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MEMOIR.

ILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the most distinguished philosophical poet that England has produced, was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770.

The family of Wordsworth appears to have been of some little antiquity, as members of it are found settled at Pennistone, near Doncaster, so far back as the reign of Edward III., and the poet himself had in his possession an antique oak chest, or almery, of the reign of Henry VIII. (1525), on which was recorded, in curious carving, some generations of the family pedigree. But the branch from which he sprang was originally planted at Falthwaite, near Stainborough, and removed thence to Sockbridge, in Westmoreland, about the beginning of the last century.

The poet's father, who is said to have been a man of vigorous mental powers and of some eloquence, was an attorney, and held the appointment of law-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale. Ann Cookson, the poet's mother, was the daughter of a mercer of Penrith, and was descended, on her mother's side, from a very ancient family— the Crackanthorpes-who had been seated at Newbiggen Hall, in Westmoreland, for more than five hundred years. She appears to have been a woman of gentle and affectionate disposition, of much wisdom, high moral principle, and unaffected piety. She died when the poet was in his eighth year; so that, like Cowper, he had hardly listened to the language of maternal love when it was lost to him for ever. Henceforth he was confided to the care of strangers. But the impressions left upon his mind by his mother's tender treatment, and by the liberal and enlarged, yet gentle and confiding spirit in which she conducted the moral and mental training of his childhood, appear to have been deep and abiding, for he has embodied them in one or two passages of his poems, in lines as full of truthful feeling and tender pathos as any in the language.

The family consisted of five children-four sons and one daughter. The eldest son became an attorney and died in 1816; the third went to sea, became commander of the Earl of Abergavenny, East Indiaman, and perished by shipwreck off Weymouth in 1805. The youngest, Christopher, entered the Church, and became well known as Dr. Wordsworth,* author of a work entitled "Ecclesiastical

* Two of Dr. Wordsworth's sons have become somewhat distinguished. One of themChristopher Wordsworth, D.D.-is the present able and learned Bishop of Lincoln, the writer of

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