ness on this happy circle. Captain John Wordsworth, the
affectionate and well-loved brother of the poet, was drowned
in the wreck of the ' Abergavenny,' East Indiaman. The
vessel, to which he had just been appointed, through
the incompetency of a pilot, ran on the shambles off the
BiU of Portland, and, when they got her off, sank while
they were endeavouring to run her on to Weymouth sands.
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412 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
This sad intelligence filled their house with mourning.
Captain Wordsworth had always entertained the pro-
foundest admiration for his brother. He fully appreciated,
and, even at the time that the critics were most cynical
and severe, predicted the success of the poems. More
than this, the object of this very voyage, in which he was
lost, was to increase the worldly means of his brother and
sister. They were not unmindful of his noble conduct,
and their grief occasioned by his melancholy fate was as
vehement as it was sincere.
"Qais desiderio sit pudor aut modus,
Tarn cari capitis P"
is the spirit of every line in verse or prose that Words-
worth wrote on the man and his memory.
A few months after this sad catastrophe, our poet
brought to a termination his long-life history, "The
Prelude." It will be our duty hereafter to express an
opinion on its merits. Wordsworth himself, in a letter
to Sir G. Beaumont, writes : " It will not be much less
than nine thousand lines — not hundred, but thousand lines
long — an alarming length ! and a thing unprecedented in
literary history, that a man should talk so much about
himself. It is not self-conceit, as you know well, that
has induced me to do this, but real humility. I began
the work because I was unprepared to treat any more
arduous subject y and diffident of my own powers.'' In
writing again to his kind and generous friend, the baronet,
he speaks thus of it : "I have the pleasure to say that I
finished my poem about a fortnight ago. I had looked
forward to the day as a most happy one ; and I was
indeed grateful to God for giving me life to complete the
work, such as it is. But it was not a happy day for me ;
I was dejected on many accounts : when I looked back
upon the performance, it seemed to have a dead weight
about it — the reality so far short of the expectation It
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 413
was the first long labour that I had finished ; and the
doubt whether I should ever live to write * The Recluse,'
and the sense which I had of this poem being so far
below what I seemed capable of executing, depressed me
so much ; above all, many heavy thoughts of my poor
departed brother hung upon me, the joy which I should
have had in showing him the manuscript, and a thousand
other vain fancies and dreams."
During the next few years, Wordsworth published " The
Waggoner," and very many other shorter poems. They
sold better than the " Lyrical Ballads ;" but he was not
one of those whom literature ever directly paid. His was
an unmarketable genius, meant to reap its reward from a
near if not a late posterity. When about the age of
fifty, he says somewhere incidentally : " I have never been
much of a salesman in matters of literature, the whole of
my returns — I do not say net profits, but returns — from
the writing trade not amounting to seven score pounds."
Notwithstanding the imremunerative nature of his
writings, the claims upon his purse grew more nume-
rous, for his family rapidly increased; and the cottage
at Grasmere being too small for them all to winter in,
they took up their quarters at Coleorton, near Ashby-
de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, in a house, the property of
Sir G. Beaumont. On their retm-n to Grasmere, they
moved into a new house at Allan Bank, where they
appear to have lived in great discomfort for upwards of
three years. In 1811, they took up their abode in
Grasmere Parsonage ; and quitting in two years a place
where every association was painful, because of the death
of two of the children, they finally settled down at Rydal
Mount. It was in the smoke-infested house at Allan
Bank that Wordsworth wrote his pamphlet on the Con-
vention at Cintra, and Coleridge commenced his now
celebrated work "The Friend." The pamphlet on the
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414 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Convention is an earnest and eloquent production. It
contains long paragraphs of fine writing, and reminds
us, at almost every page, of some of the prose works
of Milton, having most of their faults, and a few of their
beauties. As a political treatise on li great crisis, it must
be regarded as a failure ; and we know, that despite of the
interest of the subject, it met with but a cold reception.*
It was at this time also that he was toiling at " The
Excursion," which was not, however, published until
the year 1814. We will not here discuss its merits.
