ing
independent and self-sustaining: it needed to look no longer wistfully for
a monarch's smile: it cared comparatively little for the court: it issued
its periods and numbers directly to the English people: it wrote for them
and of them; and when, in 1830, the last of the Georges died, after an
ill-spent life, in which his personal pleasures had concerned him far more
than the welfare of his people, former prescriptions and prejudices
rapidly passed away; and the new epoch in general improvement and literary
culture, which had already begun its course, received a marvellous
impulsion.

The great movement, in part unconscious, from the artificial rhetoric of
the former age towards the simplicity of nature, was now to receive its
strongest propulsion: it was to be preached like a crusade; to be reduced
to a system, and set forth for the acceptance of the poetical world: it
was to meet with criticism, and even opprobrium, because it had the
arrogance to declare that old things had entirely passed away, and that
all things must conform themselves to the new doctrine. The high-priest of
this new poetical creed was Wordsworth: he proposed and expounded it; he
wrote according to its tenets; he defended his illustrations against the
critics by elaborate prefaces and essays. He boldly faced the clamor of a
world in arms; and what there was real and valuable in his works has
survived the fierce battle, and gathered around him an army of proselytes,
champions, and imitators.

WORDSWORTH.--William Wordsworth was the son of the law-agent to the Earl
of Lonsdale; he was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770. It was a
gifted family. His brother, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, was Master of
Trinity College. Another, the captain of an East Indiaman, was lost at sea
in his own ship. He had also a clever sister, who was the poet's friend
and companion as long as she lived.

Wordsworth and his companions have been called the Lake Poets, because
they resided among the English lakes. Perhaps too much has been claimed
for the Lake country, as giving inspiration to the poets who lived there:
it is beautiful, but not so surpassingly so as to create poets as its
children. The name is at once arbitrary and convenient.

Wordsworth was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, which he entered
in 1787; but whenever he could escape from academic restraints, he
indulged his taste for pedestrian excursions: during these his ardent mind
became