Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland (487) Written in London, September, 1802 (O friend) (487) It is not to be Thought of that the Flood (489) . When I have Borne in Memory what has Tamed (489) October, 1803 (These times strike monied worldlings) (489) Composed by the Side of Grasmere Lake, 1807 (492) Upon the Sight of a Beautiful Picture (501) Surprised by Joy - Impatient as the Wind (501) The Same, continued (They dreamed not of a perishable home) (507). 337 INTRODUCTION. I. FACTS OF WORDSWORTH'S LIFE. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the second child of John Wordsworth, an attorney, was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. His mother, whose maiden name was Anne Cookson, was the daughter of a mercer at Penrith. The Wordsworths were an old and respectable Yorkshire family; but if we are to trace an inheritance of genius, it must rather be sought in the poet's maternal ancestry. The boy, physically vigorous and active, was of a moody and violent temper. In 1778 his mother died, and in the same year he was sent to the grammar school at Hawkshead, close to Esthwaite Lake, where he remained, boarding in the cottage of a village dame, for about six years. A record, deeply interesting, of the growth of his mind during those years may be read in the opening books of his autobiographical poem, "The Prelude." Under William Taylor (idealized as the "Matthew" of his poems) and other masters Wordsworth became a good Latin scholar; he read for his amusement in Fielding, Swift, Cervantes, and Le Sage; but the chief influences of the time were those of woodland and fell, lake and mountain; in these he had more than the common delight of boyhood - his animal gladness was often spiritualized, or startled and awed by imaginative perceptions and feelings. Already as a schoolboy he had begun to write in verse; and among these early compositions, he tells us, was a long poem running upon my own ee adventures, and the scenery of the country in which I was brought up." Before his fourteenth year was complete Wordsworth had lost his father. He passed with his brothers — Richard, afterwards a solicitor, Christopher, the future Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and John, who was to become a sailor under the guardianship of uncles, and in 1787 was entered as a student at St. John's College, Cambridge. In consequence of having a considerable start of his fellowstudents in mathematics, he had abundance of leisure time. He did not aim at university distinctions, but read classical authors for his pleasure, studied Italian under an acquaintance of the poet Gray, Agostino Isola, learned some French and a little Spanish, and enjoyed, without excess, the social pleasures of the place. The periods most stimulating to his mind were the long vacations; the summer of 1788 was spent among the English lakes; in 1789 he wandered amid the beautiful scenery of Derbyshire and Yorkshire with his sister Dorothy and her friend Mary Hutchinson, both dear companions; in the following year — during the early days of the French Revolutionary movement-he accomplished, with his college friend Robert Jones, a pedestrian tour, unusual at that time, through France, Switzerland, and the Italian lake country, returning by the Rhine. His first studies of English landscape are embodied in his early poem "An Evening Walk"; his continental travel furnished the material for "Descriptive Sketches." These poems were separately published in 1793. Having taken his degree, Wordsworth spent the spring months of 1791 in London, entering with much imaginative interest into the life of the great city. During the summer he was with his friend Jones in North Wales; they toured on foot through valley and by stream, and climbed Snowdon by moonlight to witness from its summit the break of day (see |