CHAPTER III

Cambridge (1787-1791)

I

ONE day, just before the commencement of the Christmas holidays in 1783, Wordsworth, feverish at the prospect of departure, had climbed a great mass of rock which stood. at the junction of two roads, and commanded a distant view of both. Here, "scout-like," he stationed himself, watching impatiently for the horses which were to be sent by his father to fetch him and his brothers, and might come by either of the two roads. The day was tempestuous, dark, and wild. Seated upon the grass, at a spot where a bare wall afforded him a meagre shelter, the schoolboy had no companion save a solitary sheep on his right hand, while to his left stood a blasted hawthorn. Long he remained there, gazing intently before him, till his eyes grew weary with peering into space whenever the parting mist gave him an occasional glimpse of wood and plain below.

Ten days later, during the vacation to which he had looked forward so eagerly, the lad, with his three brothers, followed their parent's lifeless form to the grave. With superstitious simplicity he concluded that his affliction was sent as a punishment for his impatience, and however. trivial its cause might be, the repentance with which he "bowed low to God, Who thus corrected" his desires, was both deep and sincere. So strong was the impression, that often in later days he recalled the stormy night and wild landscape, the scene of his guilty impatience, that he might "drink, as at a fountain," from the recollection. Often, too, from that time forward, the mere sound of the wind, as it stirred the leaves or whistled around the house,

was sufficient to fill him with a deep emotion capable of beguiling "thoughts over busy in the course they took."1

The serious consequences which the death of their father seemed likely to entail upon Wordsworth and his brothers were probably at first concealed from him by this singular remorse and by his childish grief. Although the father had been in a fair way of attaining wealth and reputation, he left his children in a precarious position. Almost the whole of his fortune was in the hands of his patron, Sir James Lowther, who had compelled his steward to entrust him with £5000. Sir James, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale, has been described by De Quincey 2 as a potentate proud of his rank, his vast estates, and his authority as lord-lieutenant, and eccentric to the verge of madness. A thorough feudal chief, it was his delight to convince himself of his power and to demonstrate it to others by frequent violations of both law and justice. At one period of his life he refused to pay any of his creditors; some, because they were his neighbours and he knew them to be knaves; others because they lived so far off that he really could not find out what they were. It was for some such reason as this that he refused during the remainder of his life to discharge his debt to the children of his steward. An action was brought in their name, but when the case came before the court at Carlisle, Lord Lonsdale had retained every counsel on the circuit, and appeared in court with a hundred witnesses. The judge ordered the case to stand over, and the Wordsworth family did not recover their property until after Lord Lonsdale's death, nearly twenty years later. The remainder of their father's fortune was almost entirely spent in futile proceedings against the debtor. Their guardians had the greatest difficulty in raising the sum required to enable Wordsworth and his

1 The Prelude, xii. 287-335.

2 De Quincey, op. cit., vol. ii., pp. 252-255.

3 Letter from Wordsworth to Sir George Beaumont, Feb. 20th, 1805 (W. Knight, Life of Wordsworth, i. p. 98) and "Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into Bankruptcy and Insolvency" (ibid., ii. pp. 38-39). See also letter of Dorothy Wordsworth, Dec. 7th, 1792 (ibid., i. p. 52).

brothers to complete their studies at Hawkshead, where Wordsworth, who was thirteen and a half years old when his father died, remained until 1787. But a time of trial, which the holidays, spent during the last three years at Penrith, must have led him to anticipate, awaited him on leaving school. It has been mentioned that his mother's parents were stern, and wanting in natural affection. Dorothy Wordsworth, who lived with them, and was obliged to render assistance in their shop, unbosoms herself in her letters to one of her friends, and makes endless complaints of their harshness and narrow-mindedness. The incessant lectures of her grandmother upon the duty of being sedate and docile stifled her lively imagination and chilled the impulsive warmth of her affections. Her letters remind one of the sufferings of Aurora Leigh under her aunt's cold and mechanical guardianship. The maiden of the "wild eyes" felt keenly the loss of her open-air life, and was miserable on sunny week days because she could only go out on Sunday. No doubt she presented a somewhat forbidding countenance to the Cooksons' customers, who constantly interrupted her when she wanted to read the books which her brother William had lent her. She was very fond of the Iliad, but she could only snatch the time to read it in secret, and to study French, by doing the work of two hours in one. She had no joys but in the affection of her four brothers; her only happy days were those which saw them all united under one roof. They too, however, had to suffer from the harshness and ill-will of their relations, who frequently called them liars, and left them exposed to the worst kind of mortification, the insults of servants. The eldest seems to have been of a more pliant and submissive disposition, but the others would gather around their sister and shed tears of the bitterest sorrow over the melancholy lot which the death of their parents had brought upon them.1

