William Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth on the borders of the
beautiful English lake country. During a boyhood spent largely out of
doors, rowing, walking, and skating, he imbibed a love for nature which
had a broader manifestation in his later life and poetry. After a short
period at Hawkshead School, he entered St. John's College, Cambridge,
where he took a degree in 1791. He then resided for a time in France;
but was driven from there in 1793 by the Reign of Terror, and passed a
few years in a rather idle way in the vicinity of London. His real
poetic awakening came in 1797, when he and Coleridge lived near each
other at Alfoxden among the Quantock Hills in Somerset. Here, in 1798,
the two young men published _Lyrical Ballads_, a collection of poems
written for the most part by Wordsworth, though Coleridge contributed
_The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and a few others. This book,
especially in its treatment of nature, was a reaction against the
stilted formalism which had characterized much of the English poetry of
the eighteenth century, and as such it was the real stimulus for the
revival of Romanticism which followed its appearance. After a year in
Germany with his sister Dorothy, Wordsworth returned to the lake region
now associated with his name, living at Grasmere until 1813, and after
that at Rydal Mount. He married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, in 1802.
Among his later important works were _The Prelude_ (1805), _The
Excursion_ (1814), and many shorter poems and sonnets. He was made
poet-laureate in 1843, and died seven years after in 1850.
Wordsworth, though a radical in his youth, became more conservative in
later years. He was a man of quiet tastes, and deliberately chose to
live where he could be among simple people. As a poet, he was first of
all an interpreter of nature, endowed with extraordinary keenness of
observation and delighting in all her phases. In humanity, too, he had a
sympathetic interest, especially in the everyday emotions and
occupations of the plain men and women around him. And influencing his
attitude toward both nature and humanity was a sort of religious
mysticism which conceived the spirit of God as permeating all things,
flowers and trees as well as the human heart.