Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/436

422 "wayward wilfulness, petulant pride, and random recklessness." Any mention of the wilful impetuosity which led him in childhood to attempt suicide, will perhaps redound to his praise, when we remember by what a creditable self-discipline he afterwards subdued his temper. But there is something less pardonable in his University career. In this he manifested a want of heart and geniality. Whatever the faults of the system and the authorities, Wordsworth cannot escape his share of blame. If not culpably idle, he was doggedly indifferent to the numberless advantages to be gained in such a seat of learning. Though coming up to the University possessed of great talents, and those well cultivated, he refused to write for prizes and compete for honours. Had he been the hero of a debating club, or the leader of "a fast set," we might have regretted energies misdirected to the incompetent discussion of contemporaneous topics, or time wasted by the wayward play of the passions. But Wordsworth avoided such mistakes; and although he admits that he dressed with something of splendour and with elaborate precision, mentions the fact of his getting tipsy in rooms once occupied by Milton, in that tone of maudling childishness with which one gentle "freshman" boasts to another, over tea and marmalade of the daring impiety with which he has that morning absented himself from chapel.

His mental deficiencies are, however, far more glaring than his positive faults. It was a fond and vapid enthusiasm that led him on a sudden to throw himself into the popular side in France; but this impulse, at first only foolish, degenerated into a morbid and guilty feeling when he exulted in the destruction of the troops of his own country, who were, even on the hypothesis that the war was unjustifiable, at least fighting in obedience to orders. There is nothing, too, which is admirable in the suddenness with which he abandoned his early opinions, and