WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, THIS THIS poet, whose works now occupy so large a space in English literature, was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, in April 1770. His father was law-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale, and that noble family in after years always kept a kindly watch over the welfare of the son. One of his brothers, Christopher, was afterwards well known as Dr Wordsworth, the master of Trinity College. The poet dedicated the 'Sonnets to the Duddon' to him, and at his death committed to his son the preparation of his biography. Another brother was commander of the Abergavenny East Indiaman, and perished in that ill-fated vessel. He seems to have been a man of susceptible temperament, and of a gentle and affectionate disposition, and his untimely fate was among the heaviest blows William ever experienced. His sister Emmeline was the constant companion of the poet down to the day of her death, and has left one or two of her poetical effusions mingled among his. She was a woman of exquisite sensibility, and of pure and well-stored mind, and was a great favourite not only with her brother, who has commemorated her in numerous beautiful pieces, but of all with whom she came in contact. Coleridge, one of the finest judges of female character, was charmed with her, and has left in one of his letters a delightful sketch of her manners and appearance. Wordsworth seems to have considered the domestic hearth too sacred for defined portraiture, and he has left no picture of his father, and, except in the 'Prelude,' only a single one of his mother. It depicts her watching him with fluttering heart, as he appeared before the vicar with his companions— 'A trembling, earnest company.' 'How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me, It was into the bosom of this cultivated English family that the old English spirit chose to descend in one of its noblest and purest forms. In due time the young poet was sent to Hawkeshead Grammar School, which was then under the mastership of a relative. We have few notices of his schoolboy life, but it is stated that he prosecuted with great zeal the study of the classics; and there can be no doubt, from such poems as 'Dion' and 'Laodamia,' that the stately and sculptural spirit of the highest classic poetry must have entered into and become a part of his very being. It is not unlikely that this would combine, with his passionate devotion to nature, to heighten his radical disinclination to join in the every-day occupations and sympathise with the ordinary interests of the world. If there be no high moral law by which a great poet is produced in immediate contact with the scenes most fitted to develop his peculiar genius-a law in no degree more inconceivable than that by which the camel is located among the sands of Arabia-it was, at all events, a happy accident which cast Wordsworth's lot among the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland. That whole district may be said to stand single in the world, and to have in the peculiar character of its beauty no parallel elsewhere. It is in the concentration of every variety of loveliness into a compass which in extent does not greatly tax the powers of the pedestrian, that it fairly defies rivalry, and affords the richest pabulum to the poetical faculty. There every form of mountain, rock, lake, stream, wood, and plain, from the conformation of the country, is crowded with the most prodigal abundance into a few square miles. Coleridge characterises it as a 'cabinet of beauties.' 'Each thing,' says he, is beautiful in itself; and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or valley to another is itself a beautiful thing again.' Wordsworth, in his own 'Description of the Country of the Lakes,' dwells with the zest and minuteness of idolatry upon every feature of that treasury of landscape. The idea he gives of the locality is very perfect and graphic. If the tourist were seated on a cloud midway between Great Gavel and Scafell, and only a few yards above their highest elevation, he would look down to the westward on no fewer than nine different valleys, diverging away from that point, like spokes from the nave of a wheel, towards the vast rim formed by the sands of the Irish Sea. These vales-Langdale, Coniston, Duddon, Eskdale, Wastdale, Ennerdale, Buttermere, Borrowdale, and Keswickx-are of every variety of character; some with, and some without lakes; some richly fertile, and some awfully desolate. Shifting from the cloud, if the tourist were to fly a few miles eastward, to the ridge of old Helvellyn, he would find the wheel completed by the vales of Wytheburn, Ulswater, Hawswater, Grasmere, Rydal, and Ambleside, which bring the eye round again to Winandermere, in the vale of Langdale, from which it set out. From the sea or plain country all round the circumference of this fairy-land, along the gradually-swelling uplands, to the mighty mountains that group themselves in the centre, the infinite varieties of view may be imagined-varieties made still more luxuriant by the different position of each valley towards the rising or setting sun. Thus a spectator in the vale of Winandermere will in summer see its golden orb going down over the mountains, while the spectator in Keswick will at the same moment mark it diffusing its glories over the low grounds. In this delicious land, dyed in a splendour of evershifting colours, the old customs and manners of England still lingered in the youth of Wordsworth, and took a firm hold of his heart, modifying all his habits and opinions. Though a deluge of strangers had begun to set in towards this retreat, and even the spirit of the factory threatened to invade it, still the dalesmen were impressed with that character of steadiness, repose, and rustic dignity, which has always possessed irresistible charms for the poet. Their cottages, which, from the numerous irregular additions made to them, seemed rather to have grown than to have been built, were covered over with lichens and mosses, and blended insensibly into the landscape, as if they were not human creations, but constituent parts of its own loveliness. In this old English Eden, all his schoolboy days, Wordsworth wandered restlessly, drawn hither and thither by his irresistible passion for nature, and receiving into his soul those remarkable photographs which were afterwards to delight his countrymen. There can be no doubt that the charms of this lake scenery added still more strength to the poet's peculiar tendencies, and developed a conservative sentiment, which, though temporarily overcome, afterwards