CHAPTER XIII.

POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

William

1770-1850.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

MR. JOHN STUART MILL made an unfortunate statement when he called Wordsworth "the Wordsworth, poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes." On the contrary, we should be inclined to say that Wordsworth makes larger demands on a man's capacity for receiving the highest poetic truth than any poet of this century. He never meets his readers half-way, makes no attempt to allure them to his side, but is content to sow his poetic seed, and, like the farmer, to leave its growth and fruit to the influences of

nature.

William Wordsworth, the second son of John Wordsworth, an attorney, was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. His mother died when the child was eight years old,

active part in

and his father when he was thirteen. Thus it will be seen that neither parent took an moulding the character of their son. Of his school days at Hawkesworth, an interesting account is given in the "Prelude." If ever the child is father of the man" it was so in Wordsworth's case, and while still a boy he received joyously, but unconsciously, the lessons taught by the common face of nature. The simple ways, he tells us, in which his childhood walked, first led him to the love of rivers, woods, and fields. The vivid impressions of those happy days were never lost. From school, thanks to the kindness of two good uncles, he went up to St. John's, Cambridge, where he does not seem to have made much progress in the special studies of the place. A vacation spent in a walking tour through Switzerland, an enterprise quite unusual in those days, marked a characteristic in Wordsworth which continued through life. De Quincey calculates that long before the close of it he had walked nearly two hundred thousand miles. He had more faith in his legs than in a carriage, and not without justice, for he knew nothing of horses; and his sister relates how, upon having to unharness one from a cart, he was unable-and Coleridge was in the same dilemma-to lift the collar over the horse's neck. Wordsworth took his degree at Cambridge, without honours, in 1791, and after a delay of some months went to France, spending the greater portion of a year at Orleans and Blois. The fever of the times infected the youthful poet

as it infected Coleridge and Southey. He trusted in the Revolution to regenerate society, not having yet learned that by the soul only can a nation be great and free. The massacres of October, 1792, dismayed him; but he would have offered his services as a leader of the Girondist party had not the want of money brought him back to England

"Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven." With defeated hopes and a loss of faith in human nature, Wordsworth fell into a sea of doubt, and was tempted, as he tells us, to yield up moral questions in despair. His sister Dorothy came at this time like a guardian angel, and her influence saved him, keeping him

"True to the kindred points of heaven and home."

The entire sympathy of taste between William and Dorothy, the warmth and constancy of their affection, what each did for the other, the poems Dorothy inspired, the love William gave her in return,—all this must be read at large, and can only be alluded to here. In 1795, Wordsworth, then twenty-five years old, had neither profession nor prospects. Early in the year his friend Raisley Calvert died, leaving the poet, who had already published a small volume, a legacy of £900. This sum, coming thus opportunely, enabled Wordsworth to devote himself to poetry as his life's work. Some years afterwards he wrote: "Upon the interest of the £900, £400 being laid out in annuity, with £200 deducted from the principal, and £100,

a legacy to my sister, and £100 more which the Lyric Ballads" have brought me, my sister and I have contrived to live seven years, nearly eight."

*

Together they settled at Racedown, in Dorsetshire, and there for the first time Coleridge and Wordsworth met. Each was the inspirer of the other, and at Nether-Stowey, in Somersetshire, whither the Wordsworths removed in order to be near Coleridge, the genius of that poet produced its ripest fruit, and there Wordsworth also wrote some of his most characteristic poems. The 'Lyrical Ballads," for which the good Cottle, of Bristol, gave Wordsworth thirty guineas, was published in 1798. A visit to Germany followed, and the brother and sister, instead of learning the language by intercourse with the natives, shut themselves up with books and dictionaries; and the winter being unprecedently severe, were almost frozen for their pains. In the spring of 1799 they returned to England, and, after travelling with Coleridge in the Lake district, settled at Grasmere. Several happy and busily poetical years were spent in the tiny Grasmere cottage, to which, in 1802, the poet brought his wife, whose maiden name was Mary Hutchinson. She inspired Wordsworth's lovely lyric" She was a Phantom of Delight," and doubled the happiness of what was already one of

* "I think," says Sara Coleridge, "there was never so close a union between two such eminent minds in any age, They were together, and in intimate communion at the most vigorous, the most inspired periods of the lives of both."

the happiest of lives. Children were born here, and in the course of these years Wordsworth published more volumes of poetry.

A tour in Scotland, made for ever memorable by his sister's diary, is also noteworthy as the occasion of the poet's first introduction to Scott, then living in his pretty cottage at Lasswade. Soon after returning to Grasmere, where, to quote from Dorothy's notes, they found "Mary in perfect health, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire," Wordsworth went over the mountains to Greta Hall, Keswick, Coleridge's temporary home, and the residence for life of the more constant Southey. "Southey," he writes, "whom I never saw much of before, I liked much; he is very pleasant in his manner, and a man of great reading in old books." Wordsworth, it may be observed, could not sympathize with the keenest enjoyment of his friend. He cared little for books, and his study, as a servant once observed to visitors, was in the open air. He was always "booing about," to use the words of a country neighbour, and the beauty of the scenery he knew so well is reflected in his poetry.

The Wordsworths took possession of Rydal Mount in 1813, leaving behind them two children in Grasmere churchyard. This change of residence is the most prominent event for many years in his happily eventless history, unless we may give precedence to his appointment as distributor of stamps for the counties of Westmoreland and