1813, after some farther travelling, he finally took up his abode at Rydal Mount, with his sister and his wife (whom he had married in 1802), and in the following year published his philosophical poem the Excursion. The event which had the most marked effect upon Wordsworth was the French Revolution; the friends who most influenced his life were his sister and Coleridge. At the close of the last century Wordsworth found narrow ideas, and a conventional, artificial style prevailing on all sides, in poetry as in society. These he set himself resolutely to alter-perhaps occasionally with more enthusiasm than judgment-by a return to nature and simplicity; and however much he may have been laughed at then, no one can now fail to recognise the service he rendered. He was a passionate lover of simple manhood and of nature, whose smallest object never failed to give him food for reflection, and to stir him deeply. There is hardly one of his poems which does not contain some exquisite picture of mountain, river, tree, or flower, or simple country folk-exquisite, however, rather for the tender feeling than for the force of the description; though, when at its best, his language is surpassed but by few. The opening verse of the second part of Hart-Leap Well may be taken as a fair account of himself, and to it we may add a few lines from two other poems of his :

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie.
His daily teachings had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

LUCY GRAY.

Wordsworth writes of this poem:- "It was founded on a circumstance told me by my sister, of a little girl who, not far from Halifax, in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snowstorm. Her footsteps were traced by her parents to the middle of a lock of a canal, and no other vestige of her backward or forward could be traced. The body, however, was found in the canal." There is no better example than this little poem of Wordsworth's power of bringing out all the tender beauty and sadness of a simple story.

P. 15, 1. 2. Wild = unreclaimed and uncultivated land, moorland.

P. 15, 1. 4. The solitary child. Notice how Wordsworth at once excites our pity for the child by calling her "solitary," and how skilfully he makes her life seem part of the lonely scenery

around her, thereby giving a wider interest to it, and preparing us to fancy that her spirit roamed about it after her death. P. 16, 1. 19. Minster. This means literally the church attached to a monastery; here simply a church.

P. 16, 1. 21. Notice how the father's occupation is told us. P. 16, 1. 26. Wanton. Literally, untrained, apt to wander; here playful, frolicsome.

P. 16, 1. 40. Furlong originally meant the length of a furrow; here of course it has its ordinary meaning.

P. 17, 1. 47. Hawthorn literally, hedgethorn; haw being the Old English word for hedge.

P. 17, 1. 56.

Notice that Wordsworth does not tell us distinctly of Lucy's death. He does not wish us to grieve over her dead body, but to carry away with us the memory of the beautiful, simple, solitary, little life which had disappeared from among the fawns and hares, who in their wild innocence remind us of her.

P. 17, 1. 62.

Never looks behind. She is quite happy, and free from fear. Cf. The Wild Huntsman, 1. 193. P. 17,1. 64. Whistles in the wind

it whistles. Cf.

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sounds in the wind when

"Each trembling leafe, and whistling wind they heare

As gastly bug (ghostly spectre) their haire on end does reare." SPENSER, Faerie Queene, ii 3.

The ancients believed that the souls of the dead were "imprisoned in the viewless wind" (Meas. for Meas. iv. i. 124), and blown about the world; and all over England, peasants used to believe that souls of unbaptized children wandered in the wind and cried round the doors and windows till the last day.

mere.

HART-LEAP WELL.

Wordsworth writes of this poem :-"Hart-Leap Well is a small spring of water about five miles from Richmond, in Yorkshire, and near the side of the road that leads from Richmond to Askrigg. My sister and I had passed the place a few weeks before (the time at which the poem was written), in our wild journey from Sockburn, on the banks of the Tees, to GrasA peasant whom we met near the spot told us the story as far as concerned the name of the Well, and the Hart, and pointed out the stones." As is the case in most of Wordsworth's poems, a lesson is meant to be conveyed-what lesson the last verse states. But, over and above this, the poem is beautiful for its description of the hunt and the woodland scenery in which it took place.

P. 17, 1. 3. Vassal = a dependent who owes service to a master.

P. 18, 1. 14. Rout a confusion, tumult; then a mob, a noisy company of people. It is probably derived from an old English verb, routen to snore, to bellow like an ox. Not the same word as rout in Battle of Blenheim, 1. 32.

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P. 18, 1. 20. Weary mountain mountain that made them weary. Adjectives were more commonly used in this way a couple of centuries ago than now. In Shakespeare we have numberless examples, e.g. " idle bed," "weak evils," &c. Spenser has "greedy prey," and so on. We still say "happy news," "breathless expectation," &c.

A.S.

P. 18, 1. 21. Chid them on = harshly urged them on. cidan = to strive, quarrel. Hence chide to rebuke harshly. It is also used of noise and clamour of any kind, as of dogs, of winds, of the sea, &c.

P. 18, 1. 27. See note on Battle of Blenheim, 1. 26.

P. 18, 1. 28. Hart = a horned deer, and therefore a male stag with its horns grown. The female is called a "hind."

P. 18, 1. 35. Blew his horn. It was the custom at the death of the deer for the huntsman to blow certain notes on the horn (called blowing the mort) to summon every one.

