University Extension Lecturer; Author of "Our Early English Literature;" Shakspere: the Man and his Mind;" Translator from the German of Ten Brink's "History of English Literature," &c., &c.

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO

SIR JAMES HENDERSON, M.A., J.P.,
LORD MAYOR OF BELFAST, 1898.

HEN the philosophers of Ancient Greece had spent many generations in wrangling about the origin of heaven and earth and the nature of the gods, there arose at last amongst them a quiet questioner, by whom their sophistries were dissipated into empty air, and who showed them that their splendid theories were vain and barren, and that the proper study for mankind, was not to guess and speculate about the nature of the gods in heaven, but rather to observe the workings of the Deity on earth-not to speculate on things beyond their reach, but humbly "to learn to know themselves," for "the proper study of mankind is man." And this questioner, after much ridicule and persecution, was acknowledged as the wisest man and true philosopher of Greece; and all the thinking world has since admitted, that this poor man, who taught mostly in the streets, whose dress was thin and torn, whose

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countenance was rugged and ungainly-his name was Socrates-was indeed the most sensible and useful person in the Grecian world; and that by making men take heed to their own ways and elevate their own lives, he had virtually brought down the gods to dwell upon the earth-for, as was afterwards said by a greater than Socrates-"The kingdom of God is within you."

And so, in the five previous poets of this course, we have passed through a period of wrangling and revolution, of questioning and speculation, about the existence of the Deity and the destiny of men and nations.

But now we come at last to the quiet student Wordsworth-the Socrates of his age—the truthful and minute observer of things, not in the heights, nor in the coloured glow of passion, but in the common lowly light of earth -for Wordsworth is the single-eyed, impartial studier of man as man-divested of all distinctions of rank, or creed, or place, or power; a seer he was, to whom a mountain side or garden plot was a fair epitome of the entire earth, to whom the humblest peasant was a fitting type of all mankind, and whose own heart and mind and feelings supplied a proper sample of all the enduring qualities of the human race. Wordsworth is a man whose entire life was passed in following the Socratic maxim-in learning to know himself and in studying man and nature.

Wordsworth is above all a quiet, philosophic thinkerwhat Francis Bacon did for Science, by bringing it back to the bed-rock of elemental facts and strict experiment, that, William Wordsworth did for Poetry. He looked on everything in its most bare and elementary form; he discarded every sham and unreality; he brushed away all tinsel, padding, and inflation; he rejected all hollow, hign-flown rhetoric, and all foreign, ornate, or superfluous words from poetry; "Because," he said, "to be a truthful representation of how men actually speak and think in real everyday life, poetry should use only plain and every-day words, and differ in no respect from earnest or impassioned prose.'

And he was also among the first to see and to state that there is as much humanity and feeling, as much of

moral and religious conflict, or even as much poetry, in the lives and trials of the lowliest, commonest peoplein "Goody Blake" and "Harry Gill," in "The Beggars," or "The Idiot Boy," as in the lives and fates and feats of emperors and nobles; and that nine-tenths of the human race belong to the humbler class; and as all were alike in the eyes of their Creator, so there could be, and there should be, no intrinsic difference in the eye and treatment of the thinking, truthful poet-Indeed, as Abraham Lincoln said, God must have loved the common people, He made so many of them; and Wordsworth saw"How that not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called," but how the foolish things and the weak have been chosen to confound the wise and the mighty:

As he wrote in a child's Album:

Small service is true service, while it lasts;

Of friends, however humble, scorn not one;
The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,

Protects the lingering dew-drop from the Sun.

And for the same reason, the commonest weed or flower, the tiniest blade of grass peeping from the clods in Spring, the gentlest ruffle on the stagnant pool, "The Kitten playing with the falling leaves," the lonesome bird on the morass, the flying cloud, the rugged crag, the unseen murmuring rill, or the briar of the wold, were all as natural and as needful and as noble, as the giant oak, the kingly lion, the boundless ocean, or as the most immense and towering productions of that common Nature, which had made and cherished all.

For as Wordsworth says:

To me the meanest flower that blows

Can give thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.

And again he wrote:

Let other bards of angels sing,
Bright suns without a spot;

But thou art no such perfect thing-
Rejoice that thou art not.

For if thou wert in all men's view
A universal show,

What would my fancy have to do
My feelings to bestow?

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,

Whose veil is unremoved,

Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

This was a new theme-hitherto unsung; and it was made stranger still to conteniporary ears by its novel phraseology. It seemed to the minds of all men then, an infantine and stupid work, thus to fetter oneself down to talking in man's dullest words, about the dullest characters, and Nature's dullest works.

It was this that made Wordsworth the ridicule and pity of two whole generations. It is this that will keep him from being highly popular with people who love colour, brilliancy, society, excitement; with people in the full force and flower of life; or with people who dread a simple, logical sermon or lecture? But to children, to people loving the country, to those for whom excitement and society have little charm, to those who yearn for things substantial, uncoloured, real, tender, true-to such, at least, and to others also, Wordsworth is a friend and guide, and a book for daily food.

Wordsworth was born in the town of Cockermouth, among the hills of Cumberland, April 7, 1770. His father was lawyer to Lord Lonsdale, and his ancestors had lived, and had been buried, among the contiguous mountains, probably since the Saxon conquest of Britain in the 7th century. His parents died when he was still a boy. He went to Hawkshead School, by Hawkshead Lake, where he was free to wander, morning, noon, and night, among the mountains, or to roam nutting or birdsnesting through the woods, or to skate or row or swim along the lake. He went to St. John's College, Cambridge. He tried for no honours, and seemed a somewhat rough and ordinary Northman. But his leisure gave him time for general observation. After three years at the great University, he left with his B.A. degree at the age of 21.

Like most young men of spirit in that agitated period,

he was enthusiastic for the great French Revolution. After leaving Cambridge he worked for a time on a London newspaper, and then went to Paris, remaining in France about a year. He went back to France for the following year, and witnessed the ravages of the great September massacre. He made some friends among the rising generals, and wished to become an officer in the French revolutionary army. But his means, which were always small, were now cut off to bring him home. Soon afterwards, when he saw horrors heaped on horrors' head by the "Reign of Terror," when he saw the deliverers of the people become their tyrants, he gave up those socalled patriots of France, and saw with sorrow the cause of Reason prostrate in the dust. His enthusiasm became sick and wearied out with the see-saw of parties and contrarieties, and he yielded up all hope of France and Europe, and all moral questions, in despair. He lost all feelings of conviction, and all belief in anything. His heart was hardened against man and God.

After some wanderings in the south of England and in Germany, he returned, about his 30th year, to settle down among the hills and scenes of his youth; and he there resided till he had turned the fourscore years, and was gathered to his fathers, like a shock of grain fully ripe.

Now, every man, every writer, and especially every poet, has got some new word or mission to the world; and if we would fully understand a new writer, particularly a poet, it is of no use coming to him, as Ruskin says, with our prejudices, or preconceived ideas of what he ought to be. If we do, we will never learn his lessons, nor get any good from him. Instead of reading him into ourselves, we will only read ourselves into him-only get compressed in our own narrowmindedness.

Let us, then, imagine a man like this William Wordsworth, of an observant, cultured mind, born and bred and schooled among the lakes and woods and mountains, where the spirits of his people for a thousand years were gathered round the hills; a man who had felt the intellect of universities, had watched the glow and glitter of society in mighty cities, and the heat and passion of