.-.'.-1... 41. &-'---- N. 1 are blended into one proud and happy composition of elated spirits, the anger of the tempest without doors only heighteos and sets off the enjoyment within I pity him who cannot perceire that in all this, though there was no moral purpose, there is a moral effect. Kings may be blest, bot Tam was glorious, O'er a' the Us of life victorious. What a lesson do these words conres of charitable indalgence for the vicious habits of the principal actor in the scene, and of those bo resemble him! Men bo to the ngidly virtuous are objects almost of loathing, and wbom therefore they cannot nerve! The poet, penetrating the unsightly and disgusting surfaces of things, bas apreiled with exquisite skill the finer ties of imagination and feeling, that often bind these beings to practices productive of so much anbappiness to themselves, and to thore whom it is their daly to cbensh, and, as far as he pats the reader into possession of this intelligent sympathy, he qualifies bim fur exercising a salutary influence over the rainds of those who are thos deplorably enslared." The reverence for man 13 man, the eyinpathy for him in his primary relations and his essential being, of which these comments on Tum o Shanter form so remarkable An ex3mple, 19 a habit of thought too ingraised in all Worlan orth's works to call for specific illustration. The f

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·*) NATURAL RELIGION. 153 honoured among the Cumbrian dales should be the temper of all England, nok and for ever. Our discussion of Wordsworth's form of Natural Religion has led us back by no forced transition to the simple life which he described and shared. I return to the story of his later years,-if that be called a story which derives no interest from incident or passion, and dwells only on the slow broodings of a meditative soul.

·CHAPTER XI. ITALIAN TOUR - ECOLESIASTICAL SONNETS-POLITICAL VIETS-LAUREATESHIP. . WORDSWORTII was fond of travelling, and indulged this tastc whenever he could afford it. Comparing himself and Southey, he says in 1843: “My lamented friend Southey used to say that had he been a Papist, the course of life which in all probability would have been his was that of a Benedictinc monk, in a convent furnished with an inoxhaustible library. Books were, in fact, his passion ; and wandering, I can with truth affirm, was mino; but this propensity in me vras happily counteracted by inability from want of fortune to fulfil my wishes." We find Bim, however, frequently ablo to contrive a change of His Sviss tour in 1790, his residence in France in 1791-2, his residence in Germany, 1798-9, have been already touched on. Then came a short visit to Fmnco in August 1802, which produced the sonnets on Westminster Bridge and Calais Beach. The tour in Scotland which was so fertilo in poetry took place in 1803. A second tour in Scotland, in 1814, prodnced the Brownies Cell and a few other pieces. And in July, 1820, he set out with his wife and sister and two or three other friends for a tour tlırough Switzerland and Italy. This tour produced a good deal of poetry ; and here and scene.

