WITH WORDSWORTH IN ENGLAND THE YEARS 1770 TO 1795 COCKERMOUTH: HAWKSHEAD: CAMBRIDGE N INTRODUCTORY OTWITHSTANDING all that has been said, and truly, of the simplicity and lack of pretension in Wordsworth's life, it is notable that, with the exception of Dove Cottage, his successive homes were in houses of considerable dignity and spaciousness. This is particularly true of his birthplace, a commodious, well-built house, standing in the midst of fine grounds, by far the best dwelling in the small Cumberland town of Cockermouth. The deep garden at the back ends in a high terrace adorned with beautiful plants, shaded by noble trees, and overhanging the swiftly flowing Derwent. That Wordsworth always retained tender memories of this place where he and his sister Dorothy, younger by two years, spent their early childhood is told often in his later verse. The finding of the sparrow's nest in the hedge of privet and roses on the terrace-wall; the distant height of Skiddaw from the same view-point; the far-off hill road that appealed to his imagination of lands beyond, occasion the sun was rising as he turned his steps homeward. But to him it was no common sunrise: 66 'The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, Were then made for me; bond unknown to me For their own sakes these scenes are worth visiting, -the quaint old market town of Hawkshead, proud of its gingerbread and its "wiggs"; the picturesque church; the antique dwellings with their curious gables and pent-houses, and with a brook running under one of the principal streets. In walking distance, in every direction are spots of romantic beauty, -Tarn Hows, the valleys of Yewdale and Langdale leading to glistening mountain tarns, the noble heights of Old Man Coniston and Wetherlam, and those "lusty twins," the Langdale Pikes. 66 But for the Wordsworth lover there is added the charm of realizing that it was here, in comparative solitude, that the boy recognized those “ gleams like the flashing of a shield," here that he began that constant and intimate communion with Nature that fitted him for his high office as her Great Interpreter. Even farther may one wander and still be on classic ground, over the hill of Sawrey to the now wellpeopled shores of Lake Windermere, or to the Vale of Deadly Nightshade where 66 Stands yet a mouldering pile with fractured arch, the birds still building their nests and singing as sweetly as did that single wren in the nave one day, when "there I could have made My dwelling-place, and lived forever there To hear such music." While still a school-boy, the death of his father left Wordsworth both homeless and penniless. A payment due the estate, which should have been divided among the five children, was withheld from them not only now but for twenty years more. It was William, the second son, that seemed to give the guardians most anxiety. But the uncles on the Wordsworth side finally decided to give him a university training, hoping to fit him for some dignified career, and sent him to Cambridge. He was then seventeen and a half years old, a country-bred lad unused to restraints of any kind, and thoroughly hating most of the studies he was required to take. "Frantic and dissolute" were the words he used of the student-life. Though he confessed that it had, at first, some attractions for him, it soon began to repel, and he returned to his old solitary and introspective ways. The chief shaping effect seems to have come from the thought that Milton and other poets had been his predecessors there, and he resolved that he, too, would become a poet. Naturally, this determination was not hailed with joy by the practical uncles who were paying his bills. Several safe and eminently respectable careers were proposed; but |