must be now noticed. His first volume of "Lyrical Ballads" appeared in 1798; a second, with a reprint of the first, in 1800. Further editions followed in 1802 and 1805. It is noticeable that his earlier journeys supply comparatively few direct subjects to these volumes. The autobiographical poem, brought out after his death under the name "Prelude," was begun in Germany, and completed in 1805. A visit to Scotland furnished some materials for two fresh volumes (1807). The "Excursion" was published in 1814; the "White Doe of Rylstone" (written 1807), next year. Wordsworth removed to the house which he occupied till his death, "Rydal Mount," between Grasmere and Ambleside, and was appointed to a little office in the Lake district, in 1813. Meanwhile a memorable change had taken place in the political development of Western Europe, and in the attitude of England towards the Continent. That which had begun as the internal effort of one country to throw off the diseases which were destroying it, had apparently transmuted itself into the ambition of assimilating Europe to France, or even of converting Europe into the provinces of a French empire. Looking back now, with the experience of fifty years since the great struggle closed at Waterloo, we can indeed see, that much which the Revolution of 1790 attempted to do for France, was not less imperiously requisite for the well-being of other European races; and that, almost everywhere, the people welcomed at first the power which, even under the guise of foreign invasion, promised to free them from intolerable evils. We can see also that, without denying the consummate ability of Napoleon, no small portion of his early successes was due to that secret popular concurrence in the idea which he and the armies of France seemed to represent. But it was inevitable or natural that one who had shared keenly in the noble enthusiasms of 1790, had mourned bitterly over the excesses of 1792, and had hailed the fall of the extreme revolutionary section as the pledge of a return to the ways of rational liberty, should, after a while, recognize only the worse side in the career of the Consul-Emperor, and regard him simply as a tyrant, abusing the great power of an acquiescent nation to destroy national existence and freedom itself, beyond and within the borders of France. This was an unfair judgment undoubtedly; yet the unfairness sprang from no ignoble source, if the recognition of what was really eminent and really representative in Napoleon absolutely effaced itself in view of his unbounded selfishness, unscrupulous dishonesty, and cynical charlatanerie, before the lofty mind of Wordsworth. There was much of the old Greek nature in the poet; what he sympathized with was rather national individuality and advance, than the cosmopolitan interests which so much governed his great contemporary, Goethe; rather the moral elevation, simple grandeur, and personal purity of aim, which he read of in his favourite Plutarch, than the complexities of character which delight modern analysis, or that glorification of the successful "strong man" which sometimes receives and abuses the name Hero-worship. As the Athenian loved Athens, as the Roman reverenced Rome, such were his reverence and his love for England— Ah! not for emerald fields alone, With ambient streams more pure and bright Glittering before the Thunderer's sight, Is to my heart of hearts endeared The ground where we were born and reared! Let us briefly note, further, that taking what may be called the English side in the war against Napoleon, Wordsworth was led (a constant result in politics) to identify himself altogether with that side,-embracing hence its unalloyed hostility to France: that maturer years, although never shaking his profound sympathy with the people, yet brought with them their almost inevitable "something too much" of conservatism; lastly, and in the case of his sensitive poetical nature, not to be neglected, that about this time he resumed that study of the ancient literature which reproduced itself in his noble "Laodamia," "Dion," "Lycoris," and other poems ;—and we may probably find here the key to that peculiar modification of sentiment which marks his latter writings, in regard to human life and the aspects of nature, and is distinctly traceable in their style and diction. When trying to follow the developments in the mind of a great poet, we should rather aim at general suggestions than at rigorous definition; and these remarks must, therefore, not be pressed far; yet it may be useful to observe that something of (perhaps unconscious) republicanism was blended with the homeliness in choice of subject and simplicity in matter of words which Wordsworth professed, with rather indiscreet openness, in the Preface to his earlier lyrics; qualities which were naturally, though, perhaps, not altogether well, exchanged for the greater floridity and the more directly moralizing and dogmatic colour of the poems that followed the "Excursion." At first, however, his renewed interest in politics found utterance itself in prose, and he composed an address on the so-called "Convention of Cintra " (1809), which expresses in manly terms his deep regard for national liberty, seriously menaced in the Spanish peninsula, as he thought, by that treaty with the French government. The excellence of a poet's prose is well known to those who care for excellence in literature; indeed, looking at literature from the beginning, it is comparatively rare to find a prose writer of the first rank who has not himself made a serious practice of poetry. The "Cintra" tract has not been reprinted; but the truth of the preceding b remarks may be easily verified by readers of Wordsworth's "Essay on Epitaphs," his "Prefaces," already noticed, and some of the "Letters" contained in his nephew's "Memorials." A singular and almost unbroken felicity, seldom so well deserved, attended the last half of William Wordsworth's life, which was prolonged with vigour of mind and health of body to the age of eighty. An ideal picture, drawn in one of his own letters, might be fitly applied to himself: "This man was not the victim of his condition, he was not the spoiled child of worldly grandeur, the thought of himself did not take the lead in his enjoyments; he was, when he ought to be, lowly minded, and had human feeling; he had a true relish of simplicity, and therefore stood the best chance of being happy." "Profusion and extravagance had no hold over Wordsworth," says Mr. De Quincey, "by any one passion or taste. He was not luxurious in anything, was not vain or even careful of external appearances, was not even in the article of books expensive. Very few books sufficed him; he was careless habitually of all the current literature, or indeed of any literature that could not be considered as enshrining the very ideal, capital, and elementary grandeur of the human intellect." "What he gave to others, and what he most desired for himself," says another witness, 66 was love." He felt for his friends and family, neighbours and dependents, that intense |