As soon as the child is able to run alone, the door is open to him, and, free to play and frolic as he pleases, he seeks at once the companionship of his favourite river:

Oh, many a time have I, a five years' child,
In a small mill-race severed from his stream,
Made one long bathing of a summer's day;
Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again
Alternate, all a summer's day, or scoured
The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves
Of yellow ragwort; or when rock and hill,
The woods and distant Skiddaw's lofty height,
Were bronzed with deepest radiance, stood alone
Beneath the sky, as if I had been born

On Indian plains, and from my mother's hut
Had run abroad in wantonness, to sport,
A naked savage, in the thunder shower.1

Left thus to himself, the child experiences, on more than one occasion, the dread of the mysterious and unseen; that influence which, in Goethe's opinion, should be allowed free exercise during the growth of the imagination. At times Wordsworth went to play in the green courts of Cockermouth Castle, near which he dwelt. There, after boldly climbing to pluck the flowers which waved around the shattered stronghold, he once happened to enter the dungeon of the keep, where he became "a prey to soulappalling darkness." Thus was it that his young thoughts were made "acquainted with the grave." 2

Not always, however, were the amusements of the child so solitary, or so wild in character. William had an elder brother, and two others younger than himself. But his especial companion was his sister Dorothy, who, twenty months his junior, shed, even over the sports of his childhood, that gracious influence so precious to him in later years. Gifted with a sensibility always exquisitely alert, always strung to the highest pitch, the child was already able to give her brother eyes and ears, " and humble cares, and delicate fears." When, during an excursion to Whitehaven, she heard for the first time the sound of the sea,

1 The Prelude, i, 288-300. 2 Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle

To

she burst into tears.1 She was well adapted to awaken in her brother's less tender heart the sentiment of love. gether they went to look at the blue eggs in the sparrow's nest, so closely ensconced amidst the thick leafage of rose and privet against the terrace-wall :

She looked at it and seemed to fear it;
Dreading, tho' wishing, to be near it:
Such heart was in her, being then
A little Prattler among men.2

Together they chased the butterflies; he, like a true hunter, rushing upon the prey, while she "feared to brush. the dust from off its wings." 3

Doubtless William too was capable of these transports of tender emotion, but his disposition retained more of impetuosity and strength. He was a true boy, and none of the gentlest. From his earliest childhood he breathed

Among wild appetites and blind desires,

Motions of savage instinct his delight

And exaltation.

Nothing so fascinated him as dangerous feats. Already he sought

Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags,
And tottering towers; he loved to stand and read
Their looks forbidding, read and disobey,

Sometimes in act, and evermore in thought.1

The same fearless disposition drove him to set at defiance such of his relations as had no hold on his affections. Before he had completed his eighth year he was stubborn, wayward and intractable. His unmanageable temper became particularly manifest at Penrith, on the occasion of a long visit to his mother's relations. The Cooksons seem to have been narrow and unyielding people, suspicious and harsh in their treatment of children, whom they did not hesitate to address with reproach and insult. One day, when an undeserved indignity had been put upon him, William went up to the attic with the firm intention of

1 Evening Voluntaries, vi., Prefatory note.

3 To a Butterfly.

2 The Sparrow's Nest. 4 The Recluse, 723-734.

killing himself with one of the foils which he knew to be kept there. He took down the weapon, but his courage failed him.1

At times he actually provoked punishment. On one occasion when, with his elder brother Richard, he was whipping tops in the drawing-room, the walls of which were hung round with family pictures, he cried: "Dare you strike your whip through that old lady's petticoat?" "No," replied Richard. Then here goes!" And he struck his lash through the hooped petticoat of his venerable ancestress. Doubtless, Wordsworth tells us, he was properly punished, but, possibly from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, he had become hardened to all chastisement, and was rather proud of it than otherwise. We find his mother informing a friend of hers that the only one of her five children whose future caused her any anxiety was William. He will be remarkable, she added, either for good or for evil.3

Mrs Wordsworth did not survive to see her fears proved groundless. She died when her son was only eight years old. Too young to retain more than a vague recollection of her, he nevertheless remembered her pinning a nosegay to his breast before sending him to church to say the catechism:

O lost too early for the frequent tear,

And ill requited by this heart-felt sigh! 4

Not in such fashion alone, however, did he requite her to whom he owed the happiness of his infancy, and who, as the first to foresee his genius, had awakened his gratitude. To his father, whom he was not to lose until six years later, Wordsworth has not devoted a single line; indeed, the Father, the earliest visible presentation of right judgment, occupies but an inconspicuous place in poetry, especially in that of our own days. It is the faded image

1 Autobiographical Memoranda, dictated by Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, November 1847. (The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, edited by the Rev. Alexander Grosart, London, 1876, Vol. III., pp. 219-224.)

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid. And see H. C. Robinson's Diary, 2 Feb. 1836.

4 Ecclesiastical Sonnets, iii. 22.

of his mother, for him the personification of intuitive wisdom, that he has striven to revive. He has filled in her shadowy figure by means of knowledge acquired later; and partly by aid of memory, partly by conjecture, has sketched a gracious portrait of the homely guide to whom he owed his early education, and who allowed his young imagination to develop itself in freedom.

She, not falsely taught,
Fetching her goodness rather from times past,
Than shaping novelties for times to come,
Had no presumption, no such jealousy,
Nor did by habit of her thoughts mistrust
Our nature, but had virtual faith that He
Who fills the mother's breast with innocent milk,
Doth also for our nobler part provide,
Under His great correction and control,
As innocent instincts, and as innocent food;
Or draws for minds that are left free to trust
In the simplicities of opening life

Sweet honey out of spurned or dreaded weeds.
This was her creed, and therefore she was pure
From anxious fear of error or mishap,
And evil, overweeningly so called;
Was not puffed up by false unnatural hopes,
Nor selfish with unnecessary cares,

Nor with impatience from the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are, than from regard
Glanced on their promises in restless pride.1
Such was she-not from faculties more strong
Than others have, but from the times, perhaps,
And spot in which she lived, and through a grace
Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness,

A heart that found benignity and hope,
Being itself benign.2

Mrs Wordsworth had not however neglected the

1 Mrs Wordsworth thought, with Julie, that "La Nature veut que les enfans soient des enfans avant que d'être hommes. Si nous voulons pervertir cet ordre, nous produirons des fruits précoces, qui n'auront ni maturité ni saveur, et ne tarderont pas à se corrompre; nous aurons de jeunes docteurs et de vieux enfans. Nouvelle Héloïse, Part V., letter 3.

2 The Prelude, v. 267-293.

education of her son. She had been his first teacher, giving him instruction in reading, while his father made him learn by heart passages from Shakspeare, Milton and Spenser. The death of a mother who had been "the heart and hinge" of five youthful intelligences was the signal for the dispersion of the family. The two elder children required a more advanced course of instruction than could be obtained in the small schools of Cockermouth and Penrith. Their father, who, after the death of his wife, never recovered his usual cheerfulness, was unable by himself to manage his business, and at the same time to attend to the education of his children. Accordingly, in 1778, William and his brother Richard were dispatched to Hawkshead Grammar School.