_Ballads_: as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years was
from the radical youth who praised the French Revolution of 1791. As a
whole, _The Excursion_ is accurate, philosophic, and very dull, so that
few readers have the patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy
its beautiful passages.

To return to the events of his life. In 1802 he married; and, after
several changes of residence, he finally purchased a place called
Rydal-mount in 1813, where he spent the remainder of his long, learned,
and pure life. Long-standing dues from the Earl of Lonsdale to his father
were paid; and he received the appointment of collector at Whitehaven and
stamp distributor for Cumberland. Thus he had an ample income, which was
increased in 1842 by a pension of L300 per annum. In 1843 he was made
poet-laureate. He died in 1850, a famous poet, his reputation being due
much more to his own clever individuality than to the poetic principles he
asserted.

His ecclesiastical sonnets compare favorably with any that have been
written in English. Landor, no friend of the poet, says: "Wordsworth has
written more fine sonnets than are to be met with in the language
besides."

AN ESTIMATE.--The great amount of verse Wordsworth has written is due to
his estimate of the proper uses of poetry. Where other men would have
written letters, journals, or prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote
in verse: an excursion to England or Scotland, _Yarrow Visited and
Revisited_, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse. He exhibits
in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is emphatically and
without cant the poet of religion and morality. Coleridge--a poet and an
attached friend, perhaps a partisan--claims for him, in his _Biographia
Literaria_, "purity of language, freshness, strength, _curiosa felicitas_
of diction, truth to nature in his imagery, imagination in the highest
degree, but faulty fancy." We have already ventured to deny him the
possession of imagination: the rest of his friend's eulogium is not
undeserved. He had and has many ardent admirers, but none more ardent than
himself. He constantly praised his own verses, and declared that they
would ultimately conquer all prejudices and become universally popular--an
opinion that the literary world does not seem disposed to adopt.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.--Next to Wordsworth, and, with certain characteristic
differences, of the same school, but far beneath him in poe