brother,* I mean taken from the whole sum, which was about £1200 more than his share, which £1200 belonged to my sister and me. This £1200 we freely lent him: whether it was insured or no, I do not know; but I dare say it will prove to be the case; we did not however stipulate for its being insured. But you shall faithfully know all particulars as soon as I have learned them."

He gave

His course in life was now made clear to him. up the search for a "profession." Calvert's legacy had cleared a passage for him, and now allowed the stream of his ambition to flow as natural instinct led it. By dint of strictest economy-to him, as to Spinoza, a luxury—and by joining his sister, and throwing their small means into a common fund, he had enough to live upon; while he devoted his future solely to that office to which he had been “dedicated” in his eighteenth year, during the Hawkshead "morning walk."

And now began what was certainly the most powerful influence over him, if not the most important event in his life that fellowship with his Sister, which lasted, with scarcely an interval, for fifty-five years, till his death in 1850.

Hitherto Wordsworth had lived much alone. He had companions, familiar ones; but none of the Hawkshead boys, and neither Jones, nor Mathews, nor Beaupuis, nor Calvert were friends in an intimate sense. The ties to his brothers and sister were not, as yet, specially close. Home" had been a name to him, not an experience; he speaks of having led "an undomestic wanderer's life." ‡ And a somewhat stern element had developed in his character, as he himself

* John Wordsworth.

tr

+ See The Prelude, book xiv., vol. iii. p. 400.

+

The Prelude, book xiv., vol. iii. p. 400.

DorM

confesses, and as his sister points out in her letters from Forncett.

The effect of his sister's influence over him, the education it was, and its "healing power," have been gratefully recorded by himself. This "blessing of his later years,” he with him when a boy.”

tells us, was

tr

But alone at Hawkshead, alone at Cambridge, alone in France, he was deprived of its steadying influence, its staying power; and the result was

"I too exclusively esteemed that love,

And sought that beauty, which (as Milton sings)

Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down

This over-sternness." +

He says that, but for the influence of his sister, the selfconfidence of his nature would have kept him like

"A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
Familiar, and a favourite of the stars :
But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
And teach the little birds to build their nests
And warble in its chambers." +

More than this, in that autobiographic analysis of himself, and of the state of mind he passed through in France, and on his return to England, which is given in the eleventh book of The Prelude-in the period of unsettlement that ensued, when the scrutinising intellect was at work, and he lost all sense of conviction, and gave up moral problems in despair, and was on the verge of becoming like "the

* See vol. ii., p. 207.

+ See The Prelude, book xiv., vol. iii. p. 396.

Solitary," whom he afterwards described in The Excursion--
then it was that, travelling together on foot in the York-
shire dales, and Cumbrian valleys, his sister brought him
back from what was almost misanthropy, corrected his
despondency, and, (as he put it,)

"Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self;

She whispered still that brightness would return,
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth.” *

Elsewhere he writes of her

Again

"Her voice was like a hidden brook that sang;
The thought of her was like a flash of light,
Or an unseen companionship." +

"Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green field,

Could they have known her, would have loved; methought
Her very presence such a sweetness breathed,
That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills,
And everything she looked on, should have had
An intimation how she bore herself
Towards them, and to all creatures." ‡

Nothing in

It was a process of gradual development.
Wordsworth's life was sudden or abrupt. By degrees he
learned that "peace settles where the intellect is meek," and
the renewed influence of Nature's voice, along with that of
his Sister

"led him back through opening day

To those sweet counsels between head and heart

Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace." §

No poet was ever so happy in the unselfish ministry of a sister. From Chaucer downwards we meet with none in the records of English literature who was so fortunate in the devotion and the service of the women who surrounded him.

This devotion, however, with all its unselfish tenderness,—would not have done so much for Wordsworth as it did, had it not been accompanied by that wonderful insight which Dorothy possessed. She had quite as clear and delicate a perception as her brother had of those rarer beauties of Nature which the common eye sees not. Abundant evidence will be found in the passages to be extracted from the Journals she wrote at Alfoxden and Grasmere of that intellectual second-sight-that knowledge born of lovewhich made both brother and sister poets. It was the insight and the service combined that made her so invaluable to Wordsworth.

The very service, however, had its hurtful side. We shall see signs of self-involution by-and-bye, which it fostered. Wordsworth had so much done for him, his reading, his writing, his copying, the sister working in every sort of way that could contribute to his ease, that a certain element, not of selfishness-he never showed signs of that but of self-engrossedness and self-centredness arose, almost as a matter of course. Even this was akin to a virtue, but the rootedness it gave to his character took away something of the charm, and almost of necessity lessened the benignity and radiance, which we find in natures less robust and strong. For another thing, it led him to individualize a great deal in his writings, to occupy himself with minute objects, incidents, and themes, rather than to generalize, and deal with large questions and national interests.

Where Wordsworth passed the summer of 1795 we do

દુઃ

not exactly know. Part of his time would doubtless be spent at Penrith, but it is more than probable that he accompanied his sister to Halifax, and then went up to town. He would wish to see William Calvert, and we know that Mr Basil Montagu, Q.C., had some personal communications with him during the autumn; while his sister writes, in September, of William's " unsettled" life being unfavourable to mental work. Another evidence that he spent this autumn in London is that the Mr Pinney of Bristol, who gave him his first home in Dorsetshire, was a friend of Basil Montagu's. Most probably it was Montagu who introduced him to Pinney, and sent him down to Bristol to see if he could not there make a start in taking pupils. What led him to make Racedown, in Dorsetshire, his home in the autumn of 1795, is detailed in one of his sister's letters to Miss Pollard, who had just been married to Mr Marshall of Leeds. Her brother had gone to Bristol, and was staying with Mr Pinney, a local merchant there, who had a country house at Racedown, Dorsetshire. Mr Pinney had given over this house to his

son.

The son offered it, furnished, with orchard, garden, &c., to Wordsworth, rent free, apparently on the sole condition that he (Mr Pinney, jr.) should occasionally come down and stay for a few weeks. Wordsworth at the same time had another important offer from Mr Montagu, viz., to take charge of his boy Basil, for which Montagu offered him £50 a year for board. He hoped to have the son of Mr Pinney, aged 13, as a second pupil, while Dorothy was asked to take charge of a cousin's child, a girl of three and a half years.

The following is an extract from his sister's letter:

MILLHOUSE, September 2nd, 1795.

[On the back of the letter, in Lady Monteagle's handwriting, the year is given as 1796; but it was 1795.