Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/767

* WORDSWORTH. 655 WORKHOUSE. Poems, chiefly of early and late years (1842) ; The I'rclnde, a highly interesting autobiographi- cal i)oi'ni (jxisthumous, 1850) ; and The l{ecluse,ti fragment (1888). Wordsworth also issued col- lected editions of his work, containing revisions and additions, in 1820, 1827, 18;J2, 188(i-37, 1843, 1840, and 1849-.')0. It was Wordsworth's aim to dejjiet the elemental passions in unatVeeted lan- guage, and in his best work he succeeded — though his simplicity sometimes overreaches itself and becomes mere tedious cliildisliness. In his in- spired moments, "Nature herself," said Matthew Arnold, "seemed to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating ]iower." Wordsworth's passion for nature and his insistence on the brotherhood of man passed into the thought of the nineteenth century, and in course of time permeated it. Though Burns and Cowper and Crablie had de- scribed nature before him, it was his to take up what Arnold has called the office of modern poetr.y, the moral interpretation of nature. He held a sort of Neo-Platonic, almost pantheistic, view' of the existence of a soul, something con- scious and all but divine, in nature. In his choice of subjects, too, he vindicated the possi- bility of treating the lives and emotions of the humblest classes in a strain of deep poetry. BiBLiOGE.PiiY. For works, consult Poetical and Prose ^yorks, together with Dorotin/ Words- icorth's Journals, ed. by W. Knight (Eversley series, 16 vols., London and New York, 1896 et seq.) ; Poetical Works, ed. by Knight (8 vols., Edinburgh, 1882-8G) ; by E. A. Dowden (Aldine edition, 7 vols., London, 1893) ; by J. Morley (1 vol., London and New York, 1888) ; reprints of the 1807 edition of Poems by Hutchinson (ib., 1897); Prose Worls, including essays of great interest to one wishing to follow the poet's opinions, ed. by A. B. Grosart (6 vols., ib.. 1876) ; and A Deseriplioii of the Wordsworth and C'olc- ridfle Manuscripts in the Possession of T. N. Longman, ed. by W. Hale White (London and New York, 1897). Consult biographies by Chris- topher Wordsworth (London, 1S51); by W. Knight (ib., 1889) ; bv F. W. IMeyers (English Men" of Letters Series," ib., 1881) ;" by Elizabeth Wordsworth (ib., 1891) : La jennesse de Words- north, by Emile Legouis (Paris, 1896; English trans, by J. W. Matthews, London, 1897) ; Words<n:orlh, seiii Lehen seine Wcrke, by M. Gothien (Halle, 1898). Critical estimates are contained in these works. For further appre- ciations, consult Coleridge, De Quincey. R. H. Hutton, Matthew Arnold (the very best, in Es- SOI/.9 ill Criticism, second series), J. R. IjOwell, Aubrey de Vere, Dean Church, Stopford Brooke, Dowden, and Swinburne. The best work on Wordsworth's historical place in English poetry is The Age of Word-sn-orth, by C. H. Herford (London, 1897) : and a thoughtful monograph by Walter Raleigh (ib.. 1903) is well worth study. On Sejitendier 29. 1880, a Wordsworth Society w-as formed, and its last meeting was held on .July 9. 1886. Hs valuable transac- ' tions were published at Edinburgh in eight vol- umes. A selection from his papers under the title Wordsworth iana was edited by W. Knight (London, 1S89). Consult also A Wordsworth Dictionarti of Persons and Places, by J. R. Tutin (Hull, 1891). WORK (AS. wcorc, OHG. werah, -were, Ger. ^'crk, work; connected with Gk. 6^701-, ergon, work, Av. rarn::, to do). The work done by a body is defined as the product of the force it pro- duces, and the distance in the direction of the force through which it acts; in angular motion it is the product of the angular displacement and the moment of the force acting. Work is done whenever energy is transferred from one body to another. (See JIeciianics and E.nergetics.) The unit of work on the C. G. S. system is the erg, or a force of one dyne acting through a <listance of one centimeter. A more practical unit is the joule, which is 10' ergs. On the foot- pound system, the unit of work is that recpiired to raise one pound one foot vertically against the force of gravity at sea-level at latitude 45°; this unit is called a 'foot-pound.' It equals 1.383 joules, appro.ximately. WORK, Henry Clay (1832-84). An Ameri- can songwriter and inventor, born at Middle- town, Conn. In boyhood he was taken to Illinois by his father. Returning to Connecticut, Work was apprenticed to a printer, studied harmony, and achieved universal popularity during the Civil War by his songs, among which the most popular were "Kingdom Coming," "Marching Through Georgia" (1865), "Babylon. Is Fallen." He wrote also temperance songs, the best known of which is "Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now." and sentimental melodies, as "Jly Grandfather's Clock" and "Lilly Dale." He was an inventor and, among other things, patented a knitting maoliine, a walking doll, and a rotary engine. WORKHOUSE. A name given, in England, to establishments for the segregation and main- tenance of paupers; sometimes in the L'nited States, to institutions in which vagrants, drunk- ards, and other minor offenders are detained on short sentences and at labor, but which are usually and rightly known as houses of correc- tion. The institutions established in London and Westminster during the reign of Charles II., which are commonly referred to as the first Eng- lish workhouses, were in reality houses of cor- rection to which vagabonds and other pett_y of- fenders were committed. William III., in creat- ing the Board of Trade, instructed its members to "consider the proper methods of setting on work and employing the poor, and making them useful." The idea was in the air that a work- house, in the literal sense of the word, could be made an effective discouragement of unnecessary pauperism. In 1676 John Gary, a merchant of Bristol, brought about the building and opening of a workhouse in that city. The experiment was so successful that it was followed by the cities of Plymouth, Worcester, Hull, and Exeter. John Locke about tliis time, w-riting the first re- port of the Board of Trade, made a stong plea for the technical instruction as well as the com- pulsory industry of the dependent elements of society, but the public was well enough satisfied with a scheme of segregation and hard work so long as it diminished the burden of the support of the poor. And so remarkable in fact was the suppression of vagrancy and the lowering of the poor rate by the workhouse experiments which have been mentioned, tluit in 1722 a general act of Parliament autliorized parishes, singly or in