"Life of Sir Walter Scott."—Lockhart.
"In the Days of Scott."—Jenks.
"Sir Walter Scott."—Lang.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
(1770–1850)
Wordsworth, the first of the English poets of Romanticism, came of age just as the storm of the French Revolution broke over Europe. In 1791, after he had taken his degree at Cambridge University, he went to France, where he spent nearly a year, fascinated by the struggle for freedom, and only returned when his friends stopped his allowance and so compelled him to withdraw from danger.
He deliberately chose poetry as his profession, working with Coleridge for the purpose of establishing new laws of poetic composition. In 1798 they published a little volume, the "Lyrical Ballads," which marked a radical departure from the artificial and affected style of the latter days of the Classic Age. (See also notes on Coleridge, [p. 70] of this volume.)
He eventually settled in the Lake District, in the north-west of England, where Coleridge and Southey, the other two 'Lake Poets,' spent many years. His income was a mere trifle, but he and his sister Dorothy lived in tranquil simplicity on the borders of Grasmere until his circumstances improved. In 1802 he was able to marry and soon after he moved to Rydal Mount, a larger abode near by, and also overlooking a stretch of water enclosed by the heathery mountains. Here he spent the last thirty-eight years of his life, dying at the age of eighty. Almost all the greater writers of his day were among his friends and acquaintances.