Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/410



is this musing Pilgrim of Poesy, wandering amid the lakes and mountains of Cumberland? For fifty years his name has been a centre-point of controversy and criticism in English literature. He has been in turns satirized and eulogized, scorned and worshipped, feebly imitated, and flippantly assailed. How little that can excite us in the story of that calm career! How much in it to interest and instruct! For this man stepped aside from the stir and strife of the outer world to those romantic solitudes with which his name will be for ever associated. Here he worked out his self-adopted mission, and toiled at his labour of love. To that long seclusion, and that laborious self-teaching, we owe all that he has left to us. To that steady self-reliance and cherished unity of purpose are due every beauty and every fault of that genius which has so much influenced the thought and changed the taste of our generation.

William Wordsworth was the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney. He was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland. His lineage, both on his father and mother's