Most of our readers are acquainted with the celebrated
opening comment of the Northern Reviewer. "This
will never do !" Undismayed by the severity of the
censure of the critic, Wordsworth the following year gave
to the world "The White Doe of Rylstone;" and Jeffrey
commenced his notice of the poem with a longer but
more censorious dictum. " This, we think, has the merit
of being the very worst poem we ever saw imprinted in a
quarto volume ; and though it was scarcely to be expected,
we confess, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his ambition,
should so soon have attained to that distinction, the won-
der may perhaps be diminished when we state, that it
seems to us to consist of a happy union of all the faults,
without any of the beauties, which belong to his school of
poetry."
* We certainty cannot agree with the Eeverend Biographer that "if
Mr. Wordsworth had never written a single verse, this Essay alone would
be sufficient to place him in the highest rank of English Poets ;" and still
less would it give him a high rank among English Prose writers. In
an article in "Eraser's Magazine," Aug. 1850, the pamphlet is lauded to
the skies, and compared to Demosthenes, Milton, and Burke. The writer
in the "Quarterly" takes a different view. His opinion is, that "the
phraseology of his sentences is heavy and frigid; the construction in-
volved; and though he grudges not space, the loose, and circumlocutory
diction constantly leaves his meaning dark. But what was least to be
expected, there is a poverty of thought even upon subjects which he
thoroughly understood."
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 415
In 1819 " Peter Bell" appeared, and soon after it "The
Waggoner," which had been for many years kept in manu-
script. In these he exaggerated every eccentridity and
puerility which had provoked those flippant attacks of the
critics which had stimulated his sensitive but self-confident
temperament to a foolish obstinacy.
In 1820 he made a tour on the Continent, in comme-
moration of which he two years after published a volume
of sonnets and other poems. He was nearly lost in cross-
ing over from Boulogne on his return. In '23 he made
a tour in Belgium and Holland, and in '29 he travelled
over a great part of Ireland, in company with J. Marshall,
Esq., M.P. for Leeds.
The current of Wordsworth's life now flowed on so
calmly and evenly, that it presents scarcely any incident
which it is necessary to record in so concise a sketch as this.
His worldly aflfisdrs were more prosperous, owing to
the annuity left him by his generous friend Sir G. Beau-
mont, and his appointment in 1813 as Distributor of
Stamps. His poems, so long at first a drug in the market,
were much in demand, and, what was to him fkr more
important than their mere sale, exercised a manifest in-
fluence on the first intellects of the day. In 1839, he
was received at Oxford with an enthusiastic welcome. He
was presented for the honorary degree of D.C.L. by the
Rev. John Keble, Professor of Poetry, and author of" The
Christian Year," who, in introducing him, said, among
other things: "Ad ejus itaque viri carmina remittendos
esse hoc tempore putabam, si qui ex intimo animo sentire
vellent arcanam illam necessitudinem honestae Paupertatis
cum Musis severioribus, cum excels^ Philosophic, immo
cum sacrosanct^ Religione."
The theatre rang with tumultuous applause, and Words-
worth was deeply gratified, regarding it as an important
verdict in his favour, and a compensation for the severity
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416 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
of criticism which he had at first experienced. If Oxford
delighted to honour him, Edinburgh might continue to
sneer. But we must not forget that here he had a devoted
admirer in the gifted and eloquent Professor Wilson, who in
" Blackwood's Magazine," did all th%t in him lay to attract
public attention to the beauties of Wordsworth's poetry.
In the year after our Poet's ovation at Oxford,
Southey died. Her Majesty at once signified her cordial
approval of the proposal of the Lord Chamberlain, Earl
de la Warr, that the laurel should be offered to the Bard
of Rydal. Wordsworth expressed his gratitude for the
Royal favour, but respectfully dedined the honour. He
writes to the Lord Chamberlain : " The appointment, I
feel, however, imposes duties which, far advanced in life
as I am, I cannot venture to undertake, and therefore must
beg to decline the acceptance of an offer which I shall
always remember with no unbecoming pride. Her Majesty
will not, I trust, disapprove of a determination forced upon
me by reflections which it is impossible for me to set aside."
