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Ebook has 403 lines and 64645 words, and 9 pages

Release date: December 2, 2023

Original publication: London: Partridge & Oakley, 1852

MEMOIRS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

LONDON, PARTRIDGE & OAKEY.

MEMOIRS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

COMPILED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES;

WITH

NUMEROUS QUOTATIONS FROM HIS POEMS, ILLUSTRATIVE OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.

BY JANUARY SEARLE,

LONDON: PARTRIDGE & OAKEY, PATERNOSTER ROW.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

William Wordsworth is the father of a new school of Poetry, and his name marks an era in the literature of England, which is full of deep interest to the philosophical inquirer. He began his career with profound convictions respecting the nature and functions of poetry; its dignity as an art, and the immense capabilities it afforded for the utterance of sublime and ennobling truths, and for the furtherance of human liberty and happiness. He saw, too, that the old Harp of the Bards was profaned by the touch of uninspired, and even frivolous hands; and he determined, if possible, to rescue it from their keeping, and restore it once again to its divine uses, and ancient melody. To accomplish this grand object, he devoted all his faculties and culture, and was so deeply impressed with the idea that this was his especial mission upon earth, that he retired amongst the mountains and lakes of Westmoreland--a solemn and lonely man--holding converse with the Invisible through the Visible forms of Nature, and thus fitting himself for the priestly office to which he aspired. And in all the years of his noviciate--through all the time when, by universal acclamation, he stood crowned with the sacred laurels of the Bard--and his mission was accredited by all men--he never for a moment flagged in his purpose, or stooped to the garlands of fame,--but gathering his prophet's mantle around him, he pursued his undeviating course, alike regardless of applause, condemnation, and persecution. He had looked well into his own heart, before he set out on his perilous enterprise; had measured well his own strength of purpose, and capability of performance; knew, in short, what he had to do, and did it.

To appreciate fully, however, the historical position of William Wordsworth, and the value of his labours, it will be necessary to take a retrospective view of the literature which preceded him, or at least to state its leading characteristics. The grand old era of Shakspeare and his cotemporaries had long since passed away, and the noble music of Milton's song had ceased to thrill the hearts and souls of men. The brilliant, half-inspired writers in the reign of Queen Anne, who came to represent the national mind at the close of our Augustan epoch, had formed a school of Poetry in England,--at once witty and sententious, profound and hollow; without heart or genius; and with nothing but talent and culture to recommend it. Pope, who may be considered the head of this school, set the seal of his intellect upon the cotemporary and subsequent literature of that era. He had rivals whom he stung to silence, and covered with contempt by his satires, and imitators whom he fondled and despised. Pope and his compeers were, however, kings and priests of song, compared with the herd of twangsters who succeeded them. The fancy and wit, the philosophy and refinement of Pope, were sunk and lost in the barrel-grinding of these imitators of his style; and Poetry was stripped of its subjective attributes, and lived only as a mechanical form.--This at all events is true of the writers professedly of the Pope school; and the few exceptions, for upwards of fifty years after his death, owe what little fame they possess to their own little originality.

In all the departments of literature, the same lifelessness and uniformity were manifest. The deadest materialism prevailed both in science and philosophy, and the national soul seemed paralyzed beneath the weight of a dire, unknown, unseen incubus of death. In the meanwhile, however, there were influences at work both in England and Europe, which were silently preparing the way for a revolution in the thoughts and opinions of men. The spiritual element awoke in Germany and France, and like a mighty, but half-blind god, began to react upon the materialism of the age. Then, for the first time since the close of the Commonwealth, did the pulse of England begin, also, to beat with the music of life and health. The importations of German sentimentality--mawkish and imbecile as they often were--touched the right chords in the English heart, and roused it to consciousness. Men saw that there was new life struggling under this ghastly utterance, and began to lose their faith in the dead formalism, which they had so long hugged in their idolatry. Their minds were gradually turned to the old grandees of Elizabeth's reign: to Shakspeare and rare Ben Jonson, and to Spenser, Beaumont and Fletcher, until, at last, the reactionary currents had fairly set in, which were to cleanse the national mind of its disease, and restore it to health. Add to this, that the higher minds of England were already immersed in those metaphysical speculations which, whilst they confirmed the increasing spiritual tendency, gave earnestness to their aim and character. And when, at last, after Rouseau and Voltaire--the two poles of the great revolutionary idea of Europe--had flung their works into the cauldron of this vast, seething, reactionary fermentation--the wonderous phenomenon, which we call the French Revolution, burst upon the world--the reaction was complete, and a new epoch dawned upon man--the epoch, viz., of progress and humanity--which will never close until its mission is sealed with the liberty and happiness of mankind.