But the loss of their fortune, while it caused them many hardships at the threshold of life, compelled them to make sure of a livelihood as early as possible. Deprived of their

1 W. Knight, Life of Wordsworth. See the letters of Dorothy Wordsworth on pp. 35-36 and 47-49, vol. i.

inheritance by an act of high-handed injustice, they could scarcely have entered life under more unfavourable auspices; yet this did not prevent any of them from reaching a position of honour or of fame. The eldest, who followed his father's profession, went to London, and in spite of very moderate abilities became a prosperous solicitor. John Wordsworth, the third son, chose a seafaring career, and entering the eastern mercantile service, embarked on a large vessel of which he ultimately became the captain. The fourth son, Christopher, still a schoolboy at Hawkshead, was already giving evidence of a tractable intelligence united with perseverance. He had a brilliant career as a student at Cambridge, where he afterwards became a professor, and finally rose to be Master of Trinity, one of the principal colleges of his University.

Of the four sons, William alone gave his guardians any trouble or cause for anxiety. Though his genius was as yet unsuspected by others and even by himself, he exhibited remarkable qualities of mind. But he was impatient of advice, self-confident, and unable to apply himself to any prescribed employment. He was quite unconscious of what is called a vocation. Inspired, no doubt, by the example of his father and his elder brother, he seemed inclined to study law, but the violent headaches to which he was subject made him shrink from an entirely sedentary occupation. Finally his uncles decided to give him a University training, as a necessary preliminary to the bar, the teaching profession, or holy orders. In October 1787, therefore, he set out for Cambridge, in order to enter St John's College as an under-graduate. His age was then seventeen years and a half.

II

The young student entered Cambridge during one of the least brilliant epochs in the history of the old University. It was then in the very last stage of intellectual languor.

1 Letter of Dorothy Wordsworth, 1787 (W. Knight, Life of Wordsworth, i. p. 48).

During the years immediately preceding the violent excitement of the French Revolution, its atmosphere was heavy and drowsy, as if at the approach of a tempest. Classical scholarship had not been represented by a single man of mark since the death of the learned Richard Bentley in 1742, and Porson, the eminent Greek scholar, by whom it was revived, did not receive his appointment as professor until 1793. To tell the truth, learning was not in high repute at Cambridge, which was more especially the stronghold of Anglicanism and the nursery of the clergy.1

It was natural that the theologians, who had taught or written at Cambridge during the eighteenth century, should, devote all their efforts to the protection of the rising generation of clergy from the dangerous influences which, in an age of great freedom and audacity of thought, might reach them from every corner of Europe. Men such as Conyers Middleton, and, later, Paley, John Hay, and Richard Watson,2 expended the whole vigour of their intellect in devising an antidote to the poison disseminated by deists such as Toland and Collins, or by foes more formidable still-the French Encyclopædists, and David Hume the Scotchman. The cause of religion had sometimes to suffer from the zeal of its defenders. Faithful followers of Locke,3 firmly convinced of the efficacy of their logic, they claimed to demonstrate the authenticity of the sacred writings, the possibility of miracles, and the

1 Dr Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, derived an income of £1000 a year from the Royal Chair of Divinity, of which he was merely the nominal occupant. Porson received only £40 a year as professor of Greek.

2 Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), head librarian at the University, did not lecture, but published a number of controversial pamphlets. Paley, the author of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), still a classic at Cambridge, lectured in philosophy from 1767 to 1775. John Hay occupied the Norrisian chair of theology from 1780 to 1794 On Watson, see the preceding note, and the present work, book ii., ch. iii. Mr Leslie Stephen's excellent work, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols., London, 1881) may be consulted in reference to each of these theologians.

8 Locke seems to have been held in particular esteem at St John's College, where Wordsworth entered as a student. A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine (Jan. 1793), whilst admitting the excessive attention paid to mathematics at Cambridge, makes an exception in favour of St John's, "where, also, there is a proper respect paid to the sagacious Locke and the profound Butler."