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connect himself with an institution interested to support the inequalities and abuses of his native land. The death of the French king turned the tide of British power towards war with the new Republic. Wordsworth was shocked, and his mind unsettled. He would not take orders. He could not bring his mind to consent to the study of law. He therefore led a wandering life for some years, paying visits to his friends, uncertain what to do for a livelihood. He imagined he possessed military talents; but death by disease in some unhealthy colony was an unpoetical prospect, and, at the same time, a not improbable catastrophe. It is to be feared he was ill at ease in his own conscience, and was endeavouring to find, in the agitations of life, a relief which is not there.

Yet Wordsworth's life was one of remarkable purity, considering the elements in which his boyhood and youth were plunged. On one occasion, at college, he finds his wits excited by previous potations. But this is only once. roystering times is wonderful; so is the chastity he preserves His temperance in those amidst the entire absence of control during the period of life when dangers most abound. houses of his friends he again meets his sister, who is delighted In his wanderings amongst the with him, and enjoys his society, from the beauty of his thoughts, as much as from her own sisterly affection. In order to vindicate his talents, which were depreciated by his friends, he published, in 1793, "The Evening Walk" and "Descriptive Sketches." The former had been originally written some years before; the latter relates to the places visited by him in his late continental tours. It bears considerable resemblance to Goldsmith's "Traveller;" and although fully exhibiting the author's love for natural scenery, does not display, in any marked degree, the peculiarities which render the genius of Wordsworth original. Yet it attracted the notice of Coleridge, who perceived in it the promise its author afterwards redeemed. The poets became friends for life. The public, as was natural, entirely neglected the verses and their composer.

This period of Wordsworth's life was doubtless of importance to him, although at the time neither he nor his friends could perceive its value. What portion of the life of any person can be more critical than that which sees the fermentation of the spirit settling down either into permanent strength or sourness? Wordsworth walked about determinedly, watched the skiey influences, noted the atmosphere and the colours of the earth, and connected all he saw with net-works of memory and imagination. He proposed to support himself by the publication of a periodical, the "Philanthropist,' a monthly miscellany, in which his republican principles were

intended to have been exhibited. This scheme dying in the bud, he sought to obtain employment in connection with the London press. His difficulties were probably great, yet his frugality was extreme. In Penrith he had maternal relatives, and he was writing thence to London to a friend already engaged in newspaper literature, at the same time that he was watching by the couch of a young man named Raisley Calvert. The sufferer died, and his will contained a bequest of £900 to his kindly attendant. The object of this was that the world might have the benefit of Wordsworth's life in his own way. The dying man had discerned in him the powers which he thus sought to cherish and expand. His sister was as dependent as he was, and this godsend relieved them both. Dorothy Wordsworth was nearly two years younger than her brother, and her mind was singularly fitted to co-operate with his. Possessed of exquisite taste and sensibility, she brought the aid of all her powers to forward his. She was the companion of his walks and thoughts. She cheered his moody spirit in its moments of despondency, and she probably moderated the exaltation of his optimistic reveries. Under the influence of her society, the poet withdrew from the perplexities of theoretical politics, ceased to kick against the pricks of contrary institutions, and fell back on the joys that had radiated upon his youth from all the nature nestling amidst his native hills. She communicated to him the feminine feeling that pervades his maturer thought, and made it possible for him to rest amid external objects, by combining them with his own spiritual essence, in poetical associations. The first residence of this frugal pair was at Racedown, in Dorsetshire. Here they had a pleasant house, a garden, books, and delightful walks. Miss Wordsworth exults in the joys of her own first home. Household duties done they were not severe she gives herself to Italian, whilst her brother wields his spade, or exercises himself in translations of Juvenal. The satirical vein of his mind is not yet exhausted. The fermentation is not yet over.

This was in 1795. The year after, he wrote the "Female Vagrant," in the stanza of Spenser, one of his special favourites. He also produced a tragedy, "The Borderers," which delighted Coleridge, but, when it appeared in print after the lapse of some years, few others. In 1797, Coleridge arrived at the retreat where the brother poet and his sister were enjoying rural felicity on £100 a-year. Coleridge was in raptures. Full as he was of book learning and transcendentalism, he found in Wordsworth exactly what he himself had not. He saw the clods of Racedown hourly transmuted into gold by the frugal magician. Coleridge, although blazing in his own aurora, writes, "I feel my

self a little man by his side." Wordsworth himself declared, that whilst other men had done wonderful things, Coleridge was the only wonderful man he had ever known. Rambling was an aliment to the Wordsworths. It could not be undelightful to the discursive metaphysician. Cash was scarce, however, and the poets proposed to raise the wind by a joint attempt. But the combination was found impracticable. The varying elements would not coalesce. The Ancient Mariner, with scanty hints from Wordsworth, arose beneath the spells of Coleridge. The effort served to establish the peculiar provinces of both. Coleridge suffered himself to be taken up by the supernatural. Wordsworth determined to descend amidst the commonest objects, and to raise the wide surface of lowly life into a loftier sphere. To this purpose was his genius now consciously devoted. The herculean task demanded time and patience. Pioneer also as he was, the poet could not but throw up sometimes weak and crude results. But let him have this honour, due to few of the irritable race. Filth and malice lie buried and unseen wherever his track is crossed. His pantheism and his materialism sometimes demand vigilance of his readers, but to those to whom these are simply obscurities there is no danger of corruption through the blazonry of lust. The poet had not solved his difficulties. In despair of humanity alone, he had not risen to the gospel height of the human and the divine united in an incarnate and divine headship. He had only retired from the unequal contest to etherealize material objects. On these his attention was now perpetually fixed. Leaving Racedown in 1797, the pair took up their abode for a few months at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, where many small pieces issued from the poet's brain. But brother and sister were indefatigable pedestrians, and they rambled all over both coasts of the Bristol Channel, picking up scraps, and reproducing in melodious verse the unconsidered trifles which the bulk of mankind think beneath the offices either of memory or of imagination. A volume of lyrical ballads was published in 1798 by Mr. Cottle of Bristol. The "Ancyent Marinere" was the first piece; but nearly all, if not all, the other pieces were Wordsworth's. The little book had the fate of most attempts of the sort. The reviews were unfavourable, and most of the five hundred copies printed went to the trunkmakers. Yet the principles of poetry enunciated there gave rise to discussion enough to make the fortune of a dozen booksellers. As it was, Mr. Cottle retired from business, and sold his copyrights to Longmans of London. That of the Lyrical Ballads being valued at nil, was presented to the authors out of compliment. To any but men of firm self-confidence and determined precogni

