# Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Wordsworth, William

Excerpted from The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, Volume 3, 1876 ed., page 1387-1389. (Ferrier's contributions to the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography were for for the edition published 1857-1863. That this is the subsequent edition of 1876 is evidenced in its mentioning later dates—including that of Ferrier's death in 1864.)
​WORDSWORTH, William, the most meditative of English poets, was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, April 7, 1770. His father was John Wordsworth, an attorney, and factor on the estates of Sir James Lowther, afterwards earl of Lonsdale. When eight years of age he lost his mother, whose maiden name was Anne Cookson. His obstinate self-will and force of character, displayed even at this early age, had led her to predict that he would either "be steady in good or headstrong in evil;" and by good luck or wise self-discipline he drew the former lot. His early training was favourable to the development of his poetical powers. Even from his infancy he was allowed to run wild, wandering where he listed, and, as he says in "The Prelude," often making "one long bathing of a summer's day." In his ninth year he was sent to the school of Hawkeshead, a village in the lake country, a beautiful district fitted above all others in England to impress with fair pictures the imagination of a youthful poet. Here his life was as free and his steps as untrammeled as before. School work was not neglected; but the yoke of scholastic discipline seems to have lain very light on the shoulders of these young Hawkesheadians. They indulged ad libitum in the pastimes of boating, fishing, climbing the mountains, and bathing. In "The Prelude" and "The Excursion" he has recorded many of the incidents of these early years, describing his intense sympathy and earnest communings with nature, and enumerating the means and the materials by which "the foundations of his mind were laid."
Wordsworth's father died in 1783. The bulk of his property consisted of arrears due to him from his employer Lord Lonsdale, who refused to pay a single shilling to the orphan children. Nor were these arrears paid until the death of this unjust and niggardly nobleman in 1802, an interval of nineteen years. They were then promptly discharged in full and with interest, by his enlightened and liberal successor, who throughout life was Wordsworth's steady friend and patron. Meanwhile the young Wordsworths were thrown on the kind offices of their uncles. One of these. Dr. Cookson, had been a fellow of St. John's college, Cambridge, and thither Wordsworth was sent in 1787. He came to college tolerably well grounded in Latin and mathematics for a fresh-man—and this start enabled him to lead rather a gay life, in the course of which, however, he never ran into any immorality or excess. If he attended but little to the ​prescribed studies of the university, he mastered the Italian language, and greatly increased his knowledge of English literature, being incessantly occupied with Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakspeare. His first long vacation was spent at Hawkeshead where he entered with zest into the rural merry-makings; his second was marked by the renewal of his acquaintance with his gifted sister Dorothea, from whom he had long been separated, but who now joined him, and whose genial and intelligent sympathies exercised a very auspicious influence on the growth and expression of his genius. In his third academical summer (1790) he made a tour through France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy, in company with Mr. Jones, a brother undergraduate. It was then the Saturnalia of the French revolution. Wordsworth was borne along in the general whirl of excitement and delight, without having any foretaste of the bloody revels in which the reign of fraternity was so soon to end. He graduated in 1791, after which he spent four months in London in close attendance on the houses of parliament, where he listened to the debates on the French revolution with interest, but still blind to the catastrophe towards which the political movement was hastening. In the following year he crossed over to Paris, eager, as he tells us, to take an active lead in the Revolution—a part which, had he been allowed to play it, would probably have cost him his head. Luckily his friends in England, hearing of his wild projects, stopped the supplies, so that the disappointed democrat was under the necessity of turning his steps homewards.
Wordsworth's first work, containing "An Evening Walk," and "Descriptive Sketches taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps," was published in 1793. In these poems his original genius is but faintly perceptible. Their versification is an echo of Pope and Goldsmith. In his next poem, entitled "Guilt and Sorrow" (written in 1794, but not published entire until 1842), he strikes into a deeper vein, and shows a profound knowledge of the workings of the human heart; its conclusion, however, is poor and repulsive. At this time, when his finances were at the lowest ebb and his prospects as gloomy as they could be, he was providentially left a legacy of £900 by a young man of the name of Calvert, the last few weeks of whose life he had soothed by his attentions, and in return for which he was now rewarded with this acceptable, though certainly unexpected windfall. On this sum Wordsworth and his sister lived for no less than nine years. They settled at Racedown in Dorsetshire. Here he wrote imitations of Juvenal, and "The Borderers," a tragedy. The former were never given to the world, and it would have been no loss to literature if the latter too had been suppressed; for although Coleridge pronounced this tragedy "absolutely wonderful," it has found no other panegyrist even among the warmest admirers of the poet. Wordsworth became acquainted with Coleridge in 1797, and their acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy. Filled with mutual admiration, they were well fitted to stimulate each other's genius. Coleridge was residing at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, and a house being to let in the neighbouring village of Allfoxden, Wordsworth and his sister hired it in order that they might enjoy his society. It is said that the high-sounding and unintelligible talk of these children of genius inspired the simple villagers with so much mistrust and apprehension, that a government spy was procured to watch their proceedings and detect their treasonable designs. Hid behind a bank while the speakers were holding high colloquy about Spinoza, the detective thought that they had discovered his mission, and were avenging themselves on his personal appearance, which was of the Bardolphian order, by dubbing him Spy-nosey. But he was unable to bring home to them any more serious charge. Wordsworth, however, who was often seen at midnight haunting lonely places and prowling about the sea-shore, was set down as a smuggler; and the result was that the landlord of Allfoxden refused to let his house any longer to so suspicious a character. Whereupon the friends, before establishing themselves elsewhere, resolved to spend a few months in Germany.
