ent to school at Hawkshead. The impressions of his boyhood
period are related in the autobiographical poem, _The Prelude_,
(written 1805, published 1850), and from this poetical record we
discern how strong the influences of Nature were to shape and develop
his imagination. Wordsworth's father died in 1783, leaving the family
poorly provided for. The main asset was a considerable claim upon the
Earl of Lonsdale, which that individual refused to pay. On his death,
in 1802, the successor to the title and estates paid the amount of the
claim in full with accumulated interest. In the interval, however, the
Wordsworth family remained in very straitened circumstances. Enough
money was provided by Wordsworth's guardians to send him to Cambridge
University In 1787. He entered St. John's College, and after an
undistinguished course graduated without honors in January, 1791. His
vacations were spent chiefly in Hawkshead and Wales, but one memorable
vacation was marked by a walking excursion with a friend through France
and Switzerland, the former country then being on the verge of
revolution.

Shortly after leaving the University, in November, 1791, Wordsworth
returned to France, remaining there until December of the following
year. During this period he was completely won over to the principles
of the revolution. The later reaction from these principles
constituted the one moral struggle of his life.

In 1793 his first work appeared before the public--two poems, entitled
_The Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_. Coleridge, who read
these pieces at Cambridge, divined that they announced the emergence of
an original poetical genius above the horizon. Readers of the poems
to-day, who are wise after the event, could scarcely divine as much.
At about this period Wordsworth received a bequest of 900 pounds from
Raisley Calvert, which enabled him and his sister Dorothy to take a
small cottage at Racedown in Dorsetshire. Here he wrote a number of
poems in which he worked off the ferment of his revolutionary ideas.
These ideas can scarcely be said to have troubled him much in later
years.

An important incident in his life, hardly second in importance to the
stimulating companionship of his sister, was his meeting with
Coleridge, which occurred probably towards the close of 1795.
Coleridge, who was but little younger than Wordsworth, had the more
richly equipped, if not the more richly endowed, mind. He was living