·11. XI.] ITALIAX TOUR there are touches which recall the old inspiration. Such is the comparison of the clouds about the Engelberg to hoverin, angels; and such the description of tho eclipse falling upon the population of statues which throng the pinnacles of Milan Cathedral But for the most part the pocms relating to this tour have an artificial look; the sentiments in the yale of Chamouni seem to have beec laboriously summoned for the occasion; and the poet's admiration for the Italian maid and the Helvetian girl is a mere shadow of the old feeling for the Highland girl, to whom, in fact, he secins obliged to recur in order to give reality to his new emotion To conclude the subject of Wordsworthi's trrels, I will mention here that in 1823 he made a tour in Holland, and in 1824 in Yorth Wales, where his sonnet to the torrent at the Devil's Bridge recalls the Swiss scenery seen in his youth with vigour and dignity. In 1828 he made another excursion in Belgium with Coleridge, and in 1829 he visited Ireland with his friend Mr. Marshall Neither of these tours was productive. Ia 1831 he paid a visit with bus daughter to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, before his departure to seek health in Italy. Scott received them cordially, and had strength to take them to the Yarrot "Of that excursion," says Wordsworth, "the verses Yarrow Revisted are a memorial. Ononr return it the afternoon we had to cross the Tweed, directly opposite Abbotsford. A rich, but sad light, of rather a purple than a gollen hue, was spread over the Eildon hills at that moment, and, thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sur Walter would cross the stream (the Tweed), I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in tho sonnet beginning, d trouble not of clouls nor tieping rain. At doon on Thursday we left Abbotsford, and on ·156 YORDSSTORTU. (CRAP $3 the morning of that day Sir Walter and I had a serious conversation, téle-à-tête, when he spoke with gratiuude of the happy life which, upon the whole, he had led. He had written in my daughter's album, before lie came into the breakfast-room that morning, a few stanzas addressed to her; and, while putting the book into her hand, in his own study, standing by his desk, he said to her, in my presence, 'I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father's sake; they are probably the last verses I shall ever write.' They show how much his mind was impaired: not by the strain of thought, but by the execution, some of the lines being imperfect, and one stanza wanting corresponding rhymes. One letter, the initial S., had been omitted in the spelling of his own name." There was another tour in Scotland in 1833, which prorluced Memorials of little poetic value. And in 1837 he made a long tour in Italy with air, Crabb Robinson. But the poems which record this tour indicate a mind scarcely any longer susceptible to any vivid stimulus except from accustomed objects and ideas. The Musings near Aquapendente are musings on Scott and Helvellyn; the Pine Tree of Monte Mario is interesting because Sir George Beaumont has saved it from destruction; the Cuckoo at Laverna brings all childhood back into bis heart. “I remember perfectly well," say's Crabb Robinson, is that I heard the cuckoo at Laverna twice before he beard it; and that it absolutely fretted him that my car was first favoured ; and that he exclaimed with delight, I hear it! I hear it!'" This was his last foreign tour ; nor, indeed, are these tours very noticeable except as showing that he was not blindly wedded to his own lake scenery; that his admiration could face comparisons, and ·11.) ECCLESIASTICAL SOSYETS. 157 keep the same vividness when he was fresh from other orders of beauty. The productions of these Later years took for the most mart a didactic rather than a descriptive form. In the volume entitled Poems chiefly of Early and Later lears, published in 1812, were many hortatory or toclesiastical pieces of inferior ment, and among them various additions to the Ecclesiastical Sketches, a series of Bonnets begun in 1821, but which he continuul to enlarge, spending on them much of the energies of his later years. And although it is only in a few instances- as in the description of King's College, Cambridge—that these sonnets possess force or charm enough to rank them high 29 poetry, yet they assume a certain value when we consider not so much their own arlequacy as the greater inadequacy of all rival attempts in the same direction. Thc Episcopalian Churchiman, in this country or in the United States, will certainly now bere find presented lo lim in poetical form 80 dignified and comprehensive a record of the struggles and the glories, of the vicissitude and the edification, of the great body to which he belongs. Next to the Anglican Jiturgy-though next at an immenso interval--these bonnets may take rank as the authentic exposition of her histonc being—an exposition delivered with something of her own unadomel dignity, and in her moderate and tranquil tone. I would not, however, seem to claim too much. The religion which these later poems of Wordsworth's embody is rather the stately tradition of a great Church than the frange and aspirations of a holy soul. There is little in thero--whether for good or evil- of the stuff of which a l'aul, a Francis, a Dominic are made. 'That fergent emo tion-akin to the passion of lose rather than to jo ·YORDSWORTH. ГcКАР. 159 tual or moral conviction-finds voice through singers of a very different tone. It is fed by an inward anguish and felicity which, to those wlio have not felt them, scom as causeless as a lover's moods; by wrestlings not with flesh and blood ; by nights of despairing self-abasement; by ecstasies of an incommunicablo peace. How great the gulf between Wordsworth and George Herbert Herbert "offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither," and Wordsworth, for whom the gentle regret of the lines, Do this upchartered freedom tires, I feel tho reight of chanco desires--- forms his most characteristic expression of the self-judge ment of the solitary soul. Wordsworth accomplished ono reconciliation of great importance to mankind. He showed, as plninly in his way as Socrates had shown it long ago, with what readiness a profoundly original conception of the scheme of things will shape itself into the mould of an established and vencrable faith. He united the religion of the philosopher with the religion of the churchman; one raror thing ho could not do; he could not unite the religion of the philosophier with the religion of the saints It is, indeed, cvident that the most inspiring feeling which breathes through Wordsworth's ccclesiastical pieces is not of a doctrinal, not oven of a spiritual kind. The ccclcsiastical as rell as the political sentiments of his later years are prompted mainly by the admiring love with which he regarded the structure of English societymo sccn as that society was by him in its simplest and inost poetic aspect. This concrete attachment to the scenes About him had always formed an iinportant element in his chamcter. Idcal politics, whether in Church or State, ·II.] ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS 169 hall never occupied his mind, which sought rather to final ita informing principles embodied in the Englanil of his own day. The sonnet Ora Pursonage in Ocfonlshire well illustrates tho loving minuteness with which he Irawe out the beauty and fitness of the established scheme of things,--the power of English country life to satisfy so many moods of fecling. The country-scat of the English squire or nobleman las become-may we not say?--one of the world's chosen types of a happy and a stately home. And Wordsworth, egpo. cially in his poetos which deal with Coleorton, has shown how deeply he felt the way of such a home's hereditary majesty, its secure and tranquillizing charm. Yet there aro moods when the heart which deeply feels tho inequality of human lots turns towards a humbler ideal There are moments when the broad park, the lalin and towers, seem no longer the fitting franie of human greatness, but rather an isolating solitude, an unfecling triumph over the poor. In auch a mood of nund it will not always satisfy us to dwell, as Wordsworth luas so often done, on the virtue and happiness that gather round a cottage bearth, which wo bust, after all, judge by a somewhat legs exacting standard. We turn rather to the "refined rusticity" of an English Parsonage liome Where holy ground begidº, unhallowed ends, Is marked by no distinguishable line, 'The turf abitca, the pathways intertwineand the clergyman's abode las but so much of dignity as befits the minister of the Church which is the hamlet's centre; enough to suggest the old Athenian Lanust of beauty without extravagance, and study without en ·TYORDSTVORTH.- [CRAP nacy; cnough to show that dwellings where not this lifo but another is the prevailing thought and care, yet ueed not lack the graces of culture, nor the loves of home. The sonnet on Scathicaite Chapel, and the life of Robert Walker, the incumbent of Şeathwaite, which is given at length in the notes to the sonnets on the Duddon, afford a still moro characteristic instance of tho clerical idcal towards which Wordsworth naturally turned. In Robert Walker he had a Cumbrian statesman turned into a practical saint; and he describes him with a gusto in which his laboured sonnets on Laud oron Dissensions are wholly deficient. It was in social and political matters that the consequences of this idealizing views of the facts around him in Cumberland were most apparent. Take education, for example. Wordsworth, as has been already stated, was one of the earliest and most impressive assertors of the national duty of teaching every English child to read. lle insists on this with a prosaic earnestness which places several pages of the Excursion among what may be called the standing bugbears which his poems offer to the inexperienced reader And yet is soon as, tlırough the exertions of Boll and Lancaster, there seems to be somo chance of really educating the poor, Dr. Bell, whom Coloriilge fondly imagines as surrounded in henven by multitudes of gmteful angels, is to Wordsworth a name of Horror. Tho mistresses trained on his system are called "Dr. Bell's sonr-looking teachers in petticoats." And the instruction receired in these new-fangled schools is compared to "the training that fits a boxer for victory in the ring." The reason of this apparent inconsistency is not far to seck. Wordsworth's eyes were fixed on the village ·POLITICAL TIRTS Tife around him. Oletsäs of ths: in ca him the impertire Dereits ef isstraat ia malin But it is from a moral, rather than an intellec? point of Fiew that he made it a real, sod, this opening into the world of ideas onde sunt, he held that the cultivation of the home affections and home daties was all that was needel berond. And thus the Testmoreland dame, "in her summer seat in the murden, and in winter by the fireside," was elerated into the unexpected position of the ideal instructress of youth. Conservatism of this kind could provoke nothing but a sympathetic bruile. The case was different when the same conservative-even retrograde-tendency showed itself on subjects on which party-feeling ran high. great part of the meditative energy of Wordsworth's later years was absorbed by questions towards whose solution he contributel no new element, and which filled him with disproportionate fears, And some injustice has been done to his memory by those who hare not fully realized the predisposing causes which were at work,--the timidity of age, and the deep-rooted attachment to the England which he knew. I speak of age, perhaps, somewhat prematurely, as the poet's gradually growing conservatism culminated in his opposition to the Catholic Relief Bill, before he was sixty ears old. Bat there 13 nothing to wonder at in the fact hat the mind of a man of brooding and solitary habits hould show traces of advancing age earlier than is the 13e with statesmen or men of the world, who are obliged] o keep themselves constantly alive to the ideas of the generation that is rising around them. A deadness to Dew impressions, an unwillingness to make intelleciga) efforts la fresh directions, a tendency to travel the 83 the 4 ·162 WORDSWORTH. (cnap. mental pathways over and over again, and to wear the ruts of prejudice deeper at every step; such traces of age as these undoubtedly manifested themselves in the way in which the poet confronted the great series of changes- Catholic Emancipation, Reform Bill, New Poor Lak, on which England entered about the year 1829. "My sixtysecond year," Wordsworth writes, in 1832, "will soon be completed; and though I have been favoured thus far in health and strength beyond most men of my age, yet I feel its effects upon my spirits; they sink under a pressure of apprehension to which, at an earlier period of my life, they would probably have been superior.” To this it must be added, that the increasing weakness of the poet's eyes seriously limited his means of information. He had never read much contemporary literature, and he read less tban ever now. He had no fresh or coraprehensive knowledge of the general condition of the country, and he really believed in the prognostication which was uttered by many also who did not beliove in it, that with the Reform Bill the England which he knew and loved trould practically disappear. But there was nothing in him of the angry polemic, nothing of the calumnious partisan. One of the houses where Mr. Wordsiforth was most intimate and most welcome was that of a reforming momber of parliament, who was also a manufacturer, thus belonging to the two classes for which the poet had tho greatest abhorrence. But the intimacy tras never for a moment shaken, and indeed in that house Mr. Wordsworth expounded the ruinous tendency of Reform and manufactures with ovou unusual copiousness, on account of the admiring affection with which he felt himself surrounded. The tone in which he spoke was never such as could give pain or excite antagonism; and if I may be pardoned for descend.

