"W The violet by its mossy stone, The primrose by the river's brim, -Whittier. ORDSWORTH," says Blaisdell, "was the great master of the Lake School, in which Coleridge and Southey were, after him, the most prominent members. The poets of that school took their subjects often from among the commonest things, and wrote their poems in the simplest style, choosing the ordinary speech of educated people as the vehicle of their thoughts. They probably went too far in their disdain for the conventional subjects and ornaments of poetry; but their principles were sound and healthful, and their labors made a deep and lasting impression on English thought." William Wordsworth, second son of Lawyer John Wordsworth, was born on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, England. His parents died while he was yet a child, and most of his early boyhood was spent in the home of the Cooksons, his maternal grandparents, at Pendrith. He attended school at Hawskhead and later entered Cambridge, graduating in 1791. During the four years of his college course he read many books and wrote poetry. He was not much in sympathy with his college life and delightedly hailed his vacations, which he spent in touring through Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany and Scotland. "His friends wished him to enter the church, but he was born to be a poet and nothing else. The love of poetry was the grand passion of his heart, which grew and strengthened with the coming of more mature years." His first published volume, Descriptive Sketches, appeared in 1793. This was followed in the same year by An Evening Walk. These poems were sufficiently successful to show the literary public the rise of a new star in the poetical heavens, which was destined to shed a brilliant luster on the land. In 1795 Wordsworth found it necessary to turn his attention to earning a living, and thought seriously of entering either law or journalism or both. Before he had decided a young friend died, leaving him nine hundred pounds, and earnestly urging him to devote himself to poetry. This he determined to do and at once settled himself down in Dorsetshire with his sister Dorothy, of whom he was very fond, as mistress of his home. Here he wrote Salisbury Plain and a tragedy called The Borders, which he never succeeded in placing on the stage. On one of his tours he formed a lasting friendship with Coleridge, who induced him to become his neighbor and settle at Alfoxden. In 1798 the poets jointly issued a volume called Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed one poem-The Ancient Mariner. The book was not a success. Wordsworth and his sister now removed to Grasmere, where they lived nine years. It was in this village, in 1802, that he married Mary Hutchinson, whom he describes in his Phantom of Delight: A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; His mind now being relieved from anxiety over money matters by the payment to him and his sister of a debt due their father by the late Earl of Lonsdale, Words worth determined to carry out his plan of producing a great philosophical poem, and accordingly in 1814 brought forth his masterpiece, The Excursion, which he dedicated to his faithful friend, the young Earl of Lonsdale. "It brought its author very little money and a good deal of abuse," says Blaisdell. "This grand poem is only a fragment, a part of a vast moral epic to have been called The Recluse, in which the poet intended to discuss the human soul in its deepest workings and its loftiest relations. Its original unpopularity must be ascribed in part to the absence of dramatic life and the want of human interest, and in part to the novelty of embodying metaphysical reasoning in blank verse. Even now, though Wordsworth's popularity has grown immensely, The Excursion is read by few. Yet it is not all a web of subtle reasoning, for there are rich studies from nature and from life scattered plentifully over its more thoughtful groundwork." Wordsworth is best known by his minor poems, which display his genius in its simple beauty and unaffected grace. "Such are Ruth, a touching tale of love and madness; We Are Seven, a glimpse of that higher wisdom which the lips of childhood often utter; the classic Laodamia, clear-lined and graceful as an antique cameo, and the lines on Revisiting the Wye, which are so rich in the calmly eloquent philosophy that formed the groundwork of all he wrote." Chief among his remaining works are The White Doc of Rylstone, a tale founded on the ruin of a Northern family in the Civil War; Peter Bell, dedicated to Southey; The Wagoner, dedicated to Charles Lamb; Sonnets on the River Duddon, Ecclesiastical Son |