memorials of the tour was published by Wordsworth two years later. After a visit to his brother at Cambridge and to Sir George Beaumont at Coleorton, he was again at Rydal Mount by the close of 1820. He had assisted Sir George Beaumont to choose the site of a church about to be erected, and not long afterwards he sent his friend certain sonnets in remembrance of the occasion. The question of Catholic emancipation, now occupying the attention of Parliament, kept his thoughts directed to matters connected with the Church, and it occurred to him that certain points in the religious history of the country might be advantageously presented to view in verse. Hence originated the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," published with the title "Ecclesiastical Sketches" in 1822, and as he proceeded the first design expanded in his hands beyond the bounds of England. In later reprints additions were made, nor did the series reach its final completion until 1845. In early life Wordsworth had found spiritual promptings, guidance, and support chiefly, in his own soul and in the influence of external nature; with advancing years he came to value highly the organization of religion, the communities of worship, the worth of authority and tradition, the infusion of a spirit of piety through rites and ceremonies. He had not lost the gains of his youth, but he added to them others which came with a closer incorporation in the society of his fellows.

There is little of external incident to record in Wordsworth's elder years. The happy monotony of life at Rydal Mount was varied by occasional moods of creative impulse, and by more frequent wanderings from home in summer or autumn. In 1823 he travelled with his wife in Belgium and Holland; the next year their holiday was in Wales. When Sir George Beaumont died, in 1827, an annuity of £100 was left by him to be spent by Wordsworth in a yearly tour. In 1828 Coleridge was his companion on an excursion to Bel

gium and the Rhine; a year later he visited Ireland; was again in Scotland in 1831 and in 1833; and in 1837, when approaching the age of seventy, he saw for the first time Rome and Florence. Many of his later verses are connected with these summer wanderings. Only two new volumes of poetry appeared after the publications of 1822; one of these was Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems" (1835); the other," Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years" (1842), in which was included the tragedy of "The Borderers." But as successive editions of his collected writings appeared, he added now and again to their contents; and he occupied himself much in the revisal of previous work.

ee

Many alterations were effected in the texts of 1827 and of 1832. For the stereotyped edition of 1836-1837 a thorough revisal was undertaken, which, though the improvements are many, was certainly carried too far; in 1840 and in 1845 further improvements were introduced, but in not a few instances he wisely restored the earlier readings. When in March, 1843, Southey died, Wordsworth became his successor to the laureateship; in 1844 Sir Robert Peel placed his name on the civil list, with a pension of £300 a year. He had received from Oxford in 1839 the honorary degree of D.C.L., and when Keble, as Professor of Poetry, presented him to the Vice-Chancellor, the Sheldonian Theatre rang with applause.

Two matters of public interest called him into activity in these declining years; he took strong views as to the rights of authors with respect to copyright; and he was a vigorous opponent in 1844-1845 of the proposed Kendal and Windermere Railway. He did not undervalue the benefits to be expected from railways in their legitimate application; but the particular scheme in question seemed to him inappropriate and ill judged; "the staple," as he expressed it, of the Lake district "is its beauty and its character of seclusion

and retirement"; and he held that the gains likely to result from the contemplated intrusion would not compensate the sacrifice.

Wordsworth at length had attained to honor and to widespread influence. But one who reaches his years must needs endure sorrow. His sister had for long been an invalid, weakened in intellect. His sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, to whom he was much attached, died in 1836. Scott, Coleridge, Lamb, Crabbe, Hogg, Felicia Hemans, had all passed away. In 1847 his beloved daughter Dora, who had become the wife of Edward Quillinan, died, and Wordsworth, at the age of seventy-seven, had not strength to recover from the blow; all that he could attain was resignation underlying the passion of grief. But his time of sorrow was not long drawn out. On Sunday, March 10, 1850, he received a chill, which resulted in pleuritic inflammation. During his illness his thoughts were often with his lost Dora. At noon on April 23 he peacefully breathed his last. Westminster Abbey, though his marble figure is seated there, is not his resting-place. His body lies, with the bodies of those dearest to him, in Grasmere church-yard, below the hills that his feet had so often trodden, and among the rural folk whose joys and sorrows he had interpreted to the world.

Several portraits of Wordsworth exist; that by Haydon, the subject of a fine sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, best renders the strength and brooding passion of his countenance. The forehead was ample; the eyes not large, but capable of deep spiritual illumination; the nose slightly arched; the mouth expressive of force; the cheeks furrowed. In figure Wordsworth was tall, and neither slight nor massive. His over-fervid temperament caused him at an early age to look older than he actually was. A portrait by Pickersgill, which the poet himself approved, hangs

in the hall of St. John's College, Cambridge; but its expression of weak amiability is the reverse of characteristic. A bust by Chautrey's pupil, Angus Fletcher, is faithful in outline and has caught the meaning of his face.

In social converse he was grave, but animated, ready to receive and ready to communicate. He took a deep and kindly interest in the concerns of his humbler neighbors. On his visits to London during his later years he entered freely into society, and could be genial in the company of younger men, even when their opinions on moral and social questions differed widely from his own. He read what pleased him and what he considered best, but he had not the wide-ranging passion for books of a literary student.

II. CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S GENIUS.

WITH many men of genius high powers conflict one with another, or operate singly and fail in mutual help. Nothing is more characteristic of Wordsworth than the harmony existing between the several faculties of his nature; his various powers not only act in unison, they seem, as it were, to interpenetrate one another, each living and moving in its fellow. Byron's genius impresses us as a magnificent but warring chaos; his nobler impulses were met and baffled by his baser passions; and the cynicism of "Don Juan" is the result. With Keats, sensation sometimes tyrannizes over reflection. In Coleridge the will failed to sustain imagination and thought, and so his works became fragmentary. There was a practical side to Shelley's mind, but he reserved it for his prose; in verse, if not a visionary, he is almost a pure idealist. It is seldom indeed that complete intellectual and moral conciliation is effected in any one of us.

The

spirit wars against the senses, and the senses against the spirit; the intellect distrusts the imagination, and the imagination shrinks back from the intellect; the real and the ideal seem to be opposed or to stand wide apart; now the outward gains upon us, and again we take refuge in the citadel of the soul; passion and conscience are at odds; excitements mar our tranquillity or some dulness hangs weights of lead upon our nobler excitements; our desire for freedom rebels against obedience to law, or we give ourselves up to the ease and bondage of customs, conventions, unrealized creeds; we observe, accumulate, analyse, and lose the unifying and vivifying power of the mind; our manhood scorns or laments our youth, our old age wearies of the interests of our manhood. In Wordsworth's nature and in Wordsworth's work a harmony is effected between faculties and moods, which with most men are rivals for possession of supreme or exclusive power. The special character of what he achieved is happily defined by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, as consisting "First, in the unusually large number of qualities, often not only remote from each other, but apparently opposed to each other, which are represented by his higher poetry; secondly, in the absolute unity in which these various qualities are blended; and thirdly, in the masterful moral strength which results from their united expression. . In his best poetry the diverse elements of the human intellect and of the human heart are found, not only in greater variety, but in a closer and more spiritual union than in any other poetry of his time."

Two of his senses, and those the senses most needful for a poet's uses eye and ear- were susceptible of the finest impressions; a third sense, from which poetry derives some contributions, as readers of Herrick and of Keats must be well aware, that of smell,—was with Wordsworth absolutely lacking. Noticing when a boy of fourteen the strongly