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time in seclusion on his own estate. He died a bachelor in middle age. Induced by the beauty of the prospect, he built a small summer-house on the rocks above the peninsula on which the ferry-house stands.

"This property afterwards passed into the hands of the late Mr. Curwen. The site was long ago pointed out by Mr. West in his "Guide" as the pride of the Lakes, and now goes by the name of "The Station." So much used I to be delighted with the view from it, while a little boy, that some years before the first pleasure-house was built, I led thither from Hawkshead a youngster about my own age, an Irish boy, who was a servant to an itinerant conjuror. My motive was to witness the pleasure I expected the/ boy would receive from the prospect of the islands below, and the intermingling water. I was not disappointed."

Nature appears to have done more for Wordsworth than books; yet he was not remiss as a student. He read much of English literature, especially works of imagination. He knew a great deal of English poetry by heart; and he wrote English verses at school. At that time it was not the custom of north-country schools to exercise their pupils much in classical composition. But Wordsworth was a fair Latin scholar; and he had made respectable progress in mathematics before he left school. His feelings on quitting Hawkshead are expressed in the lines

"Dear native regions, I foretell,

From what I feel at this farewell,
My soul will cast the backward view,
The longing look alone on you." 1

His father had died while William was yet a schoolboy, and left him and his three brothers, and his sister, orphans in the year 1783. His father's estate was derived mainly from professional labour; and at his death the bulk of his fortune consisted in sums due to him from Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl Lonsdale, whose legal agent he was. This debt was claimed on behalf of the orphans; but in vain. It remained unpaid till the Earl's death, in 1802, when it was liquidated, in a prompt and liberal manner, by his successor, the late Earl Lonsdale. At their father's decease the brothers were placed under the care of their two uncles, Richard Wordsworth and Christopher Crackanthorpe; and in the year 1787 William was sent by them to the University of Cambridge.

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CHAPTER VI.

COLLEGE LIFE.

In the month of October, 1787, William Wordsworth, then in the eighteenth year of his age, commenced his residence at St. John's College, Cambridge. His feelings on his first arrival at the university are vividly pourtrayed by himself in his biographical poem.1 He there also describes his occupations; and to that description the reader is referred.

Suffice it to say, the picture is not a bright one. In some respects he was not very well prepared to profit by the influences of the university. His previous scholastic training had not been of a kind to qualify him for pursuing the studies of Cambridge with the same prospect of success as was within the reach of students tutored in the great public schools. Hence, intellectually, he and the university were not in full sympathy with each other. Besides, he had never been subject to restraint: his school days were days of freedom; and latterly, since the death of his parents, he was almost entirely his own master. In addition to this, his natural temperament was eager, impetuous, and impatient of control.

he says,

"While yet an innocent, I breathed,"

1 Prelude, books iii. and vi.

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Among wild appetites, and blind desires,
Motions of savage instinct my delight
And exultation." 1

He was not prepared by habit or disposition to submit with genial affection and reverent humility to the discipline of a college; especially when that discipline was administered by some who did not appear to comprehend its true meaning, and did not embody its spirit in their lives.

But, on the other hand, William Wordsworth brought with him to Cambridge an imagination elevated, an intellect enlarged, and affections solemnised, by intercourse with the powers of nature in their most majestic form. And he had a clear sense of what was noble, just, and true. If, therefore, the tone of the university had then been higher than it was if the lives of the members of the university, and especially of its rulers, had been holierif a spirit of dignified self-respect and severe selfdenial had breathed in their deportment and if an adequate appreciation of what was due to the memory and injunctions of their founders and benefactors, and a religious reverence for the inheritance of piety, wisdom, and learning, bequeathed to them by antiquity, had manifested itself in their practice; then, it can hardly be doubted, the authentic influence of the academic system would have made itself felt by him. Cambridge would have stamped its image upon the mind of Wordsworth; he would have paid it dutiful homage, filial obedience, and affectionate veneration. But, at that period of academic history, the case

1 First book of "The Recluse," still unpublished.

was otherwise. Hence he felt himself to stand at a higher elevation of moral dignity than some of his teachers. The youthful under-graduate looked down upon some of his instructors. He saw sacred services provided day after day, morning and evening, by his college, and he found that he and his fellow students were statutably required to attend them. But he looked in vain for the presence of many of those who ate the bread of the founders, and were supposed to administer the statutes, and had bound themselves by solemn engagements to observe the laws of the college, and to be examples to the younger members of the society, and especially to maintain that collegiate unity which cannot subsist without religious communion.

He felt that there was something like hollow mockery and profane hypocrisy in this. He resented it as an affront to himself and to his fellow students, as And, as is often the

members of the academic body. case with ardent and enthusiastic minds, he charged the institution with the sins of those who professed to administer its laws, but in practice violated them. He would have visited the offences of its governors on the system which they abused. He would have suspended the daily service in the college chapels, because some of the fellows betrayed their trust, and neglected those services, and led self-indulgent or irreligious lives.

In maturer years, he revised his opinion in this important respect, as will be seen hereafter: he learnt and taught that every system, however good, is liable to abuse; and that when what is good is abused, the abuse affords no ground for its destruction; but that,

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