Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/417

Rh visitant" to our metropolis. He seems to have looked on London with an eye of romance, and to have revelled in the liberty of a latch-key, without falling into vulgar vices, or idle dissipation. He was an industrious sightseer. St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, the Tower, and the picture-galleries, all came in for their share of his attention. He pored curiously over book-stalls, and loitered to listen to barrel-organs. But the theatre was his chief delight. Night after night, he gazed with rapture on Siddons, and proudly records a visit to "half-rural Sadler's Wells," to see clowns, harlequins, conjurors, and more than all, "the champion Jack the giant-killer." He availed himself of opportunities of hearing all the best speakers of the pulpit, bar, and senate, and has given a masterly account of the impression produced on him by the eloquence of Burke.

After hearing this mighty master of oratory "exploding upstart theory" in the British senate, Wordsworth was quite carried away by the very different sentiments propounded by the speakers in the National Assembly, and at the Club of the Jacobins. At Orleans, he at first moved in the higher and more polished circles, from which political discussion was carefully excluded; but growing weary of this coldness and punctilio, he mingled with the people, adopted their cause, and "became a patriot." In his autobiography, he apologises for having with such ardour embraced republican opinions. His education, he thinks, had predisposed him to these views. He had lived in a sequestered nook of the country, had enjoyed mountain liberty, had there seen nothing of regal power or patrician pomp, and had looked upon the University itself as an intellectual republic, in which individual worth, talent, and industry were of more avail than wealth or title.

He fell into the society of some military men at Orleans, 2