sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves." The political sonnets in the volume of 1807 show how ardently Wordsworth entered into the struggle maintained by England against the dominance of Napoleon Bonaparte. He looked upon his native country as now the champion at once of freedom and of order; and his reliance was not on her material strength, but on the awakened moral energy of the people and the righteousness of a great cause. Two years after the appearance of the "Poems," he published an elaborate pamphlet on "The Relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal," criticising, with great severity, as dishonourable, and therefore in the highest sense impolitic, the Convention of Cintra. He looked at events not from the point of view of a military expert, not even from the politician's point of view; but as one who saw that all present good and all hope for the future resided in the spiritual virtue of a nation. The people of the peninsula had risen against an intolerable tyranny; no temporary advantage in warfare, even supposing such an advantage were gained, could compensate the evil caused by an arrangement which thwarted or checked the noblest passions of an outraged race. No political prose so ardent and so weighty with solemn thought had been written since the days of Burke; but events had moved rapidly; when Wordsworth's pamphlet appeared the Convention was an accomplished fact of the past. His passionate meditation fell upon unheeding ears, yet it remains as a lofty interpretation of moral truths which exist independently of the occasion that called it forth. Another remarkable piece of Wordsworth's prose belongs in its ear

liest form to the year 1810- his "Guide to the Lakes," originally prefixed to a volume of "Views" drawn by the Rev. J. Wilkinson. In it the poet exhibits his mind working in an analytic way; he appears as a profound and searching student of the characteristics of landscape; he handles with complete intellectual mastery the matter which in his verse is rendered for the emotions and the imagination.

After a visit to London in the spring of 1807, Wordsworth returned, in company with Scott, to Coleorton. Later in the year he saw, for the first time, the beautiful country that surrounds Bolton Priory in Yorkshire, and gathered from its history and tradition material for "The White Doe of Rylstone," half of which was composed at Stockton-onTees, in November and December. When he reëntered his Grasmere cottage the poem was continued, but it remained unpublished until 1815. It is less a narrative of material events and outward action than of a process of the soul; yet with the purification through suffering of the spirit of his heroine, Wordsworth finely connects something of the decaying feudal temper and manners, something also of the beauty and the pathos of external nature; while in the doe, which is partly a gentle woodland creature and partly a spirit of fidelity and love, he finds, as it were, a visible presentment of the sanctity of Emily's moral being. The poem is one that grew from a sorrow chastened and subdued; it tells of the higher wisdom which came to Words- . worth himself through the discipline of affliction.

Dove Cottage was now hardly habitable by the Wordsworth household. On returning from London, whither he had been drawn by alarming accounts of Coleridge's health, Wordsworth, with his family, moved in the summer of 1808 to Allan Bank, a newly built house, situated upon a small height on the way from Grasmere to Easedale; and during

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the winter and for upwards of a year that followed, Coleridge, then engaged upon his periodical "The Friend," was their guest. For some time De Quincey was also received as a member of the household. A second daughter― Catherine— was added to Wordsworth's family, and in May, 1810, a son William- - his last-born child. Not many of his shorter poems belong to the period of residence at Allan Bank; he was for a time occupied with his Convention of Cintra pamphlet, and for a time with his essay on the district of the Lakes; but he also worked much upon The Excursion." When it was published in 1814 the public, then and during subsequent years engaged with Byron's poems and the Waverley novels, cared little for it. "The Excursion" indeed made a large demand upon the reader's thought and sympathy; it embodied a philosophy of life, which could interpret itself to the public only by degrees; it spoke of things which could be but slowly realized. Five hundred copies sufficed for the sales of six years; but Wordsworth bore neglect with equanimity. "I shall continue to write," he says to Southey, "with, I trust, the light of Heaven upon me."

Allan Bank, with smoky chimneys and damp walls, did not prove a very comfortable place of residence; the proprietor required it for his own use; and in the spring of 1811 Wordsworth took up a temporary abode at the parsonage close to the church at Grasmere. It became next year a home of sorrow. On June 4, 1812, little Catherine, a child. of most engaging disposition, died after a short illness; on December 1, Thomas, the best-beloved of the household, was lost. The father and mother could not endure to remain where every object oppressed their hearts with mournful remembrance; they felt it dutiful to seek the means of recovering tranquility. About two miles distant from Grasmere a beautifully situated dwelling-place- Rydal Mount

was about to become vacant; and in the spring of 1813 Wordsworth entered into possession of that house in which his remaining years were spent.

He had been fortunate in obtaining the post of distributor of stamps in the county of Westmoreland; the salary was £400 a year and the duties were not oppressive; his means, though not large, were yet sufficient. It was decided that John, the elder of his two surviving sons, should receive an University education; and while instructing the boy, Wordsworth revived his own interest in classical literature. His "Laodamia" and "Dion" are among the fruits of these studies in the classics; they have a dignity of expression, a poise of feeling, which contrast with some of his earlier poems. In 1814 Wordsworth again saw Scotland, was guided by Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, to Yarrow, and recorded in song his visit to that romantic stream. Yarrow was revisited many years later, in 1831, but the occasion had much of sadness, for at that moment Scott, broken in strength and spirits, was about to leave his home, seeking in vain for health in Italy. The year 1815 is memorable chiefly as that in which Wordsworth first collected his poetical works, and rearranged certain of them in groups corresponding to the faculty with which the grouped pieces are most clearly connected, Poems of the Imagination, Poems of the Fancy, Poems of Sentiment and Reflection. A preface set forth Wordsworth's views respecting the powers requisite for the production of poetry, its various kinds, and the distinction between fancy and imagination; the earlier preface to "Lyrical Ballads " was reprinted as an appendix. The poetry written in the year which followed the appearance of these volumes was chiefly suggested by political events. With the battle of Waterloo a great period of national struggle had closed; what the poet had prayed for and hoped was now accomplished; and he poured forth his gratitude and joy in

the "Thanksgiving Ode" and other kindred pieces which were published in 1816. That England should keep what now had been won seemed to Wordsworth more important than to seek for new things; his temper naturally grew more conservative; the danger from a foreign tyranny was at an end, but he feared internal dangers from a rash spirit of reform; he regarded the feudal power still surviving in England as a needful counterpoise to the popular power, already, as he believed, far in excess of the degree of knowledge and the standard of morals attained by the masses. In 1818 Wordsworth opposed with energy the candidature of Brougham for the representation in Parliament of the county of Westmoreland, and published two "Addresses to the Freeholders, in which he pleaded against overweening reformers as "the vanguard of a ferocious revolution." Little verse was written in that year; but to it belongs one poem of high spiritual import, that "Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty." His interest in earlier unpublished work, if it had declined, now revived; "Peter Bell," written long before, in the Alfoxden days, and "The Waggoner," a poem of 1805, were published separately in 1819; they were ridiculed, and "Peter Bell," admirable as are many passages, lent itself to ridicule, but they were read, and when, in 1820, a new edition of Wordsworth's miscellaneous poems was called for, these were included as a part of the collection. In the same year appeared the beautiful sequence of sonnets in which is traced the course of the river Duddon.

It was long since Wordsworth had travelled on the continent. In the autumn of 1820, accompanied by his wife. and sister and a few friends, he journeyed by the Rhine to Switzerland and the Italian lakes, returning by Paris. Journals kept by Mrs. Wordsworth, by Dorothy Wordsworth, and by Crabb Robinson, who joined the tourists at Lucerne, record the course and incidents of travel. A series of verse