Such, then, is a slight sketch of the characteristics of the age into which Wordsworth was born. He came in time to catch the full surges of its influence, and his spirit was one of the few destined to aid the onward tide of events, and mould their flowing forms into a fixed and plastic beauty. Not, however, by any active mingling with the affairs of men, for this was clearly no part of his vocation, but by silent watching and contemplative thought, and the faithful exercise of his poetic faculties. The political arena was open to more daring, and less costly men, who could do their temporary work and disappear without farther loss to the nation: but the poet had a greater and more enduring work to accomplish; he was to become the architect of a new literature and the singer of a new gospel of life to the world. The growing earnestness of his age demanded a voice to speak for it--many voices, indeed, each in its proper province of feeling and of thought. And in no province was this voice more loudly called for than in that of poetry, for death reigned in all the courts of the poetic temple, and every priest was a corpse which the muse had stuck about with flowers, that she might conceal even from herself the sorrowful fact of her desertion and utter misery. Wordsworth came to tear away the mask, and spurn the dead from her temple.

And yet Wordsworth is abused for his tameness and want of inspiration! Dead asses and idiots, Peter Bells and Waggoners, it is said, are not elevated facts enough for poetry! The foolish objectors do not understand how all poetry is based upon facts, and how the most obscure things become purified and poetic, when they are raised by imagination, and placed in new connections of thought. It is the province of the Poet to elevate the homely, and to beautify the mean. To him, indeed, nothing is mean, nothing worthless. What God has made, he, the exponent of God, shall love and honour.

It is our acknowledged want of sympathy with the common, which induced Wordsworth to devote his life and attention to the awakening of it. He knew that whatever is touched by genius is converted into gold, and stamped thenceforth as sacred, by the impress of its image. The Betty Foys of human existence, although they, too, are "encompassed by eternity," and destined to the same futurity as the Queens Elizabeth and Mary, have never, before Wordsworth's time, had a poetic priest high enough to make them religious by his love and fidelity to them. It required immense faith and majesty of mind to hazard the experiment; so plebeian are all Betsies that wear red cloaks and black bonnets, instead of ermines and crowns. Wordsworth, however, did not care for names and orders, but saw and worshipped humanity alone. He has dared, therefore, to say and to maintain, through a long and honourable life, that Elizabeth Foy was as much of a man as Elizabeth Queen. He has linked together the throne and the cottage through all their manifold gradations. He has, of course, had his full share of abuse for this heroic and triumphant effort; but the good old Skiddaw-granite-rock of a man was not to be moved by abuse, but continued to sing and preach in his solitude, with the solemnity and witchery of a Memnon statue.

Every new poet--every genius indeed that is divine--is a notification to us that the world of things is about to be classified anew, and to assume a deeper meaning. And certainly one would think that so great an announcement might gladden the hearts of men, instead of making them savage and ferocious at it. For of all men the poet is highest and noblest. He is the awful Seer, who unveils the spirit of Nature and looks with solemn and unscathed eyes upon her naked loveliness and terror. The Beloved of God, he is admitted into the very presence of the Invisible, and reports, in such wild and strange words as he can find, the sights he has beheld there. He is the renovator of man and Nature. He lifts the human soul upon his daring wings, and carries it into light and immortality. In his words we behold the re-creation of the universe. We see Orion, like the starry skeleton of a mighty giant, go forth into the solitudes of unfathomable space; we witness the planting of the solar stars, and hear the everlasting roar of the vast sun, as it wheels, seething from God's hands, upon its fiery axis; and these unspeakable sights are heightened in their magnificence and terrific grandeur by the poet, who holds us fast to their symbolical meaning, and chains them to the being of God, as the expressions in appearance of His thoughts and will.

It is necessary that we here make a few extracts from Wordsworth's defence, if we may call it so, of his manner of writing, in order that the reader may be prepared for a right appreciation of his poetry. In speaking of his poems as a whole, he says:--

It will be seen from this extract, that Wordsworth has no sympathy with the inflammations of Literature. His mission is with the ordinary, the beauty and philosophy of which he has devoted his life to expound. He has flung a charm over existences which Nature did not seem before him to love as her children; and we honour him for the great work which he has accomplished.