Funds were required to meet the expenses of the expedition; and to raise them a negotiation about the publication of a joint volume of poems was entered into with Mr. Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol. While the arrangement was pending the following amusing incidents, as related by Mr. Lockhart (Quart. Rev., vol. xcii., p. 205), occurred:—"Cottle drove Wordsworth from Bristol to Allfoxden in a gig, calling at Stowey by the way to summon Coleridge and Miss Wordsworth, who followed swiftly on foot. They carried with them bread and cheese and a bottle of brandy. A beggar stole the cheese, which set Coleridge expatiating on the superior virtues of brandy. It was he that, with thirsty impatience, took out the horse; but as he let down the shafts the theme of his eloquence rolled from the seat and was dashed to pieces on the ground. Coleridge, abashed, gave the horse up to Cottle, who tried to pull off the collar; it proved too much for the worthy citizen's strength, and he called for Wordsworth to assist. Wordsworth retired baffled, and was relieved by the ever-handy Coleridge. There seemed more likelihood of their pulling off the animal's head than his collar, and they marvelled by what magic it had ever been got on. 'La, master,' said the servant-girl who was passing by, 'you don't go the right way to work,' and turning round the collar she slipped it off in an instant, to the confusion of the three luminaries." Cottle paid to Wordsworth £30 for his contribution to the volume referred to, and made a separate bargain with Coleridge. It was entitled Lyrical Ballads, and was published in 1798. It opens with Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which in this early form contains many crudities which were removed in subsequent editions. The volume was unsuccessful, so much so that when Cottle's stock was disposed of the copyright was reckoned as nothing, and was restored to its authors. Conjoined with a second volume of Lyrical Ballads, it was reissued by Longman in 1800. The poems were still far from being popular, but the impression which they made was deep though limited; and a small school of enthusiastic disciples and admirers of the poet began to form itself.
In 1798 Wordsworth, with his sister and Coleridge, went to Hamburg, where they had several interviews with Klopstock, author of The Messiah. From Hamburg the Wordsworths proceeded to Goslar, where they remained until 1799. Here Wordsworth wrote some of his minor poems, and began "The Prelude," which was finished in 1805, but not published until near the close of his life. Returning to England they settled down for life in the Lake country, first in a cottage at Grasmere, and finally at Rydal Mount, near Ambleside. In 1802 the old Lord Lowther died, and the Wordsworths entered, as has been already said, into possession of their lawful patrimony. The two shares which fell to the poet and his sister amounted to £1700, a small fortune to people of their frugal tastes and Spartan virtues. Wordsworth now married Mary Hutcheson, whom he had known from childhood, a union in every way auspicious, and particularly so in its leaving undisturbed the relation in which he stood towards his good genius, his highly endowed and amiable sister. In the following year he made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott, Southey, and Sir George Beaumont, to the latter of whom he was indebted for many acts of substantial generosity, and for an annuity of £100 bequeathed to him by Sir George in order that he might indulge in a yearly tour; for travelling was the one luxury in which Wordsworth took delight. He frequently published poetical memorials of these travels. In 1805 Wordsworth suffered a severe domestic calamity in the loss of his brother John, the captain of an East Indiaman, whose ship was cast away on the Weymouth Sands through the incompetency of the pilot, and all on board perished. The poet has tenderly commemorated, in several of his poems, the death of this high-minded man, who had a devout faith in his brother's genius and in the celebrity he was finally to achieve.
