Chapter Wolfe to Wordsworth of W by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

site of Dodona. His writings include in theology a commentary on the Bible (1856-70), Church History to A.D. 451 (1881-83), and in other fields, Athens and Attica (1836), and Theocritus (1844).

Wordsworth, Dorothy (1771-1855).—Diarist, etc., was the only sister of the poet, and his lifelong and sympathetic companion, and endowed in no small degree with the same love of and insight into nature as is evidenced by her Journals. Many of her brother’s poems were suggested by scenes and incidents recorded by her, of which that on Daffodils beginning “I wandered lonely as a cloud” is a notable example.

Wordsworth, William (1770-1850).—Poet, son of John Wordsworth, attorney and agent to the 1st Lord Lonsdale, was born at Cockermouth. His boyhood was full of adventure among the hills, and he says of himself that he showed “a stiff, moody, and violent temper.” He lost his mother when he was 8, and his flourished in 1783 when he was 13. The latter, prematurely cut off, left little for the support of his family of four sons and a daughter, Dorothy (afterwards the worthy companion of her illustrious brother), except a claim for £5000 against Lord Lonsdale, which his lordship contested, and which was not settled until his death. With the help, however, of uncles, the family were well educated and started in life. William received his earlier education at Penrith and Hawkshead in Lancashire; and in 1787 went to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1791. In the preceding year, 1790, he had taken a walking tour on the Continent, visiting France in the first flush of the Revolution with which, at that stage, he was, like many of the best younger minds of the time, in enthusiastic sympathy. So much was this the case that he nearly involved himself with the Girondists to an extent which might have cost him his life. His funds, however, gave out, and he returned to England shortly before his friends fell under the guillotine. His uncles were desirous that he should enter the Church, but to this he was unconquerably averse; and indeed his marked indisposition to adopt any regular employment led to their taking not unnatural offence. In 1793 his first publications—The Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches of a Pedestrian Tour in the Alps—appeared, but attracted little attention. The beginning of his friendship with Coleridge in 1795 tended to confirm him in his resolution to devote himself to poetry; and a legacy of £900 from a friend put it in his power to do so by making him for a time independent of other employment. He settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, and shortly afterwards removed to Alfoxden, in the Quantock Hills, to be near Coleridge, who was then living at Nether Stowey in the same neighbourhood. One result of the intimacy thus established was the planning of a joint work, Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and Wordsworth, among other pieces, Tintern Abbey. The first edition of the work appeared in 1798. With the profits of this he went, accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, to Germany, where he lived chiefly at Goslar, and where he began the Prelude, a poem descriptive of the development of his own mind. After over a year’s absence Wordsworth returned and settled with Dorothy at Grasmere. In 1800 the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, containing the same contributions, with several additions, appeared. In the same year Lord Lonsdale died, and his successor settled the claims already referred to with interest, and the share of the brother and sister enabled them to live in the frugal and simple manner which suited them. Two years later Wordsworth’s circumstances enabled him to marry his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, to whom he had been long attached. In 1803 he made a tour in Scotland, and began his friendship with Scott. The year 1807 saw the publication of Poems in two Volumes, which contains much of his best work, including the “Ode to Duty,” “Intimations of Immortality,” “Yarrow Unvisited,” and the “Solitary Reaper.” In 1813 he migrated to Rydal Mount, his home for the rest of his life; and in the same year he received, through the influence of Lord Lonsdale, the appointment of Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland, with a salary of £400. The next year he made another Scottish tour, when he wrote Yarrow Visited, and he also published The Excursion, “being a portion of The Recluse, a Poem.” Wordsworth had now come to his own, and was regarded by the great majority of the lovers of poetry as, notwithstanding certain limitations and flaws, a truly great and original poet. The rest of his life has few events beyond the publication of his remaining works (which, however, did not materially advance his fame), and tokens of the growing honour in which he was held. The White Doe of Rylstone appeared in 1815, in which year also he made a collection of his poems; Peter Bell and The Waggoner in 1819; The River Duddon, 1820; Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1822; Ecclesiastical Sonnets, 1822; and Yarrow Revisited in 1835. In 1831 he paid his last visit to Scott; in 1838 he received the degree of D.C.L. from Durham, and in 1839 the same from Oxford Three years later he resigned his office of Distributor of Stamps in favour of his son, and received a civil list