checking the sale of the poems was such, that no edition of them was required between 1807 and 1815.

me.

...

But contempt and neglect were alike ineffectual. The poet lived and wrote as if he knew of neither. And, amidst all the hostility and obloquy which for years he endured, the just and discriminating estimate which he formed of his works, and the calm confidence with which he regarded its ultimate ratification both by his contemporaries and by posterity, are perhaps the most astonishing circumstances in his remarkable literary career. A few sentences from himself, therefore, on this subject, may be fitly quoted here. "I distinctly foresaw," he said, in writing to a friend, "what you and my other friends would have to encounter in defending But trouble not yourself about their present reception [his poems]; of what moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny?-to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform long after we are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware how far it would seem to many I overrate my own exertions when I speak in this way. I am not, however, afraid of such censure. Let the poet first consult his own heart as I have done, and leave the rest to posterity. . . . There is scarcely one of my poems which does not aim to direct the attention to some moral sentiment, or to some general principle, or law of thought, or of our intellectual constitution." And in reference to the "Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty," he says, "I would boldly say at once that these sonnets, while they each fix the attention upon some important sentiment, separately considered, do, at the same time, collectively make a poem on the subject of civil liberty and national independence, which, either for simplicity of style or grandeur of moral sentiment, is, alas! likely to have few parallels in the poetry of the present day." . . . 'But, the fact is," he says, "the English public are at this moment in the same state of mind with respect to my poems, if small things can be compared with great, as the French are in respect to Shakspeare, and not the French alone, but almost the whole Continent. I am condemned for the very thing for which I ought to have been praised, namely, that I have not written down to the level of superficial observers and unthinking minds. Every great poet is a teacher. I wish either to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing." Again, he says, "Never forget what I believe was observed by Coleridge—that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen."

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In the spring of 1808, the poet removed to Allan Bank, a new house which stood at the head of the lake of Grasmere, where he resided for three years. This period was perhaps the least prolific of his life in poetry, a circumstance which his nephew attributes to the many inconveniences of his new residence. "But, on the other hand," says the same authority, 'the time of his sojourn here was rendered memorable by the production of two works in prose by two poets-the 'Essay on the Convention of Cintra,' by Wordsworth, and The Friend, by

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Coleridge, who dictated it (for he did not write it with his own hand) under Wordsworth's roof."

Although the greater part of the poet's life was spent in comparative retirement, and in the contemplation of scenes and objects far removed from the turmoil and fierce contention of political strife, it would be a great mistake to suppose that he was an inattentive observer of public events. "Few persons," says his nephew, "though actually engaged in the great struggle of that period, felt more deeply than Wordsworth did in his peaceful retreat, for the calamities of European nations suffering at that time from the imbecility of their governments, and from the withering oppression of a prosperous despotism. His heart burned within him when he looked forth upon the contest; and impassioned words proceeded from him both in poetry and in prose. 'It would not,' he said himself in conversation, 'be easy to conceive with what a depth of feeling I entered into the struggle carried on by the Spaniards for their deliverance from the usurped power of the French. Many times have I gone from Allan Bank in Grasmere Vale, to the Raise-Gap, as it is called, so late as two o'clock in the morning, to meet the carrier bringing the newspaper from Keswick.' In his " Essay on the Convention of Cintra," the poet appears before the world as depressed in mind and indignant in spirit, because the war in the Peninsula had not been carried on by England against France with all the vigour that it might have been, and because, when it was, as he believed, in the power of England to have emancipated Spain and Portugal from the intolerable thraldom of French tyranny, she allowed the enemy to escape by a retreat similar to a triumph. Although lucidly conceived, and written in a strain of impassioned prose, and said to have been pronounced by Canning to be the most eloquent production that had appeared since the days of Burke, it yet fell almost still-born from the press, and attracted so very little attention, that there is scarcely any production of the century so difficult to be met with as this tract. As a specimen of the spirit and style of this little known but noble essay, a single extract may be given. In the following passage the poet contends for the supremacy of moral over physical power, and shows how the spirit of freedom, when actuated by pure passions and high actions, must always ultimately triumph over all the tools and implements of tyranny:

