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Miss Pollard was now Mrs Marshall. She speaks of a visit of Kit's before going up to Cambridge for his final term before graduating, and adds,] “He is very like me! It is allowed by every one, and I myself think I never saw a stronger likeness. . . . I am going to live in Dorsetshire.

You know the pleasure I have always attached to the idea of home, a blessing which I have so early lost.

I think I told you that Mr Montagu had a little boy, who, as you will perceive, could not be very well taken care of, either in his father's chambers, or under the uncertain management of various friends of Mr M., with whom he has frequently stayed. ... A daughter of Mr Tom Myers (a cousin of mine whom I daresay you have heard me mention) is coming over to England by the first ship, which is expected in about a week, to be educated. She is, I believe, about three or four years old, and T. Myers' brother, who has charge of her, has suggested that I should take her under my care. With these two children, and the produce of Raisley Calvert's legacy, we shall have an income of at least £70 or £80 per annum. William finds that he can get nine per cent. for the money upon the best security. He means to sink half of it upon my life, which will make me always comfortable and independent.

Living in the unsettled way in which my brother has hitherto lived in London is altogether unfavourable to mental exertion. ... . He has had the offer of ten guineas for a work which has not taken up much time, and half the profits of a second edition if it should be called for. It is a little sum; but it is one step. . . I am determined to work with resolution. It will greatly contribute to my happiness, and place me in such a situation that I shall be doing something. I shall have to join William at Bristol, and proceed thence in a chaise with Basil to Racedown. It is fifty miles."

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CHAPTER VII.

FIRST HOME AT RACEDOWN.

In this Racedown house, half way between Crewkerne in Somersetshire, and Lyme in Dorsetshire, Wordsworth began, what was to continue till his death, the one supreme object of his life. The following is a description of the house as seen in the summer of 1887

We approached the old farm-house over meadows bright with yellow iris and foxglove, and through lanes lined with fern, and hung with honeysuckle and wild rose. Large beech trees shade the entrance gate; the house and its clustering farm buildings stands on the slope of Blackdown; open grass fields surround it. From the terrace garden on the left hand side of the house, wide views of hill and valley are obtained. Below, amongst meadows famous for daffodils, winds Cindreford Brook. The hollow is well wooded, the remains of an avenue of Scotch firs being a prominent feature. On the opposite side of the valley rises Greggy, with quaint clumps of fir trees on the ridge of the hill; beyond, a glimpse of Lambert's Castle is to be had, and of another hill locally known as Goldencap, from the brilliance of the gorse in bloom, which is said to serve as a beacon to ships. The sea itself is visible from the top of the house, and its reviving breezes may be felt in the garden. The house, built of dull red brick, covered in front with grey stucco and much weather-stained, is three stories high, and has no beauty beyond that of situation and association. A porch, added recently, opens into a fairly wide and airy hall, with

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old-fashioned fleet staircase. The room on the right hand, looking out to the grass fields in front and to the large beeches at the entrance gate, is the one Wordsworth occupied. It is square and low, with two deep recesses and a high ornamented plaster ceiling; a small room over the hall is said to have been used as a study by the poet."

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Here, in this farm-house, well stocked with books, William and Dorothy Wordsworth began their life of closely associated labour. They spent their time industriously in reading— "if reading," Wordsworth said to Mathews,* can ever deserve the name of industry "-in writing, and in gardening. Wordsworth tells Mathews that he had begun to read Ariosto with his sister; and she, writing to Mrs Marshall, says that her "brother handles the spade with great dexterity." They had no society to distract them, and the post brought them letters only once a week. Four years later after they had experience of Alfoxden, and of Germany -Dorothy spoke of Racedown as "the place dearest to my recollections upon the whole surface of the island; it was the first home I had;" and she writes of the "lovely meadows above the tops of the coombs, and the scenery on Pilsden, Lewisden, and Blackdown-hill, and the view of the sea from Lambert's Castle." +

Strange to say, the first thing Wordsworth seems to have done at Racedown was to make experimental essays at both Satire and Tragedy, the two kinds of poetical composition in which he was least of all fitted to excel. He began by certain imitations of Juvenal, which he sent to his friend Wrangham, on the 20th November 1795. The two had thought of publishing a joint volume of satirical pieces, and Wordsworth worked at it till the spring of 1796.

Perhaps it was to this that his sister refers in

* In a letter dated March 21, 1796.

+ See Memoirs, vol. i. p. 94.

her letter to Mrs Marshall, September 21, 1795, as a work that "has not taken up much time," and for which a pecuniary offer had been made to him; but he put it aside. He had the wisdom to see that it was not his function to become a satirist. And when asked, as late as November 7, 1806, to allow these effusions to be printed, he replied:

"I have long since come to a fixed resolution to steer clear of personal satire; in fact, I never will have anything to do with it, as far as concerns the private vices of individuals on any account. With respect to public delinquents or offenders, I will not say the same; though I should be slow to meddle even with these. This is a rule which I have laid down for myself, and shall rigidly adhere to ; though I do not in all cases blame those who think and act differently.

"It will therefore follow, that I cannot lend any assistance to your proposed publication. The verses which you have. of mine, I should wish to be destroyed; I have no copy of them myself, at least none that I can find. I would most willingly give them up to you, fame, profit, and everything, if I thought either true fame or profit could arise out of them."

In the autumn of 1795 he began, and carried on throughout the whole of that winter at Racedown, the composition. of his one tragedy-The Borderers-completing it in the summer of 1796. Very likely, as his nephew suggests,* the subject occurred to him during his residence in the Border district, at Penrith, or at Keswick,--where so many of the ruined castles have traditions which carry us back to the period of the drama in question, viz., in the time of Henry III.; and Wordsworth tells us himself that he had read Redpath's History of the Borders, that he might know something of the local history.t

* See Memoirs, vol. i. p. 96.

+ See the Fenwick note to The Borderers, vol. i. p. 108.

We shall return to the Tragedy, to see its fate in the year 1797.

Meanwhile it is thus that Dorothy Wordsworth describes her life at Racedown to Mrs Marshall :

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"RACEDOWN, November 30th.*

Basil is a charming boy. He affords us perpetual
Do not suppose from this that we make

entertainment.

him our perpetual plaything. hours every morning.

We walk about two

We have very pleasant walks about

us; and what is a great advantage, the roads are of a sandy kind, and are almost always dry. We can see the sea, 150 or 200 yards from the door; and at a little distance we have a very extensive view terminated by the sea, seen through different openings of the unequal hills. We have not the warmth and luxuriance of Devonshire, though there is no want either of wood, or of cultivation; but the trees appear to suffer from the sea-blasts. We have hills which, seen from a distance, almost take the character of mountains, some cultivated nearly to their summits; others in their wild state, covered with furze and broom. These delight me most, as they remind me of our native wilds. Our common parlour is the prettiest little room that can be." [She mentions that they were seven miles from Crewkerne, and nearly equal distance from Axminster, Bridport, and Lyme.] A little brook which runs at the distance of one field from us divides us from Devonshire." [She adds that the peasants were miserably poor; their cottages “shapeless structures of wood and clay; they are not at all beyond what might be expected in savage life."]

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Lady Monteagle, in whose possession this, and all the other letters from Dorothy Wordsworth to Mrs Marshall are, has written 1796 upon it, but I think it must belong to the year 1795.

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