hand to be painted, others are sketched best from a distance. The writer of this volume lays claim to no more personal knowledge of Mr. Wordsworth than that possessed by thousands, resident both in England and America; he has seen and conversed with him several times, and that is all. Yet it has seemed to him that, availing himself of no special lights, bringing to the work simple reverence, and acquaintance with the Poet's writings, a volume might be produced not needless nor unacceptable to many readers.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770. Although his father was only an attorney, and his mother the daughter of a draper, his family was ancient, and it was his delight to trace back its history, both on his father's and mother's side, beyond the times of the Norman Conquest. To those who are disposed to believe in and to notice how race perpetuates itself, it is by no means unimportant to follow the course of a family genealogy, nor uninteresting to trace the names of both sides of his family to their Saxon derivative. Some ancient founder of the stock it would seem must have been a Poet too, capable of uttering the Weird, or Word, in a thrilling or worthy manner, and the gift which made the patriarch of the race remarkable descended on the son through the long course of generations.

But William, almost the youngest of the family, was not long to know the benefits and the affections of parental love. His mother died when he was very young, and at fourteen years of age, while he was yet

at school, he lost his father. It is probable that he inherited much of his mother's nature; young as her son William was she seems to have anticipated with maternal prescience the peculiar difficulties to which his temperament might expose him. She had remarked to a friend that of all her five children he was the only one about whose future life she was anxious. He describes himself as being when young of a stiff, moody temperament, daring and perverse; and probably made more perverse by chastisements more frequent than wise. His young days were passed in various places, with his mother's relations at Penrith, or in his father's house at Cockermouth. He has perpetuated and memorialized most of the impressions and doings of those childish days, with old Dame Birkett, to whom he went to school, and for whom and for whose teaching he always expressed a high respect and affection. With him too at the old dame school at Penrith there was a little girl, his playmate and fellow, Mary Hutchinson, who nearly thirty years after was to become his wife. He has also told us with what avidity he read books too in those early years; but more especially when he went from his home at Penrith to Hawkshead, a beautiful and tranquil little village, famous for a school on the foundation of Archbishop Sandys. His days here were important to him:-they nourished in him the love of nature,-they furnished him with images which sprang spontaneously along his verse in after years, and of which he has given to us many instances,-they fostered in him the love of independence, it seems even in that

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early period, the love of solitude too,—here, as we have already said, the love of books if not a passion, as with boys of an inferior nature, yielded to him a harvest of delight; and Gil Blas, and Don Quixote, and Gulliver's Travels, and the Tale of a Tub, and the Works of Fielding were perused and re-perused. It could not but be the case that such a boy as William Wordsworth was, became very early watchful of his emotions, and his experiences. We see how at that early age all things reflected thought within him. He must have been a mystery to his companions. He has told us that the ode on the "Intimations of Immortality in Childhood" was the result of the working and movement of his own mind. And we know, from the same source, that daring feats and wild enterprises were to him something more than they were to others. The men and boys whom he met at school furnished him with many wide fields for thought and feeling in after life, when he renewed his old impressions and affections. He left Hawkshead at sixteen years of age, and the lines in which he apostrophised the lake, hills, and valleys, so beloved and endeared by memory and association, contain a tenderness derived from the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future: a future all undefined to him, for he lost his father two years before, and the course of his life was wholly undetermined.

COCKERMOUTH, the birth-place of our poet, is not the most interesting locality of the Lake District, although it lies on the threshold, or perhaps we might say in the centre of a radius of great interest :-it is twelve miles

from Keswick, twelve from Ennerdale, about six from the vale of Lorton, the Derwent babbles and prattles sweetly by its side, and the Castle, an old feudal structure, gives some character to the town. Nearly at the top of the one long common-place street still stands the house, a large square stone structure, where Wordsworth was born. One of his sons is rector of a little village not far from the town, the pretty little village of Brigham. But although the poet first saw the light here, the locality did not perhaps influence his character much; nor had he probably many associations with the place, although he has affectionately mentioned it in his Prelude, and celebrated the ceaseless music of the Derwent, then to him "the fairest of all rivers."

HAWKSHEAD exercised a much more abiding power. At that time from what we know of it we picture it to have been what Jean Paul would call a little mountain island, out of the way of all travellers; there were no pedestrians, or students with their sketch-books to visit it then, in 1769, the year before the birth of Wordsworth, Thomas Gray, the poet, very narrowly escaped paying it a visit. "All farther access" says he in his very interesting tour, addressed to Dr. Warton, "is here barred to ordinary mortals, only there is a little path winding over the fells, and for some weeks in the year passable to the dalesmen; but the mountains know well that these innocent people will not reveal the mysteries of their ancient kingdom, 'the reign of Chaos and old night,' only I learned that this dreadful road dividing again leads one branch to Ravenglass, and the other to

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Hawkshead."* Some idea may be formed of the solitude and magnificence of the neighbourhood at this period, from the fact that the Eagle had not yet quite relinquished it as his abode. Gray stayed on the night of the day when he passed so near to the village, at the house of a brave young farmer, who had but just robbed an eagle's ærie, of an eaglet and egg. Indeed at that time the royal but destructive bird visited those mountains, and which was not so pleasant, those vallies, every year, to the annoyance of shepherd and flock. And what a place for a dreaming sensitive boy. There winter lingered late, and the frost and the snow came early; around the village the mountain streams tumbled and thundered, and gave refreshment to a race of people hardy and simple as their native hills. The tall black mountains guarded the beautiful waters of the lake. Few trades were followed, and those of the very simplest, the blacksmith's forge and the miller's water-wheel being perhaps the most prominent symbols of trade. The houses at that day would no doubt be simple rural habitations, but such as we love now to enter, when every object especially in the farm spoke of some effort at order and comfort, the rude pictures on the walls, the china in the corner cupboard behind the glass, the house surrounded by its little orchard and pretty flower garden, dear to the painters of rural scenery. The Maypole in the centre of the village, the scene of many a merry game. The people characterized by sturdy inde

Letter to Dr. Warton, October 18th, 1769. See Life of Gray, by Mason.