·POLITICAL VIEWS. 163 ing to a detail which tell illustrates may position-the only rejoinder which theso diatribes proroked was that the poet on his arrirai was sometimes decored into uttering them to the young's members of the famils, whose time was of loga raluc, so as to get his mind free to relarn to those topics of more permanent interest where his conversation kept to the fast all that tendernese, nobility, vislos, which in that family, as in many others familiar with the celebrated persone of that day, won for him a regard and s rererence guch as was accorded to no other thin. To thoxe, indced, who realized hot deeply he felt theo changes --!io« profoundly his notion of national happiness is bound up with a lovely and vanishing idcal,--the prominent reflection 1729 that the hopes and principles which maintained through all an underlying hope and trust in the future pust lase leen potent indeel It was no easy optimism which prompted the lines written in 1837-one of his latest utterances—in which he speaks to himself with strong self-judgroent and resolute hope. On reading them one slinks fronn dwelling longer upon an old man's weakness and a braye man's fears. If this great world of joy and paja Rerolre in one sare track; If Freedom, eet, Tenire sgaip, And Virtue, lowo, come back, Hoe to the parbliad crew who 611 The beart with each day's ere, Xor learn, from past and future, kill To bear and to for bear, The poet had also dunng these years more of prirate Borrow than his tranquil Life bad for a long time eine rienced. In 1832 his rister had a fost rerious illness, ·WORDSWORTH. [nas. which kent her for many months in a state of great pros tration, and left her, when the playsical symptoms abated, with her intellect painfully impaired, and her bright naturc permanently overclouded. Coleridge, too, was nearing his end. "He and my beloved sister," writes Wordswortli, in 1832, "are the two beings to whom my intellect is most indebted, and they are now proceeding, as it were, pari prassul, along the path of sickness, I will not say towards the grave, but I trust towards a blessed immortality." In July, 1834, "every mortal power of Coleridge was frozen at its marvellous source." And although the early intimacy had scarcely been maintained,--though the scomfortless and hidden well" had, for a timo at least, replaced the " living murmuring fount of love" which used to spring beside Wordsworth's door,-- get the loss was one which the surviving poet deeply felt. Coleridge was the only contemporary man of letters with whom Wordswortli's connexion liad been really close; and when Wordsworth is spoken of as one of a group of poets excmplifying in various ways the influence of the Revolution, it is not always remembered how very little hne jind to do with the other famous mon of his time. Scott and Southey were valued friends, but he thought little of Scott's poetry, and less of Southey's. Byron and Shelley he seems scarcely to have read; und lie failed altogether to appreciate Keats. But to Coleridge his mind constantly reverted; he called him " the most wonderful man he had ever known," and lio kept him as the ideal auditor of his own poems, long after Coleridge had listened to the Prehule,-- A song dirine of high and passionate thonguts To their oirn music chanted.

