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of solitude, and his position and his age all conspired to make him feel yet more its "self sufficing power." Hawkshead as we have said is still a beautiful little village, then it was still more secluded; it was a kind of upland hamlet shut in from all contact with the noisy world, between two lakes, Windermere and Esthwait. The greater part of a century has rolled along since our poet was prosecuting his education there; such a course of training as he then pursued could now be followed and cultivated in no single portion of Great Britain. He was trained to a sturdy independence in his childhood; no letters then greeted him, as they now constantly greet the boys of our schools; cities were far removed, it was a sort of Highland solitude, not unlike the Fichtelberge where Richter's first days were passed. It was a realm unknown, untrodden, and unheard of by almost all the gentle or simple of the British islands; the trim tokens of cultivation and urbanity which now meet the eye over the whole lake district were then and there wholly unknown, and those scenes now only suggestive of beauty and majesty were not unfrequently, and especially in winter, the ministers of savage grandeur. That was not the age of magazines and newspapers, and the light literature which now sports so gracefully round the years of childhood aud youth; no light canoes and pleasant rafts were there, on which the mind could put off quickly from the havens of thought, and stunt itself under the pretext of improvement. Sports and tasks were the occupations of the boys, and of the former summer and winter brought pleasingly fresh alterna

LOVE OF SOLITUDE.

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tions, the records of which have been sketched with mingled power and beauty in the Prelude. Whoso converses too lengthily with solitude exercises his own mind, but imparts to his character a timidity and modesty, and reserve, greatly unfitting him for any active place among his fellow-men: and his mental and moral training in this lonely region influenced no doubt his whole after-life, and gave to a character quite disposed for such seclusion, its indisposition to all communion and fellowship with men. All things favoured this hermetic state, he did not board or lodge in the school or school-house, but like all the rest of the boys with an ancient dame, Anne Tyson. Night and day ministered to his solitary emotions. His pillow, even so young, was a place haunted by imagery to waking eyes; he speaks of the gladness with which he sought his bed

"That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind
Roar, and the rain beat hard; where I so oft
Had lain on summer nights to watch

The moon in splendour couched among the leaves
Of a tall ash that near our cottage stood;

Had watched her with fixed eyes, while to and fro

In the dark summit of the waving tree

She rocked with every impulse of the breeze."

Thus the presence of nature curtained round and impressed his spirit. Holidays spent in boating, or in boyish rambles, all ministered to the aesthetic passion of his soul.

* Prelude, p. 71.

Nothing at that time

So welcome, no temptation half so dear

As that which urged me to a daring feat:

Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags,

And tottering towers-I loved to stand and read

Their looks.

And then the winter's amusement of Skating; the compass of poetry contains no finer description of that most zestful exercise than is given to us in his poem, from which we have quoted so much. This appears to have been the most favoured amusement. 66 For me it was a time of rapture." At sun-set, when the cottage windows were blazing through the twilight, as the village clock tolled six,

All shod with steel,

We hissed along the polished ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures

So thro' the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag

Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy not unnoticed."

But it is more to our present purpose, as showing the character of the boy, and his peculiar life, that while the stars appeared, and the orange twilight sky in the west faded-he says

• Quoted from M.S. of Recluse, by Dr. Wordsworth, in the “Life,” p. 41.

EARLY SELF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng
To cut across the reflex of a star

That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed

Upon the glassy plain; and often times

When we had given our bodies to the wind,

And all the shadowy banks on either side

Came sweeping thro' the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs

Wheeled by me-Even as if the Earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!

Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched

Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.*

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We have quoted these passages principally as illustrating how from his first years Wordsworth was followed by the Sense of his own Consciousness. Even at that early period his own shadow fell on every object. Nothing was contemplated alone and in itself; mere animal pleasure and excitement we find invariably yielding to mental, and the enthusiasm of the boy speedily melts in an anticipation and fore-colouring of the character of the man.

This, as nearly as we can make it out, is his boyhood. In tracing the history of those who have been most remarkable for their mental wealth, and the elaborate structure of their mental characters, it has always been most interesting to note the years, the occupations, and amusements of their Boyhood. We shall usually find

* Prelude.

how influential those years were in forming and laying the foundation of the character of the man.

Hawkshead was the school of the mind of Wordsworth; we find no unhealthy evidences of precocious maturity-he was a boy, not a man; his genius was too hardy and noble to develope itself too early; he was no Chatterton; images of beauty and power; the playmates he met there; the men who spoke to him in the casual intercourse of daily life; all tended to form him. Here he played with that boy whose delight it was to blow

"Mimic hootings to the silent owls;"

Here he met those two stately champions of the Hanoverian and Non-jurist politics, whose portraits have been so affectingly sketched in the Excursion. His tutor supplied him at an after period with that most exquisite series of paintings associated together with the name of "Matthew." The imagery of that most stirring and healthful neighbourhood lay ever after on his mind, and a passionate tenderness poured itself forth in prophecy when at the age of seventeen he left school, in lines well known to most English readers,

Dear native regions, I foretell
From what I feel at this farewell,
That wheresoe'er my steps may tend,
And whensoe'er my course shall end,
If in that hour a single tie

Survive of local sympathy,

My soul will cast the backward view,

The longing look alone on you,

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