antedates his development,-it being almost as difficult to realize one's former self as to realize another self altogether.

At the age of fourteen Wordsworth became an orphan. His mother had died of consumption at Penrith, her native town, in the year before he was sent to school at Hawkshead; and his father, who never fairly rallied from his grief at her loss, was taken away six years afterwards. How little precocious was Wordsworth's genius, appears from the fact that, whereas the constant endeavour of his subsequent poetical activity was to reproduce his own experience, neither of these events awaked the hitherto dor mant muse within him. His first verses, indeed, were a schooltask on the Summer Vacation of 1785. It is remarkable, however, that, besides those on the prescribed subject, he handed in other verses on the Return to School; and that versification became from this time forward a regular habit, all the adventures which excited him, and all the scenes which pleased him, being described in song. The long, steady flight of his muse agreed well with the unromantic circumstances of his first ascension into the poetic heaven: great resources, with little impulsiveness, but with a steady will, were characteristic of Wordsworth's literary career throughout.

This early period was, for another reason, quite an epoch in his poetical history. He says that it dawned upon him about this time, that an infinite variety of natural appearances had been left unnoticed by all poets; and he resolved to supply the deficiency. Hence the minute, sometimes topographically minute, description of natural scenery, and the detailed analysis of past mental states. with which his poetry abounds.

On the death of Wordsworth's father, Sir James Lowther's estate, for which he had been law-agent, was indebted to the family in £5000; but the claim was not acknowledged, and a law. suit was undertaken to enforce it. This law-suit dragged its slow length along till 1802, when the new Earl of Lonsdale acknow. ledged the claim, and satisfied it by paying £8500 to the Wordsworths. In 1787, however, fifteen years before this seasonable supply came to the family, Wordsworth had been sent to St John's Cambridge, of which his maternal uncle, Dr Cookson, had been Fellow. During his under graduateship there, Dr Chevalier, the master, died; and, according to custom, the pall was strewed with elegiac verses, tributes of respect and affection from the students to his memory. Wordsworth, however, made no such contribution; and when Dr Cookson, who hoped that he would have dis tinguished himself on this occasion, asked him the reason, he answered that he had never known the deceased, having merely seen him now and then in the college garden. A proud spirit, conscious already of its high vocation, might have thus refused to bewail an event which had not even ruffled the surface of its own sympathies, and a moody-tempered youth, such as Wordsworth describes himself to have been as a child, might have given such an answer merely by way of evasion; but the real explanation of his refusing a contribution to the funeral wreath of Dr Chevalier probably lies in the fact, that he was already, on general grounds out of harmony with the college system. The era of the French Revolution was dawning at this time; and it must be remembered

that that was the outburst of a fermentation which had long been going on in the minds of men, and these not Frenchmen only. The English universities, just because they impose so much of the past upon the present, and glory in doing so, were of all places the most likely to become the scene of occasional premonitory explosions and Wordsworth's college-life, though it never broke out into open rebellion, was yet on the whole a smothered revolt. The amount of conventionalism intertwined with any system is usually in proportion to its antiquity, just as the quantity of dead bark on a tree is in proportion to its age; for as each returning year clothes the vegetable trunk with a new rind, so does each returning cycle of human development call for a new outward expression of the inward life. Were the generations of men independent of each other, each would cast off the outward expression of its predecessor, even as the serpent casts its skin. But dependence is the law; and the destiny of each generation, as of each individual, is to preserve a part of what is old, and to initiate a part of what is new. Ancient institutions, however, like the English universities, are naturally tenacious of the old, and suspicious of the new; and, on the other hand, young men are disposed to couple "old" with "abuses," and "new" with "improvements." At a time, then, when the modern age was on the eve of asserting, on so grand a scale, its right to an outward expression of its own, it is no wonder that a truth-loving youth like Wordsworth, whose whole career afterwards was a crusade against conventionalism in poetry should have sulked at conventionalism in the studies and forms of English university life. To take but one instance, which Wordsworth has himself adduced, when the students were hunted into attendance on the daily service in the college chapel, while their pastors and masters regularly neglected it, what wonder if the more clear-headed and honest-hearted among the former came to regard it as a sham, and their superiors as impostors! It was merely because the contemplative element prevailed over the active in Wordsworth's constitution that, instead of breaking out into open rebellion, he only muttered his protest; and, when he withheld the customary lament from Dr Chevalier's bier, it was in strict conscientiousness as a dissenter from the conventionalism of the place.