MEMOIR OF

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The poet was second son of his father, and spent most of his early days at Cockermouth. He was subsequently removed to Hawkshead grammar school. And here, properly speaking, his true history begins. In the "Prelude," a poem but lately published, we have a full account of his boyish ways, and experiences, and a complete record of the development of his mind.

This poem is, therefore, doubly valuable, both as a psychological and literary performance. True it is that, like all Wordsworth's poems, on their first appearance, it has been exceedingly well abused, and that too by men who have eyes to see, and understandings wherewith to understand; which is singular; but the poem is not the less a great vestibule, or outer porch to a great poetic temple for all that. In reading it, I seem to be walking up through the long dim avenues of eternity with the young soul of the poet, and listening to its half remembered ideas of the unspeakable glory from which it has come--itself radiant with immortal lustres--and bursting out, ever and anon, in an ecstacy of rapturous wonder at the mystic and beautiful revelations of Time--the grand and everflowing pageantry of nature,--its woods, mountains, streams, and heavenly hosts of stars. For it is certain that this, or something like this, is the impression one receives, whilst following the poet, in the manifold disclosures which he makes of his own spiritual and mental development: he will not let go the glory of his birth, but cleaves to it, as to the title of some grand heritage, which he shall one day possess. And it is this, and its kindred spiritual ideas, which give the mystic tinge and colouring to all Wordsworth's higher poetry, as if it had been baptised in an element altogether alien to sensuous experience, and to the common world of man.

It was very fortunate for Wordsworth that his early life was cast in the midst of such magnificent scenery, as that of Cumberland, for it acted powerfully upon his mind, and helped to mould his character, and develope his genius. School did very little for him, nor College, nor even books, until a comparatively late period of his life. But both nature and poetry had always a great and transcendent charm for him. As a boy, at Cockermouth he obtained the rudiments of learning from the Rev. W. Gillbanks; and his father, who was a man of vigorous character, and considerable culture and scholarship, initiated him into the pantheon of poetry, by repeating to him the finest passages of Shakspeare, Milton, and Spenser, which the boy subsequently committed to memory. But he was frequently refractory in his conduct, and peevish in his temper. His mother, whom he loved much, and who died before he was eight years of age, had at times terrible misgivings about her darling son, on these accounts, although I find no record to justify her in her forebodings. He was certainly a wild little fellow, full of animal spirits, which never flagged, with a little of the dare-devil in him: but this is natural enough in a healthy boy. Wordsworth, in alluding to his mother's dread of the "evil chance" of his life, gives us an anecdote, with the intention of justifying her, which seems to me very comical in such connection.

"I remember going once," he says, "into the attics of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in my hand, but my heart failed me.

"Upon another occasion, while I was at the same house, along with my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down upon particular occasions.--The walls were humg round with family pictures, and I said to my elder brother: 'Dare you strike your whip through that old lady's petticoat?' 'No,' he replied, 'I won't.' 'Then,' said I, 'here goes!'--and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat; for which, no doubt, I was properly punished, although I have forgotten it. But, possibly from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I was perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise."

Perhaps the real truth of Mrs. Wordsworth's anxiety is, after all, to be found in the fact that she had anticipated an extraordinary career for her son. There does not appear, however, to have been much ground for the supposition that the "evil chance" would prevail; and considering the wise teaching of this dear mother, and the apt though erratic nature of her son, I think there was good reason for a more cheering augury of his fate. Speaking of his mother's mode of education, in the "Prelude," he says, that it was founded upon

"a virtual faith, that He Who fills the mothers breast with innocent milk, Doth also for our nobler part provide, Under His great correction and control, As innocent instincts, and as innocent food.

This was her creed, and therefore she was pure From anxious fear of error, or mishap, And evil, overweeningly so called, Was not puffed up by false, unnatural hopes, Nor selfish, with unnecessary care; Nor with impatience for the season asked More than its timely produce; rather loved The hours for what they are, than from regard Glanced on their promises in restless pride. Such was she--not for faculties more strong Than others have, but from the times, perhaps, And spot in which she lived, and thro' a grace Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness, A heart that found benignity and hope, Being itself benign."

That there are evidences of this healthful and pious faith, this holy and beneficent teaching, in Wordsworth's writings, every one acquainted with them will admit; and the passage just quoted is more than ordinarily interesting on this account, as an illustration of the force of early training. His mother's love haunts him in later years, although he is altogether silent about his father, and only speaks of his mother twice in all his poems. The hearth-stone, and its gods, seem to have been too sacred with him for parade. When he appears before the vicar, with a trembling, earnest company of boys about his own age, to say the catechism, at Easter, as the custom was, the mother watches him with beating heart; and here is the second tribute of affection to her beloved memory:

"How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me, Beloved mother! Thou whose happy hand Had bound the flowers I wore, with faithful tie; Sweet flowers, at whose inaudible command, Her countenance, phantom like, doth reappear; Oh! lost too early for the frequent tear, And ill-requited by this heart-felt sigh."

