Edited by FRANCIS STORR, B.A., ASSISTANT-MASTER AT MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE, LATE SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND BELL UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR. The object of these Volumes is to supply preparatory Schools, and the fourth or fifth forms of larger Schools, with cheap Annotated Text-books for English reading. It is intended that each Volume should contain enough for one Term's work. Fcap. 8vo. THOMSON'S SEASONS: Winter. With an Introduction to the Series, by the Rev. J. FRANCK COWPER'S TASK. By FRANCIS STORR, B. A., Assistant-Master at Marlborough BACON'S ESSAYS. By FRANCIS STORR, B. A., Assistant-Master at Marlborough SCOTT'S LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. By J. SURTEES PHILLPOTS, M. A., Assistant - Master at Rugby School, formerly Fellow of New College, Oxford. SIMPLE POEMS. By W. C. MULLINS, M. A., Assistant - Master at Marlborough College. SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. By H. H. TURNER, of Trinity College, Cambridge. WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. By H. H. TURNER, of Trinity College, Cambridge. The general Introduction to the Series will be found in THOMPSON'S Winter. Rivingtons LONDON, OXFORD, AND CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH SCHOOL-CLASSICS WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION The Wanderer EDITED, WITH LIFE, INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES BY H. H. TURNER OF TRINITY COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE RIVINGTONS London, Oxford, and Cambridge 1874 2 fo. 32. WILLIAM LIFE. WORDSWORTH was born in April, 1770, at Cockermouth, on the river Derwent, in Cumberland. The Wordsworths were a family of no great note, but had long held a respectable position, and the father of the poet was a solicitor, and acted as agent to Lord Lonsdale. He had five children, of whom William was the second, and his only sister, Dorothy, the third. By the banks of Derwent the future poet passed his early childhood. Even then the mountain stream "sent a voice that flowed along his dreams," and in its waters, when only five years old, he tells us, he made "one long bathing of a summer's day." The wise care of his mother, whom Wordsworth always lovingly remembered, made these pleasant years of infancy full of profit to him. His passionate and earnest nature showed, she tells us, some signs of sullenness, which vanished, however, under her wise training, and which have as their sole counterpart the complete lack of humour which marked his character. His mother died when he was eight years old, and the following year he was sent, with his elder brother John, to school at Hawkshead, a market village near the lake of Esthwaite. The one fact of Wordsworth's school-time is that it was only a continuation of his childish freedom. It is the first index of a life singular throughout for its unconven |