The office was again pressed on him, with the assurance
that it might be considered in his case as a sinecure. He
also received firom the late Sir Robert Peel a very kind
letter, urging him to accept it. " Do not," writes Sir
Robert from his place in the House of Commons, "be
deterred by the fear of any obligations which the appoint-
ment may be supposed to imply. I will undertake that
you shall have nothing required from you. But as the
Queen can select for this honourable appointment no one
whose claims for respect and honour, on account of emi-
nence as a poet, can be placed in competition with yours,
I trust you will not longer hesitate to accept it." Words-
worth replied gratefully to Sir Robert and the Lord
Chamberlain, and upon these conditions, became the
successor of Southey.
Two years after his appointment, in writing to his
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 41?
friend, Professor Reed, he gives him a short account of a
visit to London to pay his respects to the Queen. ^^ The
reception given me by the Queen, at her ball, was most
gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your minister, among
many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I
was. It moved her to the shedding of tears. This
eflfect was in part produced, I suppose, by American habits
of feeling, as pertaining to a republican government. To
see a grey-haired man of seventy-five years of age,
kneeling down, in a large assembly, to kiss the hand of a
young woman, is a sight for which institutions essentially
democratic do not prepare a spectator of either sex, and
must naturally place the opinions upon which a re-
public is founded, and the sentiments which support it,
in strong contrast with a government based and upheld as
ours is."
He says, in the same letter, of his Laureate successor :
" I saw Tennyson in London several times. He is de-
cidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will give
the world still better things. You will be pleaded to hear
that he expressed, in the strongest terms, his gratitude to
my writings. To this I was far from indiflferent, though
persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I
should myself most value in my attempts, viz., the
spirituality with which I have endeavoured to invest the
material universe, and the moral relations under which I
have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances."
After Wordsworth's muse became oflicial, she grew stub-
bornly silent. An occasional poem, he wrote and sent in
manuscript to a friend, but such efiusions were '^ short and
far between."
He had established a great reputation, he enjoyed, if
not wealth, a competence very comfortable : he had always
hated his writing-desk, and his kind amanuensis lay on a
£ E
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418 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
sick bed. We must remember, too, his extreme age.
His time was not idly spent in the calm and regular life
he led. His early love for out-door rambling, seems to
have again revived. He writes in almost the last letter
that he penned: ^'The pleasure which I derive from
God's works in His visible creation is not with me, I
think, impaired; but reading does not interest me as it
used to do, and I feel that I am becoming daily a less
instructive companion to others/' He might have eaih^
soled himself with the. reflection how ouidi he had
taught, and was at that moment teaiAaog through his
books.
There was much, too, which, had he not home all
with cheerful resignation^ might have made him sad and
weary as he neared the goal in life's pilgrimage. He
had cause for sorrow, though not for repining, in the
health of his sister, the loss of his accomplished daughter,
Mrs. Quilliman, and the absence of so many, removed
by death, who had been the steadfast friends and dear
companions of his youth.
Not long after his last and saddest bereavement — the
death of his daughter — the poet and father was himself
called away to
" Grod who is our home."
On the 7th of April, 1850, he had reached his eightieth
year. He had for some days suflfered from an attack of
inflammation in the chest, but was growing convalescent,
and was empkyed in reading the third volume of Southey's
" Life and Correspondence." He, however,, suffered a
relapse, and, on the 20th, was thought incapable of
recovery. On that day he received the Sacrament.
" William, you are going to Dora," whispered to him his
sorrowing and affectionate wife; and, not long after.
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 419
when he heard one of his nieces moving near his bed,
he asked, " Is that Dora ?" The next morning* he fell
gently, without pang or struggle, into the sleep of death.
Three days after, he was laid in Grasmere Church-yard,
near the graves of his own darling little ones, whom
so long before it had pleased Heaven to take from
him.
Though Wordsworth has doubtless been seen by many
who may read these pages, there are some who may per-
haps ask for a description of his personal appearanca He
stood about five feet ten, and there was nothing striking
or majestic in his carriage. His eyes were weak and
not lustrous, but he had a nose '* worthy a Trajan or an
Antonine,"t and his broad and lofty forehead gave an
intensely intellectual expression to a face which was
"The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging throngh strange seas of thought alone."