reared itself up in haughtier majesty than before. The poet was naturally led to indulge much in out-of-door wanderings and pastimes, such as skating, of which he has left a picture unapproachable in its vividness and precision. Considering the effect of Wordsworth's subsequent theories upon his style, it is remarkable how pure, unaffected, and dignified it was at this time. Indeed, so far as style is concerned, he never, even in the vigour of manhood, excelled his juvenile productions. In 1786 he wrote some verses in anticipation of leaving school, which are chaste and sweet. Thus, in illustration of the idea, that wherever he might be, he would ever turn his look backward to his native regions—he says— "Thus from the precincts of the west A lingering lustre fondly throws On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose. Among his sonnets there is one written in very early youth, which is remarkable for precocious maturity of diction :— 'Calm is all nature as a resting wheel: The kine are couched upon the dewy grass; Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal Is hushed am I at rest. My Friends! restrain The officious touch that makes me droop again!' In the year 1789, also, two small pieces were produced which in simplicity and melody he never afterwards surpassed. The one is that beginning 'Glide gently, thus for ever glide,' which has been always much admired; the other is brief enough for quotation. It is entitled, 'Lines Written while Sailing in a Boat at Evening' 'How richly glows the water's breast Such views the youthful bard allure; Who would not cherish dreams so sweet, Though grief and pain may come to-morrow?' In 1787 Wordsworth went to Cambridge, but at every convenient opportunity he seems to have made his escape, and pedestrianised among his beloved lakes and mountains. Even at this early date he had fixed on Grasmere as his future place of abode. In the 'Evening Walk,' which he was engaged in composing during this and the two following years, and which consisted of a series of very striking pictures of the Lake country, he thus alludes to this darling object of his life: "Even now hope decks for me a distant scene Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of death.' He varied these trips by a tour among the magnificent mountains of Wales with Mr Jones, afterwards a clergyman of the Church of England; and in 1790 the two made a pedestrian journey through France and Switzerland to the north of Italy. The 'Descriptive Sketches' arose out of this ramble. It is strikingly illustrative of the effect of the first French Revolution on the European mind, that even the inflexible intellect of Wordsworth was carried away in the general whirl. Indeed he seems at this time to have been subject to a subdued melancholy, or even misanthropy, in looking on the ordinary ways of men, and particularly of politicians. The uprising of the French stirred his blood like 'the sound of a trumpet;' and in common with all the young and ardent spirits of the time, he looked for the advent of a new and more blessed era. He seems by the tone of his 'Sketches' to have thought with Rousseau, that the 'state of nature' is the condition most favourable to virtue and dignity; and with Shelley, that it is the rulers of the world who 'blast, the human flower in its bud.' Southey and Coleridge, no less eagerly than Byron, were gazing across the Channel on the great drama enacting before the eyes of an excited world; while Wordsworth, strange to say, more impetuous than any of them, placed his knap sack on his back, and with staff in his hand, set out on his pilgrimage to the promised land. All France was in a delirium of enthusiasm: everywhere the rattle of arms and the flapping of the tri-coloured banner. Every warlike sound was music to Wordsworth's ear as he plodded along the endless avenues of elms. To him it seemed that 'From every cot the watchful bird Crowed with ear-piercing power till then unheard.' The following prayer shows how deeply the youthful poet had imbibed the revolutionary infection : 'Grant that every sceptred child of clay Who cries, presumptuous, "Here the flood shall stay!" And cease the acknowledged purpose to withstand; Or swept in anger from the insulted shore, Sink with his servile bands to rise no more." In this wild exaltation of feeling he ascended among the mists and cataracts of the Swiss mountains; and the style and language in which he has embodied his recollections are totally unlike those usual to him, and sometimes remind one of flames crackling and forcing upward through the narrow crater of a volcano. Still, however, his exquisite poetical taste enabled him to extract from his tour more pleasure than is possible to the ordinary pedestrian. He has recorded his experiences and ideas of such perambulations in lines which ought to be learned by rote, as the poetic manual of all travellers on foot. These and future excursions must at that time have cost money; and from a sonnet composed in gratitude to Raisley Calvert, we are led to believe that he was considerably indebted to that gentleman for at least a part of his power to rove wherever fancy carried him. Thus between desultory study and perpetual wandering his college time was spent. He has himself recorded in his posthumous work the 'Prelude' the development of his mind at Cambridge, so far as it was possible to do so with accuracy, looking back from a more mature period of life. In his first session he seems to have given himself up with all the zest of a novice to the boatings, the drivings, the fêtes, and the frivolities that enlivened the banks of the Cam. These unusual gaieties relaxed to some extent the tone of his imagination; and even the delight he felt on first revisiting the scenes of his boyhood scarcely reawakened the poesy within him. But the old familiar objects, and the impressive changes that had passed during his brief absence over many dear friends among the mountains, tended to solemnise his thoughts; and when he returned to the university, it was with a deeper love towards the spiritual world of books. His studies, however, do not appear to have been pursued on any rigid system. He affected, as his inclinations led him, occasionally the classics, and occasionally the abstract sciences; and even in his riper years he felt it difficult to determine whether this careless roving of the intellect tended more to strengthen or to debilitate. In 1793 he graduated, and published his first poetical venture, 'The Evening Walk,' and 'Descriptive Sketches,' already referred to. These works contained no trace whatever of any tendency to that theory which after |