was resisted, and remained unpaid during the life of the Earl, whose debt it was. It was paid, some nineteen years after the death of Wordsworth's father, by the late Lord Lonsdale. The early years of Wordsworth and his brother were years of anxiety, arising from straitened income. The traces of the first eight or nine years of his life are imperfect. His maternal grandparents lived at Penrith, and on his visits to them he was under the care of the "Dame" of Penrith. We have Wordsworth's own reference to her modes of teaching :

"The old dame did not affect to make theologians or logicians, but she taught to read, and she practised the memory often, no doubt, by rote, but still the penalty was imposed. Something, perhaps, she explained, and left the rest to parents, to masters, and to the parson of the parish."

Among the old dame's pupils, for, like Shenston's schoolmistress, she imprisoned within the same room, girls and boys, was Mary Hutchinson, the poet's future wife. At Cockermouth he was taught by the Rev. Mr. Gilbanks; and it is said that from early childhood his father accustomed him to repeat passages from Shakspere, Milton, and Spenser. In the "Pieces relating to Childhood," we have records of what he calls "a solemn image-his father's family." The language of these poems is often of a highly imaginative cast. It is of a man thinking for himself, speaking to himself, scarce conscious that he has an audience. The rainbow which he beholds in manhood is the same exulting, exhilarating image that it was in infancy-" the heart leaps up" as of old. In this

poem it is that we have the expression, so often repeated, of "the boy is father of the man"-and the feelings in which he wishes his days to be united to each other, as if they were one; nothing to make one period of life discrepant from that which has gone before or that which is to follow.

"The boy is father of the man, And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each in natural piety."

The poem, "to a Butterfly," is still more beautiful; not more truthful, but is expressive of a truth more deli

cate, less appreciated, but not less true:

"Stay near me, do not take thy flight!

A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!

Float near me! do not yet depart,
Dead times revive in thee,
Thou bring'st-gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family!

"Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush

Upon the prey; with leaps and springs,
I followed on from brake to brush,
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings."

There is another poem written in the same year with this last, which, in the editions of Wordsworth before us, is arranged with the poems founded on the affections. As this classification is Wordsworth's own, references to it ought to be preserved, but when a new edition of the poems is called for, we trust that they may be given to us, as far as possible, in chronological order, and without reference to a system which could not have been thought of when the poems were written, and which is certainly illogical, and, we think, for any purpose, useless. This other poem, to the Butterfly, is also one of great beauty. It began in the old editions"I've watched you now a full half hour"— language which seems to us truer to the thought intended to be expressed than that substituted in the edition of 1836:

"I've watched you now a short half hour,
Self-poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little Butterfly! indeed

I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!-not frozen seas
More motionless! and then

What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

"This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!

Come often to us, fear no wrong;

Sit near us on the bough!

We'll talk of sunshine and of song;

And summer days when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now."

The sister Emmeline of these poems was the poet's sister Dorothy. The death of Wordsworth's mother disconnected this brother and sister for a few years.

"Dorothy Wordsworth was removed from Cockermouth to Penrith, the residence of her maternal grandfather; and eventually she was educated mainly at Halifax, under the care of her mother's cousin, Miss Threlkeld, afterwards married to W. Rawson, Esq., of Millhouse, near Halifax. She also resided occasionally with Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor, her maternal uncle, at Forncett, and at Windsor."

On his mother's death the poet was sent to school at Hawkeshead, in Lancashire. Hawkeshead is a market-town in the vale of Esthwaite; its immediate vicinity is Windermere. This school was founded by Archbishop Sandys, in the year 1585. It consists of a school-room on the groundfloor, some chambers on the first floor, in one of which is a library and a tablet recording the masters' names in succession. To this school Wordsworth was sent before he was ten years old. The poem on Matthew the Village Schoolmaster had reference to one of these masters :

"And can it be,

That these two lines of glittering gold Are all that must remain of thee?"

He

Wordsworth's school-time must have been a time of great happiness. He appears to have enjoyed exuberant health and spirits, and the arrangements of the school secured happiness as far as it can be secured by any arrangements. The boys were boarded in the village and neighbouring hamlets at the houses of dames. During Wordsworth's time the Rev. William Taylor was one of the masters. died while Wordsworth was at the school, and he is the subject of many of Wordsworth's most beautiful poems, "The Fountain," " Matthew," "The Two April Meetings." These have been long familiar to Wordsworth's readers, and the later editions of his works have added to the poems of this class, which relate to Taylor, or " Matthew," as he is called in these verses. Taylor seems to have loved poetry;

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over his tomb was inscribed, by his command, a stanza from Gray's "Elegy."