In Wordsworth's habits there was nothing very marked
or eccentric. He was simple in his tastes, regular and
temperate in his style of living, and frugal in his expendi-
ture. His natural spirits were good at every period of
his life. If not in his mirth boisterously hilarious, he had
an even flow of tranquil good-humour, and in after life a
calmness of demeanour which contrasted with the impe-
tuosity of his youth. He was never so thoroughly happy
as when wandering in the open air, drinking in the moun-
tain breezes, and basking in the genial sunshine. A
peripatetic poet, he composed as he walked abroad, or
loitered in his garden. He would trust to his memory
to reproduce what he had composed, and his sister would
commit to paper under his dictation the result of his
* April 23rd, which, by a strange and interesting coincidence, happens to
have been the day on which Shakespeare died, and upon which it is also very
probable he was bom.
t Quarterly Review.
E E 2
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420 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
morning's walk. His aversion to any employment at his
writing-desk was inconquerable. This is his own con-
fession : " My writing-desk is to me a place of punishment ;
and as my penmanship sufficiently testifies, I always bend
over it with some degree of impatience.'*
He was not much more diligent with books than with
his pen ; and not only was averse to poring long over their
contents, but treated their exteriors very unceremoniously.
Southey, whose whole soul was in his library, compared
Wordsworth among books to a bear in a tulip-garden ;
and was horrified one morning by his cutting the pages of
a volume of a costly edition of Burke with a knife greasy
with butter. Wordsworth seems to have indulged a
proud feeling 6f superiority at not being supposed to owe
much to the aid of book lore. To Archdeacon Wrangham
he writes almost exultingly : " My reading powers were
never very good, and now they are much diminished,
especially by candle-light ; and as to buying books, I can
affirm that in new^ books I have not spent five shillings
for the last five years, i.e. in reviews, magazines, pamphlets,
&c., &c., so that there would be an end of Mr. Longman
and Mr. Cadell, &c., if nobody had more power or incli-
nation to buy than myself. And as to old books, my
dealings in that way, for want of means, have been very
trifling. Nevertheless, small and paltry as my collection
is, I have not read a fifth part of it."
Wordsworth was fond of gardening, and of paintings he
was not a bad judge.
Of his moral character, it would be impossible to speak
in terms too eulogistic. We have the testimony of
Southey, who speaks of him as follows :
" Wordsworth's residence and mine are fifteen miles
asunder, a sufficient distance to preclude any frequent
interchange of visits. I have known him nearly twenty
years, and ' for about half that time, intimately. The
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 421
strength and the character of his mind you see in * The
Excursion ;' and his life does not belie his writings^ for
in every relation of life he is a truly exemplary and admi-
rable man."
We have sought to narrate the events of the poet's
career in that spirit of respect and veneration which a life
so full of virtue, love, and gentleness must ever command.
It now remains that we should speak, with no timid
reticence, our opinions on his mental charactericstics, the
merits of his writings, his position in literature, and his
influence on the age. Such a criticism, to be in any way
ample or satisfactory, would fill the volume of which this
memoir constitutes but a few pages. Much indeed as has
been even of late written on Wordsworth's genius, it yet
remains for some one, with special qualifications for the
task, to calmly and candidly investigate the soundness of
his. poetical system, and to pronounce upon the success
with which he carried it out. We can only state concisely
the results of the reasoning process which has led us to
our conclusions.
His moral character we have unreservedly praised ; and
by this we mean, first, that he was unexceptionable in all
matters of what has been flippantly called " tea-table
morality ;" and, secondly, that he was generous and com-
passionate to the poor and suffering, a good husband, a
kind father, and, notwithstanding a complaint of Mr. De
Quincey's, a faithful friend. But he had weaknesses of a
mixed character, in those parts of our nature where the
intellectual and moral elements interpenetrate each other.
His warmest admirers would find it difficult to defend him
against the charges of vanity, egotism, and obstinacy.