·LAUREATESILIP 103 In 1836, inoreover, died one for whom Coleridge, as well as Wordsworth, hail felt a very high respect and rugard-Sarah Hutchinson, Mr. Wordsworth's sister, and long the inmate of Wordsworth's household. This most valued friend had been another instance of the singular good fortune which attended Wordsworth in his domestic con- Dexions; and when she was laid in Grasmere churchyard, the stone above her tomb erpressed the wish of the poet and his siſe that, even as her remains were laid beside their dead children's, so their own bodies also might be laid by liers. And now, while the inner circle of friends and relations began to pass array, the outer circle of admirers was rapidly spreading. Between the years 1830 and 1840 Wordsworth passed from the apostle of a clique into the most illustrious man of letters in England. The rapility of this change was not due to any remarkable accident, nor to the appearance of any new work of genius. It was merely an extreme instance of what must always occur where an author, running counter to the fashion of his age, Las to create his own public in defiance of the established critical powers. The disciples whom he drains round him are for the most part young, the established authorities are for the most part old ; $0 that by the time that the original poet 13 about sixty years old, most of his admirers will be about forty, and most of bis critica will be dead. His admirery now become his accredited critics ; his works are widely introduced to the public; and if they are really good his reputation is Recure. In Wordsworth's case the detractors had been unusually persistent, and the reacti011, when it came, was therefore unusually violent; it was even somewhat facti. tioug in its extent; and the poems were forced by ·166 NORDSWORTH. {TITAP. enthusiasts upon a public which was only half ripe for them. After the poet's death a temporary counter-reaction succeeded, and his fame is only now finding its permanent level. Among the indications of growing popularity was the publication of an American edition of Wordsworth's Poems in 1837, by Professor Reed of Philadelphin, with whom the poet interchanged many letters of interest. "The acknowledgments," he says in one of these, "which I receive from the vast continent of America are among the most grateful that reach me. What a vast field is there open to the English mind, acting through our noble language ! Let us hope that our authors of true genius will not be unconscious of that thought, or inattentive to the duty which it imposes upon them, of doing their utmost to instruct, to purify, and to elevate their readers." But of all the manifestations of the growing honour in which Wordsworth was field, none yras more marked or welcome than the honorary degree of D.C.L. conferred on him by the University of Oxford in the summer of 1839. Keble, as Professor of Poetry, introduced him in Tords of admiring reverence, and the enthusiasm of the audience was such as had never been evoked in that place before, “except upon the occasions of the visits of the Duke of Wellington." The collocation was an interesting one. The special claim advanced for Words Forth by Keble in his Latin oration ras" that he had shed a celestial light upon the affections, the occupations, the piety of the poor." And to many men besides the author of the Christian Year it seemed that this striking scene ras, as it were, another visible triumph of the teinper of mind thich is of the essence of Christianity ; & recognition that one spirit ·LAUKETESHIR. JU ore had become 13 a little child, and hul entered into ze kingdom of bearen. In October, 1812, another token of pablic respect 23 stown on him in the shape of an annuity of 3001. a Ar from the Civil List for distinguished literary merit. I need scarcely add," says Sir Robert Peel, in making e ofer, "that the acceptance by son of this mark of arour from the Crown, considering the grounds op which - is proposed, will improse no restraint upon your perfect dependence, and involve no obligation of a personal atare." In March, 1813, came the death of Southey, and 28 few days Wordsworth received a letter from Earl De Wart, the Lon Chamberlain, offering him, in the most ourteous terms, the office of Poet Laureate, which, how- Fer, he mrspectfully declined as imposing daties, "which, 3r alvanced in life as I am, I cannot venture to underake." This letter brought a reply from the Lord Chamberlain, regning the office on him again, and a letter from Sir Robert Peel which give dignified expression to the national feeling in the matter. "The offer," he says, wag male to you by the Lord Chamberlain, with my entire concurrence, not for the purpose of iroposing on Fou any onerous or disagreeable daties, but in order to pay you that tribute of respect which is justly due to the Girst of living poets. The Queen entirely approved of the nomination, and there is one unanimous feeling on the part of all wlio hare heard of the proposal (and it is pretty generally known) that there could not be a question about the selection. Do not be deterred by the fear of ans obligations which the appointment may be supposed] to impls. I will tn-lertake that you shall have nothing reprired from you. But as the Queen can select for this

·168
YYORDSITORTI.
[CH, X
honourable appointment no one whose claims for respect
and honour, on account of eminence as a poet, can be
placed in competition with yours, I trust you will not
longer hesitate to accept it."
This letter overcame the aged poet's scruples; and he
Glled with silent dignity the post of Laureate till after
seven years' space a worthy successor received
This laurel groeper from the brows
or him that uttered nothing base.

·CHAPTER IIL
LETTERS OX 18% LEYDIL LYD UIT ILTA
OCLCSIA
WORDSWORTH'S appointment to the Lord
significant in more ways than ce
besides a poet, that his appointment
is
& national recognition, not cols of
being
achievements, but of the substatia acest
of principles which through many years of
ridicule he had consistently supported. The resu
fore nothing incongruous in the film
composition of any importance which create
duced after he became Laureate 523 ESTI
letters on the projected Kendal & Wohnen
ray, 1841. No topic, in fact, cy!! ETA
which the veteran poet could mot ETT
ever authority his oficial sposobe:
higher life could give, for it 1733 : KETE
of which he was familiar, and
she
milways through the late come si
grounds of popular benefit, (and oct
advantage), no one, certainls,
LT: EZT
capable of estimating at their fra
were here proposed.
The results which follor on a mi

·170 TYORDSTORTA. [CRAP. into the Lake country may be considered under tro heads, as affecting the residents, or as affecting the visitors themselves. And first as to the residents. Of the sealthier class of these I say nothing, as it will perhaps be thought that their inconvenience is outreighed by the possible profits which the railway may bring to speculators or contractors. But the effect produced on the poorer residents,- on the peasantry,-is a serious matter, and the danger which was distantly foreseen by Wordsworth has since his day assumed grave proportions. And lest the poet's estimate of the simple virtue which is thus jcopardized should be suspected of partiality, it may be allowable to corroborate it by the testimony of an eminent man, not a native of the district, though a settler therein in later life, and whose writings, perhaps, have done more than any man's since Wordsworth to increase the sum of human enjoyment derived both from Art and from Nature. "The Border peasantry of Scotland and England," says Mr. Ruskin," "painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Wordsworth,----(for leading types out of this exhaustless portraiture, I may name Dandie Dinmont, and Michael) are hitherto a scarcely injured race; whose strength and virtue yet survive to represent the body and soul of England, before her days of mechanical decrepitude, and commercial dishonour. There are noen rorking in my own fields who might have fought with Henry the Fifth at Agincourt, without being discerned from among his knights; I can take my tradesmen's word for a thousan' pounds; my garden gate opens on the latch to thi rond, by day and night, without fear of any foot "A Protest against the Extension of Railways in trict-Simpkin, Ilarshall, and Co., 1876.

