se years his fame was increasing slowly but steadily,
and his age gathered to itself the reverence and the troops of
friends which his poems and the nobly simple life reflected in them
deserved. Public honours followed private appreciation. In 1838 the
University of Dublin conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. In 1839
Oxford did the same, and the reception of the poet (now in his
seventieth year) at the University was enthusiastic. In 1842 he
resigned his office of Stamp-Distributor, and Sir Robert Peel had the
honour of putting him upon the civil list for a pension of L300. In
1843 he was appointed Laureate, with the express understanding that it
was a tribute of respect, involving no duties except such as might be
self-imposed. His only official production was an Ode for the
installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of
Cambridge. His life was prolonged yet seven years, almost, it should
seem, that he might receive that honour which he had truly conquered
for himself by the unflinching bravery of a literary life of half a
century, unparalleled for the scorn with which its labours were
received, and the victorious acknowledgement which at last crowned
them. Surviving nearly all his contemporaries, he had, if ever any man
had, a foretaste of immortality, enjoying in a sort his own posthumous
renown, for the hardy slowness of its growth gave a safe pledge of its
durability. He died on the 23rd of April, 1850, the anniversary of the
death of Shakespeare.

We have thus briefly sketched the life of Wordsworth,--a life
uneventful even for a man of letters; a life like that of an oak, of
quiet self-development, throwing out stronger roots toward the side
whence the prevailing storm-blasts blow, and of tougher fibre in
proportion to the rocky nature of the soil in which it grows. The
life and growth of his mind, and the influences which shaped it, are
to be looked for, even more than is the case with most poets, in his
works, for he deliberately recorded them there.

Of his personal characteristics little is related. He was somewhat
above the middle height, but, according to De Quincey, of indifferent
figure, the shoulders being narrow and drooping. His finest feature
was the eye, which was grey and full of spiritual light. Leigh Hunt
says: 'I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired, so supernatural.
They were like fires, half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of
acrid fixture of regard. One might