turning their backs on the world, cutting themselves off from professions, chances of getting on, and settling down in an out-of-the-way corner, with no employment but verse-making, no neighbours but unlettered rustics. In the world's eye nothing but success will justify such a course, and the world will not be toe ready to grant that success has been attained. But Wordsworth, besides a prophet-like devotion to the truths he saw, had a prudence, self-denial, and perseverance rare among the sons of song. "Plain living and high thinking" were not only praised in verse, but acted out by him and his sister in that cottage home. The year 1800 was ushered in by a long storm, which blocked up the roads for months, and kept them much indoors. Spring set them free, and brought to them their much-loved sailor brother, John, who was captain of an Indiaman. There was one small room containing their few books, which was called, by courtesy, the library. But Wordsworth was no reader; the English poets and ancient history were the only subjects he was really well read in. He tells a friend that he had not spent five shillings on new books in as many years, and of the few old ones which made up his collection, he had not read one-fifth. As for his study, that was in the open air. "By the side of the brook that runs through Easdale," says he, "I have composed thousands of verses."

The first months at Grasmere were so industriously employed, that some time in the year 1800, when a second edition of the first volume of Lyrical Ballads was reprinting, he added to it a new volume. The old Earl of Lonsdale, who still withheld from the Wordsworths their due, died in 1802, and was succeeded by a better specimen of manhood, who not only paid the original debt of £5000, but also the whole interest, amounting to £3500. This £8500 was divided into five shares, two of which went to the poet and his sister. Being thus strengthened in worldly means, the poet, in October, 1802, enriched his fireside with a wife; the lady being Mary Hutchinson, his cousin, and the intimate friend of his sister. In August, 1803, Wordsworth and his sister set out from Keswick with Coleridge on their memorable tour in Scotland. They travelled great part of the way on foot, up Nithsdale, and so on towards the Highlands. Coleridge turned back soon after they had reached Loch Lomond, being either lazy or out of spirits. Everywhere, as they trudged along, they saw the old familiar Highlands sights, as if none had ever seen them before; and wherever they moved among the mountains, they left foot-prints of immortal beauty. He expressed what he saw in verse, she in prose, and it is hard to say which is the more poetic.

Early in 1805, the first great sorrow fell upon the poet's home, in the loss of his brother, Captain Wordsworth. He was leaving England, intending to make one more voyage, and then to return and live with his sister and brother, when his ship was run on the shambles of the Bill of Portland by the carelessness of the pilot, and he with the larger part of his crew perished. For a long time the poet was almost inconsolable, he so loved and honoured his brother. His letters at the time, and his poems long after, are darkened with this grief. Captain Wordsworth greatly admired his brother's poetry, but saw that it would take time to become popular, and would probably never be lucrative; so he would work for the family at Town-End, he said, and William would do something for the world.

In 1807, Wordsworth came out with two more volumes of poetry, mostly written at Grasmere. He was now in his thirty-seventh year, so that these volumes may be said to close the spring-time of his genius, and to be its consummate flower. Some of his later works many have equalled these, and may even show an increased moral depth and religious tenderness; but there is about the best of the Grasmere poems a touch of ethereal ideality which he perhaps never afterwards reached. Among these is the Ode on Intimations of Immortality, which marks the highest point that the tide of poetic inspiration has reached in England since the days of Milton.

The cottage at Town-End, Grasmere, was Wordsworth's home from the close of 1799 till the Spring of 1808. In the latter year, as that cottage was

too small for his increasing family, he moved to Allan Bank, -a new house, on the top of a knoll to the west of Grasmere, overlooking the lake. There he remained till 1811, Coleridge being an inmate of his home during the earlier part of that time. In the Spring of 1811, he was obliged to remove thence to the Parsonage of Grasmere, where his home was darkened by the loss of two of his little children, a boy and a girl, who were laid side by side in Grasmere churchyard. This affliction, which at the Parsonage was rendered insupportable by the continual sight of the graves, made the poet and his family glad to quit Grasmere for a new home at Rydal Mount, which offered itself in the Spring of 1813. This was their last migration, and there the poet and his wife lived till, many years after, they were carried back to join their children in Grasmere churchyard. Besides those two children, his family consisted of a daughter and two sons. The daughter, Dorothy, but commonly called "Dora," afterwards Mrs. Quillinan, died before her father; the sons still survive. Few poets have been by nature so fitted for domestic happiness, and fewer still have been blessed with so large a share of it. The strength and purity of his home affections, so deep and undisturbed, entered into all that he thought and sang. Herein may be said to have lain the heart of "central peace" that sustained the fabric of his life and poetry.