Even his relative and biographer is forced into the confes-
sion, expressed with considerable alliterative power, that
Wordsworth, in persisting to exaggerate some of the pecu-
liarities which the critics had condemned, was guilty of
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422 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
'^ wayward wilfulness, petulant pride, and random reckless-
ness/' Any mention of the wilfal impetuosity which led
him in childhood to attempt suicide, will perhaps redound
to his praise, when we remember by what a creditable
self-discipline he afterwards subdued his temper. But there
is something less pardonable in his University career. In
this he manifested a want of heart and geniality. What-
ever the faults of the system and the authorities, Words-
worth cannot escape his share of blame. If not culpably
idle, he was doggedly indifferent to the numberless advan-
tages to be gained in such a seat of learning. Though
coming up to the University possessed of great talents,
and those well cultivated, he refused to write for prizes
and compete for honours. Had he been the hero of a
debating club, or the leader of "a fast set," we might
have regretted energies misdirected to the incompetent dis-
cussion of contemporaneous topics, or time wasted by -the
wayward play of the passions. But Wordsworth avoided
such mistakes ; and although he admits that he dressed
with something of splendour and with elaborate precision,
mentions the fact of his getting tipsy in rooms once occu-
pied by Milton, in that tone of mauling childishness with
which one gentle " freshman " boasts to another, over tea
and marmalade of the daring impiety with which he has
that morning absented himself from chapel.
His mental deficiencies are, however, far more glaring
than his positive faults. It was a fond and vapid enthu-
siasm that led him on a sudden to throw himself into the
popular side in France; but this impulse, at first only
foolish, degenerated into a morbid and guilty feeling when
he exulted in the destruction of the troops of his own
country, who were, even on the hypothesis that the war
was unjustifiable, at least fighting in obedience to orders.
There is nothing, too, which is admirable in the sudden-
ness with which he abandoned his early opinions^ and
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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 423
having been the eloquent eulogist of Milton, afterwards
panegyrized Laud. It may be, however, but fair to re-
member in the case of Wordsworth, as in that of the
yoiitfafid putiflOGratists Coleridge and Southey, that, after
fifty years of pofitiol ptug i mB , liie yoathfiil radical may
appear, without blameable inconsistency — a steady conser-
vative. In such a lapse of time, others have arisen to
carry on the work of reform still further, and its earliest
and most ardent supporters seem now to be laggards in
the rear.
Wordsworth underrated the critical faculty, and cer-
tainly possessed it in but a niggard measure himself. His
views on great political and social questions, on which Dr.
Wordsworth appears to lay so much stress, are very far
removed from being either sagacious or profound. In-
deed, if we judge his intellectual powers by these, we
shall be induced to suppose that a premature senility
clouded his capacities, and that, after his wayward boy-
hood was over, he had passed from youth to age without
the intervening period of manhood, that he was an old
man at the time of life when others are young, and an
old woman when he should have been an old man. He
had all the faults of one who lived in a little world of his
own, and reigned in that petty kingdom supreme.* While
his unfamiliarity with what was to other men familiar
* This was written before the Authors had seen the able article in the
"Quarterly" before alluded to. They find almost the same yiew there
stated. "The notion he (Wordsworth) had imbibed of the latent capa-
bilities of insignificant objects, led him in the true spirit of system, to
select them in preference. Hence sprung some of the merits, and many of
the defects of his verse. He brought into prominence numerous neglected
sources of delight; convinced that he possessed that poetio stone, the
touch of which would turn lead to gold, he not unfrequently adopted
trivialities which it was beyond his alchemy to transmute.^' And elsewhere
the Reviewer more tersely expresses the same idea. " His doctrine, that
the business of a Poet is to educe an interest where none is apparent,
engaged him in efforts to squeeze moisture out of dust."
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424 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH-
caused him to find food for poetic musing in what they
passed by unheeded, it caused him to magnify trifles, to
aim at dignifying the meanest objects, and to struggle, not
merely to seek good, but to find poetry in everything. He
himself t^lls us :
" To every natural rock, or fruit, or flower,
Even the loose aionet that cover tAe highuHxy,
I gave a moral life. I saw them fr el.
Or linked them to somefreling^'*
This would be harmless enthusiasm enough, were it not
that an undue exultation of what is smaU has a tendency