WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, a distinguished English poet,was b. April 7,1770,at Cocker mouth, in Cumberland. He was the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney, and agent on the estates of the first earl of Lonsdale. He was sent to school at Penrith„ where his parents had gone to reside; and after the death of his mother in 1778, was transferred to Ilawkshead, in Lancashire, at the public school of which his earlier educe cation was completed. In 1783 his father died, leaving his family in some difficulty. By lord Lonsdale a considerable sum was due to them; but his lordship, a man of most eccentric character, saw fit to resist the claim with all the vexatious impediments which the law so plentifully affords. Enough, however, remained, with some little assistance from relatives, to carry forward the education of the children. Wordsworth remained at Hawkshead till 1787, in which year he was entered at St. John's , Cambridge.
Here he remained four years. In the studies proper to the place, his interest was slight; but in his own fashion be was a diligent student; and poetry became more and more his favorite pursuit. In Jan., 1791, he left Cambridge, after taking his degree as bachelor. During the autumn of the previous year, he had, along with a fellow-student, made a pedestrian tour through France, then in the early fervors of its great revolution; and thither, after leaving college, he returned. His sympathy with the aims of the revolution was passionate; and with the party of the Gironde lie seemed to have cultivated relations of a somewhat intimate kind, which, in the end, might have seriously compromised him, bad not circumstances, probably of the pecuniary sort, determined his return to England some little time before his friends were sent iu a body to the scaffold. The republican principles which at this time he held, he lived to renounce in favor of a reasoned conserv atism; and opposed as he was, in its earlier stages, to the war waged against France, no one more patriotically urged it, when the struggle became in effect a life and death grapple on the part of England with the military despotism of Napoleon.
In 1793 Wordsworth came before the public as an author, in two poems, entitled An Erenzng Walk, addressed to a Young La' and Descriptive Sketches, taken during a Pedes trian Tour among the Alps. These pieces abound in touches of refined and original obser vation of nature, but otherwise are not in themselves specially remarkable; and they failed to make any impression, except on a few minds, such as that of Colertdge, then at Cambridge, who afterward professed to have discerned in them the seeds of a great unde veloped genius. Wordsworth was now in a position of much perplexity; his little finances were almost entirely exhausted: for the church, which his friends would fain have had him enter, he had at this time an obstinate aversion; poetry had become with him a passion, to which he longed to wl.olly dedicate himself; and unhappily it appeared that his poetry would not in the least pay. As a poet cannot live like a singing-bird by pecking about the hedgerows, it became necessary for him to bethink himself of some means of support; and he was on the point of proceeding to London, to do liberal politics for the newspapers, when unexpected relief came to him in the shape of a legacy. The name of Raisley Calvert deserves to be remembered with that of Wordsworth. An inti mate friend of the poet, lie had formed a high opinion of his genius; and at his early death in 1795 he was found to have bequeathed to Wordsworth the sum of £900, expressly that leisure might for some years be allowed for the undisturbed development of his powers. Seldom bas money been better bestowed; and small as the sum may seem,
to a man of the poet's simple tastes and entire singleness of aim, it could suffice over a term of years. With his only sister, Dorothy, his attached companion through life, and always a devout believer in the brother, no little of whose genius she shared, he now set tled himself at Racedown lodge, in Dorsetshire, removing in 1797 to Alfoxden, iu Sonier setshire, in order to be near Coleridge, who had established himself some 3 m. off at Nether-Stowey. Out of the intimacy thus begun came the famous Lyrical Ballads, pub lished in 1798 by Cottle of Bristol, as a joint adventure of the two poets. The volume had no success; but probably no man ever lived more serenely self-appreciative than Wordsworth; and lie did not allow himself to be disheartened by the neglect meantime of the world. After a short tour in Germany, along with his sister and friend, he returned to his native Cumberland. which he never again permanently left. He settled himself at Grasmere; in 1808 lie removed to Allan bank, in the vicinity; and in 1813 lie transferred his household to Rydal mount, the place which, of all others, remains spe cially associated with his memory. On the death of the old lord Lonsdale, the justice of the claim of the Wordsworths against the estates was admitted; and in 1802 a sum of about 28.000 was by his successor made over to the family. To Wordsworth and his sister their moiety of the money may have been acceptable, as by this time, one should say, they must needs have been meing pretty bigh to the end of Raisley Calvert's con venient £900. Henceforth a modest competence was secure to them; and Wordsworth was wedded within the year to Mary Hutchinson, a cousin of his own, with whom he bad been intimate from his childhood. In 1813, by the kindness of lord Lonsdale, he was appointed distributor of stamps for the county. of Westmoreland, a situation which brought him, without much to do for it, a salary of £500 a year. Whcu, the year alter, be published his great poem, The Excursion, he dedicated it to lord Lonsdale, in a son net, expressive of "high respect and gratitude sincere" for this comfortable increase to an income sufficient, perhaps, but certainly not excessive, for a man who had now a family growing up round him. Meantime, and pending the appearance of this elaborate work, the reputation of the poet bad been surely, if slowly, rising. In 1800 he had pub lished, in two volumes, a second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, disjoining his own front those of Coleridge, and adding a quantity, of new matter; and in 1802 and 1805 further editions bad been issued. To these succeeded, in 1807, a new collection, under the title of Poems, in Two Volumes. In these earlier writings there was a good deal which almost wilfully seemed to invite ridicule; and for a good while Wordsworth was merely the laughing-stock of reviewers, more particularly of Jeffrey, who, as editor of the great Edinburgh, at this time figured as chief Aristarchus of the day. The more to popularize the ridicule, a nickname was invented; and " the Lake School," as it was called. which, with Wordsworth, included Coleridge and Southey, who chanced to reside in the same district, passed current as an easy name of scorn. It could not be long concealed, how.