Sketches, the subjects of which were suggested by the romantic lakes and mountains of Westmorland, and by a tour made in Switzerland, in company with his friend the Rev. R. Jones, Fellow of St. John's

College. During his stay in Westmorland, where he had settled soon after his marriage, a gentleman dying in the neighbourhood, and entertaining a great liking for him, left Wordsworth a handsome legacy, which seems to have led the way to other and numerous bequests left him by those who valued and admired him; added to which, the post of distributer of stamps was obtained for him by the influence of the noble family of Lowther, which, being of easy though profitable employment, left the greater portion of his time unoccupied, a leisure he did not fail to make use of. This post he resigned in favour of his son, in 1842.

Wordsworth was perhaps the greatest of our metaphysical poets, and the variety and beauty of his works procured for him, from a liberal government, a pension of 300l. per annum. He was also appointed poet-laureate in 1843, in consequence of the death of his illustrious friend, Southey.

His early poetry is in the style of Goldsmith; but reflection is less the subject of these works than description. Enthusiastic dreams of liberty seem to have engrossed his thoughts, and given a bias to his actions.

In 1798, he and his friend Coleridge gave to the world a collection of Lyrical Ballads; those by Wordsworth were designed as an experiment, as to whether a simpler style of poetry than that in vogue would meet with the same attention from the public. They were, however, unsuccessful, and in many instances condemned; and his style of composition overpowered, at least for a time, the impression

otherwise created by the spirit of exquisite beauty by which they were accompanied. Two more volumes were published in 1807; and it became apparent that the poet possessed a fund of description and meditation that could not fail to be admired; and he has triumphed as a poet in spite of his own theory. In 1814 appeared The Excursion, a philosophical poem in blank verse, which is perhaps the noblest production of our author. The Excursion, however, was an unfinished poem, and formed part of a larger one, The Recluse.

The after works of the poet were, The White Doe of Rylstone, Sonnets on the River Dudden, the Waggoner, Peter Bell, Ecclesiastical Sketches, Yarrow Revisited, &c.

Wordsworth diversified his poems with descriptions of the different scenes through which he travelled; and having made repeated visits to the Continent and Scotland, imparted to his works the result of his journeys, giving a description of local manners, legends, &c. His works, classified into Poems of the Affections, of the Imagination, &c. were published in 7 volumes, the 7th volume containing a tragedy and poems, written very early and very late in life. Of the tragedy much cannot be said in commendation; of all poets perhaps Wordsworth has the least dramatic power. Many of his odes and sonnets have, however, a noble and chaste simplicity; and his power is more remarkably displayed in these than any other of his productions.

Wordsworth had little strong passion in his writings, which were rather marked by an imaginative style, blending metaphysical truth with metaphor and glowing description. He has, however, given to the world a specimen of how much he could excel in imparting to the description of love in Vaudracour and Julia, a warmth and passion foreign to his general idealism.

It is to be regretted that Wordsworth fell into those errors which want of discrimination and taste too frequently led him into, and he seems to have attached as much value to his most indifferent ballads and attempts at humour, as to the most enthusiastic and beautiful of his descriptive pieces. His peculiar habits of retirement, and the strangeness of his disposition, may doubtless have been the cause of this weakness.

Coleridge, his most ardent admirer, friend, and companion, has drawn his poetical character at length in his Biographia Literaria. "First. An austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning.

Secondly. A correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, won not from books, but from the poet's own meditations. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them; even throughout his smaller poems, there is not one which is not rendered valuable by some just and original reflection.

Thirdly. The sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction.

Fourthly. The perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives a physiognomic expression to all the works of nature.

Fifthly. A meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy, indeed of a contemplator rather than a fellow-sufferer and co-mate (spectator haud particeps); but of a contemplation from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather or toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine.

Lastly and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of Fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is always grateful, and sometimes erudite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous presentation; indeed, his fancy seldom displays itself as a mere and unmodified fancy but in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton. And yet, in a mind perfectly unborrowed and his own, to employ his own words, which are at once an instance and illustration, he does indeed, to all thoughts and to all objects,

'Add the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or lands,
The consecration and the poet's dream.''

Mr. Wordsworth died April 23d, 1850.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.
(1771-1832.)

