e, and for a time, like many young men, was
a fervent Republican; but, like all the nobler of those who had "hailed
the dawn of the French Revolution," he lived to curse its noon. He
published early, his first volume of poems bearing the date 1793; but,
though that attention to nature which was always his chief note appeared
here, the work is not by any means of an epoch-making character. He was
averse from every profession; but the fates were kind to him, and a
legacy of L900 from his friend Raisley Calvert made a man of such simple
tastes as his independent, for a time at least. On the strength of it he
settled first at Racedown in Dorset, and then at Alfoxden in Somerset,
in the companionship of his sister Dorothy; and at the second of the two
places in the neighbourhood of Coleridge. Massive and original as
Wordsworth's own genius was, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the
effect, both in stimulus and guidance, of the influence of these two;
for Dorothy Wordsworth was a woman of a million, and Coleridge,
marvellous as were his own powers, was almost more marvellous in the
unique Socratic character of his effect on those who possessed anything
to work upon. The two poets produced in 1798 the _Lyrical Ballads_,
among the contents of which it is sufficient to mention _Tintern Abbey_
and _The Ancient Mariner;_ and they subsequently travelled together in
Germany. Then Wordsworth returned to his native lakes and never left
them for long, abiding first at or near Grasmere, and from 1813 at his
well-known home of Rydal Mount. When Lord Lonsdale died in 1802, his
successor promptly and liberally settled the Wordsworth claims. The poet
soon married his cousin Mary Hutchinson; and Lord Lonsdale, not
satisfied with atoning for his predecessor's injustice, procured him, in
the year of his migration to Rydal, the office of Distributor of Stamps
for Westmoreland--an office which was almost a sinecure, and was, for a
man of Wordsworth's tastes, more than amply paid. It is curious, and a
capital instance to prove that the malignity of fortune has itself been
maligned, that the one English poet who was constitutionally incapable
of writing for bread never was under any necessity to do so. For full
sixty years Wordsworth wandered much, read little, meditated without
stint, and wrote, though never hurriedly, yet almost incessantly. The
dates of his chief publications may be best given in a note.[3] For some
years his poems were greet