Wordsworth | Page 2

agreement of opinion exists,-- though less
among professed poets or critics, than among men of eminence in other
departments of thought or action whose attention has been directed to
Wordsworth's poems. And although I have felt it right to express in
each case my own views with exactness, I have been able to feel that I
am not obtruding on the reader any merely fanciful estimate in which
better accredited judges would refuse to concur.
[Footnote 1: I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. William
Wordsworth, the son (now deceased), and Mr. William Wordsworth,
the grandson, of the poet, for help most valuable in enabling me to give
a true impression of the poet's personality.]
Without further preface I now begin my story of Wordsworth's life, in
words which he himself dictated to his intended biographer. "I was
born," he said, "at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770,
the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney-at-law--as lawyers of this
class were then called--and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards
Earl of Lonsdale. My mother was Anne, only daughter of William
Cookson, mercer, of Penrith, and of Dorothy, born Crackanthorp, of the
ancient family of that name, who from the times of Edward the Third
had lived in Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland. My grandfather was the
first of the name of Wordsworth who came into Westmoreland, where
he purchased the small estate of Sockbridge. He was descended from a
family who had been settled at Peniston, in Yorkshire, near the sources
of the Don, probably before the Norman Conquest. Their names appear
on different occasions in all the transactions, personal and public,
connected with that parish; and I possess, through the kindness of

Colonel Beaumont, an almery, made in 1525, at the expense of a
William Wordsworth, as is expressed in a Latin inscription carved upon
it, which carries the pedigree of the family back four generations from
himself. The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed, partly
at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother's parents at Penrith, where
my mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold, in
consequence of being put, at a friend's house in London, in what used
to be called 'a best bedroom.' My father never recovered his usual
cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my
fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I
had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year."
"I remember my mother only in some few situations, one of which was
her pinning a nosegay to my breast, when I was going to say the
catechism in the church, as was customary before Easter. An intimate
friend of hers told me that she once said to her, that the only one of her
five children about whose future life she was anxious was William; and
he, she said, would be remarkable, either for good or for evil. The cause
of this was, that I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; so much so
that I remember going once into the attics of my grandfather's house at
Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an
intention of destroying myself with one of the foils, which I knew was
kept there. I took the foil in hand, but my heart failed. Upon another
occasion, while I was at my grandfather's house at Penrith, along with
my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large
drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down upon particular
occasions. The walls were hung round with family pictures, and I said
to my brother, 'Dare you strike your whip through that old lady's
petticoat?' He replied, 'No, I won't.' 'Then', said I, 'here goes!' and I
struck my lash through her hooped petticoat; for which, no doubt,
though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished. But, possibly from
some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I had become
perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it
than otherwise."
"Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were
very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty then, and in the

vacations, to read whatever books I liked. For example, I read all
Fielding's works, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and any part of Swift that I
liked--Gulliver's Travels, and the Tale of the Tub, being both much to
my taste. It may be, perhaps, as well to mention, that the first verses
which I wrote were a task imposed by my master; the subject, The
Summer Vacation; and of my own accord I added others upon Return to
School. There was nothing remarkable in either poem; but I was called
upon, among other