guishing characteristics of his neighbors, but touched in him with a loftier spirit, and put to higher purposes. Even in his face and figure-in the ruggedness of the one and the firmness and sturdiness of the other-much of this was discernible. It was a figure that showed worst in drawing-rooms, as though consciously alien to them; a face that seemed almost vacant to the nimble-minded dwellers in cities, but which glowed with true illumination and nobility among the sounds and visions of his native country-side. The mold in which Wordsworth was cast was a strong one. His nature was slow, and deep, and steadfast; what he was at thirty he practically was at seventy, save that there had been an inevitable stiffening of ideas, and an equally inevitable growth of self-reliant sufficiency.

Let any one try to picture to himself the leading characteristics of the life of a Cumbrian dalesman, and, if he pleases, let him go to the poems of Wordsworth himself for materials, and he will find that the life so outlined will be, above all things, independent, self-respecting, and selfsufficient, frugal without parsimony, pious without formality, and simple without boorishness. It is a wholesome life of humble industries and simple pleasures, and such a life was not merely to Wordsworth the ideal life, but it was an ideal which he himself perfectly fulfilled. And let any one think again of the sort of life which found favor with the poets of his day, and the sort of life they themselves lived-Byron with his bitter misanthropy, Shelley with his outraged sensitiveness, Keats with his recoil from a sordid world to the ideal paradise of Greek mythology, Moore with his cockney glitter, Coleridge with his remote and visionary splendor-let him think of this,

and he will see how strange a thing it was to such a world that a Cumbrian dalesman's life should have been thrust before it as an ideal human life, and that, too, by a man who had himself chosen such a life for himself, and had found in it tranquillity and satisfaction. In that age there were only two poets who had shown any genuine love of Nature in her daily and common manifestations, and had written verses which might have "been murmured out in the open air." These were Burns and Scott, and it is noticeable that for both Wordsworth felt a deep attraction. In both there is a supreme healthfulness, a sense of robust enjoyment in fresh air and simple sights. When Scott describes nature it is always with a true eye for color, and Burns's poems touch us by their artless rusticity not less than by their artistic beauty. Wordsworth himself has told us how "admirably has Burns given way to these impulses of nature, both with reference to himself and in describing the condition of others"; and it was the simple humanness of the Ayrshire farmer that endeared him to a poet who valued more than anything else simplicity and virtue in human nature. But where Wordsworth differed from all other poets of his day was that he had a conscious ideal of what human life might be made, through simplicity of desire and communion with nature, and he resolutely set himself to the fulfillment of his ideal. Especially was the dalesman's independence and self-sufficiency marked in him. He knew what it was to be a law unto himself, and found in his own nature the true impulses of action. And so he writes: "These two things, contradictory as they seem, must go together-manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance." And again: "Let the poet first consult his own heart, as

I have done, and leave the rest to posterity-to, I hope, an improving posterity. I have not written down to the level of superficial observers or unthinking minds." The spirit of these words reveals the man, and the man so revealed could only have thriven in a region where simplicity, and manliness, and rugged honesty were the prime virtues and common heritage of daily life.

The great turning-point in the life of Wordsworth was the year 1795, when his sister Dora joined him and became henceforth the chosen comrade of his intellectual life, not less than the confidant of his emotions. The period preceding had been spent somewhat aimlessly, and is memorable only for the foreign travel Wordsworth had indulged in, his hopes of France, and his subsequent disillusionment and despair. Like every poet of his day, save Keats and Scott, he was violently affected by the French Revolution, and was caught within the whirl of its frantic fascination. But with the Reign of Terror his hopes of world-wide regeneration perished, and a sullen and impenetrable despair fell upon him. He was indeed slow to give up hope, and when England declared war upon France he flamed out in indignant denunciation of what seemed to him a disgraceful outrage. The effect of these events on his poetry we shall best see when we come to consider his patriotic poems. In the mean time, what we have to observe is that in 1795 Wordsworth was as unsettled as man could well be, and was without any true aim or work in life. He was, to quote Mr. F.W. H. Myers, "a rough and somewhat stubborn young man, who, in nearly thirty years of life, had seemed alternately to idle without grace and to study without advantage, and it might well have seemed incredible that he could have any

thing new or valuable to communicate to mankind.”

It

was from this state of lethargic aimlessness that Dora Wordsworth redeemed him. She revealed to him the true bent of his nature, and discovered to him his true powers. She led him back to the healing solitude of nature, where alone, as she justly perceived, his mind could find a fit environment, and his powers could ripen into greatness. She understood him better than he understood himself. She knew that he was unfitted for public life, or the conduct of affairs, but that there was in him that which might be of infinite service to the world, if fitting opportunity were given for its development. And she judged that nowhere so well as in the beloved environment of his native mountains would that spark of ethereal fire which possessed him be kindled into a living and animating flame. Some years were yet to elapse before he finally settled at Grasmere, but they were years passed in seclusion, during which he gradually gave himself up to that appointed task of poetic toil to which he felt himself divinely consecrated. It meant for him a practical renunciation of the world. He had but the scantiest means of subsistence, and knew well that such a life as he now contemplated must be almost a peasant's life, lived upon a peasant's frugal fare and in a peasant's mean surroundings. When he turned his back upon great cities, and steadily set his face toward the English mountains, he resolutely shut the door upon all hopes of brilliant worldly success, upon all the natural hopes of advancement in life which a man of culture and education may legitimately entertain.

His only guide in this most difficult hour was the need and impulse of his own nature. He felt that in the solitude of nature there was peace, and there only was a life

of plain living and high thinking possible. All he knew was that the common ideals of life did not satisfy him, and he exclaimed:

The wealthiest man amongst us is the best;

No grandeur now in nature or in book

Delights us.

He had learned the great lesson of living, not for things temporal, but for things eternal; he had set himself above all to be true to his own self, and he had the rare daring of being absolutely faithful to the voice of this supreme conviction. Any greatness which attaches to Wordsworth's character directly springs from this spiritual honesty of purpose. The noblest qualities of his poetry, all the qualities indeed which differentiate and distinguish it, and give it a lofty isolation in English literature, were the natural result of this temper of spirit and method of life. There, far from the fevered life of cities, where the free winds blew, and the spacious silence taught serenity; there, in the daily contemplation of simple life and natural beauty among his own mountains-the bonds of custom fell from Wordsworth's spirit, and he became enfranchised with a glorious liberty. Strength returned to him, clearness and resoluteness of spirit, sanity and joy of mind. The great lesson which he was consecrated to expound was the nobleness of unworldly and simple life, and such lessons could only be learned, much less taught, by a life which was itself infinitely removed from the vulgar scramble for wealth and the insane thirst for social power. is not too much to say that it is to Dora Wordsworth that England owes the precious gift of her brother's genius. She recognized it when he himself was dubious; she

It