Walter Scott was born at Edinburgh on the 15th August, 1771. He was descended from a family which, in the old time, bore a conspicuous part in the warlike exploits of the day. He was related to the Scotts of Buccleuch. Mr. Scott, his father, was a writer to the signet, who married Miss Rutherford, the daughter of the eminent medical professor of that name. They had six children, of whom Walter was the third. He was a sickly and delicate child; and a fever which he caught when quite young resulted in a shortening of the right limb, and the consequent necessity in after-life of using a walking-stick. At seven years of age he was committed to the care of his paternal grandfather, who resided in a fortalice called Smailholm Tower, which was five or six miles from Kelso, overlooking a beautiful tract of country; and here was spent the early youth of Walter Scott; here he fed his youthful imagination with the wondrous tales of border chivalry. His ill-health, however, induced his relative to send him for awhile to Kelso, where his aunt lived. Here he attended occasionally at a school in the neighbourhood, where he first made the acquaintance of James Ballantyne. He was afterwards sent to the Edinburgh University, where he lost what Latin he had acquired (which, from all accounts, was not much), and was so stubborn against Greek, that the professor voted him a dunce. In his fifteenth year he was articled to his father's business, to which it

was the parental wish that young Scott should look as his future means of livelihood.

But the future novelist was fonder of Spenser and his fanciful images than of the professor's Greek or the desk in his father's office; although he always in after years spoke with pleasure of the few years that he spent under his father's immediate eye, as having taught him habits of business and application which he afterwards found useful. Hitherto Scott had displayed, either at college or at school, or in the eyes of his friends, no intellectual superiority, which might seem to presage the brilliant literary career which was in store for him. When his time of apprenticeship expired, as young Walter showed no disposition to take up his father's business, he was, after the usual studies, admitted of the faculty of advocates in July 1792.

The few years which he spent in this way were chiefly devoted to certain routine duties, which he went through out of deference to his father and friends, and the old antiquarian studies which had always been his favourite pursuit. His leisure hours were spent in excursions into the pastoral district of Liddlesdale, where border legends were still rife. This tended to form his character more than all the Latin and Greek of the worthy professor. He gathered together in these excursions the old ballads of the country, and thus laid the foundation of what afterwards appeared as the Minstrelsy of the Scot

tish Border. These grew so rapidly under Scott's hands, that they speedily filled three octavo volumes, two of which appeared in 1802, and met with a favourable reception. At the same time, he was asked by the Countess of Dalkeith to write a ballad on a sprite which tradition connected with the annals of the Buccleuch family. This ballad soon became a long narrative, divided into cantos; and purported to be written by the last member of the minstrel fraternity. It was styled the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and was published in January 1805. It dissipated all doubts as to Scott's original genius; and was chiefly instrumental in making him persevere in his literary career. About this time he became a partner with James Ballantyne, who had set up a printing-office in Edinburgh. But the Duke of Buccleuch soon obtained for Scott a more solid advantage, in the shape of the reversion of the clerkship of session, which realised 300%. a year. He did not, however, touch a farthing of it till 1812. This was a comfortable income, and relieved his anxiety for the welfare of his wife and children; for he had now been married some seven or eight years to a French emigrée of English extraction, named Charlotte Carpenter, whom he had accidentally met while on a visit to Gilsland Wells in Cumberland, and to whom, after an acquaintance of two months, he was united at Carlisle. During the winter he lived at Edinburgh, where he mixed in the best society, and where his agreeable manners, his aversion to disputation, and extensive fund of information, failed not to conciliate the friendship of the Buccleuchs, Melvilles, and others. The summer was spent on the banks of the Tweed, in the delightful retreat of Ashestiel, to which neighbourhood his duties as sheriff of Selkirkshire called him.

In 1808 appeared the romantic tale of Marmion, which was published by Mr. Constable. His zeal for the honour of his country induced him soon afterwards to quarrel with that publisher, and to take an interest in the establishment of the Quarterly, in opposition to the Edinburgh Review. Actuated by the same feelings, he soon afterwards set up a publishing house at Edinburgh, under the firm of John Ballantyne and Co., a step which afterwards proved fatal to his fortunes.

In May 1810 this firm published the Lady of the Lake, a poem which merited and obtained great popularity, from the vivid pictures of the past which it presents to the reader. Meanwhile, Scott was engaged in publishing editions of various works, which, before the end of this year, encumbered the concern to the extent of 90007.

In 1811, when on the eve of realising his salary, he was so confident in his means and prospects, that he determined to buy 100 acres of land in Tweeddale, although the needful 40007. had to be borrowed. Such was the nucleus of his estate of Abbotsford, on which he afterwards built a castle. He removed hither in May 1812. Towards the close of the year he published another romance in verse, under the title of Rokeby, which proved a comparative failure. By this time the firm of J. Ballantyne and Co. had become considerably involved, as the annual loss on the Edinburgh Register alone is stated to have been 10007. In this plight Scott was glad to humble himself before the man with whom he had quarrelled, and Constable lent his friendly aid to the sinking firm.