In 1807 Wordsworth put forth two new volumes of poetry, and in 1814 "The Excursion." It was on these volumes especially that the Edinburgh Review fastened the brand of its censure and contempt. Posterity has reversed the judgment of Lord Jeffrey; but by that verdict the poet, for some twenty years, was kept out of his just inheritance of fame, as he had at an earlier period been defrauded of his patrimonial dues, for a similar length of time, by the iniquitous caprice of Lord Lonsdale. Yet reviewing the controversy at the present day, we must confess that the critic's severity was in a large measure justified by the puerility, affectation, and prosiness of many of the verses contained in these, as well as in Wordsworth's earlier compositions. They looked like irritants thrown out on purpose to provoke the ire, or at least to defy the taste, of those who had been educated in a different school of poetry. And how much they were at variance with Wordsworth's own better judgment is proved by the circumstance that, when the strife had subsided, he either silently withdrew the obnoxious passages from all the subsequent editions of his works, or modified them considerably, thereby virtually acknowledging the justice of the sentence which ​condemned him. But still the critic was much more at fault than the poet; for, not content with tearing up weeds, Jeffrey (as Lockhart remarks) "in several cases set his heel upon a flower," and dealt but a scanty measure of justice to the nobler attributes of Wordsworth's genius. And therefore the depreciatory sentence of the Edinburgh reviewer has been very properly set aside as discreditable to his critical taste and penetration. As some compensation for the ill-usage of the critics, Wordsworth was appointed, about this time, distributor of stamps for the county of Westmoreland, an office which, it is presumed, he could transact by deputy, and which brought him a few hundreds a year.
"The White Doe of Rylstone" was published in 1815, and "Peter Bell" in 1819. Viewed as wholes these poems cannot be very highly commended; but they contain many passages of the most exquisite poetry, which, however, is sometimes laid on at the wrong places, leaving bald those spots where poetry is most wanted. This seems to be a not unfrequent fault with Wordsworth. In 1835 he published "Yarrow Revisited, and other poems," and in 1842 a volume containing "Guilt and Sorrow" and "The Borderers." His collected works have been frequently reprinted in various forms by Moxon, His popularity was now unquestioned. He received in 1839 the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of an unusually crowded theatre. In 1842 a pension of £300 a year was conferred upon him by Sir Robert Peel; and on Southey's death in the following year he was presented by the same minister to the laureateship, "as a tribute due to the first of living poets." But if honours fell thick upon his latter years, his home on the other hand was visited by some of those heavy sorrows, which few men escape whose life is protracted beyond the ordinary span. Some years before his death his sister's health became hopelessly disordered, and he lost his only surviving daughter, Dora, who had recently become the wife of Mr. Edward Quillinan. His own health continued strong until April, 1850, when he had reached his eightieth year. About the beginning of this month he was attacked with inflammation of the chest. The more painful symptoms of the malady were subdued, but he never rallied, and died peacefully on the 23rd of April. He was buried in Grasmere churchyard by the side of his children, two of whom he had lost many years before.
Wordsworth was about five feet ten inches in height. His figure was not graceful, but in his countenance there was a fine mixture of the poet and philosopher. He resembled the portraits of Locke; his eyes burned with an inward glare, and looked as if they saw things (which they did) in nature not revealed to ordinary vision. His manners were grave and rather austere; but never, even when his poetical fortunes were at their lowest ebb, was he, in the smallest degree, a soured or disappointed man; for nature had given him a sanguine temperament, equable, indeed elastic spirits, and he had moreover an unshaken faith in the genuineness of his own genius, and a correct appreciation of the value of his own writings, which he was sure would be finally rated at their proper worth, whatever vicissitudes they might meanwhile undergo. These vicissitudes are well summed up by De Quincey, who says, "From 1800 to 1820 the poetry of Wordsworth was trodden under foot, from 1820 to 1830 it was militant, from 1830 and onwards it has been triumphant." It must be remembered, however, that he had, from the first, a select fraternity of admirers who looked up to him as the very high priest of nature.
With regard to the poems themselves of Wordsworth there is but room for this single remark, that, of these poems it may perhaps be said, with greater truth than of any other modern poetry, that they contain passages and lines so startling in their simplicity, subtlety, and freshness, that the perusal of them forms an epoch in the intellectual life of every student of sensibility and taste. When first read they are felt to be unlike anything in poetry which the reader has ever met with before. As an instance of this spell-like originality take the two last lines of the following stanza—
" The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
For the life of Wordsworth in full, see Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D.; Memoirs of William Wordsworth, compiled from authentic sources, by January Searle; neither of which, however, are works of much merit or interest. There is an excellent epitome of his life by Mr. Lockhart in vol. xcii. of the Quarterly Review.—J. F. F.