things, but the only wonderful man I ever knew was Coleridge." "And 'tis my faith that every flower If any one will read over the short poems above named, they will let him see further into Wordsworth's mood during this, the fresh germinating spring-time of his genius, than any words of ours can. The occasion of their making a joint literary venture was curious. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister wished to make a short walking tour, for which five pounds. were needed, but were not forthcoming. To supply this want they agreed to make a joint-poem, and send it to some magazine which would give the required sum. Accordingly, one evening as they trudged along the Quantock Hills, they planned "The Ancient Mariner," founded on a dream which a friend of Coleridge had dreamed. Coleridge supplied most of the incidents, and almost all the lines. Wordsworth contributed the incident of the shooting of the albatross, with a line here and there. The Ancient Mariner soon grew, till it was beyond the desired five pounds' worth, so they thought of a joint volume. Coleridge was to take supernatural subjects, or romantic, and invest them with a human interest and resemblance of truth. Wordsworth was to take common every-day incidents, and by faithful adherence to nature, and true but modifying colours of imagination, was to shed over common aspects of earth and facts of life such a charm, as light and shade, sunset and moonlight, shed over a familiar landscape. Wordsworth was so much the more industrious of the two, that he had completed enough for a volume when Coleridge had only finished the "Ancient Mariner," and begun "Christabel" and the "Dark Ladie." Cottle, a Bristol bookseller, was summoned from Bristol to arrange for the publication, and he has left a gossipy but amusing account of his intercourse with the two poets at this time, and his visit to Alfoxden. He agreed to give Wordsworth £30 for the twentytwo pieces of his which made up the first volume of the Lyrical Ballads, while for "the Rime of the Ancient Marinere," which was to head the volume, he made a separate bargain with Coleridge. This volume, which appeared in the autumn of 1798, was the first which made Wordsworth known to the world as a poet, for the "Descriptive Sketches" had almost escaped notice. Of the ballads or shorter poems, which, as we have seen, were mostly composed at Alfoxden, and which reflect the feelings and incidents of his life there, we shall reserve what we have to say for a more general survey. The volume closes with one poem in another style, in which the poet speaks out his inmost feelings, and in his own "grand style." This is the poem on Tintern Abbey, composed during a walking-tour on the Wye with his sister, just before leaving Alfoxden for the Continent. Read these lines over once again, however well you may know them. Bear in mind what has been told of the way his childhood and boyhood had passed, living in the eye of nature, the separation that followed from his favourite haunts and ways, the wild fermentation of thought, the moral tempest he had gone through, the return to nature's places, and to common life and peaceful thoughts, with intellect and heart deepened, expanded, humanized, by having long brooded over the ever-recurring questions of man's nature, his true aims, and his final destiny; bear these things in mind, and, as you read, every line of that masterpiece will come out with deeper meaning and in exacter outline. And then the concluding lines in which the poet turns to his sister, his fellow-traveller, with "the shooting lights in those wild eyes," in which he caught "gleams of past existence" "If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion." What prophetic pathos do these words assume when we remember how long and mournfully ere the end of her life those wild eyes were darkened! Before the volume appeared, Wordsworth and his sister had left Alfoxden, and sailed with Coleridge for Germany. It has been said that the reason for their leaving Somersetshire was their falling under suspicion as hatchers of sedition. A Government spy, with a peculiarly long nose, was sent down to watch them. Coleridge tells an absurd story, how, as they lay on the Quantock hills conversing about Spinoza, the spy, as he skulked behind a bank, overheard their talk, and thought they were talking of himself under the nickname of "Spy-nosey." Coleridge was believed to have little harm in him, for he was a crack-brained, talking fellow; but that Wordsworth is either a smuggler or a traitor, and means mischief. He never speaks to any one, haunts lonely places, walks by moonlight, and is always "booing about" by himself. Such was the country talk; and the result of it was, the agent for the owner of Alfoxden refused to re-let the house to so suspicious a character. So the three determined to pack up, and winter on the Continent. At Hamburgh, however, they parted company. Their ostensible purpose was to learn German, but Wordsworth and his sister did little at this. He spent the winter of 1798-99, the coldest of the century, in Goslar, and there by the German charcoal burners, the poet's mind reverted to Esthwaite and Westmoreland hills, and struck out a number of poems in his finest vein. