Walter Scott, on his return from Ireland, was escorted by Wilson to Mr Bolton's villa on Windermere on Canning's invitation. Wordsworth and a large party were there. These were the days! What cavalcades through the woods in the mornings, and boatings on the lakes in the evenings! Then there was a magnificent regatta in honour of the Minstrel; and on the arrival of the long procession of fifty barges, the bards of the Lakes led the cheer which hailed his triumph. Afterwards Scott visited Wordsworth at Rydal, and accompanied him to Southey's, and then to Lord Lonsdale's, where they spent two days in the midst of a splendid circle. In truth Wordsworth was now fast rising, and becoming courtly; and after this date we find greater polish and subdued smoothness, with less vigour in his style, and a gradual multiplication of such gentle pieces as Verses to Needlecases and Gold-Fishes. A portrait of him was painted by Pickersgill for the university of Cambridge, so like as to draw tears from him. Jeffrey now began visibly to relent, and even cited from the Spirit of the Age' an extract speaking of Wordsworth in very high terms. In 1827 we find Wordsworth with the laureate at the fashionable watering-place of Harrowgate, and both in so high an odour of sanctity, that a very pious lady sent them her album for contributions. Unluckily it was found full of effusions by Calvinistic preachers. As some of these worthies,' says the laureate playfully, 'had written in it texts in Hebrew, Chinese, and Arabic, I wrote in Greek, "If we say that we have no sin;" and I did not write in it these lines which the tempting occasion suggested: 6 "What? will we, nill we, are we thrust The covenanted sons of schism, Needs must we then ourselves array Against these state tormentors; Hurrah! for Church and King we say, And down with the Dissenters.' A year or two before this Wordsworth took a tour in Wales, and in 1828 he and Coleridge revisited their old haunts on the continent. In 1830 he was chiefly occupied in writing romaunts-as the 'Egyptian Maid,' the ' Russian Fugitive,' and the 'Armenian Lady's Love." Next year he revisited Yarrow, Loch Katrine, and his old favourite spots in Scotland. On his way he had an affecting interview-the last he ever had-with Sir Walter Scott. The Great Magician was rapidly failing, and was about to set off for an Italian clime. The evening of the 22d September was a very sad one in his antique library. Lockhart was there, and Allan the historical painter. Wordsworth was also feeble in health, and sat with a green shade over his eyes, and bent shoulders, between his daughter and Sir Walter. The conversation was melancholy, and Sir Walter remarked that Smollett and Fielding had both been driven abroad by declining health, and had never returned. Next morning he left Abbotsford, and his guests retired with sorrowful hearts. Wordsworth has preserved a memento of his own feelings in a beautiful sonnet. In 1833 he visited Staffa and Iona: 1834 was a sort of era in his life, by the publication of his complete works in four volumes. His friends, however, now began to fall around him. That year poor Coleridge bade adieu to his weary life. This must have touched many a chord of association in Wordsworth's heart. In 1836 his sister and constant friend and companion died, and blow followed blow in fatal succession. Many a melancholy phantom must in his late years have haunted the poet's memory by the margin of silent Rydal. He was not an impromptu writer, but in his works there is one wild wailing impromptu wrung from him by these afflictions. How fast," says the poet 'How fast has brother followed brother, 6 A note is appended to this piece like a bare tombstone. It is this: 'Walter Scott died 21st September, 1832. S. T. Coleridge Felicia Hemans ... 25th July, 1834. ... 27th December, 1834. Many a noble name in literature was added to this funereal list before Wordsworth was laid in his last resting-place among his native lakes. Honours now flowed fast upon him. In 1835 'Blackwood,' under the inspiration of Wilson, raised an irresistible arm in his defence. In 1839, amid the acclamations of the students, he received a degree from Oxford University. In 1842 he published a tragedy, and some very early and very late poems, and resigned his office in favour of his son. Next year he was appointed to the laureateship, left vacant by the melancholy fate of Southey. In 1844 Lord Jeffrey, in republishing his contributions to the 'Edinburgh,' took occasion to pay a warm tribute of praise to Wordsworth. In 1845 the poet contributed to 'Horne's Modernisations of Chaucer;' but though pre-eminently fitted for the task, he was pronounced by Wilson, a most able judge, to have failed. Take a single verse. Chaucer has it 'The God of Love! a benedicite! Wordsworth's modernisation is "The God of Love! ah benedicite! How mighty and how great a Lord is he! "The simplicity of the words is kept,' observes Wilson, 'for they are the very words; and yet something is gone, and in that something everything.' 'The love itself,' adds Christopher, 'here is not;' and concludes that 'there is nothing else to be done with a great poet than to leave him in his glory.' Up to his death on the 23d of April 1850, Wordsworth lived a quiet and dignified life at Rydal, evincing little apparent sympathy with the arduous duties and activities of the every-day world. At times he exhibited an impatience at the changes which were passing over society, deteriorating his mountains, and invading the solitude of his lakes with the noise of railway trains; but in many parts of his works he shows that he had a perfect appreciation of the great destinies of machinery, and was only afraid that in the hurry to get rich by its means, important social interests should be neglected and ruined. The public feeling at his death was the best proof of the universal consciousness that a great English poet had then taken his departure. Since his death, 'The Prelude,' already alluded to, has been given to the world. This poem may be said to be the exercise by which he set himself to scrutinise his own soul, and measure its capabilities for the production of the great poem of 'The Recluse.' It was begun in 1799, and finished in 1805. It is thus the product of the most vigorous period of his poetical life, and as it lay by him unpublished to the end of his career, it had the benefit of all the improvements that a ripe and highly-polished taste could devise. It is in everyway worthy of the poet, and is as pure, clear, and sparkling as a diamond. The style is remarkably chaste, vigorous, and musical, and the sentiments are uniformly pleasing and dignified. The poem is, besides, interesting from its singular character and subject. It is something to be thus