The dame with whom Wordsworth lodged was Anne Tyson. Anne Tyson is also the subject of affectionate verse. He describes his return to Esthwaite from Cambridge in summer vacation -the delight with which he again beheld all that he had left some half year before, and the new aspect they assumed to him when seen in contrast to what had met his eye in the interval:

"With another eye

I saw the quiet woodman in the woods,
The shepherd roam the hills. With new de-
light

This chiefly did I note, my gray-haired dame;
Saw her go forth to church or other work
Of state, equippped in monumental trim;
Short velvet cloak (her bonnet of the like),
A mantle such as Spanish cavaliers
Wore in old time. Her smooth, domestic life,
Affectionate, without disquietude,

Her talk, her business pleased me; and no less
Her clear though shallow stream of piety,
That run on Sabbath days a fresher course;
With thoughts unfelt till now, I saw her read
Her Bible on hot Sunday afternoons,
And loved the book, when she had dropped
asleep,

And made of it a pillow for her head."*

In 1787, Wordsworth entered St. John's College, Cambridge. He came but ill-prepared by previous study for the place. It is not possible to think of Wordsworth as at any time an idler, but he was impatient of studies which were disregarded by all but a few. The attendance on college chapel exacted from the students was neglected by the fellows, and their disregard of the statutes made the devotional exercises seem to him but forms of hollow and profane hypocrisy-"he resented it as an affront to himself and to his fellow-students, as members of the academic body." His nephew tells us that his then feeling was a wish to suspend the daily service in these chapels, but that, in after years, his views changed on this subject. His own intellectual course was one entirely devious from that which his college I would direct. His last college vacation was passed among the Alps, and the week before he took his degree was spent in reading "Clarissa

Harlowe." That there is some wisdom in regulated studies was, however, the result to which his mind came in its latter years. To one of his nephews, an undergraduate, he gave the advice, "Don't trouble yourself with reading modern authors at present, confine your attention to ancient classical writers; make yourself master of them, and then you will come down to us." To another he expressed anxiety that his son should seek university honours.

In his biographical poem Wordsworth had told of the sort of companionship which he had created for himself, after the tumultuous time of boyish sports had passed, with mountains and streams, and all that in nature appears to assume something of personality. These enduring things aided him in apprehending a something permanent to which he sought to mould his character, and by which, as it seemed to him, his animal being was sobered down and subdued. When he first went to the university, his total distaste for the studies there pursued fostered in him the habit of solitary musing; but society and its demands grew on him. This can only be told in his own language, and, while we are on the subject, though nothing can be happier than occasional forms of expression, and though we are led on through the poem with a feeling of interest throughout, we cannot but feel that the style wants condensation; that parenthesis crowded on parenthesis, always in the thought, often in the expression, leaves the mind loaded and oppressed; that in short the poem ought to have been abridged by the omission of fully one-half of the verbiage of almost every passage in it. The fatal facility of the octosyllabic has been spoken of by a poet as a dangerous temptation. The never-ending continuity of blank verse

"That flows, and, as it flows, for ever would flow on,"

is infinitely worse. Clarendon's prose, with its periods of half-a-mile, has strength and vigour in comparison; and your chance of a fact keeps attention watchful and engaged, whereas, with mere sentiments, there is fear of falling asleep. It is, we think, a thing, in its ultimate result, unfortu nate for Wordsworth's fame that he has written so much in blank verse.

His rhymed poetry, and particularly in such poems as required him to pack up what he had in small parcels, is much more successful than when we have him in the character of the pedlar displaying his goods in full sunlight, and with unmeasured length of time and space before him. Still what we have let us enjoy, instead of fancying how it might be improved. On his passing to Cambridge, the poet tells

us:

"I had made a change

In climate, and my nature's outward coat
Changed also slowly and insensibly.
Full oft the quiet and exalted thoughts
Of loneliness gave way to empty noise
And superficial pastimes; now and then
Forced labour, and more frequently forced
hopes;