How little Wordsworth did actually sympathize with English university life while he was in it, appears from the almost total silence of his muse during his residence at Cambridge,-the only verses, which he is known to have written there, being those entitled "Written while Sailing in a Boat at Evening." The sail in question is understood to have been on the Cam. Nor does what he wrote elsewhere during the academic period, the "Evening Walk" for example, seem to have been suggested, or in any way whatever affected by academic scenes. It is remarkable, too, as showing his comparative indifference to college studies and college honours, that the vacation, immediately preceding his examination for the B.A. degree, was devoted to a Continental ramble, in company with Robert Jones, a fellow collegian from Wales. This was a pedestrian excursion, and so extensive that it seems wonderful how the £20 a-piece, with which they set out, should have sufficed. Landing at Calais, they trudged on by

Lyons to Switzerland and the Alps; then, purchasing a boat at Basle, they floated down to Cologne, and returned, as they had gone, by Calais.

After taking his degree in 1791, Wordsworth visited London and then North Wales, being attracted to the latter by the residence of his friend Jones in the vale of Clwydd. He who feels himself out of harmony with surrounding things, naturally seeks for relief in change of place; and Wordsworth, whom his friends were tugging in one direction, whilst himself was tending in another, now resolved upon returning to the Continent; not, however, this time to make a tour there, but for the purpose of residing in France. He set out in the autumn of 1791: Paris, Orleans, and Blois were successively his head-quarters; and, being entirely cut off from communication with the English in the provincial towns last-mentioned, he became thoroughly master of the French language. His residence on the banks of the Loire is also remarkable on account of the "Descriptive Sketches," most of which were composed there. He returned to England in the close of 1792.

Such was the state of France during the thirteen months of Wordsworth's residence there, that it was impossible for all his energies to be engaged by lingual studies and poetic musings. Ir. 1792 the royal authority was suspended by the Legislative Assembly, and a Republic proclaimed by the National Convention. Of both measures Wordsworth was an enthusiastic approver. In the uprising of the French people against things as they were, he saw a repetition, on a gigantic scale, of his own private struggle against an oppressive conventionalism; and he firmly believed that the national heavings were but the throes of political and social regeneration. His friends wished him to prepare for episcopal orders; but he had returned to England with a stone from the ruins of the Bastille in his pocket, and the tide of his sympathies ran anywhere but in the accustomed channels prescribed by old institutions like the Church of England.

66

In 1793 Wordsworth ventured into print by publishing the Evening Walk," addressed to his sister, and shortly after it the Descriptive Sketches." In both these productions the conscientious working out of his poetical system clearly appears. He considered that the conventionalism reigning in poetry, regarding both the matter and the manner of treatment, was fatal to real power and truth; and that the function of the poet was not to make poetry, but to show men the poetry which God has made in all creation. Accordingly, he would not allow any subject whatever to be rejected as in itself unpoetical; and, in respect to diction, he almost restricted himself to the every day language of men. He came at length to see that these principles are not of unlimited application;-as indeed what principles are ?-and he even expunged in later years some passages which his taste, sophisticated by his theory, had allowed him to write. What, for instance, could be more bald than the following from the "Highland Boy?"

"A household tub, like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes
This carried the blind boy."

These lines appeared for the last time in the edition of 1807. Wherever there is poetic beauty inherent in the subject selected, Wordsworth's simple mode of treatment is perfectly successful. Witness his poetical treatment of the poultry-yard in the "Evening Walk," p. 236, introduced by the lines:

"Not undelightful are the simplest charms,

Found by the grassy door of mountain farms."

Yes; but to describe these charms with dignity in a serious poem is a most difficult achievement; and Wordsworth has accomplished it by so vividly representing the details of the actual scene, that his reader forgets the describer, and becomes absorbed in the picture itself. This is not the baldness of the letter, but the charm of Nature.

