Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/253

 to Beaupuy, and one main secret of their sympathy is revealed in an anecdote. They met a 'hunger-bitten girl' leading a heifer by a cord tied to her arm, while she was 'knitting in a heartless mood of solitude.' 'Tis against that that we are fighting,' said his friend. Wordsworth took the Revolution to mean the destruction of 'abject poverty' by the abolition of exclusive privileges and the elevation of human beings intrusted with power over their own lives. He caught the contagion of the patriotic enthusiasm with which the French rose to meet their invaders in 1792. He became so hearty a sympathiser that he was almost inclined to join in some active movement, and might, he remarks, have ended his career by the guillotine. He was forced, probably by stress of money, to return to England, passing through Paris soon after the September massacres; and might have said afterwards, as Bolingbroke said to Atterbury, that he was being exchanged for Paine, who had just crossed in the opposite direction.

So far Wordsworth's case was not peculiar. He shared the sentiments of most generous and intelligent young men at the dawn of a new era.