to the parsonage or for a run on the mountain-side. In the evening he was busy teasing, spinning, and weaving wool. His pew in the chapel is still to be seen upholstered with the cloth woven at the parsonage. He assisted the dalesmen in their husbandry, and at clipping time plied the shears. On Sundays broth was served at the parsonage to those of the congregation who had come from a distance. He pursued his studies by a light made of rushes dipped in tallow; and Wordsworth, who was no mean critic, says that his style was correct, simple, and animated."

66

His wife died in January, 1802, aged ninety-three; and in June of the same year he passed away, in the ninety-third year of his age and the sixty-seventh of his curacy.

See Wordsworth's Prose Works, vol. iii.; also the Excursion, book vii.

12-14. See Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales; Herbert, Priest to the Temple, and Goldsmith, Deserted Village.-KNIGHT.

XLIII.

66 Return, Content."

Wordsworth says that he first became acquainted with the Duddon by accompanying a friend from Hawkshead on a fishing excursion. Cf. Prelude, i. 269-300.

XLIV.

Who swerves from Innocence."

5-8. In regard to these lines, Wordsworth says that oddly enough this imagination was realized in 1840, when he visited this district with his wife and daughter and others. On leaving Seathwaite the party separated, and Mrs. Wordsworth, taking an opposite direction, was tempted to an eminence, expecting there to await them on their return; they, however, did not find her until well into the evening.

XLV.
Afterthought.

It is not possible to ascertain from what point the Poet took this view of the Duddon. Rev. H. D. Rawnsley thinks that it may have been the summit of a hill just above Broughton, and that the sight of the little Broughton church would give rise to the thought that the "elements must vanish."

The last stanza of Whittier's poem on Wordsworth strikes the same note as this sonnet:

"Art builds on sand; the works of pride
And human passion change and fall;
But that which shares the life of God,
With Him surviveth all."

It was in this faith that he quietly reposed in his domestic life, and by it enhanced all the faithful affection for wife and sister, children and brother, that nowhere in English poetry burns with a lovelier or a purer light. REV. STOPFORD BROOKE.

1821.

XLVI.

Introduction to Ecclesiastical Sonnets.

While the ecclesiastical sonnets, begun in 1821 and continued through the Poet's later life, do not often rise to the height of his best work, yet there are among them a few, which for charm of dic. tion, united with depth and delicacy of sentiment, are unsurpassed.

XLVII.

Seclusion.

See Legends of Saxon Saints, Aubrey de Vere.

Inside King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

Unless one has passed some time in the presence of England's noble castles and inspiring cathedrals, he is apt to wonder at the place they occupy in the literature and the life of her people. In the seclusion of the cloisters and quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge the human past, consecrated by the memories of kings and queens, of saints and sages, of poets and scholars, fills the soul with awe. Wordsworth, in reverencing King's College Chapel - the noblest and most inspiring

structure ever erected for collegiate worship—has yielded to the spell of this human past. The history of this magnificent chapel the last of the thoroughly medieval structures erected at Cambridge - is so remarkable that I cannot refrain from giving it somewhat in detail.

On the 10th of February, 1441, about one year after his founding of Eton College, Henry VI. signed the charter for the first foundation of the Royal College of St. Nicholas, but the site chosen was so limited that in 1443 he granted a charter to King's College, in order that poor scholars from Eton might be maintained at Cambridge free of expense. At the present time a certain number of Etonians are annually sent to King's College. The provisions as seen in the will of Henry VI. are the result of an examination of William Wykeham's College at Winchester: this document is remarkable for the accuracy and detail of the King's plans, even specifying the planting of trees and flowers. The first stone of the building was laid by the King himself on July 28, 1446. The designer of the structure is unknown; it is conjectured, from the personal supervision and alterations made by him at Eton, that Henry himself was the architect. The chapel, 288 feet long and 40 feet wide, was to form the north of the quadrangle, the east and west sides of which were to join it, while the south was to be occupied by chambers. The material, quarried from the same place as that used for Eton, is white limestone, and marks the limit of Henry's work, which ceased at his deposition. Little was done to the building for nearly half a century, until, at the close of his reign, Henry VII. determined to do honor to his uncle by completing it. In 1508 the work was resumed, and carried on by the executors of his will; the walls, the great vault, the battlements, and pinnacles were completed. On entering the city from Girton in 1887, these towers were the first to greet my sight. I saw

"The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift
Turrets and pinnacles in answering files."

Henry VIII. was now solicited by the college to complete the work, and the interior was finished. Of the twenty-six windows, twentyfive contain four pictures, each in "Oryent colours and Imagery of the Story of the olde lawe and the newe lawe after the fourme of the glasse windowes of the Kinge's newe chapell at Westmynster." The windows are the most important specimen of English glass-painting in existence. These glorious paintings are in two series around the chapel - the upper illustrating scenes from the Old Testament, the

lower, scenes from the New Testament. Such is the delicacy of tint and the graceful blending of colors, that while the brighter hues prevail, there is the most perfect harmony, the shading is so exceptional as to be transparent, and the fretted roof and arches glimmer,

"dyed

In the soft checkerings of a sleepy light."

The figures are larger than life, and the expression is strong and beautiful

"A glorious work of fine intelligence."

That these windows should have escaped the fanaticism of the Puritan soldiers quartered in the city is almost a miracle. The work of Henry VII. can be detected by the presence of the red rose, the hawthorn bush, and the crown, in the tracery of the windows; while the weaving together of the initials of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn on the organ screen and stalls tells its own tale.

8. St. Paul's Cathedral.

1823.

LII.

66 Not Love, not War."

It may well be set down to the credit of Wordsworth's Muse that she does not affect "the perfumed chambers of the great;" that she lets the sumptuous chariots and equipages wheel by unnoticed; and that she rather shuns than seeks "the canopies of costly state," the proud saloons of fashion and high life, preferring the lowly cottage where modest worth and "honorable brows bedewed with toil" have their abode, and eat their bread in purity and gentleness of heart. — DR. HUDSON.

Cf. Highland Hut, 1831.

1827.

LIII.

To Rotha Q

Rotha was the daughter of Mr. Edward Quillinan, who, in 1841, married the Poet's daughter Dora.

See Address to my Infant Daughter Dora, 1804.

10. Rotha is the river that unites the three sister-lakes, — Grasmere, Rydal, and Windermere.

Lady Fitzgerald, as described to me by Lady Beaumont.-W. W. This sonnet answers admirably Aubrey de Vere's definition: "It is in poetry what the Collect is in devotion;" within its compass there is "meditation and observation, imagination and passion."

LV.

"Scorn not the Sonnet."

Composed almost extempore in a short walk on the western side of Rydal Lake.

It is not often that criticism is presented to us in the form of the highest poetry and condensed into fourteen lines. This sonnet alone is sufficient to vindicate Wordsworth's claim to mastery in this form of poetry; for in it we have history enriched with the finest touches of the imagination, and transmitted in diction pure and strong, while the music varies from the most powerful animation to the softest cadences of metrical harmony

"Rising loudly

Up to its climax, and then dying proudly."

1830.

LVI.

To the Author's Portrait.

The portrait here alluded to was painted by H. W. Pickersgill, R. A., at the request of the Master and Fellows of St. John's College, Cambridge. It represents the Poet seated under a high bank, with Lake scenery in the background; he is clad in a black cloak lined with red, while the left hand, holding a pencil, rests on some papers. The features are sharp profile, as the face is turned to the right. The picture hangs in the Dining Hall.

The last six lines of this sonnet are not written for poetical effect, but as a matter of fact, which, in more than one instance, could not escape my notice in the servants of the house.-W. W.