admitted to the arcana of a poet's development, and it may be observed that Wordsworth appears in this production to lay bare his innermost thoughts and feelings with accuracy and honesty. He commences with his childhood, and traces his spiritual conditions through his schoolboy and college career, to his return from France. Wordsworth's prose writings were confined to one or two critical essays on his own theories, a political pamphlet, a letter on Currie's Life of Burns,' an Essay on Epitaphs,' and a Description of the Country of the Lakes.' They evince, however, great skill in prose composition, and are uniformly couched in a clear, manly, and highly-polished English style. To sum up what has been already said of his poetic character and position:-His devotion to external nature had the power and pervasiveness of a passion; his perception of its most minute beauties was exquisitely fine; and his portraitures, both of landscapes and figures, were so distinctly outlined as to impress them on the mind almost as vividly and deeply as the sight of them could have done. Yet his pictures, so to speak, are inodorous, and there is a certain want of richness, which may arise from his deficiency in the sense of smell. He was defective in the stronger passions, and hence, in spite of the minuteness of his portraitures of character, he failed to produce real human beings capable of stirring the blood; and what was even more serious, he himself was incapacitated from feeling a genial and warm sympathy in the struggles of modern man, on whom he rather looked as from a distant height with the commiseration of some loftier nature. From the characteristics enumerated arose the great faults of his works. His landscape paintings are often much too minute. He dwells too tediously on every small object and detail, and from his overintense appreciation of them, which magnifies their importance, rejects all extrinsic ornaments, and occasionally, though exceptionally, adopts a style bare and meagre, and even phrases tainted with mean associations. Hence all his personages-being without reality-fail to attract, and even his strong domestic affections, and his love for everything pure and simple, do not give a sufficient human interest to his poems. His prolixity and tediousness are aggravated by a want of artistic skill in construction; and it is owing to this that he is most perfect in the sonnet, which renders the development of these faults an impossibility, while it gives free play to his naturally pure, tasteful, and lofty diction. His imagination was majestic; his fancy lively and sparkling; and he had a refined and Attic humour, which, however, he seldom called into exercise. He was naturally conservative; and after the heat of youth cooled down, he became more and more in harmony with the system of the conservative party in church and state, modified so much in appearance by his peculiar tendencies, as to simulate the features of a peculiar religious and philosophical creed. As might have been anticipated, he spent most of his life in retirement, and left the solitudes of the lakes principally to wander through other solitudes elsewhere. Indeed as a whole range of signs in algebra is often expressed by a single sign, so the activities of Wordsworth's life may be aptly enough expressed as the continuous development of a passion for nature, while the entire cycle of his poetry is the efflux of this in song. This occupied him wholly even in those fervent years when youth is generally stirred by more social passions. It was through the agency of this that the old institutions of his country, and the old legends and manners of his district, took so firm a hold of his heart, and made him peculiarly the poet of the old English spirit, in contradistinction to the new influences invading it from abroad or developing from itself. With volcanic power in the heat of his earlier days it drove him into the wild mountains of Wales, and into the recesses of the Alps; and gradually abating its impetus, and contracting its successive sweeps as the chill of age came on, at last left him to die in peace by those beloved lakes among which he was born. With much that might with advantage be curtailed or altogether forgotten, the poems of William Wordsworth, though never likely to be extensively popular, will ever occupy a place in literature next to the highest. THOMAS CAMPBELL. THE HE biography of a literary man is to be found in the history of his works startling incident and romantic adventure are not to be expected. The development of the progress of genius can alone supply the record of its existence. That of a poet ranking so high as Thomas Campbell discovers no exception to this general law. He was born on the 27th of July 1777, in his father's house, situated in the High Street, Glasgow, subsequently demolished. The poet's father was Alexander, the youngest of three brothers, the sons of Archibald Campbell of Kirnan, belonging to a family which had been long settled at a place of that name, on the borders of Inverary. The estate produced a small independent rental, and came by inheritance to Robert Campbell, the eldest son of Archibald, and the poet's uncle, who ultimately sold it, and died in London. The name of the second son was Archibald: he went out to Jamaica as a Presbyterian clergyman, and removing from that island to Virginia, in the United States, died there very much esteemed by all who knew him. Through his descendants a legacy of four thousand five hundred pounds came eventually to the subject of this memoir. Alexander Campbell went in early life to America. By trade a merchant, he was still connected with that country after his return to Glasgow. Here he carried on his business in partnership with Daniel Campbell, who, though of the same name, was not a relative of the family. This Daniel's sister became afterwards the wife of Alexander, and the poet's mother. Her name was Margaret, and he was married to her at Glasgow in 1756, when he was forty-nine and she had just numbered her twentieth year. The business of the partnership flourished until the American war broke out. In 1775, Alexander, then in his sixty-fifth year, found his house ruined, as was the case with numerous other firms similarly connected with the colonies at the commencement of that unnatural contest. Alexander Campbell was an acute and well-informed man, religiously disposed, and of mild manners. He was sixty-seven when the poet, his youngest child, was born, and he died in Edinburgh, in March 1801, aged ninety-one. Margaret Campbell, the poet's mother, was born in 1736, and died in February 1812, aged seventy-six. She was a woman of a decided character, in person thin, with dark eyes and hair, comely, shrewd, of a friendly cha |