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728 WORDSWORTH cursion to North Wales ; and in the autumn of 1791 began a second tour in France, where he sympathized with the revolution. He remained about a year in Orleans, Blois, and Paris, and returned to England just in time, as he after- ward acknowledged, to save him from the guil- lotine. He settled in London, and published in 1793 two poems in the heroic couplet, "An Evening Walk, addressed to a Young Lady," and " Descriptive Sketches, taken during a Pe- destrian Tour among the Alps," which attracted little notice. In his republican zeal, he pro- posed in an unpublished letter to the bishop of Llandaff to abolish the monarchy and the peer- age. He was indignant that England made war against France, and, after witnessing oa the Isle of Wight the equipment of the fleets, strayed toward Wales, and began in the Spenserian stanza the poem of " Guilt and Sorrow," which did not appear entire till 1842. In 1795 he re- ceived a legacy of 900 from Raisley Calvert, a young friend whom he had attended for sev- eral months in his last illness. A further sum of 8,500 was paid to the family in 1802, to be divided among five children, as arrears due from the earl of Lonsdale, and Wordsworth now resolved to make poetry his sole business. In the autumn of 1795 he settled at Racedown in Somersetshire, with his sister Dorothy, his asso- ciate during the remainder of his life. There he began the tragedy of " The Borderers," which was published in 1842. In June, 1797, Coleridge visited him, and they became friends for life. Subsequently, to be near Coleridge, the Words- worths removed to Alfoxden, Somersetshire. In November, 1797, the poets started on a pedestrian tour through the surrounding coun- try, and began a joint composition. Coleridge suggested the thome of " The Ancient Mari- ner," to which his partner contributed one or two ideas. But they soon discovered that the supernatural was the stronghold of the one, and the natural of the other ; and they began to concentrate their powers upon separate poems. Their roving and contemplative habits laid them under suspicion, and the agent of the landlord at Alfoxden refused to let the house to Wordsworth any longer. This determined the two poets and Miss Wordsworth to make a trip to Germany, and to raise the requisite funds the volume entitled u Lyrical Ballads " was offered to Joseph Cottle of Bristol. He offered 30 guineas for Wordsworth's portion ; made a separate bargain with Coleridge for " The Ancient Mariner," the first piece in the collection ; printed 500 copies (1798) ; and soon after sold the larger part of the impression at a loss to a London publisher, and presented the copyright, as of no value, to Wordsworth. The volume was an experiment upon the pub- lic taste as to how far the humblest subjects and language " really used by men " should be deemed fit for poetry ; and it was universally neglected, ridiculed, or condemned. Mean- time Wordsworth sailed from Yarmouth, had interviews with Klopstock at Hamburg, re- mained several months at Goslar, returned to England in the spring of 1799, and soon after took up his residence with his sister at Grasmere, in Westmoreland. In 1800 appeared a second edition of the " Lyrical Ballads," in two volumes, with the addition of many new pieces, and with an exposition in prose of the principles on which as a poet he professed to write. They were reprinted in 1802 and 1805, and became popular with a large class. In 1802 Wordsworth married Miss Mary Hutch- inson of Penrith, whom he had known from childhood, and on whom he wrote the lines, "She was a phantom of delight." In 1803, on a tour through Scotland, in company with his sister and Coleridge, he made the acquain- tance of Sir Walter Scott and Sir George Beau- mont. His sister's journal of this tour, edited by Principal Shairp, was first made public in 1874. In 1807 he published two new volumes of "Poems," the sale of which was almost stopped by the contempt and ridicule of Jef- frey in the " Edinburgh Review." In 1809 Wordsworth published an essay on the conven- tion of Cintra, which he strongly condemned ; and from that time he became a conservative. He removed in 1808 to Allan Bank, and in 1813 to Rydal Mount, in sight of Lake Windermere, his residence for the remainder of his life, the grounds and gardens of which were skilfully embellished under his direction. In 1813 also he was appointed distributor of stamps in the county of Westmoreland, an office which af- forded him over 500 a year. It had long been his aim to compose a vast philosophical poem, as an introduction to which he com- pleted in 1805 " The Prelude," first published posthumously in 1850, containing a record of the cultivation and progress of his own powers. The main poem, entitled " The Recluse," was to consist of three parts; but only the sec- ond part, entitled "The Excursion" (1814), was over published. In 1815 appeared u Tho White Doe of Ryestone," a romantic narrative poem, to which he assigned the highest place among his productions; in 1819 the serio- comic tales of " Peter Bell " and " The Wag- oner," both of which had been written many years before, and were severely attacked ; and in 1822 a collection of sonnets and poems under the title of "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent," soon followed by his series of ecclesiastical sonnets. His whole income from his literary labors had not in 1819 amount- ed to 140. But his reputation rose rapidly from 1830 to 1840; in 1839 the degree of D. C. L. was conferred on him by the university of Oxford ; in 1842 he was permitted to re- sign his office to his second son, and received a pension of 800; and in 1843 he succeeded Southey as poet laureate. lie published a col- lected edition of his poems in 1842, arranging them in a new order according to subjects. His complete prose works, including "An Apology for the French Revolution," various letters and speeches on education, two essays