tion of their own rights in the face of the public, surely the compliment would have been anything but a delicate one, These "Lyrical Ballads" the public would now not willingly let die."

Elaborate essays have been written upon theories of poetry, and Wordsworth's ideas have taxed exalted powers of language to display them. But to obtain a simple notion of them, reference must be made to the common things out of which his subjects and illustrations are taken. The staple of the world's commodities, he argues, are of the commonest and healthiest use. They are the least liable to abuse, and the best to produce in the long run powerful effect. The healthy appetite ought to seek the food most abundantly provided for it. To present continually to the palate materials sought out with the most piquant discrimination from amidst the market or the shambles, and disguised by the transmutations of exotic cookery, is to debase the taste and corrupt the system. So with poetry. The mind presents for the affections to dwell upon and digest highly wrought images, distorted by ornament and falsified by unreal associations. The poet who provides the fare is the parent of spiritual gout and every distinguished disease that incapacitates its subject for the business of life. But the appetite must be supplied with pabulum that has passed through the poetic mill. The true poet, therefore, finds his proper types in the honest miller and the baker, or in that clean domestic whose ruddy arms are concerned only to separate the wholesome from the profitless, and to distribute it to the consumer redolent of its native virtue. Wordsworth desires, indeed, to be the interpreter of the language of nature, but he disdains to add tinsel embellishment to the words which "go out to the end of the world." You find, accordingly, in his reproductions of the language of inarticulate creation, weaknesses in which are reflected, amidst the earnest weight of material things, the triviality of the wandering minds of men. For the poet scarcely seems to have discerned that vanity is written, through human degeneracy, even upon the world he dominates, and that the creature is subjected to a bondage from which it is the office of the idealist to anticipate its release. It must not be supposed that Wordsworth is a sceptic, professed or understood. want of perception of many of the secrets of the all-searching Spirit is apparent enough. His narrow-mindedness in respect of religious development is a blot upon his fame. The Church of England is his religion. To be a Dissenter is the ruin of a poetess at least ; to conduct a "Dissenting academy" is unworthy, according to him, of the powers of mind of Miss Seward. Falling back on the joys of his youth for the consolation of his man hood, he gradually learns to accept things as they are. From

His

being an ardent Republican, he insensibly grows with his years into a bigoted Conservative. Unexpected comforts come to himself in the ample supply of his limited wants, and he forgets that others are labouring in a world where they find continual contrarieties and inconsistencies. Yet many of his remarks are delightful, as showing an eye that perceived many things belonging to the kingdom of heaven. Where his own standpoint was with this reference it is not becoming to inquire. But let us accept with thankfulness every fruit of his genius in harmony with it. Such was his sympathy with the poor. Unenvious of greater state, unheeding the pomps and vanities, and honouring all men, we find him truly condescending to men of low estate; and that neither in the way of patronage nor of indifference to their defects; but altogether in the way of brotherly sympathy, and in the Christian loftiness of humility bestowing "upon our uncomely parts more abundant honour." To this the characters in his works testify throughout. And this spirit is sustained in spite of literary incongruities within and abundant ridicule from without. Perhaps the idea of representing his characters in humble life acting as he imagined he should have done, had he been himself in their circumstances, satisfied his mind on the score of verisimilitude. That he cared little for meeting the conventionalisms of his day as to the inequalities of society, is clear from the expression, " dear James," applied to his servant. Honour to the man who could so express the attachment he felt, in spite of the laughable solecism he probably appears to many to have committed!

At the time of publication of the Lyrical Ballads, the Wordsworths and Coleridge were at Hamburgh. There the party visited Klopstock. They then separated, and the Wordsworths went to Goslar. Their object was to acquire the German language, and improve their acquaintance with its literature. Coleridge was better off at Ratzeburg. He was not expected to entertain company; the Wordsworths were. The latter, consequently, saw no society, and had few opportunities of colloquial instruction. But at all times they lived remote from the bustle of life. One wonders now, considering the difficulties of aspirants to public notice, how Wordsworth ever attracted sufficient attention even to be ridiculed, as he so abundantly was by the light wits and undiscerning critics of his day. Coleridge had something to do with his introduction to general observation. The brilliant conversation of the latter made his sayings appreciated, and his admiration of Wordsworth was unqualified. The faults of Wordsworth's muse were, in fact, so transparent, as to be beneath the public exposure of a generous friend. Had it not been mani