·111.) LETTERS OX TIIF PROJECTED RAILIYAY. 171 Inut my own; and my girl guests toay wander lig road or inoorland), or throagh every boshy dell of this wild wool, treo 49 the heather-bees or squirrels. What effect on the character of such a population will be produced by the influr of that of the suburbs of our manufacturing towns there is crilence enough, if the reader cares to ascertain the facts, in every newspaper on his morning table." There remains the question of how the greatest benefit is to be secureil to visitors to the country, quite apart from the welfare of its more permanent inhabitants. At first sight thuis question seems to present a problem of a well-known order--to find the point of maximum pleasure to mankind in & case whero the intensity of the pleasure varies inversely as its extension-where each fresh person who shares it diminishes pro tanto the pleasure of the rest. But, as Wordsworth has pointed out, this is not in reality the question hiero. To the great mass of cheap excursionists the characteristic scenery of the Lakes is in itself harily a pleasure at all. The plea- Bure, indecil, which they derive from contact with Naturo is great and important, but it is one which could be offered to them, not only as well but much better, near their own homes. " It is benignig ordained that green fields, clear blue skies, runding streams of pure water, nich grores and woods, orcbards, and all the ordinary varieties of rural patare should find an easy way to the attections of all men. But & taste beyond this, however desirable it may be that every one abould possess it, is not to be implanted at once, it must be gradually developed both in nations and indırıdaals. Rocks and mountains, torrents and wide-spread waters, and all those features of nature which go to the composition of such scenes as this part of England is distinguished for, cannot, in their finer relations to the buinan mind, be comprehender, or even tery ·172 YORDSTORTR. [CHAT. in perfectly conceivel, without processes of culture or opportunities of observation in some degree labitual. In the eye of thousands, and tens of thousands, a rich meadow, with fat cattle grazing upon it, or the sight of what they would call a heavy crop of corn, is worth all that the Alps and Pyrenees in their utmost grandeur and beauty could show to them; and it is noticeable what triling conventional prepossessions will, in common minds, not only preclude pleasure from tlie siglt of natural beauty, but will eren turn it into an object of disgust. In the midst of a small pleasure.ground immediately below my house, riscs a detached rock, equally remarkable for the beauty of its forın, the ancient oaks that grow out of it, and the flowers and shrubs which adorn it. What a nice place would this be,' said a Manchester tradesman, pointing to the rock, 'if that ugly Jump were but out of the war.' Men as little advanced in the pleasure which such objects give to others, are so far from being rare that they may be said fairly to represent a large majority of mankind. This is the fact, and none but the deceiver and the willingly deceived can be offended by its being stated." And, since this is so, the true means of raising the taste of the masses consists, as Wordsworth proceeds to point out, in giving them,--not a few hurried glimpses of what is above their comprehension, ---but permanent opportunities of learning at leisure the first great lessons which Nature has to teach. Since he wrote thus our towns have spread their blackness wider still, and the provision of parks for the recreation of our urban population has become a pressing national need. And here again the very word recreation suggests another unfitness in the Lake country for these purposes. Solitude is as characteristic of that region as beauty, and what the mass of mankind need for their refreshment-most naturally and justly-is not solitude but society. The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills, ·1.3 LETTERS ON TIE PROJECTED RAILTAT. is to themi merely a drawback, to be overcome by tori about in large masses, and by congregating in chix TCBorts with vehement hilarity It would be main sonable to wish to curtail the social espansica na whoso lives are for the most part pusei in a way round of toil. Dut is it kinder and wiser,-- T point of view but the railway shareholder'sthem into excursion trains by the prestigiosa which is to them (as it was to all classes a cei ago) at best indifferent, or to provide the with their needed space for rest and plas, from their homes by hours of clamour a) broken up by barren precipices, por donde sweeping storm Unquestionably it is the masses WESTconsider. Sooner than that the rest in towns should be debarred from the —sooner than that they should entiti tury to be debarred as now they that Cumbrian statesmen and sheer into innkeepers and toutz, 23 - dreamer, in England should be solitude at the North Pole EES of sentiment to pretend tbs: than lision of interests here. Thess. yet for all to enjoy in this have the power rould leta rome upblighted beltz the factory-band, when I whose degradation i Vurusworth, Senin ing as this, the of the mass of: - ·174 TYORDSTORTH. [citAP likely to forget that in every class, even the poorest, are found exceptional spirits whicle some inbred power has attuned already to the stillness and glory of the hills. In what way the interests of such men may best be consulted, he has discussed in the following passage. "O nature, a' the rhors an' forms To feeling pensiro hearts hao charms!” “So exclaimed the Ayrshire ploughman, speaking of ordinary rural nature under the varying influences of the seasons; and the sentiment has found an echo in the bosoms of thousands in as humble a condition as he himself was vrhca he gave vent to it. But then they accre feeling, pensive hearts ---men who would be among the first to lament the facility with which they had approached this region, by a sacrifice of so much of its quiet and beauty as, from the intrusion of a railway, would be inseparable. What can, in truth, be more absurd than that either rich or poor should be spared the trouble of travelling by the high roads over so short a space, accord. ing to their respective means, if the unavoidable consequence must be a great disturbance of the retirement, and, in many places, a destruction of the beauty, of the country which the parties are come in search of? Would not this be pretty much like the child's cutting up his drum to learn where the sound came from?" The truth of these words has become more conspicuous since Wordsworth's day. The Lake country is now both engindled and intersected with milways. The point to which even the poorest of genuine lovers of the mountains could (lesiro that his facilities of cheap locoinotion should be carried has been not only reached but for overpassed. If he is not content to dismount from his milway car.

·173 SIL) LETTERS ON THE PROJECTED RAILWAY. riage at Coniston, or Seascale, or Blownes,mat Penrithi, or Troutbeck, or Keswick,-apd to move at eight miles an Jiour in a coach, or at four miles an hour on foot, whilo he studies that small intervening tract of country, of which every mile is a separate gem, - klien, se may ask, is he to dismount? what is be to study ? Or is nothing to be expected from Naturc but a serics of dissolving views It is impossible to feel sanguine as to the future of this irreplaceable national possession. A real delight in scepery, -apart from the excitements of sport or mountaineering, for whick Scotland and Switzerland are better suited than Cumlerland, --is still too rare a thing among the wealthier as among the poorer classes to to compete wit auch a power as the Railway Interest. And it is little likely now that the Government of England should act with regard to this district as the Government of the United States has acted with regard to the l'osemite and Yellowstone valleys, and guard as a national possession the leasts which will become rarer and more fascines with every generation of men. But it 13 in ST desirable that Wordsworth's unanswered train of ruin on the rabject should be kept is ries-that it selv clearly agderstood that the one argument from railways through the Liikes is that they OSTOSTA phile it is certain that each 3 ay erteza: * to the peasantry of the district, and to 27 m really care for its scenery, while con the crowds who are draggeed maas series not enjoy, instead of having is secured to them, as it ought to be It is probable that all this :] vain. Hailways, and mice, a TEZE ·176 TURDSISORTH. (char. their way, till injury has become destruction. The natural sanctuary of England, the nurse of simple and nolle natures, "the last region which Astraza touches with flying feet," will be sacrificed it is scarcely possible to doubt it to the greed of gain. We must seek our consolation in the thought that nu outrage on Nature is mortal; that the erer-springing affections of men create for themselves continually some fresh abode, and inspire some new landscape with a consecrating history, and as it were with a silent soul. Yet it will be long ere round some other lakes, upon some other hill, shall cluster sories as pure and high as those which horer still ind Rydal and Grasmere, and on Helvellyn's windy mit, "and by Glenridding Screes and low Glencoign." With this last word of protest and warning, --uttered, t inay seem to the reader, with unexpected force and riction from out of the tmnquillity of a serene old Wordsworth's mission is concluded. The prophecy ais boyhood is fulfilled, and the" dear native regions” ince his dawning genius rose have been gilded by the my of its declining fire. There remains but the jestic chronicle of a few more years of mingled sad. s and peace. And I will first cite a characteristic pasfrom a letter to his American correspondent, Mr. d, describing his presentation as Laureate to the AE ! en : The reception given me by the Queen at her ball was t gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your Minister, ng many others, was a witness to it, without knowing It moved her to the shedding of tears. i effect was in part produced, I suppose, by American ts of feeling, as pertaining to a repuhlican goverzt. To see a grey-haired man of seventy-five years of I Tas.

