Christopher, the youngest brother of the poet, was born at Cockermouth in 1774. After a preliminary education at the grammar school of Hawk- stead, he removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1792, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1796, was elected a fellow in 1798, and graduated as master of arts in 1799. In 1802 he printed Six Letters to Granville Sharpe, on his Remarks on the Uses of the Article Definitive in the Greek Testament, which were highly admired by such scholars as Horsley and Middleton, and procured him the patronage of Manners Sutton, then archbishop of Canter- bury, who appointed him his domestic chaplain. This patronage, of course, secured him ecclesiastical preferment; and among other livings which were conferred on him was that of dean of Bocking, the same which Gauden, the presumed real author of the Icon Basilike, had held. In 1809 he issued his Ecclesiastical Biography, in six volumes, which, on its subsequent re-issue, were augmented by four more. This work was rewarded with the title of B.D., which was conferred on him by royal mandate, and was speedily followed by valuable church preferment. In 1814 he was made rector of St Mary's, Lambeth; in 1816 he became chaplain of the House of Commons; and in 1820 was elected master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Perhaps his residence at Bocking had inspired him with a more than usual interest in the vexed question of the Icon Basilike, at all events he wrote two volumes on the subject, the one entitled, Who wrote Icon Basilike considered and answered; the other, King Charles the First the Author of Icon Basilike proved in reply to the objections of Lin- gard, the Edinburgh Review, Mr Hallam, &c. The question is so usually discussed under the influence of political bias, that we shall be excused pronouncing an opinion on the success of his work in proving Charles to be the author of the Icon. He has, however, accumulated a mass of evidence in his favour which must be disproved before it can again be asserted that Gauden was the real author. In 1837 he prepared his Christian Institutes, intended for students for holy orders; and in 1841 resigned his mastership of Trinity, an office in which he has been worthily succeeded by Dr Whewell. After his resigna- tion he retired to his living at Boixted, where he died in 1846.

Wordsworth, William, a philosophical and patriotic English poet. The anniversary of St George, the patron saint of England, was appropriately marked by the birth and death of Shakspeare, whose pen achieved greater mira- cles for his country than those ascribed to the sword of the fabulous champion. The same festival—the memorable Wordsworth was further signalized, in 1850, by the death of another truly English poet, one who sang of her hills and groves, her lakes and rivers, with intense delight, and who sympathized equally with "the heroic wealth of hall and bower," and with the virtues found among "the huts where poor men lie." This enthusiastic worshipper of nature and simplicity resided for about half a century in the picturesque lake-country in Westmoreland, and gave forth his poetical oracles, as the great Pan of the lakes, with unaltering confidence and power. He was long neglected, ridiculed, and contemned; but he lived to see his creed widely adopted and firmly established. He never sank into apathy nor despondency, but dignified his retirement by the careful cultivation of his intellectual powers, and by the lustre of a blameless and unspotted life. Without the force and splendour of Byron, the universality of Scott, the chastened energy and melodious pathos of Campbell, or the sparkling brilliancy of Moore, Wordsworth was more original and philosophical than any of his great contemporaries, and he has sent forth strains that recall the divine genius of Milton. He was not without grievous faults. His taste was not equal to his genius; the power or the will to discriminate, reject, and condense, was wanting; and hence his description is often too minute and his style redundant. He brooded over his poetical conceptions and theories with a fond and undistinguishing partiality, that extended to puerilities and conceits, no less than to his loftiest and most profound speculations. This error lay upon the surface, and was peculiarly open to satire. It was not prominent, however, in his later and most finished productions; and those higher flights kept possession of the better part of the public. By repeated efforts, he stamped his mind upon the age, and his influence promises to be lasting. Some of his odes and minor poems have never been excelled. Numbers of his sonnets, too, are unique, and unrivalled in modern poetry. Even his worst pieces are suggestive of some reflection or emotion; some link of affinity between man and external nature. The rise of Wordsworth's reputation, in spite of every obstacle, in the face of a dazzling file of competitors, and in defiance of hostile criticism, furnishes a remarkable proof of the purer taste and elevated moral feeling that have, during the last half century, gained ground among the readers of poetry, and of that love of nature and that kindred sympathy with humanity, even in its lowliest forms, which it was the great and unceasing business of his life to inculcate. It may be compared with one of his own grand yet simple illustrations:

"Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide And darken, so can deal, that they become Contingencies of pomp, and serve to exalt Her native brightness. As the ample moon In the deep stillness of a summer even Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, Burns like an unconsuming fire of light In the green trees; and kindling on all sides Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil Into a substance glorious as her own, Yea, with her own incorporated, by power Capacious and serene; like power abides In man's celestial spirit; virtue thus Sets forth and magnifies herself—thus feeds A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire."

