Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
1907
The contents of the present collection have all been in print before,either in the Nineteenth Century and Fortnightly Review, orin some other shape. I have to thank the proprietors of the twoperiodicals named for sanctioning the reproduction of my articleshere.
October 1890.
[Footnote 1: Originally published as an Introduction to the newedition of Wordsworth's Complete Poetical Works (1888).]
The poet whose works are contained in the present volume was born inthe little town of Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. Hedied at Rydal Mount, in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland, onApril 23, 1850. In this long span of mortal years, events of vast andenduring moment shook the world. A handful of scattered and dependentcolonies in the northern continent of America made themselves into oneof the most powerful and beneficent of states. The ancient monarchy ofFrance, and all the old ordering of which the monarchy had been thekeystone, was overthrown, and it was not until after many a violentshock of arms, after terrible slaughter of men, after strangediplomatic combinations, after many social convulsions, after manyportentous mutations of empire, that Europe once more settled down fora season into established order and system. In England almost alone,after the loss of her great possessions across the Atlantic Ocean,the fabric of the State stood fast and firm. Yet here, too, in theseeighty years, an old order slowly gave place to new. The restorationof peace, after a war conducted with extraordinary tenacity andfortitude, led to a still more wonderful display of ingenuity,industry, and enterprise, in the more fruitful field of commerceand of manufactures. Wealth, in spite of occasional vicissitudes,increased with amazing rapidity. The population of England and Walesgrew from being seven and a half millions in 1770, to nearly eighteenmillions in 1850. Political power was partially transferred from aterritorial aristocracy to the middle and trading classes. Laws weremade at once more equal and more humane. During all the tumult of thegreat war which for so many years bathed Europe in fire, through allthe throes and agitations in which peace brought forth the new time,Wordsworth for half a century (1799-1850) dwelt sequestered inunbroken composure and steadfastness in his chosen home amid themountains and lakes of his native region, working out his own ideal ofthe high office of the Poet.
The interpretation of life in books and the development of imaginationunderwent changes of its own. Most of the great lights of theeighteenth century were still burning, though burning low, whenWordsworth came into the world. Pope, indeed, had been dead for sixand twenty years, and all the rest of the Queen Anne men had gone.But Gray only died in 1771, and Goldsmith in 1774. Ten years laterJohnson's pious and manly heart ceased to beat. Voltaire and Rousseau,those two diverse oracles of their age, both died in 1778. Hume hadpassed away two years before. Cowper was forty ye