evolutionary fervours. He was wandering about among his friends with no
certain dwelling-place, no fixed plan of life, his practical purposes and
his opinions, political, philosophical, and religious, all alike at sea.
But whatever else might remain unsettled, the bread-and-butter question,
as Coleridge calls it, could not. The thought of orders, for which his
friends intended him, had been abandoned; law he abominated; writing for
the newspaper press seemed the only resource. In this seething state of
mind he sought once more his sister's calming society, and the two
travelled together on foot from Kendal to Grasmere, from Grasmere to
Keswick, 'through the most delightful country that was ever seen.'

Towards the close of this year (1794) Wordsworth would probably have gone
to London to take up the trade of a writer for the newspapers. From this
however he was held back for a time by the duty of nursing his friend
Raisley Calvert, who lay dying at Penrith. Early in 1795 the young man
died, leaving to his friend, the young Poet, a legacy of 900 pounds. The
world did not then hold Wordsworth for a poet, and had received with
coldness his first attempt, 'Descriptive Sketches and an Evening Walk,'
published two years before. But the dying youth had seen further than
the world, and felt convinced that his friend, if he had leisure given
him to put forth his powers, would do something which would make the
world his debtor. With this view he bequeathed him the small sum above
named. And seldom has such a bequest borne ampler fruit. 'Upon the
interest of the 900 pounds, 400 pounds being laid out in annuity, with
200 pounds deducted from the principal, and 100 pounds a legacy to my
sister, and 100 pounds more which "The Lyrical Ballads" have brought me,
my sister and I have contrived to live seven years, nearly eight.' So
wrote Wordsworth in 1805 to his friend Sir George Beaumont. Thus at this
juncture of the Poet's fate, when to onlookers he must have seemed both
outwardly and inwardly well-nigh bankrupt, Raisley Calvert's bequest came
to supply his material needs, and to his inward needs his sister became
the best earthly minister. For his mind was ill at ease. The high hopes
awakened in him by the French Revolution had been dashed, and his spirit,
darkened and depressed, was on the verge of despair. He might have
become such a man as he has pictured in the character of 'The Solitary.'
But a good Providence broug