The foregoing Sketch is mainly condensed from Professor J. C. Shairp's admirable paper on Wordsworth in his Studies in Poetry and Philosophy. It seems needful to add a few particulars touching the poet's subsequent life. To the volumes of poetry already mentioned, others were added from time to time, as, The Excursion, in 1814; The White Do: of Rylstone, in 1815; Peter Bell, and The Waggoner, in 1819; The River Duddon and other Poems, in 1820; Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, and Ecclesiastical Sonnets, in 1822; Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems, in 1835. After the latter date, he wrote but little poetry, chiefly sonnets, which were subsequently distributed among the earlier pieces. Towards the close of his life, he gathered together all the poems of his then in print that he cared to preserve, gave them a careful revision, (in fact he was always revising them,) rearranged them, and set them forth in a collected edition. The Prelude, though written before The Excursion, was not published till after his death.

About the time of his settlement at Rydal Mount, Wordsworth was appointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland county. This office brought him a considerable addition of income; in fact, secured him an easy competence; while its conditions were such as to disburden him of private cares, without oppressing him with public ones; thus releasing him from anxiety, and at the same time leaving his freedom and leisure unimpaired. From this time onward his life flowed in an even, tranquil course: his whole heart was in his home, his whole soul in his high calling as a poet: every year brought him increasing returns of honour and gratitude from those who had deeply felt the blessing of his genius and wisdom: his great, simple, earnest mind had all that it needed for delight and nourishment in the grand and lovely forms and aspects of Nature that waited on his steps, and in the widening circle of friends whom he had himself inspired with congenial thoughts and congenial tastes: so that he was conducted to an old age as beautiful and free, perhaps, as ever fell to the lot of any human being.

On the death of Southey, in March, 1843, the office of Poet Laureate, thus made vacant, was, with the full approval of the Queen, offered to Wordsworth. He at first declined the honour on the ground of his being too far advanced in age to undertake the duties of the office. This brought him a special letter from Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, urging his acceptance, and assur ing him that "the offer was made, not for the purpose of imposing on him any onerous or disagreeable duties, but in order to pay him that tribute of respect which was justly due to the first of living poets.' With this understanding, he accepted the appointment. The office was, indeed, well bestowed: old as

he was, and past bearing further fruit of song, the laureate wreath of England surely never invested worthier brows.

In July, 1847, the poet's only daughter, Dora, then Mrs. Quillinan, died. The event was no surprise either to herself or to others: knowing her end was near for some time before it came, she looked at it calmly, and met it as became a soul that had lived in the presence of so much moral beauty. Still the affliction bore hard upon her aged parents, and would probably have been too much for them, but that they had the full strength of Christian faith to console and sustain them. On the 23d day of April, 1850, the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, and also of his death, Wordsworth himself died, his age being eighty years and sixteen days. He was buried, according to his declared wish, beside his children in Grasmere churchyard. Mrs. Wordsworth survived her husband some three years, and was then gathered to his side.

For a long series of years Wordsworth's poetry had decidedly up hill work, and made its way very slowly. He can hardly be said even to have found the "fit audience, though few:" he had to educate his own audience, and that, too, from the bottom upwards; had to develop the faculties for understanding him, and create the taste to enjoy him. The critical law-givers of the time, or those who passed for such, were nearly all down upon him from the first: the Edinburgh Review, whose verdict was then well-nigh omnipotent with the reading public, could see neither truth nor beauty in his works, and had nothing but obloquy and ridicule to bestow upon them; in fact all the dogs of criticism, big and little," Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart," joined in barking against him, and kept up their miserable chorus of vituperation, till they were fairly shamed out of it by a new generation of thinkers and writers.

Through this long pelting of detraction the poet stood unmoved; it seems indeed not to have hurt so much as his patience. Writing, in May, 1807, to a very dear friend, who had expressed great uneasiness on his account, he has the following: "It is impossible 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. 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 world, among those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, 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."