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P. 18, 1. 32. Feat deed, from the French fait, which is itself derived from the Latin factum, whence we get our fact. "Feat" refers to the doing of a thing, and "fact" to the reality of its having been done. There are many other such pairs of words in the English language-frail and fragile, caitiff and captive, royal and regal, &c.

P. 18, 1. 46. Notice the gentle sarcasm of this.

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P. 19, 1. 50. Sheer separated, or severed, pure, unmixed. Hence sheer ascent = ascent, and nothing else. A.S. sciran to cut. Cf. shire, shears, &c. See note on Battle of Blenheim, 1. 22.

P. 19, 1. 51. Several = separate, apart, distinct. Hence "several " comes to mean "various," "divers;" and hence "numerous."

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P. 19,1. 60. Coy quiet, gentle, shy. From the French coi, which is itself from the Latin quietus. So that coy and quiet are the same word. See note on line 32, above.

P. 19, 1. 61. Cunning = skilful, from A.S. cunnan, to know, to know how to, to be able. The word did not acquire its meaning of unlawfully skilful till about the middle of the seventeenth century. Cf. "craft," "silly," &c.

P. 19, 1. 70. Paramour lady love. It is generally now used of an unlawful lady love.

P. 19, 11. 73-76. Notice the vainglorious boast, and he end of it. Cf. lines 169–176.

P. 19, 1. 77. Stone dead. Spenser, Faerie Queene, ii. 11, “The stone-dead quarry falls." Cf. "stone cold," and in Shakespeare, "stone hard" (Rich. III. iv. 4) and "stone still" (John, iv. 1). P. 19, 1. 81 "Before three days had elapsed." To liken the motion of the moon to that of a ship is a simile natural enough.

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P. 20, 11. 97-100. These describe Wordsworth's idea about his own poetry. The delight in mysteries and horrors was very general at and before this time. Cf. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Christabel; Southey's Thalaba, and Mrs. Radcliffe's and Monk Lewis's novels.

P. 20, 1. 97. Trade = a trodden path, habitual course, way of life, employment, commerce. For its use here Cf.

"Alas! what boots it with incessant care

To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade?

MILTON, Lycidas, 64, 65.

Tawny = a dark, swarthy yellow; probably bark of the young oak. The green had

P. 20, 1. 110. from French, tan become tan coloured.

P. 21, 1. 123.

yule, Christmas. P. 21, 1. 150.

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timely,

Jolly. French joli, from Norse jol, English Tide = time, hour, season. Time consists of, or is recognised by, the happening of events; hence betide to happen; tidings happenings, events, news; tidy in due season, orderly; tides the regular seasons of the sea. P. 22, 11. 165, 166. Wordsworth held that there was a soul, a living spirit, in nature that entered into all things, and gave each its distinct life; indeed, that the spirit of God existed in all things. Cf.

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"I have felt (in nature)
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought
And rolls through all things."-Tintern Abbey.

P. 22, 11. 167, 168. Compare

"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

COLERIDGE, Ancient Mariner, 614-617.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was born in Portland, Maine, U.S., in the year 1807. After travelling for some time through the various countries of Europe he settled down, in 1829, as Professor of Modern Languages at Bowdoin College, U.S. Six years later he was appointed to the similar post at Harvard College, Massachusetts-a post which he still holds. But before entering on his new duties he again travelled for more than a year through the north of Europe. There is certainly no living poet, except perhaps Tennyson, whose works have been more read in England, whose words have grown more familiar in every home. Everyone has read Hiawatha, Evangeline, Tales of a Wayside Inn, and Miles Standish; everyone knows by heart the Psalm of Life and the Village Blacksmith. It is Longfellow's tender, homely feeling which has made him so widely understood and loved. But there is little, very little vigour of thought or expression in his work. He is far too prone to give us a sermon in verse instead of a work of imagination and art-a sermon, too, of a very ordinary kind. Nevertheless his purity and simplicity of thought, his tender homely sadness, and, here and there, his touches of genuine poetic feeling, have rightly gained him a wide and sure popularity.

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.

This poem is a very good example of Longfellow's manner. There is nothing very lofty in it, nor are the verses especially melodious; but there is in the thought a ring of that sturdy manliness and proud contentment with one's lot which Longfellow has so long and so earnestly preached; while, just before the end, there is a touch of that homely pathos which is seldom absent from any of his poems.

P. 23, 1. 8. Tan a brown, swarthy yellow. See note on Hart-Leap Well, line 110.

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sacristan

P. 23, 1. 17. Sexton the keeper of the sacristy, or place where the sacred vestments and other implements of a church are stowed. Nowadays his chief or only duty is to dig graves.

P. 23, 1. 32. Paradise = a Greek word for "park.' Xenophon says the Persians applied the word to gardens in which were put every good and beautiful production of the earth. We used paradise first as the garden of Adam and Eve, and then as a place of happiness, heaven.