which was to form Part II., was finished and published in 1814.

The Excursion' is in nine books, and, like all of Wordsworth's long poems, has many passages which are bald and prosaic; but there are also many passages of rare beauty. The action of the poem is extremely simple, and the characters are few: the Wanderer, the Solitary, the Pastor, and one or two others. The excursion is through two of the neighbouring valleys, and the Churchyard among the Mountains' is that of Grasmere.

The Wanderer is the chief character, and, though he is described as an old Scotch pedlar, he is really Wordsworth himself, and he pours out the meditative wisdom of the poet in grave and lofty verse. Perhaps the finest book is the fourth, Despondency Corrected.' In this book a very beautiful description is given of the rise of the Grecian mythology, and a few lines may be extracted from it.

The nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye

Up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed
That timely light, to share his joyous sport:

And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs
Across the lawn and through the darksome grove,
Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes

By echo multiplied from rock or cave,

Swept in the storm of chase; as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven,

When winds are blowing strong.

And a few pages later there occurs the beautiful image :

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.

Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever during power;
And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.

There are still several poems which must be at least mentioned. The story of The White Doe of Rylstone was written in 1807, and is the pleasant memorial of a summer visit to Yorkshire. The Waggoner' belongs to 1805, and describes the mountain road which led from Grasmere to Keswick, where the poet's friends, Coleridge and Southey, lived. The story of Michael,' in which the noble simplicity of the mountain peasants is so beautifully described, belongs to 1800, and in the same year Wordsworth wrote The Pet Lamb.'

To the period 1803-6 belongs the wonderful 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality,' which Emerson speaks of as the high-water mark of English poetry. From his early youth, without knowing it, Wordsworth had been a Platonist, and he tells us :

I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature.

H H

Many times, while going to school, have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes.

In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines:

Obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings, &c.

To that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in childhood, everyone, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony.

The ode is too long to quote, but Stanzas I, II, V, VI, IX may be pointed out as specially beautiful. Whatever one may think of its truth, no one with a sense of poetic beauty can read without delight the magnificent Stanza V:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.

Stanzas VII and VIII may have been partly suggested by the strangely precocious Hartley Coleridge, the infant son of the poet's friend.

The last really beautiful poem written by Wordsworth belongs to 1818, and describes An Evening of extraordinary Splendour and Beauty.' He wrote many short poems in later years, of which the most noteworthy were the series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets' and Memorials' of towns in Scotland and on the Continent. After 1830 the excellence of the poet's work began to be universally recognised. In 1843, on the death of Southey, he was created Poet Laureate, and in 1850 he died.

COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY.

COLERIDGE and SOUTHEY were kinsmen and fellowworkers, and were both of them ardent and reverent admirers of Wordsworth. In the malicious and thoughtless criticism of the time, the three were classed together as the Lakers,' and as the founders of a new school of poetry. But when ridicule gave way to true insight, it was seen that Wordsworth stood alone as the creator of (a new style, and his two friends, though each excellent in his own province, had but little in common with him.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772, at Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, where his father, a kindly eccentric man, not unlike Fielding's Parson Adams,' was vicar and schoolmaster. The father died when Samuel was nine years old, and he was sent away to Christ's Hospital in London, where Lamb was his schoolfellow, and describes him thus:

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring of thy fancics, with hope like a fiery column before thee-the dark pillar not yet turned-Samuel Taylor Coleridge-Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Iamblichus, or Plotinus, or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy.

Wordsworth also in 'The Prelude,' after reviewing his own happy school-time at Hawkshead, speaks thus of his friend:

Of rivers, fields,

And groves I speak to thee, my friend! to thee,
Who, yet a liveried school-boy, in the depths
Of the huge city, on the leaded roof

Of that huge edifice, thy school and home,
Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds
Moving in heaven; or, of that pleasure tired,
To shut thine eyes, and by internal light

See trees, and meadows, and thy native stream,
Far distant, thus beheld from year to year
Of a long exile.

In 1791 Coleridge entered Cambridge just as Wordsworth left it; and two years later, for some unexplained reason, he suddenly quitted the university, and enlisted, like Steele, in a cavalry regiment under an assumed name. Four months later he was discovered, his discharge was secured, and he returned to Cambridge in April 1794.

Two months later he paid a visit to Oxford, and his life-long friendship began with Southey, who, like himself, was then an undergraduate. They were both equally ardent in their good wishes to France, and they planned and executed a drama, The Fall of Robespierre,' and Coleridge contributed some lines to Southey's poem, 'Joan of Arc.'

Later in the year Coleridge visited Southey at Bristol, and became acquainted with Sara Fricker, his future wife, whose younger sister Edith was already engaged to Southey. The two ardent youths were at this time dreaming of a scheme which they called Pantisocracy, and which was to be realised on the banks of the Susquehanna. With England they were profoundly dissatisfied, and even France was beginning to disappoint them. But they believed that a band of noble-minded youths, each accompanied by a loyal and loving wife, might found a pleasant and prosperous Utopia in America.