Wordsworth

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

WILLIAM, an English poet; born ir. Cockermouth, Cumberland, April 7, 1770. He was the son of an attorney and in 1787 was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. He left the university after taking his degree, but without having otherwise distinguished himself, and lived aimlessly in London and elsewhere. He crossed to France in November, 1791, and exhibited vehement sympathy with the revolution, remaining in France for nearly a year. After his return, disregarding all entreaties to enter on a professional career, he published his "Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches" (1793). Two years afterward he received a legacy of $4,500 from Raisley Calvert, a friend whom he had nursed in his last illness. With this sum and the consecrated helpfulness of his sister Dorothy he contrived to keep house for eight years, while he gave himself to poetic effort as his high "office on earth." For the first two years they lived at Racedown in Dorset where the poet among other experiments began his tragedy of "The few excepted, by the literary value of Borderers." In this retreat they were visited (1797) by by Coleridge, who had already recognized an original poetic genius in the author of "Descriptive Sketches." Coleridge was at this time living at Nether Stowey, in Somerset, and during this visit he induced the Wordsworths to go into residence at Alfoxden, in his immediate neighborhood. Here the two poets held daily intercourse, and after a year they published "Lyrical Ballads" (1798) in literary copartnership. Though this volume was received with almost complete public indifference, yet Wordsworth felt that he had found his mission, and after a winter spent in ermany, he and his sister settled at Germ Grasmere (1799), where he proposed to write a great philosophical poem on man, nature, and society. Thenceforth his life was marked by a few incidents. Those worth noting are his marriage in 1802 with his cousin Mary Hutchison; a removal from Grasmere to Allan Bank in 1808; his appointment in 1818 to an inspectorship of stamps, and his removal to Rydal Mount; several journeys into Scotland and to the Continent; his acceptance of a D. C. L. degree conferred on him in 1839 by the University of Oxford; and his accession in 1843 to the laureateship on the death of Southey. Wordsworth's Wordsworth's great philosophic poem, which, in his own phrase, was to be the Gothic cathedral of his labor, received only a fragmentary accomplishment in "The Prelude," "The Excursion," and "The Recluse." Yet enough was achieved in his smaller poems to justify his own conception of himself as a "dedicated spirit," and to set him apart among the greatest of England's poets. A complete edition of his poetical works has been published by Professor Knight, his prose writings have been collected and published by Dr. Grossart, his "Memoirs" were published in 1851 by his nephew, and an interesting account of the poet and his sister Dorothy is found in her "Diary of a Tour of the Highlands." He died in Rydal Mount, April 23, 1850.