Again, wishing to make his friend as easy-hearted as himself on the subject, he continues thus: "Trouble not yourself upon their present reception; of what moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny? To console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, to 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 in us) are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware how far it would seem to many I overrate my own exertions, when I speak in this way. I am not, however, afraid of such censure, insignificant as probably the majority of those poems would appear to very respectable persons. I do not mean London wits and witlings, for these have too many foul passions about them to be respectable, even if they had more intellect than the benign laws of Providence will allow to such a heartless existence as theirs; but grave, kindly-natured worthy persons, who would be pleased if they could. I hope that these vol

umes are not without some recommendations, even for readers of this class; but their imagination has slept; and the voice which is the voice of my poetry, without imagination, cannot be heard."

I must quote one passage more, where the poet is referring to that portion of his contemporaries who were called the reading public: "Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read books; they merely snatch a glance at them, that they may talk about them. And even if this were not so, never forget what, I believe, was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen; this, in a certain degree, even to all persons, however wise and pure may be their lives, and however unvitiated their taste. But for those who dip into books in order to give an opinion of them, or talk about them to take up an opinion, - for this multitude of unhappy, and misguided, and misguiding beings, an entire regeneration must be produced; and if this be possible, it must be a work of time. To conclude, my ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings; and, after what I have said, I am sure yours will be the same. I doubt not you will share with me an invincible confidence that my writings will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society wherever found; and that they will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier."

A great deal has been written upon Wordsworth; for, in truth, no one who has once been fairly touched by his power, or caught the spirit of his poetry, can ever shake off its influence, or keep from thinking about it. Probably the most searching and most deeply-considered criticism that his works have called forth is found in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, written while the tempest of detraction against Wordsworth was in full blast. At the close of that masterly review, the best piece of poetical criticism, I suspect, in the language, Coleridge sums up the merits of his friend's poetry as follows: "First: An austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely, its untranslatableness in words of the same language, without injury to the meaning. Be it observed, however, that I include in the meaning of a word, not only its correspondent object, but likewise all the associations which it recalls. In poetry it is practicable to preserve the diction uncorrupted by the affectations and misappropriations which promiscuous authorship, and reading, not promiscuous only because it is disproportionally conversant with the compositions of the day, have rendered general. Yet, even to the poet, composing in his own province, it is an arduous work; and, as the result and pledge of a watchful good sense, of fine and luminous distinction, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the honour which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable, and the more valuable for being rare.

"The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's works is a correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, won, not from books, but from the poet's own meditative observation. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. His Muse, at least when in her strength of wing, and when she hovers aloft in her proper element,

Makes audible a linkèd lay of truth,

Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes.

"Both in respect of this and of the former excellence, Mr. Wordsworth strikingly resembles Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our golden

Elizabethan age, now most causelessly neglected; Samuel Daniel, whose diction bears no mark of time, no distinction of age; which has been, and, as long as our language shall last, will be, so far the language of to-day and for ever, as that it is more intelligible to us than the transitory fashions of our own particular age. A similar praise is due to his sentiments. No frequency of perusal can deprive them of their freshness. For though they are brought into the full day-light of every reader's comprehension, yet are they drawn up from depths which few in any age are privileged to visit, into which few in any age have courage or inclination to descend. If Mr. Wordsworth is not, equally with Daniel, alike intelligible to all readers of average understanding in all passages of his works, the comparative difficulty does not arise from the greater impurity of the ore, but from the nature and uses of the metal. A poem is not necessarily obscure, because it does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a work be perspicuous to those for whom it is written, and 'fit audience find, though few.'

"Third, -and wherein he soars far above Daniel:- The sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction. This beauty, and as eminently characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry, his rudest assailants have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge and admire.

"Fourth: The perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colours its objects; but, on the contrary, brings out many a vein and many a tint which escape the eye of common observation, thus raising to the rank of gems what had been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the traveller on the high road of custom.

"Fifth: A meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtile thought with sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy indeed of a contemplator, rather than a fellow-sufferer or co-mate, (spectator haud particeps,) but of a contemplator from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, of toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The superscription and the image of the Creator remain legible to him under the dark lines with which guilt or calamity had cancelled or cross-barred it. Here the man and the poet lose and find themselves in each other, the one as glorified, the latter as substantiated. In this mild and philosophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer. Such he is: so he writes.

"Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of IMAGINATION in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of Fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and is sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature of predetermined research, rather than spontancous presentation. Indeed his fancy seldom displays itself as mere and unmodified fancy. But in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an illustration, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects

I must add, that Wordsworth was far from being an overweening truster in his own genius. On the contrary, he was a most earnest, careful, painstaking