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"Thursday, 8th.-..

When I was coming home, a post chaise passed with a little girl behind in a patched, raggeċ cloak. In the afternoon, after we had talked a little William fell asleep. I read the Winter's Tale; then I went to bed, but did not sleep. The swallows stole in and out of their nest, and sate there, whiles quite still, whiles they sung low for two minutes or more, at a time just like ɛ muffled robin. William was looking at The Pedlar wher I got up. He arranged it, and after tea I wrote it out—280 lines. The moon was behind. William hurried me out in hopes that I should see her. We walked first to the tox of the hill to see Rydal. It was dark and dull, but our own vale was very solemn-the shape of Helm Crag was

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quite distinct, though black. forwards on the White Moss white brightness on the lake. the foot of Silver How.

We walked backwards and path; there was a sky-like The Wyke cottage right at Glow-worms out, but not sc numerous as last night. O, beautiful place! O, beautiful place! Dear Mary William. The hour is come I must prepare to go.

The swallows, I must leave them, the wall, the garden, the roses, all. Dear creatures! they sang last night after I was in bed; seemed to be singing to one another, just before they settled to rest for the night. Well, I must go. Farewell." Several of the poems, referred to in this Journal, are difficult, if not impossible, to identify. "The Inscription of the Pathway," finished on the 28th of August 1800; "The Epitaph," written on the 28th January 1801; "The Yorkshire Wolds poem," referred to on March 10th, 1802; alsc "The Silver Howe poem," and that known in the Wordsworth household as "The Tinker." It is possible that some of them were intentionally suppressed.

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VISIT TO CALAIS--MARRIAGE TO MARY HUTCHINSON-RETURN TO GRASMERE.

FROM the Grasmere Journal it will be seen that Mary Hutchinson was a frequent and privileged inmate of Dove Cottage. The tie which bound her to Wordsworth had been formed in childhood. The early intimacy of the Dame School at Penrith ripened by degrees into strong mutual regard; and that passed at length into an attachment which led to marriage. They were cousins, and the cousin relationship--the connecting-link to many between the nearer tie to home and the remoter one to the world beyond-made them increasingly and familiarly intimate, long before Wordsworth had any thought of marriage. In the autumn of 1789, during his second long vacation from Cambridge, he paid a visit to Penrith, where his sister and Mary Hutchinson were staying. When he went to wait on Raisley Calvert in the same town, in 1795, Mary Hutchinson had gone to Sockburn to keep house for her brother, Thomas Hutchinson; but in the following year we find her living with the Wordsworths at Racedown. Mr Hutchinson of Kimbolton Rectory, Mr Wordsworth's nephew, supplies me with the following paragraph in reference to his aunt:

"After the death of my grandfather in 1786, my aunt, Mary Wordsworth, remained in Penrith, and was brought up, along with some of her younger brothers and sisters, by an aunt, Miss Elizabeth Monkhouse, and a great-aunt, Mrs

Gamage. My mother's family were left motherless in 1790, and they were nourished by the same kind old ladies. On the death of my great-grandfather at Sockburn, my aunt became my father's housekeeper, and remained with him there, and at Gallow Hill, till her marriage in 1802. The passage in the sixth book of The Prelude, commencing Another maid there was,' shows that M. H. was a resident in Penrith in 1790. Towards the end of the year 1792, or the commencement of 1793, she took up her residence at Sockburn."

When the Wordsworths returned from Germany in 1799, they went straight to Sockburn, where Mary Hutchinson was keeping house; and there, with the exception of occasional excursions, the poet remained for ten months. On the 10th of November 1801, Mary came to Dove Cottage, and stayed till December 28. On that day she went with the Wordsworths to Keswick, spent a night at Greta Hall, and next day they all proceeded by Threlkeld to visit the Clarksons at Eusemere, Ullswater. Mary left them on New Year's Eve for Penrith, returning, however, very early in January to Grasmere. On the 19th January she paid a five days' visit to the Clarksons (the Wordsworths being still their guests), and on the 23rd went back to Penrith; her cousins crossing the hills, by the Grisdale Hause, to Grasmere.

There was an entire absence of romance in Wordsworth's courtship. It may almost be said there was no courtship at all, in the ordinary sense of the term. He loved Mary Hutchinson; he had always loved her; and he loved her with an ever-increasing tenderness: but his engagement to her seemed somehow to be just the natural sequel to their early unromantic regard, its development or flowering.

The supreme devotion of Wordsworth's life was to his office

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as a poet. To this he was conscript and consecrated; and all other things ministered to it. He could portray the enthusiastic and chivalrous devotion of man to woman; but it may be doubted if he ever felt it, and in this he stands. almost alone amongst poets. Milton, perhaps, comes nearest to him. He did not devote himself much, either to his sister, or to his wife. Intense as the tie between them was, Dorothy lived for him, much more than he ever lived, (or could live), for her. He was the very light of her eyes, and her supreme passion was to help him daily in his high vocation. It used to be said—half in sport, half in earnest—that she did everything for him, even wrote his love letters and there is evidence that he often asked her to write for him to Mary Hutchinson, as he detested correspondence. It was, of course, inevitable that the wife should displace the sister, in this office of correspondent; but the "Emily" of the Alfoxden and Dove Cottage days lived on with him to the last, and retained her old function as fellow-traveller, and scribe, and "sister of the soul."

Wordsworth's wife was a noble Cumbrian maiden, with a clear intellect and an unsophisticated heart, a gentle tranquil unambitious soul, very tender-hearted, sympathetic, and full of tact. Had she possessed a larger or wider culture, she would not have been any more perfectly fitted for him; and, on his side, if there was an absence of passionate devotion, there was a calm and constant regard, and a continuity of affection to the end of life.

The readers of De Quincey's Recollections will remember his description of Mary Wordsworth in 1807. She "exercised," he said, "all the practical fascination of beauty, through the mere compensatory charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect and purity of heart speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements." “In a quiescent, reposing

meditative way, she appeared always to have a genial enjoyment from her own thoughts; . . . to feel and to enjoy in a luxurious repose of mind, there was her forte and her peculiar privilege." He speaks of the "supreme expression of her features" being that of " sunny benignity—a radiant graciousness.

Wordsworth's own verses addressed to his wife are more worthy of attention, however, than the eulogy of any critic. He tells us that, in her early days, all things about her were drawn

that she was

"From May time and the cheerful Dawn,”

A daring Shape, an Image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and way-lay."

Then, in the days of these visits at Racedown and Grasmere, on nearer view".

he saw

"A Spirit, yet a Woman too,

A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet.
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."

At length, when she took her place as a permanent "inmate of the heart," she was seen as

"A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;

A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command ;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light."

Other allusions to his wife, in The Prelude, in the dedication of The White Doe of Rylstone, as well as in many of the sonnets and lyrics, are known to every reader, and are referred to in the notes to the poems where they occur; and though Mary Hutchinson was neither a Beatrice nor a Laura, and wanted some of the charms that have made the

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