With such a mother as this, it is no wonder that Wordsworth--in spite of his occasional devilry--was a happy and joyous boy. He looks back, indeed, in after life, upon the home and scenes of his childhood, as upon some enchanted region. He has no withering recollections of poverty or distress; all is sunshine and delight. The sweet, melodious, and romantic Derwent is the syren of these dreams, and it sings with wondrous music in his verse. All his memories are associated with the fine scenery of his birth-place--are fused into it--and become, at last the real foundation of his life: and here is a description of his native scenery, which I find ready made to my hand:

"The 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 Keswick--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, Haweswater, 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 ever-shifting 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."

"Abode with me; a forming hand, at times Rebellious, acting in a devious mood; A local spirit of his own, at war With general tendency; but for the most Subservient strictly to external things With which it communed. An auxiliar light Came from my mind, which on the setting sun Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds, The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed A like dominion; and the midnight storm Grew darker in the presence of my eye."

"There have I lov'd to skim the tender age, The golden precepts of the classic page; To lead the mind to those Elysian plains Where, thron'd in gold, immortal Science reigns; Fair to the view is sacred Truth display'd, In all the majesty of light arrayed, To teach, on rapid wings, the curious soul, To roam from earth to heaven, from pole to pole; From thence to search the mystic cause of things, And follow Nature to her secret springs; Nor less to guide the fluctuating youth, Firm in the sacred paths of moral truth. To regulate the mind's disordered frame, And quench the passions kindling into flame; The glimmering fires of virtue to enlarge, And purge from vice's dross my tender charge. Oft have I said, the paths of fame pursue, And all that virtue dictates, dare to do. Go to the world--peruse the book of man, And learn from thence thy own defects to scan; Severely honest, break no plighted trust-- But coldly rest not here--be more than just! Join to the rigour of the sires of Rome The gentler manners of the private dome; When virtue weeps in agony of woe, Teach from the heart the tender tears to flow; If Pleasure's soothing song thy soul entice, Or all the gaudy pomp of splendid vice, Arise superior to the syren's power, The wretch, the chort-liv'd vision of an hour. Soon fades her cheek, her blushing beauties fly, As fades the chequer'd bow that paints the sky."

In 1786, in anticipation of leaving school, he wrote some sweet verses, in which he speaks, with a sad fondness, of the old region round about Hawkshead, and vows, with a lover's heart, never to forget its beauty, but to turn towards it wherever he may be, as to the shrine of his idolatry.

"Thus from the precincts of the west The sun, while sinking down to rest, Though his departing radiance fail To illuminate the hollow vale, A lingering lustre fondly throws On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose."

The muse had now fairly possessed him, and he was destined to have a triumphant career as the high priest of song. Among his earliest sonnets is the following, which is the last quotation I shall give from these boyish effusions.

"Calm is all nature as a resting wheel: The kine are couched upon the dewy grass; The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is cropping audibly his later meal: Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal O'er vale and mountain and the starless sky. Now in this blank of things a harmony, Home-felt and home-created, comes to heal That grief for which the senses will supply Fresh food, for only then while memory Is hushed am I at rest. My friends! restrain Those busy cares that would allay my pain; Oh, leave me to myself, nor let me feel The officious touch that makes me droop again!"

His school-days at Hawkshead were now drawing to a close, but before we leave this part of his life, this genial seed-time from which he subsequently reaped so glorious a harvest, it will be well to add a few more particulars respecting the locality of Hawkshead, and the general discipline of its old Elizabethan grammar school, as a sort of supplement to the previous history. And, first of all, a word about Esthwaite. "Esthwaite, though a lovely scene in its summer garniture of woods, has no features of permanent grandeur to rely on. A wet or gloomy day, even in summer, reduces it to little more than a wildish pond, surrounded by miniature hills; and the sole circumstances which restore the sense of a romantic region, and an Alpine character, are the knowledge of endless sylvan scenery, stretching for twenty miles to the sea-side, and the towering groups of Langdale and Grasmere fells, which look over the little pasture barrier of Esthwaite, from distances of eight, ten, and fourteen miles."