·CONCLUSIOY. 117 soge, kneeling down in a large asembly to kiss the hand of > young woman, is a right for which institutions essentially democratic do not prepare a spectator of either sexy and boast naturally place the opinions upon which a republic is founded, and the senliments which support it, in strong contrast with a government based and upheld as In the eame letter the poet introdaces an ominous alla- 22on to the state of bis daughter's bealth. Dora, his only Janghter who survived chuldhood, was the darling of Wordswortb's age. lo her way ar gaiety and bright intelligence there was much to remind him of his sister's youths; and his clinging nature wound itself round this Dew Dona as tenderly as it had ever done round her who *29 now only the object of loving compassion and care. In 1841 Dora Wordsworth married at Quillinan, an exofficer of the Gaards, and a man of great literary taste and some original power In 1821 he had settled for a time in the sale of Rydal, mainly for the sake of Words Forth's society; and ever since then he had been an întiwate and valued friend. He had been married before, lut his wife died in 1822, leaving hurs two daughters, one of whom was named from the murmuring Rotha, and wa golchild of the poet. Shortly after marriage, Dora Qudaa's health began to fail. In 1845 the Quillinaps Fent to Oporto 18 search of health, and returned in 1846, is the trust that it wa3 regained. But in Jals 1847 Dora Quilinan died at Rydal, and left her father to mourn for hus few remaining years his immeasprable lose" The depth and duration of Wordsworth's gref in such bereavemente as fell to his lot, was such as to make his friends thapkfal that his late kad on the whole been guidel througb ways of 80 pnloand a peace. X ·178 IVORDSTORTH. [CAT Greatly, indeed, have they erred, who have imagined him as cold, or even as by nature tranquil. "What strange workings," writes one from Rydal Monnt when the poet was in his sixty-ninth year,"what strange workings are there in his great mind! HOT fearfully strong are all his feelings and affections! If his intellect had been less powerful they must have destroyed him long ago." Such, in fact, was the impression which ho gard to thoso who knew him best throughout life. The look of premature age, which De Quincey insists on; the furtowed and rugged countenance, the brooding intensity of the eye, the bursts of anger at the report of evil doings, the lonely and violent roamings over the moun. tains,mall told of a strong absorption and a sniothered fire. His own description of himself (for such we must probably hold it to be) in his Imitation of the Castle of Indolence, unexpected as it is by the ordinary reader, carries for those who knew him the stamp of truth, Full many a timo, upon a stormy night, His voice came to us from the neighbouring beight: Ort did tre sce him driving full in view At mid-day when the sun ros shiviug bright; What ill was on him, what he had to do, A mighty wonder bred ninong our quiet crew. Ah! piteous sight it was to see this Man When he came back to us, a sithered flower, Or liko a siðful creature, palo and san. Dora rould ho sit; and rithout strength or power Look at the comnion grass from hour to hour: And oftentimes, hois long I fear to say, Wiero applc-trees in blossom made a bower, Retired in that sunshiny shado ho lay; And, like a naked Indian, slept binself away.

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·180 IYORDSIYORTH. caf. more than once happened that soins one of my cottage neighbours (not of the double-coach-house cottages) has said, 'Well, there he is! we are glad to hear him booing about again.'" Wordsworth's health, steady and robust for the most part, indicated the same restrained excitability. Whilo he tras well able to resist fatigue, exposure to weather, &c. there were, in fact, three things which his peculiar constitution made it difficult for him to do, and unfortunately those three things were reading, writing, and the composition of poetry. A frequently recurring inflammation of the eyes, caught originally from oxposure to a cold vind when overheated by exercise, but always much aggravated by mental excitement, sometimes prevented his reading for months together. His symptoms when he attempted to hold the pen are thus described, in a pub). lished letter to Sir George Beaumont (1803) - "I do not know from what cause it is, but during the last three years I have never had a pen in my hand for five minutes before my whole frame becomes a bundlo of uneasiness; a perspiration starts out all over ine, and my chest is oppressed in a manner which I cannot describe." While as to the labour of composition his sister says (September 1800): "He writes with so much feeling and agitation that it brings on a sense of pain and internal weakness about his left side and stomach, which now often makes it impossible for him to write when he is, in mind and feelings, in such a state that he could do it without dificulty." But turning to the brighter side of things to the joys rather than the pains of the sensitive body and spirit-10 find in Wordsworth's later years much of happiness on which to dwell. The memories which his name recalls