"There is no middle course : two masters cannot be served :--Justice must either be enthroned above might, and the moral law take the place of the edicts of selfish passion; or the heart of the people, which alone can sustain the efforts of the people, will languish; their desires will not spread beyond the plough and the loom, the field and the fireside; the sword will appear to them an emblem of no promise; an instrument of no hope; an object of indifference, of disgust or fear. Was there ever-since the earliest actions of men which have been transmitted by affectionate tradition, or recorded by faithful history, or sung to the impassioned harp of poetry—was there ever a people who presented themselves to the reason and the imagination, as under more holy influences than the dwellers upon the Southern peninsula ; as roused more instan

taneously from a deadly sleep to a more hopeful wakefulness; as a mass fluctuating with one motion under the breath of a mightier wind; as breaking themselves up, and settling into several bodies, in more harmonious order; as reunited and embattled under a standard which was reared to the sun with more authentic assurance of final victory?. . . Let the fire, which is never wholly to be extinguished, break out afresh; let but the human creature be roused; whether he have lain headless and torpid in religious or civil slavery; have languished under a thraldom, domestic or foreign, or under both these alternately; or have drifted about, a helpless mem. ber of a clan of disjointed and feeble barbarians,-let him rise and act; and his domineering imagination, by which from childhood he has been betrayed, and the debasing affections which it has imposed upon him, will from that moment participate in the dignity of the newly-ennobled being whom they will now acknow. ledge for their master; and will further him in his progress, whatever be the object at which he aims. Still more inevitable and momentous are the results, when the individual knows that the fire which is reanimated in him is not less lively in the breasts of his associates; and sees the signs and testimonies of his own power, incorporated with those of a growing multitude, and not to be distinguished from them, accompany him wherever he moves. Hence those marvellous achievements which were performed by the first enthusiastic followers. of Mohammed, and by other conquerors, who with their armies have swept large portions of the earth like a transitory wind, or have founded new religions or empires. But if the object contended for be worthy and truly great (as, in the instance of the Spaniards, we have seen that it is); if cruelties have been committed upon an ancient and venerable people, which shake the human frame with horror; if not alone the life which is sustained by the bread of the mouth, but that-without which there is no life-the life in the soul has been directly and mortally warred against; if reason has had abominations to endure in her inmost sanctuary; then does intense passion, consecrated by a sudden revelation of justice, give birth to those higher and better wonders which I have described; and exhibit true miracles to the eyes of men, and the noblest which can be seen. It may be added that,- as this union brings back to the right road the faculty of imagination, where it is prone to err and has gone furthest astray; as it corrects those qualities which are in their essence indifferent, and cleanses those affections which (not being inherent in the constitution of man, nor necessarily determined to their object), are more immediately dependent upon the imagination, and which may have received from it a thorough taint of dishonour-so the domestic loves and sanctities which are in their nature less liable to be stained-so these, wherever they have flowed with a pure and placid stream, do instantly, under the same influence, put forth their strength as in a flood; and without being sullied or polluted, pursue—exultingly and with song—a course which leads the contemplative reason to the ocean of eternal love."

In 1810, he wrote the introduction to a folio volume of "Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire," which, as a description of the, beauty and magnificence of the lake scenery, of the inhabitants, their homesteads,

and their manner of living, of the most striking and characteristic features of each district, with instructions as to the best manner of seeing these, is reckoned the most accurate and interesting thing of the kind ever written.

In the spring of 1813, after one temporary change of residence, he took up his abode at Rydal Mount, about two miles distant from Grasmere, and here he continued to reside till the day of his death, thirty-seven years after. The house, which has since become so famous, is a two-storied, sober-hued, modest mansion, tinged with weather stains, mantled over here and there with roses, ivy, jessamine, and Virginia creeper, and stands on the sloping side of a rocky hill, with a southern aspect, overlooking the lake of Windermere, and commanding beautiful views of the romantic vale of the Rothay, and of the distant wood-fringed waters of the lake; while around the dark waters rise the gracefully-rounded, richlywooded mountains-soft as the scenery of a still Dreamland; beautiful with cultured picturesqueness, as of the gardens of the Titans; clothed with the "infinite enchantment" of atmospheric effects ever varying and always lovely; and glowing—“ in the light of setting suns "--with a glory of colour-orange, and bronze, purple and amethyst,-against the loftier and remoter peaks that rise in the far distance, faint and unsubstantial in the wide lapse of light, like high-piled cloud on cloud.