"Esthwaite, therefore, being no object for itself, and the sublime head of Coniston being accessible by a road which evades Hawkshead, few tourists ever trouble the repose of this little village town.... Wordsworth, therefore, enjoyed this labyrinth of valleys in a perfection that no one can have experienced since the opening of the present century. The whole was one paradise of virgin beauty; and even the rare works of man, all over the land, were hoar with the grey tints of an antique picturesque; nothing was new, nothing was raw and uncicatrized. Hawkshead, in particular, though tamely seated in itself and its immediate purlieus, has a most fortunate and central locality, as regards the best scene for a pedestrian rambler. The gorgeous scenery of Borrowdale, the austere sublimities of Wastdalehead, of Langdalehead, or Mardale,--these are too oppressive in their colossal proportions, and their utter solitudes, for encouraging a perfectly human interest. Now, taking Hawkshead as a centre, with a radius of about eight miles, we might describe a little circular tract which embosoms a perfect net-work of little valleys--separate wards or cells, as it were, of one large valley, walled in by the great primary mountains of the region. Grasmere, Easdale, Little Langdale, Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, Elterwater, Loughrigg Tarn, Skelwith, and many other little quiet nooks, lie within a single division of this labyrinthine district. All these are within one summer afternoon's ramble. And amongst these, for the years of his boyhood, lay the daily excursions of Wordsworth.

"I do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an amiable boy; he was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits; not generous; and above all, not self-denying.... Meantime, we are not to suppose that Wordsworth, the boy, expressly sought for solitary scenes of nature amongst woods and mountains, with a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative pleasure, or loving them with a pure, disinterested love, on their own separate account. These are feelings beyond boyish nature, or, at all events, beyond boyish nature trained amidst the necessities of social intercourse. Wordsworth, like his companions, haunted the hills and the vales for the sake of angling, snaring birds, swimming, and sometimes of hunting, according to the Westmorland fashion, on foot: for riding to the chace is often quite impossible, from the precipitous nature of the ground. It was in the course of these pursuits, by an indirect effect growing gradually upon him, that Wordsworth became a passionate lover of Nature, at the time when the growth of his intellectual faculties made it possible that he should combine those thoughtful passions with the experience of the eye and ear."

De Quincey then continues to relate, as an illustration of the sudden, silent manner in which Nature makes herself felt by the observer, even when he is paying no attention to her operations, but is occupied with nearer and more secondary matters--how he and Wordsworth were walking one midnight, during the Peninsular war, from Grasmere to Dunmail Raise, to meet the mail, in order that they might obtain the newspaper Coleridge was in the habit of sending them, and thus learn the earliest intelligence of the state of affairs on the Continent. "At intervals, Wordsworth had stretched himself at length on the high road, applying his ear to the ground, so as to catch any sound of wheels that might be going along at a distance. Once, when he was slowly rising from this effort, his eye caught a bright star that was glittering between the brow of Seat Sandal and the mighty Helvellyn. He gazed upon it for a minute or so; and then, upon turning away to descend into Grasmere, he made the following explanation:--'I have remarked, from my earliest days, that if, under any circumstances, the attention is perfectly braced up to a steady act of observation, or of steady expectation, then, if this intense condition of vigilance should suddenly relax, at that moment any beautiful, any impressive visual object, or collection of objects, falling upon the eye, is carried to the heart with a power not known under other circumstances. Just now my ear was placed upon the stretch, in order to catch any sound of wheels that might come down upon the lake of Wythburn, from the Keswick road; at the very instant when I raised my head from the ground, in final abandonment of hope for this night, at the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension, with a pathos and a sense of the Infinite, that would not have arrested me under other circumstances.'"

Enough, however, has been said upon this subject, for it is impossible to trace in any direct manner, the subtle and delicate influences of Nature upon the human mind, or to determine even, in the instance of Wordsworth, the precise time when he first sought "the woods and mountains, with a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative pleasure." We will leave all this, therefore, and direct the reader to the "Prelude," as the best exposition of the poet's mental development at this early period. A few words respecting the government of the Hawkshead grammar school, as an influence affecting the character of the poet, and we will then follow him to Cambridge.

It will thus be seen that Wordsworth was early inducted into those thriftful and economical habits which marked his character through life, and enabled him during his young days to bear the temporary loss of his paternal fortune without much inconvenience. And the above facts are worthy to be remembered, not only as illustrating much for us in the history of Wordsworth, but as another instance of the power of a wise and early training.

The poet thus alludes to the cottages of the "Danes:"--

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