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·182 WORDSTORTH. [CHAP way; and many tho saw him there must have thought of the lines in sluich his favourite poet congratulates himseif that he has not been exiled from his home. 4 Calm as the sacred streams thy sears shall iov; Grores which the youth bas koowu thinc age shall knor; Iere, as of old, Hyblæan bees shall tvino Their manzy murmur into dreams of thine, Still from the hedgo's willor-bloom suall come Through summer silences a slumberous hum,- Still from the crag skall lingering winds prolong The half-heard cadence of the woodman's song:- Thila ezermore the doves, thy lore and are, Fill the tall olms with sighing in the air. Het vrords like these fail to give the solemnity of his last years ----the sense of grave retrospection, of humblo self-judgment, of hopeful looking to the end. "It is indeed a deep satisfaction," he writes near the close of life, “ to hope and believe that my poetry will be while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth, especially among the young. As for myself, it seems nor of little moment how long I may be renembered. When a man pusles off in his little boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little low long ho is kept in sight by watchers from the shore." And again, to an intimate friend, "Worldly-minded I am not; on the contrary, my wish to benefit those within my humble sphere strengthens scemingly in exact proportion to my inability to realize those wishes. What I lament inost is that the spirituality of my nature docs not expand and rise the nearer I approach the grave, as yours does, and as it fares trith my beloved partner." The aged puet might feel the loss of some vividness of emotion, but his thoughts dwelt more and more constantly on the unseen world. One of the images which recurs ·3I1.] COXCLUSION. 183 oſtenest to his friends is that of the old man as he would stand against the window of the dining-room at Rydal Jſoupt and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day; of the tall bowed figure and the silvery hair; of the deep voice which always faltered when among the prayers ho came to the words wliich give thanks for those " who havo departed this life in Thy faithi and fear." There is no need to prolong the narration. As healthy infancy is the same for all, so the old age of all good men brings philosopher and peasant once more together, to meet with the same thoughts tlie inevitable hour. Whatever the well-fought fight may laro been, rest is the same for all. Retirement then might bonrly look Upon a southing scene; Agentcal to his allotted nook Contented and sereno; With heart as calm ag lakes that bleer, In frosty moonlight glisteniog, Or moudtoin torrents, where they creer Along a channel amooth and deep, To their own fur-off murmure listeding What touch has given to these lines their impress of an unfathomable reace! For there speaks from them a tranquillity which seems to overcome our souls, which makes us feel in the midst of toil and passion that wo are dis. quicting ourselveg in vain, that we are travelling to a region wlicro these things eltall not be, that "50 shall inimolemte fear leare us, and inonlinatc love shall die." Wordsworth's last day's were absolutely tranquil. A cuid caught on a Sunday afternoon walk brought on a pleurisy. IIo lay fur come weeks in a state of passive weakness, and at last Mrs Wordsworth said to him, "William, you are going to Dora." "He made no reply at ·184 WORDSWORTI. (ch. 11. the time, and the words seem to have passed unhceded ; indeed, it was not certain that they had been even heard. Jſors than twenty-four hours afterwards one of his nieces came into his room, and was drawing aside the curtain of his chamber, and then, as if awakening from a quiet sleep, he said, 'Is that Dora ?'" On Tuesday, April 23, 1850, as his favourite cuckooclock struck the liour of noon, his spirit passed away. Ilis body was buried, as he had wished, in Grastiere churchyard. Around him the salesmen of Grasmere lie beneath the shade of sycamore and yer; and Rotha's inurmur mourns the pausing of that “music sweeter than her own." And surely of hin, if of any one, we may think as of a man who was so in accord with Nature, 80 at one with the very soul of things, that there can be no Mansion of the Universe which shall not be to him a home, no Governor who will not accept him among His servants, and satisfy him with love and peace.

·. INDEX. Abhotatoril, Word,worth at, 155 Coleridge, 7, 31, 49, 52, 65, 161 dneul (Virgil's). Worlanorth's Coleridge, Wartley, 89 translation of, 112, 117 Coniston, 48 Afliction of Jargaret, 107 Contention Cintra (Worly. worth', nainshtet) 70 78 Arnold, Dr.(hes Incaster of Rugby). Cuckoo al Latcrna, 160 89 Daffodils, The, 63, 65, 61, 100 OA nr 1 00 18m of LAMICY, AM, JA 28. Jou!,!. I'mok, The, sondet on, 143 Dvdion, simnets on eke, 86, 112 Brothere. The 52 Iruty, Ole to, 111 Brmonie's Cell, The, 154 Borps, 105, 127, 150, 152 Ecclesiastical Sketches, 157 Byron, 7, 100, 102, ICA Elinburgh Recicio on The Excur. non, 93, 100 Calaú Ench, sondet on, 61, 143 Emma's Dell, 60 Calais, Worlsworth at, 13 Esthwaite Water, 47, 48, 49 Calvert, Radley, 29 Erening Otte, 121 Cambniz, G the soother of Istening l'oluntaria, 51 poeto, 7: Worluworth's delight Erening Tall, Miss Worte in tu tenttim, 8, 9; ita low worth's criticism of 30 Intellertaal lile, 10; manly Errureth, The, 31, 51, descrip- Ilmox; here of. 13 tions of Wordsworth and his Catholic PB., Worlleworth's Delghbours in, 89.90 ; its com op309 , 161 brong form, 90 ; its on whacks Cockermost, 47 and advantages 91, Ils serere ·TORDSWORTH. 86 and prosaic themes, 91-95, 100; Switzerland, 38; cliniate of, 39; its fincst passages, 95; its re. description of a scene in, 40-41; ception, 95, 96, 100 character of the Lake shores, 41- Expostulation and Reply, 33 42; the tarns, 42; the dwellers in, 43; Wordssorth's intimate Farmer of Tilsbury Male, 16 knowledge of, 47; railways of, Fenwick, Miss Isabella, 34 170 seq.; cheap excursions to, Fletcher, Jſrs., 89 171 seq.; future of, 175 Fountain, The, 116 Landamia, 111, 115 Fragment, 145 Land, sonnet on, 160 France, Wordsworth in, 18 seq. Lecch-Gatherer, The, 45, 138; French Revolution, 18-19, 21, 75, Wordsworth's feelings in writ. 104 ing, 138 Liberty, Sonnels to, appreciatio Gcorgics (Virgil's), 112 of, 79, SO Germany, Lincs arrillen in, 35 Lonsdale, Loril, 87, 88, 117 Germany, Wordsworth in, 33-34 Louisa, 149 Girondist party, Wordsworth and Lucy, 113, 139 the, 19 Lucy Gray, 34, 35 Goody Blake, 33, 100 Lyrical Ballads, 30, 69; origin Goslar (in Germany), 34, 35, 36 32; some of its contents, 33 Grasmcre, 50, 51, 52 Gmy, 7, 29 Mary's Pool, 50 Guide to the Lakes, 29, 38-39 Jemorials, 156 Guill and Sorroir, 31 Jichael, 51, 152 Mill, Jolin Stuart, effect of W llappy Tarrior, The, 82; a worth's poems on, 136 manual of greatness, 82; ex. Jusings near Aquapendente, tracts from, 82 ; n sunimary of patriotism, 84 Nature, poems on, 124; Words. Hawkslicad, village of, 11, 47, 51 wortli's inanner of regardiug, Herbert, George, 7, 158 124; awfulness of, 125; gentlo Highland Girl, The, 62 aspects of, 125 ; loveliness of, Hutchinson, Sarah, 165 125 ; how regarded by various poets, 127 ; effect of the con. Idiot Boy, The, 33, 100, 139 templation of, 128, 131; religion Imitation of the Castle of Inlol. of, 129 ; worship of, 130; comence, Wordsworth's description munion with, 137 ; influence of of himself in, 178 nature on human character, 139; Immortality, Ovlc on, 122 contrasts in, 140; Wordswortli's idealisation of, 143 Joanna's Rock: 50 Nelson, 75; compared with Words. John's Grore, 50, 69 worth, 61 ; his connection with Lady Hamilton, 81 note; his Keats, 36, 164 last hont, 82; his womanly Keble, 166 tenderness, 82 ; his sympathy, $3 Lako country, 38; compared with Nightingalc and Stock-dore, 147 Luv 1 !

