In 1809 the most important of Wordsworth's prose writings was published-a pamphlet of over two hundred pages: "Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal to each other, and to the common enemy, at this crisis; and specifically as affected by the Convention of Cintra." It was begun in November, 1808, and two portions of it were first printed in "The Courier;" the mode of publication in a journal was found unsuitable ; De Quincey undertook to see the work through the press, and in May it was issued, not without some anticipations on the author's part. that it might lead to a government prosecution, and possibly to imprisonment. But

its form and style were little calculated to produce a popular effect. It contains pages of the loftiest eloquence; it is inspired by the most generous passions-indignation, hope, courage, sympathy with the militant virtue of nations; it is a work of masculine thought; but it demands a sustained attention, an ardour of feeling, and a power of spiritually interpreting material fact that are rarely found; and-fatal error-it came too late. If terms over-favourable had been granted to the French by Wellesley in August, he had crossed the Douro and repulsed Soult before the pamphlet appeared in the following May, and a few weeks later the country was rejoicing for the victory at Talavera. What Canning justly described as the most eloquent production since the days of Burke remained unread, and byand-by it was sold as waste paper to the trunkmakers. But for us to-day it lives by the side of "Areopagitica" and the letters on a "Regicide Peace.'

Another prose work, different in character, and somewhat later in date, was not, like the "Convention of Cintra," a heroic failure. This was the “Guide to the Lakes," which originally appeared (1810) without the writer's name as the Introduction to a folio volume containing a series of very ill-executed "Views of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire," by the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson. It is a masterly analysis, in which imagination aids the intellect, of the characteristics of the landscape from which Wordsworth had received impressions both exact and deep, and towards which his spirit had so often gone forth in answer to the summons or challenge of beauty. The Introduction to Wilkinson's folio was afterwards enlarged; it has been frequently republished; and probably no finer example can be found of profound scholarship in what we may term the fine art of Nature.

Meanwhile Wordsworth had not turned away from poetry. During the summer of 1807 he visited for the first time the beautiful country that surrounds Bolton Priory, in Yorkshire, and the romantic narrative poem The White Doe of Rylstone," founded upon a tradition connected with that place, was planned and in great part was written in the closing weeks of the same year. The first half was composed at Stockton-on-Tees, while he was on a visit to his wife's relatives, the Hutchinsons; the poem was advanced towards its conclusion on his return to Dove Cottage; it underwent some re-handling at a later date, and was published in quarto in 1815. "The White Doe" by its narrative character, its revival of the past, and its metrical movement, suggested an ill-judged comparison

with Scott. But Wordsworth did not aim at unfolding a story of prowess abounding in energetic action; his theme was spiritual-the purification and annealing of character through suffering. His own great grief of 1805 had taught him the lesson of affliction; he had previously represented with great power a kind of cruel anguish or misery; now he knew the sanctifying influences of sorrow. "Everything that is attempted by the principal personages in the White Doe' fails"-thus Wordsworth himself comments on his poem-"fails, so far as its object is external and substantial: so far as it is moral and spiritual, it succeeds." The heroine of the poem knows that her duty is not to interfere with the current of events, either to forward or delay them, but

"To abide

The shock, and finally secure

O'er pain and grief a triumph pure.”

The poetry proceeds, as he says, from the soul of man, communicating its creative energies to the images of the external world. It is a spiritual romance founded on abiding realities. of human nature.

In the summer of 1808 Wordsworth and his family moved from Dove Cottage, which they had outgrown, to Allan Bank, a new-built house situated on a small height on the way from Grasmere into Easedale. The gain in space was in part counterbalanced by the discomfort of damp walls and smoky chimneys. Another inmate was added to the household in September-Wordsworth's fourth child, named Catharine; and during several months Coleridge, then occupied with the planning and

publication of his periodical, "The Friend," and De Quincey, presently to become the tenant of Dove Cottage, were guests at Allan Bank. To "The Friend" Wordsworth contributed some political sonnets, some translations of epitaphs by Chiabrera, an "Essay on Epitaphs," afterwards republished among the notes to "The Excursion," and a deep-thoughted letter of "Advice to the Young," written in response to the appeal of John Wilson, who sought for guidance with respect to moral dangers of youth which proceed from intellectual errors. It was at Allan Bank that the greater part of "The Excursion" was written ; but this poem, in which so large a body of Wordsworth's thought, feeling, and experience was embodied, remained in manuscript until 1814. When it was published, Jeffrey in the "Edinburgh Review" pronounced that the author was finally lost to the cause of good poetry; next year the "White Doe," in which Wordsworth exhibits himself "in a state of low and maudlin imbecility," confirmed his critic's worst fears; its one distinction was that of being "the very worst poem we ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume." And though Lamb's article in the "Quarterly Review," even as revised by the editor, expressed a very different feeling, the public in general sided with Jeffrey; five hundred copies of "The Excursion" satisfied the demand of readers during six years. In 1820 Wordsworth told a friend that the whole of his returns-returns, and not net profits-from the "writing trade" did not amount to seven-score pounds. The final verdict on "The Excursion" will probably be that it is of solid worth and deep interest, not

because it is uninterrupted or flawless poetry from beginning to end, but because Wordsworth has put into it a great portion of his mind. It is a broad territory; as such it has indeed level tracts; it has also mountain heights glorified by the sunlight and breathed upon by airs of heaven.

In the spring of 1811 it became necessary to restore Allan Bank to the proprietor, a Liverpool merchant, for the use of his own household, and Wordsworth found a temporary abode at the Parsonage, Grasmere, which stands hard by the churchyard. The dwellingplace was not in itself cheerful, and for Wordsworth and his wife it became a home of sorrow. On June 4th, 1812, his bright and winning Catharine, now four years old, whose gay selfsufficingness he had described in the lines "Loving she is and tractable though wild," died after a short illness; her father's sense of bereavement is expressed in the sonnet, written long afterwards, "Surprised by joy, impatient as the wind." Six months later Thomas died, "of all the children the one"-so Dorothy Wordsworth wrote "who caused us the least of pain and who gave us the purest delight." Three children remained, John and Dorothy, the two eldest, and William, the youngest, who was born at Allan Bank in May, 1810. The afflicted parents felt that they could with difficulty recover tranquillity in a home where the images of their lost children were constantly before them. Wordsworth now was even content to quit his beloved vale of GrasFortunately Rydal Mount, some two. miles distant, a house beautifully placed on the sloping side of Nab's Scar, above Rydal Lake,

mere.