intimate and intensely sympathetic with nature, as may be seen in
his _Evening Walk_, in the sketch of the skater, and in the large
proportion of description in all his poems.

It is truer of him than perhaps of any other author, that the life of the
man is the best history of the poet. All that is eventful and interesting
in his life may be found translated in his poetry. Milton had said that
the poet's life should be a grand poem. Wordsworth echoed the thought:

If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,
Then to the measure of that Heaven-born light,
Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.

He was not distinguished at college; the record of his days there may be
found in _The Prelude_, which he calls _The Growth of a Poet's Mind_. He
was graduated in 1791, with the degree of B.A., and went over to France,
where he, among others, was carried away with enthusiasm for the French
Revolution, and became a thorough Radical. That he afterwards changed his
political views, should not be advanced in his disfavor; for many ardent
and virtuous minds were hoping to see the fulfilment of recent predictions
in greater freedom to man. Wordsworth erred in a great company, and from
noble sympathies. He returned to England in 1792, with his illusions
thoroughly dissipated. The workings of his mind are presented in _The
Prelude_.

In the same year he published _Descriptive Sketches_, and _An Evening
Walk_, which attracted little attention. A legacy of L900 left him by his
friend Calvert, in 1795, enabled the frugal poet to devote his life to
poetry, and particularly to what he deemed the emancipation of poetry from
the fetters of the mythic and from the smothering ornaments of rhetoric.

In Nov., 1797, he went to London, taking with him a play called _The
Borderers_: it was rejected by the manager. In the autumn of 1798, he
published his _Lyrical Ballads_, which contained, besides his own verses,
a poem by an anonymous friend. The poem was _The Ancient Mariner_; the
friend, Coleridge. In the joint operation, Wordsworth took the part based
on nature; Coleridge illustrated the supernatural. The _Ballads_ were
received with undisguised contempt; nor, by reason of its company, did
_The Ancient Mariner_ have a much better hearing. Wordsworth preserved his
equanimity, and an implicit faith in himself.

After a visit to Germany, he settled in 1799 at Grasmere, in the Lake
country, and the next year republished the _Lyric