Archbishop Whately, with that happiness of illustration for which he is remarkable above all contemporary writers, compares the eloquence of some orators to moonlight, which draws attention to itself, and that of others to sunlight, which directs the eyes and thoughts of the beholder, not at all to itself, but to the grand and beautiful scenes which it lights up. The same distinction exists among poets, who are orators too, only that their eloquence is set to the music of verse. Wordsworth expressly aspired to the higher glory of sunlight; for he studied, by truth of representation and simplicity of diction, to paint the living scene just as it is, meaning that it should then speak for itself. For this very reason, however, his claims to rank high were but slowly acknowledged. Bright colouring and magniloquent diction attract the attention of the multitude at once; for a staring daub is always more striking to the vulgar eye than a finely-toned picture, which overdoes neither the forms nor the hues of Nature. Accordingly, the first edition of his "Evening Walk" and "Descriptive Sketches" was long in being exhausted; and minor critics, as daring as incompetent, pronounced his verses doggrel. Coleridge, however, who was then at Cambridge, formed a very different estimate. In his Biographia Literaria he says:-"During the last year of my residence in Cambridge I became acquainted with Mr Wordsworth's 'Descriptive Sketches;' and seldom or never was the emergence of original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." All men of genuine sympathies and profound thought confirmed this verdict; and the circle of Wordsworth's readers gradually widened. Even now, however, he cannot be be reckoned among the popular poets: just because men of the stamp requisite for appreciating his somewhat recondite genius do not, and indeed never can, form the majority.

Conscious that his poems were the result of genuine feeling and hard-won thought, Wordsworth had from the beginning a firm faith that posterity would do justice to them; and his grand affliction in 1793 was not the indifferent reception given by the English public to the "Evening Walk" and the "Descriptive Sketches," but the decapitation of the French King, and the declaration of war by England against France. These events gave a shock to his moral being, the force of which can be estimated only by those who can realize the extravagant expectations of human progress, which the dawn of the French Revolution enkindled in the breasts of the

friends of liberty throughout Europe. The Republic was to have been a matchless organization in the interests of justice and mercy, and behold it proved a gigantic engine of violence and bloodshed! Curiously, yet naturally enough, instead of being led by this example to set down the intrinsic value of all organizations at a low figure, Wordsworth took refuge in the old; and gradually, yet most completely in the long run, lapsed back into a narrow conservatism, in matters both of church and state. To all the liberal movements, political and social, which in England have marked the era of peace succeeding the great continental wars, he was strongly opposed. He resisted the emancipation of the Catholics, because he conceived it would lead to the civil establishment of Popery in Ireland; and he would not hear of English dissenters being admitted to the ancient universities. He objected even to Bible Societies, because they brought sectaries and churchmen together. The Reform Bill was an abomination to him; and of Mechanics' Institutions he wrote:-" They make discontented spirits, and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen. Such, at least, was the opinion of Watt, one of the most experienced and intelligent of men.' His high churchism in particular he seems to have carried to the extreme of vulgar spite; for in a letter. dated May 10, 1830, after noticing Miss Steward's poems, he mentions Mrs Barbauld as a person "who, with much higher powers of mind, was spoiled as a poetess by being a dissenter, and concerned with a dissenting academy!!!"

This extreme reaction from new-fangled to old-fashioned formulæ, how common soever it be on the disappointment of extravagant hopes in the former, was yet wholly unworthy of Wordsworth's mental powers. It is probably to be accounted for by that same despair of humanity, on which some highly-accomplished persons found their adherence to the Papacy. Believing that, in matters of religion, mankind are to be divided evermore into the dupers and the duped, these persons are content that the majority should continue to be duped in the good old mediæval way. In like manner Wordsworth, believing that, in mundane things, man kind are to be divided evermore into the leaders and the led, was content that all the accustomed harness, blinders included, should remain upon the latter. His premises were right, his conclusion wrong; for it is also true that, in the long run, they who think must govern them who act; and by virtue of this principle, he who believes in Providence sees it to be not only fair but safe to completely emancipate the individual. Wordsworth's heart was not at fault; for he sincerely believed that the people were better off in the hands of the aristocracy than they would be in their own. But it is amazing that such a man, whose whole life was spent in contemplation, should not have risen to the higher truth just enunciated, and to a nobler faith both in man and in God.

His own experience as an author must also be taken into account in considering the phenomenon of his narrow-mindedness in political and social affairs. So far as his poems were concerned, the English public divided itself very markedly into the initiated and the profane. The former were confined to a select and highlyeducated few: the latter comprised the masses. Without insinnating that he was spited at the insensibility of the multitude, it