brated at Brompton in Yorkshire. It was a marriage founded on deep affection and one full of blessings for his entire life. Mary Wordsworth was not beautiful in person, except as goodness creates a beauty of its own; her temper of happy tranquillity and love, her steadfast household energy, her wisdom of good sense, her womanly strength, her sure instinct for literary beauty made her a fitting wife for Wordsworth. How deep were his joy, his tenderness, and his unwavering love may be read in the last book of "The Prelude," in the stanzas "She was a Phantom of Delight"; in the poem, among those on the "Naming of Places," "To Το M. H.," in the lines beginning "Oh, dearer far than life or light are dear"; and in the touching sonnet "To a Painter,” written after thirty-eight years of wedded life : Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve, To thy large heart and humble mind, that cast Mary Wordsworth survived her husband some years, dying on Jan. 17, 1859; she was buried by his side in Grasmere churchyard. was In June, 1803, Wordsworth's first child- a son born, and two months later, accompanied by Dorothy, and for part of the way by Coleridge (who since 1800 had resided at Greta Hall, Keswick), he visited some of the most interesting scenes in Scotland. A detailed account of the tour is given in the journal of Dorothy Wordsworth, a record inspired by the delight of wandering, and showing everywhere the writer's exquisite sensibility to natural beauty. Some of her brother's most radiant and spiritual poems belong to this Scottish tour. In the first week Wordsworth looked upon the grave of Burns; in the last at Lasswade he made the acquaintance of his great contemporary, Walter Scott. Scott partly read for the travelers and partly recited, in an enthusiastic style of chant, the first four cantos of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel "; he accompanied them to Rosslyn, met them again at Melrose, and was their guide up the Teviot to Hawick, with a legend or ballad, says Lockhart, on his lips associated with every tower or rock they passed. During the year 1804 Wordsworth was at work upon "The Prelude," which, before December closed, had reached the eleventh book. Early in the following year came the first great sorrow since his boyhood. His brother John, captain of an East Indiaman, perished in the wreck of his ship (February 5) two miles from Weymouth Beach; to the last his bearing had been calm and in every way exemplary. John Wordsworth was a man of high character, a lover of literature, a lover of nature, and the sympathy between the brothers had been complete; they had not met since their parting at Grisdale Farm on Michaelmas day, 1800. Wordsworth conveyed something of his brother's spirit into his poem "The Happy Warrior," which presents a lofty ideal of heroic manhood; his sense of the discipline of pain is expressed in the "Elegiac Stanzas, suggested by a Picture. of Peele Castle." His grief was deep and abiding; his joy in life was, indeed, not quenched, but the happiness that continued to be his took upon itself a sober coloring. He threw himself upon poetical work, partly as a refuge from pain, and by the middle of May, 1805, had brought "The Prelude to a close. The sorrow which matured Wordsworth's mind was turned to wise uses, and there were new sources of gladness to set over against the sorrow. Voices of children cheered his home; Dorothy was born in 1804, Thomas in 1806; and the cottage growing narrow for his household, he accepted for the winter of 1806-1807 the offer made by his friend Sir George Beaumont, a landscape painter of some distinction, of a farmhouse at Coleorton in Leicestershire. Here he was visited by Coleridge, lately returned from Italy, and his son Hartley. The old friendship was renewed under sadder circumstances, for Coleridge's abiding mood was one of dejection only veiled by transitory cheerfulness. He had taken with him to Malta five books of "The Prelude" in manuscript; and now the remainder of that poem, which belonged in a special sense to him, was read aloud. homage to Wordsworth's spiritual power and strength of purpose, and the pathetic sense of his own infirmities, were poured forth on the night of the recital of "The Prelude " in memorable verse. His During his residence at the Coleorton farmhouse, Wordsworth composed the "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," in which the spirit of chivalry is expressed, and at the same time is controlled by the spirit of a finer and deeper wisdom. Here, too, he saw in proof the last pages of two small but inestimable volumes, the "Poems" of 1807.1 They contain a series of noble sonnets, the poems of the Scottish tour, many lyrics of external nature, the record of fortitude in "Resolution and Independence," and the Ode afterwards named "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." The reception of these volumes by the reviewers was far from favourable; but Wordsworth's "faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse" was not dependent on the public journals. "Trouble not yourself," he wrote to Lady Beaumont, "upon their present reception; of what moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny? to console the afflicted; to add 1 The earlier proofs were sent to the printer from Grasmere. sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel; and, therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves." The political sonnets in the volume of 1807 show how ardently Wordsworth entered into the struggle maintained by England against the dominance of Napoleon Bonaparte. He looked upon his native country as now the champion at once of freedom and of order; and his reliance was not on her material strength, but on the awakened moral energy of the people and the righteousness of a great cause. Two years after the appearance of the "Poems," he published an elaborate pamphlet on "The Relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal," criticising, with great severity, as dishonourable, and therefore in the highest sense impolitic, the Convention of Cintra. He looked at events not from the point of view of a military expert, not even from the politician's point of view; but as one who saw that all present good and all hope for the future resided in the spiritual virtue of a nation. The people of the peninsula had risen against an intolerable tyranny; no temporary advantage in warfare, even supposing such an advantage were gained, could compensate the evil caused by an arrangement which thwarted or checked the noblest passions of an outraged race. No political prose so ardent and so weighty with solemn thought had been written since the days of Burke; but events had moved rapidly; when Wordsworth's pamphlet appeared the Convention was an accomplished fact of the past. His passionate meditation fell upon unheeding ears, yet it remains as a lofty interpretation of moral truths which exist independently of the occasion that called it forth. Another remarkable piece of Wordsworth's prose belongs in its ear liest form to the year 1810- his "Guide to the Lakes," originally prefixed to a volume of "Views" drawn by the Rev. J. Wilkinson. In it the poet exhibits his mind working in an analytic way; he appears as a profound and searching student of the characteristics of landscape; he handles with complete intellectual mastery the matter which in his verse is rendered for the emotions and the imagination. After a visit to London in the spring of 1807, Wordsworth returned, in company with Scott, to Coleorton. Later in the year he saw, for the first time, the beautiful country that surrounds Bolton Priory in Yorkshire, and gathered from its history and tradition material for "The White Doe of Rylstone," half of which was composed at Stockton-onTees, in November and December. When he reëntered his Grasmere cottage the poem was continued, but it remained unpublished until 1815. It is less a narrative of material events and outward action than of a process of the soul; yet with the purification through suffering of the spirit of his heroine, Wordsworth finely connects something of the decaying feudal temper and manners, something also of the beauty and the pathos of external nature; while in the doe, which is partly a gentle woodland creature and partly a spirit of fidelity and love, he finds, as it were, a visible presentment of the sanctity of Emily's moral being. The poem is one that grew from a sorrow chastened and subdued; it tells of the higher wisdom which came to Wordsworth himself through the discipline of affliction. Dove Cottage was now hardly habitable by the Wordsworth household. On returning from London, whither he had been drawn by alarming accounts of Coleridge's health, Wordsworth, with his family, moved in the summer of 1808 to Allan Bank, a newly built house, situated upon a small height on the way from Grasmere to Easedale; and during |