The real life of Wordsworth was internal, and must be read in his works. The few incidents in his external career are easily related. He was a native of the lake-district, which he has helped to render so famous. He was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April 1770. His father was law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards earl of Lonsdale, and was descended from an old Yorkshire family. His mother, Anne Cookson, daughter of a mercer in Penrith, was connected with the ancient Westmoreland family of Crackanthorp. The poet was one of five children, four sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Richard, died a respectable attorney-at-law in London, in 1816; the second was the poet; the third, John, was commander of the Earl of Abergavenny East Indiaman, in which he perished by shipwreck, off Weymouth, in 1805; the fourth, Christopher, became master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and died in 1846; the only daughter, Dorothy, survived the poet unmarried, and was his cherished literary associate and his travelling companion at home and abroad. She was about two years younger than he was, and exercised a most beneficial influence on his character and tastes. This amiable and attached family were early deprived of both parents. At the age of fourteen, William was an orphan. After some elementary instruction at Cockermouth and Penrith, he was sent to school at Hawkshead in Lancashire, which he continued to attend until his eighteenth year, when he removed to St John's College, Cambridge. The academical career of Wordsworth was not distinguished. He was headstrong, impatient of control, and, like Milton, averse to the studies and discipline of his college. His last summer vacation he spent on the continent in a pedestrian tour with a fellow-collegian, Mr Robert Jones, with whom, in the following year, after taking his degree, he proceeded on an excursion to North Wales. The result appeared in Descriptive Sketches, written in 1791 and 1792, addressed to his fellow-traveller, and published in 1793. The same year appeared another poem, An Evening Walk, addressed to a Young Lady. The latter contains sketches of the English lakes, commemorating the charms of Derwent, Rydal, Grasmere, and Windermere: scenes with which the young poet's happiness and fame were ever afterwards to be associated. The versification of the poems is in the regular heroic couplet, easy and flowing, but without much animation. Wordsworth was then a republican in sentiment, glorying, like Coleridge and Southey, in the new day of liberty which had dawned upon France:

"Before him shone a glorious world, Fresh as a banner, bright, unfurled."