·INDEX. Xuthing, 31 Si dalam air, $1,3 silins "Filipa." 116 Futtel th's old Cumberland Bypur, Tre, 45 Fax2031 Fasa ca the Firler 1857. L'arso Dagt at Cranere, 85-87 170 Parsnage va Otfiniskirt, Sunet Part 31, 112, 133 ON & 159 Enkl. Late. $.. 51 Pau V Kvisture, The, ale 02 53 Frisl, Vout, $7 S8, 151 Teasantry of Lake Cogntrs, 23, 43-11, 85; Raskin oo, 170-171 Sooth, 102, 127, 152; Lis betod L'eel, Sir Robert, 167 of obeerties for 141; l'enrita, 3, 4,25 Wordsworth's visit to 155, I'ersonal Talk, Ronnets 38 136; bus opitioa of Scoti't Peler !!, 139, 215 poetry, 164 P'd Lamb, The, 118 Sainte Chapxl, secret C, 163 Pine Tree Vonle Varo, The Stelle, 97, 101, 101 156 Snox Lx, 33 T'lat, 127, 128, 135 Wery Feener, Thu, 115 Poems thirty of Early and Later Sllary, The, 89 Yrari, 157 Sonthey. 29, $3,164 l'oema on the Naning of Places, Deping Tester, 14S 50 Some Cucit, Szen12 Portry, foost of, 60; enjoymest SYMY Tos (Wais of, 99; art and practice of, 103, Erst verest 5 necessity of the gut of melonis Suitzerland wir In, 209 Poet's Epitaph, The, 34, 35, 198 Poor, Wordsworth's picture of the 162 Takes Torud, Tk, Pore, 90, 105, 127 Tales of Li 4 Poner MSIC, The, 1: Tano Sant Pere Prelude, The, an antokiographxcal poem, 13; its subject, 37; Teresy , ** its value as an autobiography, Te 37; its çandour and dom.ty, Tin Til, 1 37; box composel, 51 Tasez Ota Grzte Tit'izlar Quarterly Pariere on The Excur m, 100 Tedure, The, projected poem, 35 Reed, Professor, 166 Tim 13 Beform Bil!, Wordsworte's emporis tion t, 162 Pedution and Independez, 133 Return to Seneretile reuse seli Retent of Poor Sun, 15 ·WORDSWORTI. 189 Virgil, likeness betsreen Wonis. worth and, 112, 113; Words. worth's translation of, 118; lis style, 11?; Cowper's translation of, 119; Wordsworthian passages in, 112, 113, 119, 120 Waggoner, Th., 52, 149 Walker, Robert, incumbent of Srathwaite, 160 Wanderer, The, Wordsworth's description of liimself in, 89 l'ansfell, 51 l'e are Soren, 148 Westminster Bridge, Sonnet on, 17, 61 Ilhite Doe of Rylstone, The, 101, 102 Wild Duck's Nest, The, 51 Willian's Peak, 50 Wilson, Professor, 89 Windermere, 48-49 Wordsworth, William, birth and family history, 3 ; carliest recollections, 4; violent temper as a chill, 4 ; early school-days, 5; love of books, 5; school Verses, 5; goes to St. John's College, Cambridge, 6; vacations, 12; leaves Cambridge and goes to London, 15; choice of a career, 15; goes to France, 18; interest in the French Re. volution, contemplateil active part in it, 19; returns to England, 19; liopes in the French disappointed, 20, 75- 76; beginning of coinpanion. slip with liis sister, 24; re. ceives a legacy from Raisley Calvert, 31; lives with his sister nt Racclown, 30; derotes liimself steadily to poetry, 30 ; writes various short pieces, 30-31 ; removes to Alfoxden in Somersetshire, 31; publishes Lyrical Ballads, 33 ; goes to Geriuany for four months, 33. 31; writes some of his finest pieces there, 34 ; begins The Prelude, 36; returns to Eng. land and settles at Grasmere, 37; cnvironment in the Lake district, 38-54; marriage, 55; narrow mcars, 56 ; solitary and uncrentful life, 57; description of the cottage at Grasmere, 57. 58; tour in the Highlands, 61 ; encounter with the two Highland girls, 63 ; beginning of frienilship with Sir George Beau. mont, 65; death of his brother John, 70; patriotic poems, 75 seq.; changes of residence, 85 settles finally at Rydal Mount 87; is appointed to the dis tributorship of stamps for Wes moreland, 88; declines the nio remunerative collectorship Whitehaven, 88; friends a.. neighbours at Rydal, 89; composes The Excursion, 89 seq.; picture of himself in Thc ITanderer, 89; adverse criticism of Thc Excursion in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Revicios, 95, 100; losses, 96, 100-101 ; dislike of publishing, 102; republislies his minor poems, 104 ; trans. lates parts of the neid, 112; writes Laorlunia, and other pocms, 114; his culminating point, 116-117, 121; writes the Erening Ode, 121; various tours, 154-756; visits Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, 155; juroductions of his later years, 157 ; Ecclesiastical Sketches, 157 ; opposition to the Reform Bill and other measures, 102; sudilen great popularity, 165 seq.; pulilication of the Ameri. can erlition of his poems, 166 ; receives the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxforil, 166 ; is placed ou the Civil List, 107; 19;

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