And, worst of all, a treasonable growth
Of indecisive judgments, that impaired
And shook the mind's simplicity. And yet
This was a gladsome time. Could I behold-
Who, less insensible than sodden clay
In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide,
Could have beheld-with undelighted heart,
So many happy youths, so wide and fair
A congregation in its budding-time

Of health, and hope, and beauty, all at once
So many divers samples from the growth
Of life's sweet season-could have seen un-
moved

That miscellaneous garland of wild flowers
Decking the matron samples of a place
So famous through the world? To me, at
least,

It was a goodly prospect: for, in sooth, Though I had learnt betimes to stand unpropped,

And independent musings pleased me so
That spells seemed on me when I was alone,
Yet could I only cleave to solitude
In lonely places; if a throng was near
That way I leaned by nature; for my heart
Was social, and loved idleness and joy.

"Not seeking those who might participate My deeper pleasures (nay, I had not once, Though not unused to mutter lonesome songs, Even with myself divided such delight, Or looked that way for aught that might be clothed

In human language), easily I passed
From the remembrances of better things,
And slipped into the ordinary works
Of careless youth, unburthened, unalarmed.
Caverns there were within my mind which

sun

Could never penetrate, yet did there not Want store of leafy arbours where the light Might enter in at will. Companionships, Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all. We sauntered, played, or rioted; we talked Unprofitable talk at morning hours;

Drifted about along the streets and walls,

Read lazily in trivial books, went forth
To gallop through the country in blind zeal
Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast
Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars
Come forth, perhaps without one quiet
thought."

The feeling that he was in a scene hallowed by great names, was, however, one that pressed strongly on his mind. His mind, like theirs, whatever its individual power and range, was subdued by the spirit of the place.

"I could not always lightly pass

Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,

Wake when they waked, range that inclosure old,

That garden of great intellects undisturbed.
Place also by the side of this dark sense
A noble feeling, that those spiritual men,
Even the great Newton's own ethereal self,
Seemed humbled in these precincts, thence
to be

The more endeared. Their several memories here

(Even like their persons in their portraits

clothed

With the accustomed garb of daily life)
Put on a lowly and a touching grace
Of more distinct humanity, had left
All genuine admiration unimpaired.”

Chaucer, and Spenser, and Milton, are among the great names which are connected with Cambridge, giving and receiving honour. Wordsworth tells, in touching language, of his veneration for the two first. Of Milton he informs us that one of his acquaintances occupied the chambers which had been Milton's; and that he, William Wordsworth, the sage, the temperate, the water-drinker, was, on some occasion, at his friend's rooms, where he drank to Milton's memory,

""Till pride And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain Never excited by the fumes of wine Before or since "

and that he ran off to chapel in a state of intoxication, to the surprise of the townsfolk, and the scandal of porters and beadles. The poem, in which this is recorded, is addressed to Coleridge, and he expresses a strong belief that the spirit of Milton will forgive him, and that Coleridge will not be very angry.

Whatever Wordsworth may have done, or left undone, at college, there can be little doubt that he learned

a good deal more in the vacations than in term time, and that of his academic years, the months passed furthest from his academy were the most fruitful. They were spent, during the first two years, in rambling through some of the most beautiful parts of England, or visiting the scenes of his boyhood. At Penrith, on the southern frontier of Cumberland, his mother's relatives lived, and here he again had the society of that sister mentioned in the poems descriptive of childhood, and of his future wife. In the immediate neighbourhood was Brougham Castle.

No reader of Wordsworth can have forgotten The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, which gives to Emont its name in song ::

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Wordsworth had written verses of no ordinary merit at school. The time passed at Cambridge appears to have been a period in which, if the mind was acquiring stores of thought, it yet did not exhibit any fruits. He did nothing in College studies; and there is no evidence of any fixed occupation of his own. In the year 1793, however, appeared two poems which showed power of a high kind; the one, "An Evening Walk," in England, addressed to his sister; the other, Descriptive Sketches" of foreign scenery, addressed to the companion of his last vacation's rambles. Both are pleasing poems; the style in both elaborately wrought out. We are reminded, when reading it, of other poets, by something of a manner between that of Goldsmith and Johnson-more apparently artificial than Goldsmith, and with truer delicacy of touch than Johnson. The style is, we think, a more perfect one, though of less compass and variety than that of his after poems.

These poems had but small sale. Among the few into whose hands they fell was Coleridge :

"During the last year of my residence at Cambridge I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's Descriptive Sketches,' and seldom, if ever, was the