He wandered from place to place, "unfitted with an aim." His friends were desirous that he should enter the church, or adopt the legal profession; but to both he had insuperable objections. He projected a monthly miscellany, to be called The Philanthropist; and he looked about for an engagement as a newspaper writer. Neither scheme took effect. A young friend, Raisley Calvert, fell ill of a consumption; Wordsworth attended him faithfully for months, and on the death of Mr Calvert, in the spring of 1795, it was found that he had left the poet a sum of £900. "Upon the interest of the £900," he says, "£400 being laid out in annuity, with £200 deducted from the principal, £100, a legacy to my sister, and £100 more which the Lyrical Ballads brought me, my sister and I contrived to live seven years, nearly eight." A further sum of about £1800 each came to his sister and himself, as part of his father's estate, due by Lord Lonsdale; and with this humble provision (still farther reduced by an advance made to their sailor-brother) the poet resolved to devote himself to poetry and retirement. He first settled at Racedown Lodge, Dorsetshire, and there (June 1797) met with Coleridge, with whose conversation and poetical enthusiasm, Wordsworth and his sister, like all other persons, were fascinated. To be near Coleridge, they removed to the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey, Somersetshire, inhabiting a large house called Allfoxden, situated in a large park, with seventy head of deer around them. In this congenial retreat, Wordsworth wrote many of his smaller poems, and his tragedy, The Borderers, which was offered to the managers of Covent Garden Theatre, but rejected, and not published till 1842. In 1798, appeared Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems, for the copyright of which a poetical bookseller, Mr Joseph Cottle of Bristol, gave thirty guineas. Mr Cottle printed an edition of 500 copies; but he says the sale was so slow, and the severity of most of the reviews so great, that its progress to oblivion seemed certain. He disposed of most of the 500 volumes at a loss to a London bookseller, and the copyright being valued at nil, Cottle presented it to Wordsworth. Yet the first piece in this collection was Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," and the concluding poem, Wordsworth's exquisite lines on revisiting Tintern Abbey. After a tour in Germany, partly with Coleridge, and after six months residence there, the poet and his sister settled down in a cottage at Grasmere. In 1800 was published Lyrical Ballads, in two volumes; the first being a reprint of the previous series, and the second containing "Hartleap Well," "Ruth," "The Fountain," "The Pet Lamb," and other pieces since highly popular. Another edition of the Ballads was published in 1802, and a third in 1805. The Edinburgh Review at this time exercised an almost despotic sway over current literature, and its editor, the brilliant Francis Jeffrey, set himself in direct opposition to the lake-poets, and especially to Wordsworth. He ridiculed the poet's choice of subjects, picked out all his most doubtful and puerile productions or passages, and for years kept up a constant fire of sarcasm, reproof, and invective against the devoted poet. There was, of course, some truth in this harsh criticism. There was no occasion, as Scott said, that Wordsworth should "crawl upon all fours, when God had given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven." The wrong and injustice inflicted on the poet was, that the critic looked only on the unfavourable side of the picture. He concealed or appeared insensible to all the brighter and better traits of his genius, and would not or could not see that Wordsworth was leading the public taste into pure and natural channels, and reclaiming poetry from its alliance with false excitement and immorality, as well as from the stiff conventional restraints of the old regime. The poet, on the other hand, with characteristic firmness or obstinacy, seemed determined on persevering in opposition to the public taste, and defended his views as to the proper subjects for poetry, and the nature of poetic diction, in prefaces and essays which savoured strongly of paradox and egotism. Gradually, however, a reaction took place, and there were concessions on both sides. The original and suggestive character of the poems was felt and acknowledged, readers multiplied, and the new school extended (for it was based on nature and on our best feelings and affections), while its founder, without professing to yield, tacitly abandoned his own theory, and supplied his admirers with productions of a higher order. Some pieces were silently dropped out of the later editions of the Poems, and others were considerably modified; nor did the poet ever return to the style of "Goody Blake," "Alice Fell," or the "Idiot Boy."

Limited as were the worldly fortunes and hopes of Wordsworth, he found a lady willing to share them, and fitted to add fresh blessings to his cottage at Grasmere. In 1802, he was married to Miss Mary Hutchinson, Penrith, whom he had long known and esteemed. The wedded life of poets has been supposed to be rarely productive of happiness. The names of Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, Dryden, Addison, and Byron, have been cited in illustration of this dictum, though in the cases of Shakspeare and Addison there is an absence of all direct proof; Coleridge might with more certainty be added to the ill-starred list. But with Wordsworth there was no disturbing influence. His life to its close was eminently prosperous, and his beautiful lines, "She was a phantom of delight," written in the third year after his marriage, with various other passages in his works, attest the durability as well as intensity of his domestic happiness. Generous friends also came forward. Sir George Beaumont chose a beautiful spot near Keswick (Applethwaite), which he purchased and presented to Wordsworth; Lord Lonsdale placed £800 to the poet's credit, that he might become owner of a small estate at Patterdale. Of this sum, however, only a fourth part was accepted. The poet continued to reside at Grasmere until his increasing family rendered a removal necessary, and, in 1813, he took up his abode at Rydal Mount, in which he was destined to spend the remainder of his life, extending to the long period of thirty-seven more years—

"On man, on nature, and on human life, Musing in solitude."

The same year that witnessed his removal to Rydal, Wordsworth was rendered easy and independent in pecuniary circumstances by his appointment, through the influence of Lord Lonsdale, to the office of distributor of stamps in the county of Westmoreland. The duties of this office he could discharge by deputy; and in his official co-adjutor Wordsworth, with his usual good fortune, is said to have found a person not only well qualified to administer his affairs, but also a corrector of the press, a scholar, and critic. The ladies of his household—his wife and sister—acted as amanuenses. "Muttering his wayward fancies" among the lakes and mountains, the poet composed most of his poetry in the open air; afterwards dictating it from memory to the fair hands that were proud to commit it to paper.

