nor of Newbiggin, near Penrith, from the time of Edward
III. He was thus, as Scott put it in his own case, come of "gentle"
kin, and, like Scott, he was proud of it, and declared the fact in his
short fragment of prose autobiography. The country squires and farmers
whose blood flowed in Wordsworth's veins were not far enough above
local life to be out of sympathy with it, and the poet's interest in
the common scenes and common folk of the North Country hills and dales
had a traceable hereditary bias.

Though his parents were of sturdy stock, both died prematurely, his
mother when he was five years old, his father when he was thirteen,
the ultimate cause of death in his mother's case being exposure to
cold in "a best bedroom" in London; in his father's, exposure on a
Cumberland hill, where he had been befogged and lost his way. At the
age of eight Wordsworth was sent to school at Hawkshead, in the
Esthwaite Valley, in Lancashire. His father died while he was there,
and at the age of seventeen he was sent by his uncle to St. John's
College, Cambridge. He did not distinguish himself in the studies of
the university, and for some time after taking his degree of B.A.,
which he did in January, 1791, he showed what seemed to his relatives
a most perverse reluctance to adopt any regular profession. His mother
had noted his "stiff, moody, and violent temper" in childhood, and it
seemed as if this family judgment was to be confirmed in his manhood.
After taking his degree he was pressed to take holy orders, but would
not; he had no taste for the law; he idled a few months aimlessly in
London, a few months more with a Welsh college friend, with whom he
had made a pedestrian tour in France and Switzerland, during his last
Cambridge vacation; then, in November of 1791, he crossed to France,
ostensibly to learn the language, made the acquaintance of
revolutionaries, sympathized with them vehemently, and was within an
ace of throwing in his lot with the Brissotins, to give them the
steady direction that they needed. When it came to this his relatives
cut off his supplies, and he was obliged to return to London toward
the close of 1792. But still he resisted all pressure to enter any of
the regular professions, published "An Evening Walk" and "Descriptive
Sketches," in 1793, and in 1794, still moving about to all appearance
in stubborn aimlessness among his friends and relatives, had no more
rational purpose of livelihood than drawing