The poet's good fortune seems to have followed him to this beautiful abode; for he had hardly taken possession of it when he received the appointment of distributor of stamps in the county of Westmoreland—an office which added about £500 a year to his income, and the duties of which were discharged by a clerk, so that he was still left ample liberty to follow his literary pursuits. For this desirable appointment he was indebted to the influence of the Earl of Lonsdale, who had been for many years his constant and generous friend, and whose kindness on this occasion he gratefully acknowledged by dedicating "The Excursion" to him in a complimentary prefatory sonnet.

A second tour in Scotland early in 1814, in company with his wife and his sister, gave birth to a few poems, amongst which was "Yarrow Visited." And in the summer of the same year appeared his great poem, "The Excursion." It need scarcely be said, that, with the leading reviewers of the day, it fared no better than his former less ambitious attempts had done; and that, with hardly a single exception, and in the strongest terms of condemnation, they doomed it to oblivion! And it is a somewhat remarkable fact in literary history that a single edition of 500 copies of this poem satisfied the English public for a period of six years. Another edition, also confined to 500 copies, published in 1827, was found sufficient for the following seven years. But, notwithstanding these discouragements, the poet's equanimity was undisturbed. "Let the age continue to love its own darkness,"

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he said, in a letter to Southey, "I shall continue to write, with, I trust, the light of Heaven upon me." "If 'The Excursion' is to be judged of by its best passages,' says one of his admirers, "hardly any poem in the language is equal to it. Some of its scenes, extending to hundreds of lines, many smaller passages, and innumerable verses and phrases, are among the most exquisite things to which any poetic

mind ever gave expression." "In power of intellect," says another, Hazlitt, "in lofty conception, in the depth of feeling, at once simple and sublime, which per vades every part of it, and which gives to every object an almost preternatural and preter-human interest, this work has seldom been surpassed!"

In 1815 appeared the "White Doe of Rylstone," a beautiful legendary poem, which the poet considered, in conception, the highest work he had ever produced. In the preceding and two following years were composed Laodamia," Dion," and the “Ode to Lycoris," in conception and expression the purest and most richly classic pieces he ever penned. The "Thanksgiving Ode," and a rhymed translation, in the style of Pope, of three books of the "Eneid," were produced in 1816.

In 1819, appeared "Peter Bell," which had been written nearly twenty years before, and which is really remarkable as having been more in request than any of his previous publications. An edition of 500 copies was printed in April, and another impression of it was required in the following month. "The Waggoner," which appeared at the same time, was not, however, so successful. To this year, also, belong the beautiful series of "Sonnets on the River Duddon,"

In 1820, Wordsworth, accompanied by his wife and sister, made a tour of four months on the Continent, which gave birth to a volume of sonnets and other poems, published in 1822, under the title of "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent." In this year, too, a brief visit to his friend, Sir George Beaumont, at his seat of Coleorton, in Leicestershire, suggested the splendid series of "Ecclesiastical Sonnets."

During the next few years the poet appears to have done little else than travel about, either on special tours, or on visits to his friends, and in the autumn of 1831 he set off from Rydal Mount, in company with his daughter, to visit Sir Walter Scott before his departure, ruined in fortune, and weakened in body and mind, for Italy.

They reached Abbotsford on Monday. "How sadly changed," says Wordsworth, "did I find him from the man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful a few years before. The inmates and guests we found there were Sir Walter, Major Scott, Anne Scott, and Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart; Mr. Liddell, his lady and brother, Mr. Allan, the painter, and Mr. Laidlaw. In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Liddell sang, and Mrs. Lockhart chanted old ballads to her harp; and Mr. Allan, hanging over the back of a chair, told and acted old stories in a humorous way. With this exhibition and his daughter's singing, Sir Walter was much amused, and, indeed, were we all, as far as circumstances would allow. On Tuesday morning Sir Walter accompanied us to Newark Castle, on the Yarrow. Of that excursion the On our return, in the

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verses, Yarrow Revisited,' are a memorial.

afternoon, we had to cross the Tweed directly opposite Abbotsford. .. A rich but sad light, of rather a purple than a golden hue, was spread over the Eildon

Hills at that moment; and, thinking it probable that it might be the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was not a little moved, and expressed some of my feelings in the following sonnet :