In 1814 appeared The Excursion, the most elaborate work of its author—a poem in blank verse, irregular and unfinished in design, but containing episodes and descriptions of great beauty, pathos, and grandeur. The hero is no higher personage than a Scotch pedlar, a "gray-haired wanderer," with whom the poet roams over his region of lake and mountain, and visits some of its inhabitants, including a "solitary," a moralizing recluse (a sort of Jaques), and a pious pastor, who recounts to them some of the vicissitudes that had taken place in his sequestered district, and some of the characters he had known. Disquisitions moral and political are interspersed, occasionally rising into a strain of pure and lofty eloquence; but the chief interest centres in the cottage scenes and narratives, and in the portraits of the living or dead drawn by the pastor from his own observation of life among the mountains. The next work of the poet was a feudal story, The White Doe of Rylstone, founded on a tradition connected with Bolton Priory. This work brought Wordsworth more into comparison with Scott and Byron, the subject and versification being similar to those of their romantic tales. In the art of relation or narrative he was greatly their inferior; but in poetical imagination and description, Wordsworth in this poem appears fully equal to his great contemporaries. His picture of Rylstone Hall by moonlight (opening of the fourth canto), and the conclusion of the poem, are among the finest passages of our modern poetry. Recurring to his youthful studies and productions, Wordsworth, in 1819, published his serio-comic tales of Peter Bell and The Way-goner, written, one twenty, and the other thirteen years before publication. They are impregnated with the faults of his early period, yet contain fresh and living transcripts

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1 In the poem on the "Blind Highland Boy," Wordsworth had made his humble hero sit as ill in "A household tub, like one of those Which women use to wash their clothes." He afterwards substituted (not very naturally) a turtle shell— "A shell of ample size, and light As the pearly ear of Amphitrite." Numerous other corrections and alterations were made by the poet from time to time, and they cannot all be considered improvements. Working of nature. These tales were followed at intervals by some volumes of sonnets devoted to the River Duddon, to Ecclesiastical History, and to a Tour on the Continent. He made journeys to Scotland and the Highlands in 1831 and 1833—on the latter occasion, visiting Staffa and Iona—and these excursions called forth a volume of poems, Yarrow Revisited, &c., which was published in 1834. His latest appearance as an author was in 1847, when he indicted an ode on Prince Albert's installation as Chancellor of the University of Oxford. This ode was not, in lyrical power, what Wordsworth could have done and had done. He did not like "writing to order," and a request coming from the queen's consort almost implies a command; yet the production, for a poet of seventy-seven, was no ordinary achievement.

Wordsworth continued in robust health long after the allotted threescore and ten years, and his reputation was daily brightening and extending. In 1839, he was honoured by the University of Oxford with the degree of D.C.L. In 1842, he resigned his office of stamp-distributor in favour of his second son—the elder son was a well-beneficed clergyman—and at the same time a pension of £300 a year was settled upon him by the recommendation of Sir Robert Peel. In 1843, he succeeded his friend Southey as Poet Laureate. The appointment had been refused by Mr Rogers; Wordsworth also, at first, declined it; but he was assured that it was offered to him, as it has since been continued to his eminent successor, Mr Tennyson, as a mark of the royal favour and respect for what he had written, not as a retainer for future court services. In 1847, the venerable poet was shaken by a severe calamity, the death of his only daughter, Mrs Quillinan, the "Dora" of his poems, and a lady of great taste and accomplishments. His brother, the Master of Trinity, had died the year before. But enjoying, as he did, an easy competency, living in his own romantic and beloved district, with the society of his affectionate family, and in the enjoyment of public honours and respect, the lot of the poet must be pronounced eminently fortunate and happy. Death had indeed thinned his household, and removed his early poetical associates and friends; but even these visitations were long deferred; and when did any man live to the age of fourscore without paying this penalty on prolonged existence? Wordsworth died on the 23rd of April 1850, and was interred in the green churchyard of Grasmere, between a yew-tree he had planted and an aged, perhaps tri-secular, thorn-tree. His daughter Dora is at his side. A plain headstone with his name marks the spot. He had no desire for any other memorial of him but such as might survive for a while in the affection of his friends, and such as he was sure of in his works, and in every hill and valley around him.

(II. c.—s.)