for his indolence and melancholy, and, although poetry and fiction were forbidden, he contrived to read clandestinely Robinson Crusoe and Cowper's poems. His inattention to his studies caused him to be placed by the school authorities with a shopkeeper, from whom, in 1789, he ran away. A few months afterward he sent a volume of poems to a London bookseller, and followed it himself to the great metropolis. The poems were declined, but the young poet obtained a situation in the publisher's office. In 1791 he wrote a tale, his first prose production, for the Bee, an Edinburgh periodical, and soon afterward published a novel, which was declined because the hero gave utterance occasionally to a strong expression. The young author was greatly hurt at this, for he was of a deeply religious cast of mind, and imagined he had only done that which was right in imitating Fielding and Smollett. He returned to a situation for some time, and at length entered the service of Mr. Gales, a printer and bookseller at Sheffield, who permitted him to write political articles for the Sheffield Register, a paper conducted on what were then called revolutionary principles. A warrant being issued for the apprehension of Gales, he fled to America, and Montgomery started a paper on peace and reform" principles, called the Sheffield Iris, and was soon afterward indicted for producing some doggerel verses which had been brought to his printing-office to be printed. For this he was fined twenty pounds and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. On another occasion, for publishing an account of a riot at Sheffield, he was fined thirty pounds and was imprisoned for six months. His subsequent ca

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he produced The Wanderer in Switzerland, which quickly ran through three editions and was subsequently followed by other and better works of the same nature, the chief of which were The West Indies, The World be-. fore the Flood and Greenland, a poem descriptive of the establishment of the Moravians in that desolate region, which sect he had again joined. In 1823 he produced Original Hymns for Public, Private and Social Devotion. In 1825 he resigned the editorship of the Sheffield Iris, whereupon he was entertained at a public dinner by his fellowtownsmen. His interesting History of Missionary Enterprise in the South Seas was produced in 1830. Five years later he was offered the chair of rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh, which he declined. Sir Robert Peel about the same time bestowed upon him a pension of one hundred and fifty pounds. In 1836 he left the house of his old employer, Gales, where he had lived during forty years, for a more convenient abode. He delivered several courses of lectures upon "The British Poets" at Newcastle-on-Tyne and other places during some years, but in 1841 he visited his native country on a missionary-tour. His last effort was a lecture "On some Passages of English Poetry but little known."

THOMAS BUDD SHAW.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born

on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland. His parents were of the middle class and designed him for the Church; but poetry and new prospects turned him into another path. His pursuit

through life was poetry, and his profession that of stamp-distributor for the government in the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland. He made his first appearance as a poet in 1793 by the publication of a thin. quarto volume entitled An Evening Walk: An Epistle in Verse, addressed to a Young Lady. In the same year he published Descriptive Sketches in Verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps, of which Coleridge thus writes in his Biographia Literaria: "During the last of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled Descriptive Sketches, and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." Two years after, the two poets, then personally unknown to each other, were brought together at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. Coleridge was then in his twenty-fourth and Wordsworth in his twenty-sixth year. A congeniality of pursuit soon ripened into intimacy, and in September, 1798, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth, they made a tour in Germany.

Wordsworth's next publication was the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, published just after he had left for the Continent by Joseph Cottle of Bristol, who purchased the copyright for thirty guineas. But it proved a great failure, and Cottle was a loser by the bargain. The critics were very severe upon it. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, Byron in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," James Smith in his "Rejected Addresses," and others of less note in the literary world, all fired their shafts of reason and ridicule at him. Many years, therefore, elapsed before Mr. Wordsworth again appeared as a poet.

But

he was not idle, for in the same year that witnessed the failure of his Lyrical Ballads he wrote his "Peter Bell," though he kept it by him many years before he published it.

Wordsworth married, in the year 1803, Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, and settled among his beloved lakes-first at Grasmere, and afterward at Rydal Mount. Southey's subsequent retirement to the same beautiful country and Coleridge's visits to his brother-poets originated the name of the "Lake School of Poetry," by which the opponents of their principles and the critics of the Edinburgh Review distinguished the three poets whose names are so intimately connected. In 1807 he put forth two volumes of his poems, and in the autumn of 1814 appeared, in quarto form, the celebrated “Excursion." It consists of sketches of life and manners among the mountains, intermingled with moral and devotional reflections. It is merely a part of a larger poem which was to be entitled "The Recluse," and to be prefaced by a minor one, delineating the growth of the author's mind, published since his death under the name of "The Prelude." "The Recluse" was to be divided into three parts. The "Excursion" forms the second of these; the first book of the first part is extant in manuscript, but the rest of the work was never completed.

No sooner did the "Excursion" appear than the critics were down upon it with a vengeance. "This will never do," was the memorable opening of the article in the Edinburgh. A few thought it "would do," and praised it; but while it was still dividing the critics "Peter Bell" appeared, to throw among them yet greater differences of opinion. The

deriders of the poet laughed still louder than before, while his admirers believed, or affected to believe, that it added to the author's fame. Another publication the next year—“ The White Doe of Rylstone"-was even more severely handled by one party, while with "the school" it found still greater favor than anything that he had written. In 1820 he published his noble series of "Sonnets to the River Duddon," which contain some of his finest poetry. Two years after appeared his "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," which were composed at the same time that Southey was writing his History of the Church.

In 1831 Wordsworth visited Scotland, and on his way to the lakes had an affecting interview-the last he ever had-with Sir Walter Scott, who was rapidly failing and was about to set off for an Italian cline. The evening of the 22d of September was a very sad one in his antique library. Lockhart was there, and Allan, the historical painter. Wordsworth was also feeble in health, and sat, with a green shade over his eyes and bent shoulders, between his daughter and Sir Walter. The conversation was melancholy, and Sir Walter remarked that Smollett and Fielding had both

friend and companion, died, and blow followed blow in fatal succession. As if to console him for the loss of so many that were dear to his heart, worldly honors began to be heaped upon him. In 1835, Blackwood's Magazine came out strongly in his defence. In 1839, amid the acclamations of the students, he received the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University. In 1842 he received a pension of three hundred pounds a year, with permission to resign his office of stamp-distributor in favor of his son. Next year he was appointed to the laureateship, left vacant by the melancholy death of Southey. After this he lived a quiet and dignified life at Rydal, evincing little apparent sympathy with the arduous duties and activities of the every-day world—a world which he left calmly and peacefully, at a good old age, on the 23d of April, 1850.

CHARLES D. CLEVELAND.

HONOR THY PARENTS. ONOR thy parents-those that gave thee birth,

his

And watched in tenderness thine earliest days,

And trained thee up in youth, and loved in all.

Honor, obey and love them; it shall fill Their souls with holy joy, and shall bring

down

God's richest blessing on thee; and, in days

To come, thy children, if they're given, Shall honor thee and fill thy life with peace.

JONATHAN EDWARDS.