Wordsworth | Page 3

scholars, to write verses upon the completion of the
second centenary from the foundation of the school in 1585 by
Archbishop Sandys. These verses were much admired--far more than
they deserved, for they were but a tame imitation of Pope's versification,
and a little in his style."
But it was not from exercises of this kind that Wordsworth's
school-days drew their inspiration. No years of his life, perhaps, were
richer in strong impressions; but they were impressions derived neither
from books nor from companions, but from the majesty and loveliness
of the scenes around him;--from Nature, his life-long mistress, loved
with the first heats of youth. To her influence we shall again recur; it
will be most convenient first to trace Wordsworth's progress through
the curriculum of ordinary education.
It was due to the liberality of Wordsworth's two uncles, Richard
Wordsworth and Christopher Crackanthorp (under whose care he and
his brothers were placed at there father's death, in 1783), that his
education was prolonged beyond his school-days. For Sir James
Lowther, afterwards Lord Lonsdale,--whose agent Wordsworth's father,
Mr. John Wordsworth, was--becoming aware that his agent had about
5000£ at the bank, and wishing, partly on political grounds, to make his
power over him absolute, had forcibly borrowed this sum of him, and
then refused to repay it. After Mr. John Wordsworth's death much of
the remaining fortune which he left behind him was wasted in efforts to
compel Lord Lonsdale to refund this sum; out it was never recovered
till his death in 1801, when his successor repaid 8500£ to the
Wordsworths, being a full acquittal, with interest, of the original debt.
The fortunes of the Wordsworth family were, therefore, at a low ebb in
1787, and much credit is due to the uncles who discerned the talents of

William and Christopher, and bestowed a Cambridge education on the
future Poet Laureate, and the future Master of Trinity.
In October, 1787, then, Wordsworth went up as an undergraduate to St.
John's College, Cambridge. The first court of this College, in the
south-western corner of which were Wordsworth's rooms, is divided
only by a narrow lane from the Chapel of Trinity College, and his first
memories are of the Trinity clock, telling the hours "twice over, with a
male and female voice", of the pealing organ, and of the prospect when
From my pillow looking forth, by light Of moon or favouring stars I
could behold The antechapel, where the statue stood Of Newton with
his prism and silent face. The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
For the most part the recollections which Wordsworth brought away
from Cambridge are such as had already found expression more than
once in English literature; for it has been the fortune of that ancient
University to receive in her bosom most of that long line of poets who
form the peculiar glory of our English speech. Spenser, Ben Jonson,
and Marlowe; Dryden, Cowley, and Waller; Milton, George Herbert,
and Gray--to mention only the most familiar names--had owed
allegiance to that mother who received Wordsworth now, and
Coleridge and Byron immediately after him. "Not obvious, not
obtrusive, she;" but yet her sober dignity has often seemed no unworthy
setting for minds, like Wordsworth's, meditative without languor, and
energies advancing without shock or storm. Never, perhaps, has the
spirit of Cambridge been more truly caught than in Milton's Penseroso;
for this poem obviously reflects the seat of learning which the poet had
lately left, just as the Allegro depicts the cheerful rusticity of the
Buckinghamshire village which was his now home. And thus the
Penseroso was understood by Gray, who, in his Installation Ode,
introduces Milton among the bards and sages who lean from heaven,
To bless the place where, on their opening soul, First the genuine
ardour stole.
"'Twas Milton struck the deep-toned shell," and invoked with the old

affection the scenes which witnessed his best and early years:
Ye brown o'er-arching groves, That contemplation loves, Where
willowy Camus lingers with delight! Oft at the blush of dawn
I trod your level lawn. Oft wooed the gleam of Cynthia silver-bright In
cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly, With Freedom by my side,
and soft-eyed Melancholy.
And Wordsworth also "on the dry smooth-shaven green" paced on
solitary evenings "to the far-off curfew's sound," beneath those groves
of forest-trees among which "Philomel still deigns a song" and the
spirit of contemplation lingers still; whether the silent avenues stand in
the summer twilight filled with fragrance of the lime, or the long rows
of chestnut engirdle the autumn river-lawns with walls of golden glow,
or the tall elms cluster in garden or Wilderness into towering citadels of
green. Beneath one exquisite ash-tree, wreathed with ivy, and hung in
autumn with