Memoirs of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth is the father of a new school of Poetry, and his name marks an era in the literature of England, which is full of deep interest to the philosophical inquirer....

It was very fortunate for Wordsworth that his early life was cast in the midst of such magnificent scenery, as that of Cumberland, for it acted powerfully upon his mind, and hel...

De Quincey then continues to relate, as an illustration of the sudden, silent manner in which Nature makes herself felt by the observer, even when he is paying no attention to h...

And yet, with the exception of “Lines written whilst sailing up the Cam,” Wordsworth does not seem to have composed a line at Cambridge. He was learning, however, the first less...

“There is in them,” says Coleridge, in his “Biographia,” a harshness and acerbity combined with words and images all aglow, which might recal those products of the vegetable wor...

In a letter which Wordsworth wrote to his dear friend, Sir George Beaumont, Bart., in the year 1806, we learn the manner in which the £900, bequeathed to him by Calvert, were in...

Hartley Coleridge, the ærial child who awakened the fears and sympathies of Wordsworth, was a fine boy, rejoicing his parents’ hearts; and the happy pair had cut a road into the...

“Your brother John is one of you; a man who hath solitary usings of his own intellect, deep in feelings, with a subtle tact, a swift instinct of truth and beauty; he interests m...

August 29.--Left Calais, at twelve o’clock in the morning, for Dover ... bathed, and sat on the Dover Cliffs, and looked upon France; we could see the shores almost as plain as...

These lines occurred to William’s memory; and while he and I were talking of Burns, and the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions,...

It was in the beginning of the winter, 1807, that De Quincy paid his first visit to Wordsworth; and I find great fault with Dr. Wordsworth that he makes no allusion to De Quincy...

The reason for Wordsworth’s removal, was the increasing number of his family. And here I may as well give a list of this family, adding to it the only one who was born after the...

At last, in 1814, the great poem was published upon which Wordsworth’s fame is built, viz., “The Excursion.” It was met, as usual, with tremendous and most indiscriminate abuse,...

“Her brow hath opened on me--see it there, Brightening the umbrage of her hair; So gleams the crescent moon, that loves To be descried thro’ shady groves. Tenderest bloom is on...

Those who would know more of the poet must go to his writings; and, I may add, that the “Memoirs” of Dr. Wordsworth are indispensable to a full understanding both of the Poet an...