extinguished even his sensibility to the voice of worldly honor injuries,' says Wordsworth

' injuries

Made him more gracious.'

And so utterly had he submitted his own will or separate interests to the transcendent voice of his country, which, in the main, he believed to be now speaking authentically for the first time since the foundations of Christendom, that, even against the motions of his own heart, he adopted the hatreds of the young Republic, growing cruel in his purposes towards the ancient oppressor, out of very excess of love for the oppressed; and, against the voice of his own order, as well as in stern oblivion of many early friendships, he became the champion of democracy in the struggle everywhere commencing with prejudice or feudal privilege. Nay, he went so far upon the line of this new crusade against the evils of the world, that he even accepted, with a conscientious defiance of his own inevitable homage to the erring spirit of loyalty embarked upon that cause, a commission in the Republican armies preparing to move against La Vendée; and, finally, in that cause, as commander-in-chief, he laid down his life. 'He perished,' says Wordsworth

'perished, fighting in supreme command,

Upon the banks of the unhappy Loire.'

Homewards fled all the English from a land which now was fast filling its prisons, and making ready the shambles for its noblest citizens. Thither also came Wordsworth; and then he spent his time for a year and more, in London chiefly, overwhelmed with shame and despondency for the disgrace and scandal brought upon liberty by the atrocities committed in that holy name. Upon

this subject he dwells with deep emotion in the poem on his own life; and he records the awful triumph for retribution accomplished, which possessed him when crossing the sands of the great Bay of Morecamb from Lancaster to Ulverstone; and hearing from a horseman who passed him, in reply to his question was there any news? 'Yes, that Robespierre had perished.' Immediately, a passion seized him, a transport of almost epileptic fervor, prompting him, as he stood alone upon this perilous* waste of sands, to shout aloud anthems of thanksgiving for this great vindication of eternal justice. Still, though justice was done upon one great traitor to the cause, the cause itself was overcast with clouds too heavily to find support and employment for the hopes of a poet who had believed in a golden era ready to open upon the prospects of human nature. It gratified and solaced his heart, that the indignation of mankind should have wreaked itself upon the chief monsters that had outraged their nature and their hopes; but for the present he found it necessary to comfort his disappointment, by turning away from politics to studies less capable of deceiving his expecta

tions.

*That tract of the lake country which stretches southwards from Hawkshead and the lakes of Esthwaite, Windermere, and Coniston, to the little town of Ulverstone, (which may he regarded as the metropolis of the little romantic English Calabria, called Turness,) is divided from the main part of Lancashire by the estuary of Morecamb. The sea retires with the ebb tide to a vast distance, leaving the sands passable for a few hours for horses and carriages. But partly from the daily variation in these hours, partly from the intricacy of the pathless track which must be pursued, and partly from the galloping pace at which the returning tide comes in, many fatal accidents are continually occurring — sometimes to the too venturous traveller who has slighted the aid of guides sometimes to the guides themselves, when baffled and perplexed by mists. Gray the poet mentions one of the latter class, as having then recently occurred under affecting circumstances. Local tradition records a long list of interesting cases.

1794-95

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From this period, therefore that is, from the year we may date the commencement of Wordsworth's entire self-dedication to poetry as the study and main business of his life. Somewhere about this period, also, (though, according to my remembrance of what Miss Wordsworth once told me, I think one year or so later,) his sister joined him; and they began to keep house together once at Race Down, in Dorsetshire; once at Clevedon, on the coast of Somersetshire; then amongst the Quantock Hills, in the same county, or in that neighborhood; and, at length, at Alfoxton, a beautiful country-house, with a grove and shrubbery attached, belonging to Mr. St. Aubyn, a minor, and let (I believe) on the terms of keeping the house in repair. Whilst resident at this last place it was, as I have generally understood, and in the year 1797 or 1798, that Wordsworth first became acquainted with Coleridge; though, possibly, in the year I am wrong; for it occurs to me that, in a poem published in 1796, there is an allusion to a young writer, of the name of Wordsworth, as one who had something austere in his style, but otherwise was more original than any other poet of the age; and it is probable that this, and knowledge of the poetry, would be subsequent to a personal knowledge of the author, considering the little circulation which any poetry of a Wordsworthian stamp would be likely to attain at that

time.

CHAPTER XII.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

It was at Alfoxton that Miss Mary Hutchinson visited her cousins the Wordsworths; and there, or previously, in the north of England, at Stockton-upon-Tees and Darlington, that the attachment began between Miss Hutchinson and Wordsworth, which terminated in their marriage about the beginning of the present century. The marriage took place in the north; somewhere, I believe, in Yorkshire; and, immediately after the ceremony, Wordsworth brought his bride to Grasmere ; in which most lovely of English valleys he had previously obtained, upon a lease of seven or eight years, the cottage in which I found him living at my first visit to him in November, 1807. I have heard that there was a paragraph inserted on this occasion in the Morning Post or Courier- and I have an indistinct remembrance of having once seen it myself — which described this event of the poet's marriage in the most ludicrous terms of silly pastoral sentimentality; the cottage being described as 'the abode of content and all the vir tues,' the vale itself in the same puerile slang, and the whole event in a style of allegorical trifling about the muses, &c. The masculine and severe taste of Wordsworth made him peculiarly open to annoyance from such absurd trifling; and, unless his sense of the ludicrous overpowered his graver feelings, he must have been much

displeased with the paragraph. But, after all, I have understood that the whole affair was an unseasonable jest of Coleridge's or Lamb's.

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To us who, in after years, were Wordsworth's friends, or at least intimate acquaintances - viz., to Professor Wilson and myself the most interesting circumstance in this marriage, the one which perplexed us exceedingly, was the very possibility that it should ever have been brought to bear. For we could not conceive of Wordsworth as submitting his faculties to the humilities and devotion of courtship. That self-surrender- that prostration of mind, by which a man is too happy and proud to express the profundity of his service to the woman of his heart it seemed a mere impossibility that ever Wordsworth should be brought to feel for a single instant; and what he did not sincerely feel, assuredly he was not the person to profess. Ah, happy, happy days! - in which, for a young man's heart that is deep and fervid in his affections, and passionate in his admirations, there is but one presence upon earth, one glory, one heaven of hope! days how fugitive, how incapable of return, how imperishable to the heart of all that a man has lived! Wordsworth, I take it upon myself to say, had not the feelings within him which make this total devotion to a woman possible. There never lived the woman whom he would not have lectured and admonished under circumstances that should have seemed to require it; nor would he have conversed with her in any mood whatever without wearing an air of mild condescension to her understanding. To lie at her feet, to make her his idol, to worship her very caprices, and to adore the most unreasonable of her frowns these things were impossible to Wordsworth; and, being so, never could he, in any emphatic sense, have been a lover.