the poet's mind reverted to Esthwaite and Westmoreland hills, and struck out a number of poems in his finest vein. 'She dwelt among the untrodden ways,' Lucy,' or 'Three years she grew in sun and shower,' 'Ruth,' 'The Poet's Epitaph,' 'Nutting,' 'The Two April Mornings,' 'The Fountain,' 'Matthew,' are all products of this winter. So Wordsworth missed German, and gave the world instead immortal poems. Coleridge went alone to Göttingen, learned German, dived for the rest of his life deep into transcendental metaphysics, and the world got no more Ancient Mariners.

In the spring of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister set forth from Goslar on their return to England. As they left that city behind, and felt the spring breeze fan their cheeks, Wordsworth poured forth that joyful strain with which 'The Prelude' opens. Arrived in their native land, they passed most of the remainder of the year with their kindred, the Hutchinsons, at Sockburn-on-Tees, occasionally travelling into the neighbouring dales and fells of Yorkshire. In September, Wordsworth took Coleridge, who also had returned from abroad, and had seen but few mountains in his life, on a walking tour to show him the hills and lakes of native Westmoreland. 'Haweswater,' Coleridge writes, 'kept my eyes dim with tears, but I received the deepest delight from the divine sisters, Rydal and Grasmere.' It was then that Wordsworth saw the small house at the Town-End of Grasmere, which he and his sister soon after fixed on as their home.

From Sockburn-on-Tees William and Dorothy Wordsworth set forth a little before the shortest day, and walked on foot over the bleak fells that form the watershed of Yorkshire and Westmoreland. As side by side they paced the long dales, and set their faces to the Hambleton hills, the ground was frozen hard under their feet, and the snow-showers were driving against them. Yet they enjoyed the snow-showers, turned aside to see the frozen waterfalls, and stopped to watch the changing drapery of cloud, sunshine, and snow-drift as it coursed the hills. At night they lodged in cottages or small wayside inns, and there, by the kitchen-fire, Wordsworth gave words to the thoughts that had occurred to him during the day. A great part of 'Hart-leap Well' was composed during one of these evenings, from a tradition he had heard that day from a native. And of a sunset seen during the same journey, some of the glory still lives in the sonnet ending

'They are of the sky,

And from our earthly memory fade away.'

The poet and his sister reached Grasmere on the shortest day of the year 1799, and settled in the small two-storeyed cottage at that part of the village called Town-End. The house had formerly been a public-house, with the sign of the Dove and the Olive Bough, but was henceforth to be identified with Wordsworth's poetic prime. The mode of life on which they were entering was one which their friends, no doubt, and most sensible people, called a mad project. With barely a hundred pounds a year

between them, they were turning their back on the world, cutting themselves off from professions, chances of getting on, society, and settling themselves down in an out-of-the-way corner, with no employment but verse-making, no neighbours but the homely dalesmen. When a man makes such a choice, he has need to look well what he does, and to be sure that he can go through with it. In the world's eyes nothing but success will justify such a renunciant, and the world will not be too ready to grant that success has been attained. But Wordsworth, besides a prophet-like devotion to the truths he saw, had a prudence, self-denial, and perseverance, rare among the sons of song. To himself may be applied the words he uses in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, when speaking of another subject than poetry:It is such an animating sight to see a man of genius, regardless of temporary gains, whether of money or praise, fixing his attention solely upon what is interesting and permanent, and finding his happiness in an entire devotion of himself to such pursuits as shall most ennoble human nature. We have not yet seen enough of this in modern times.' He himself showed this sight, if any man of his age did. Plain living and high thinking were not only praised in verse, but acted out by him and his sister in that cottage home.)

The year 1800 was ushered in by a long storm, which blocked up the roads for months, and kept them much indoors. This put their tempers to the proof, but they stood the test.

Spring weather set

them free, and brought to their home a much-loved sailor brother, John, who was captain of an Indiaman. In their frugal housekeeping, the sister, it may be believed, had much to do indoors, but she was always ready, both then and years after, to accompany her brother in his mountain walks. Those who may wish to know more of their abode and way of life, will find an interesting sketch of these given by De Quincey, as he saw them seven years later. There was one small room containing their few books, which was called, by courtesy, the library. But Wordsworth was no reader; the English poets and ancient history were the only two subjects he was really well read in. He tells a friend that he had not spent five shillings on new books in as many years, and of the few old ones which made up his collection he had not read one-fifth. As for his study, that was in the open air. By the side of the brook that runs through Easdale,' he says, 'I have composed thousands of verses: '

'He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.'

Another favourite resort for composition at this time was the tall fir-wood on the hillside above the old road leading from Grasmere to Rydal. Society they found in the families of the 'statesmen' all about. For Grasmere was then, like most of the neighbouring dales, portioned out among small but independent peasant lairds, whose forefathers had ages lived and died on the same farms. With these men Wordsworth and his sister lived on terms

for

of kindliness and equal hospitality. He would receive them to tea in his home, or would go to sup in theirs. If the invitation was to some homestead in a distant vale, the ladies would travel in a cart, the poet walking by its side. Among these men, in their pastoral republic, the life was one of not too laborious industry; the manners were simple, manly, and severe. The statesmen looked after the sheep, grew hay on their own land in the valley, and each could turn out as many sheep to feed on the fell or common (as they call it) during the summer months, as they could provide hay for in the winter. Their chief source of income was the wool from the flock, and this not sold in the fleece, but spun into thread by the wives and daughters. These, with their spinning-wheels, were in high esteem, for they did more to maintain the house than the spade or plough of the husbands. Wordsworth loved this manner of life, not only because he had been familiar with it from childhood; but also because he knew what sterling worth and pure domestic virtues sheltered under these roofs. He lived to see it rudely broken up. Machinery put out the spinning-wheel, and the statesmen's lands passed for the most part into other hands.

The few statesmen's families who survived down to a recent time in and around Grasmere retained an affectionate and reverent remembrance of the 'pawet,' as they in their Westmoreland dialect called him, long after he had left them for Rydal Mount. Many stories I have heard them tell of his ways, while