william wordsworth was born in 1770 in the town of cockermouth in cumberland; educated in the village school of hawkshead among the mountains, and at st. john’s college, cambridge. a dreamy, moody youth; always ambitious, but not always industrious; passionate in disposition, with high spirits, simple tastes, and independent virtues; he did not win, and seems not to have desired, university honours. his principal property when he came of age consisted of two manuscript poems,—an evening walk and descriptive sketches,—composed in the manner of cowper’s task. with these in his pocket he wandered over to france; partly to study the language; partly to indulge his inborn love of travel by a second journey on the continent; and partly to look on at the vivid scenes of the french revolution. but the vast dæmonic movement of which he proposed to be a spectator caught his mind in its current and swept him out of his former self.

wordsworth was not originally a revolutionist,

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like coleridge and southey. he was not even a native radical, except as all simplicity and austerity of character tend towards radicalism. when he passed through paris, in november of 1791, and picked up a bit of stone from the ruins of the bastile as a souvenir, it was only a sign of youthful sentimentality. but when he came back to paris in october of 1792, after a winter at orleans and a summer at blois, in close intercourse with that ardent and noble republican, michael beaupuy, he had been converted into an eager partisan of the republic. he even dreamed of throwing himself into the conflict, reflecting on “the power of one pure and energetic will to accomplish great things.”

his conversion was not, it seems to me, primarily a matter of intellectual conviction. it was an affair of emotional sympathy. his knowledge of the political and social theories of the revolution was but superficial. he was never a doctrinaire. the influence of rousseau and condorcet did not penetrate far beneath the skin of his mind. it was the primal joy of the revolutionary movement that fascinated him,—the confused glimmering of new

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hopes and aspirations for mankind. he was like a man who has journeyed, half asleep, from the frost-bound dulness of a wintry clime, and finds himself, fully awake, in a new country, where the time for the singing of birds has come, and the multitudinous blossoming of spring bursts forth. he is possessed by the spirit of joy, and reason follows where feeling leads the way. wordsworth himself has confessed, half unconsciously, the secret of his conversion in his lines on the french revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement.

“oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!

for mighty were the auxiliars which then stood

upon our side, we who were strong in love!

bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

but to be young was very heaven!”

there was another “bliss,” keener even than the dreams of political enthusiasm, that thrilled him in this momentous year,—the rapture of romantic love. into this he threw himself with ardour and tasted all its joy. we do not know exactly what it was that broke the vision and dashed the cup of gladness from his lips. perhaps it was some difficulty with the girl’s family, who were royalists.

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perhaps it was simply the poet’s poverty. whatever the cause was, love’s young dream was shattered, and there was nothing left but the painful memory of an error, to be atoned for in later years as best he could.

his political hopes and ideals were darkened by the actual horrors which filled paris during the fall of 1792. his impulse to become a revolutionist was shaken, if not altogether broken. returning to england at the end of the same year, he tried to sustain his sinking spirits by setting in order the reasons and grounds of his new-born enthusiasm, already waning. his letter to bishop watson, written in 1793, is the fullest statement of republican sympathies that he ever made. in it he even seems to justify the execution of louis xvi, and makes light of “the idle cry of modish lamentation which has resounded from the court to the cottage” over the royal martyr’s fate. he defends the right of the people to overthrow all who oppress them, to choose their own rulers, to direct their own destiny by universal suffrage, and to sweep all obstacles out of their way. the reasoning is so absolute, so

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relentless, the scorn for all who oppose it is so lofty, that already we begin to suspect a wavering conviction intrenching itself for safety.

the course of events in france was ill fitted to nourish the joy of a pure-minded enthusiast. the tumultuous terrors of the revolution trod its ideals in the dust. its light was obscured in its own sulphurous smoke. robespierre ran his bloody course to the end; and when his head fell under the guillotine, wordsworth could not but exult. war was declared between france and england, and his heart was divided; but the deeper and stronger ties were those that bound him to his own country. he was english in his very flesh and bones. the framework of his mind was of cumberland. so he stood rooted in his native allegiance, while the leaves and blossoms of joy fell from him, like a tree stripped bare by the first great gale of autumn.

the years from 1793 to 1795 were the period of his deepest poverty, spiritual and material. his youthful poems, published in 1793, met with no more success than they deserved. his plans for entering into active life were feeble and futile. his

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mind was darkened and confused, his faith shaken to the foundation, and his feelings clouded with despair. in this crisis of disaster two gifts of fortune came to him. his sister dorothy took her place at his side, to lead him back by her wise, tender, cheerful love from the far country of despair. his friend raisley calvert bequeathed to him a legacy of nine hundred pounds; a small inheritance, but enough to protect him from the wolf of poverty, while he devoted his life to the muse. from the autumn of 1795, when he and his sister set up housekeeping together in a farmhouse at racedown, until his death in 1850 in the cottage at rydal mount, where he had lived for thirty-seven years with his wife and children, there was never any doubt about the disposition of his life. it was wholly dedicated to poetry.