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," "Lucy," or "Three years she grew in sun and shower," Ruth," "The Poet's Epitaph," "Nutting," "The Two April Mornings," "The Fountain," " Matthew," are all products of this winter. So Wordsworth missed German, and gave the world instead immortal poems. Coleridge went alone to Göttingen, learned German, dived for the rest of his life deep into transcendental metaphysics, and the world got no more Ancient Mariners. In the spring of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister set forth from Goslar on their return to England. As they left that city behind, and felt the spring breeze fan their cheeks, Wordsworth poured forth that joyful strain with which the "Prelude" opens. Arrived in their native land, they passed most of the remainder of the year with their kindred, the Hutchisons, at Sockburn-on Tees, occasionally travelling into the neighbouring dales and fells of Yorkshire. In September, Wordsworth took Coleridge, who also had returned from abroad, and had seen but few mountains in his life, on a walking tour to show him the hills and lakes of native Westmoreland. 66 Haweswater," Coleridge writes, "kept his eyes dim with tears, but he received the deepest delight from the divine sisters, Rydal and Grasmere." It was then that Wordsworth saw the small house at the Town end of Grasmere, which he and his sister soon after fixed on as their home. From Sockburn-on-Tees these two set forth a little before the shortest day, and walked on foot over the bleak fells that form the watershed of Yorkshire and Westmoreland. As side by side they paced the long dales, and set their faces to the Hamilton hills, the ground was frozen hard under their feet, and the snow-showers were driving against them. Yet they enjoyed the snow-showers, turned aside to see the frozen waterfalls, and stopped to watch the changing drapery of cloud, sunshine, and snow-drift as it coursed the hills. At night they stopped in cottages or small wayside inns, and there, by the kitchen-fire, Wordsworth gave words to the thoughts that had occurred to him during the day. A great part of "Heartleap Well" was composed during one of these evenings, from a tradi-, tion he had heard that day from a native. They reached Grasmere on the shortest day, and settled in the small two-storeyed cottage, which had formerly been a public-house, with the sign of the Dove and the Olive Bough, but was henceforth to be identified with Wordsworth's poetic prime. The mode of life on which they were entering was one which their friends, no doubt, and most sensible people, called a mad project. With barely a hundred pounds a year between them, they were turning their back on the world, cutting themselves off from professions, chances of getting on, society, and settling themselves down in an out-of-the-way corner, with no employment but verse-making, no neighbours but unlettered rustics. When a man makes such a choice, he has need to look well what he does, and to be sure that he can go through with his purpose. In the world's eyes nothing but success will justify such a recusant, and yet the world will not be too ready to grant that success has been attained. But Wordsworth, besides a prophetlike devotion to the truths he saw, had a prudence, self-denial, and perseverance, rare among the sons of song. To himself may be applied the words he uses in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, when speaking of another subject than poetry :-"It is such an animating sight to see a man of genius, regardless of temporary gains, whether of money or praise, fixing his attention solely upon what is interesting and permanent, and finding his happiness in an entire devotion of himself to such pursuits as shall most ennoble human nature. We have not yet seen enough of this in modern times." He himself showed this sight, if any man of his age did. Plain living and high thinking were not only praised in verse, but acted out by him and his sister in that cottage home. This century was ushered in by a long storm, which blocked up the roads for months, and kept them much indoors. This put their tempers to the proof, but they stood the test. Spring weather set them free, and brought to them a much-loved sailor brother, John, who was captain of an Indiaman. In their frugal housekeeping the sister, it may be believed, had much to do indoors, but she was always ready, both then and years after, to accompany her brother in his mountain walks. Those who may wish to know more of their abode and way of life, will find an interesting sketch of these given by De Quincey, as he saw them seven years later. There was one small room containing their few books, which was called, by courtesy, the library. But Wordsworth was no reader; the English poets and ancient history were the only two subjects he was really well read in. He tells a friend that he had not spent five shillings on new books in as many years, and of the few old ones which made up his collection, he had not read one-fifth. As for his study, that was in the open air. "By the side of the brook that runs through Easedale," he says, "I have composed thousands of verses: " "He murmurs near the running brooks Another favourite resort for composition at this time was the tall fir-wood on the hillside above the old road leading from Grasmere to Rydal. Society they found in the families of the "statesmen" all about. For Grasmere was then, like most of the neighbouring dales, portioned out among small but independent peasant lairds, whose forefathers had for ages lived and died on the same farms. With these men Wordsworth and his sister lived on terms of kindliness and equal hospitality. He would receive them to tea in his home, or would go to sup in theirs. If the invitation was to some homestead in a distant vale, the ladies would travel in a cart, the poet walking by its side. Among these men, in their pastoral republic, the life was one of industry not too laborious; the manners were simple, manly, and severe. The statesmen looked after the sheep, grew hay on their own land in the valley, and each could turn out as many sheep to feed on the fell or common (as they call it) during the summer months, as they could provide hay for in |