It was a long time, however, before Wordsworth could understand Nature,--before he could make out what she would be at, in dodging him in his ordinary paths, and haunting him in his solitary hours. True, he was always very fond of the beautiful and terrible Mother; loved her storm-wrath, and wind-wrath; her golden and voluptuous sunshine; her rivers and brooklets; her mountains, lakes, dells, and the flowery bespanglement of her green and rustling kirtle. But this was all. He did not know that this love was merely initial,--the basework of a deeper passion--the basement of a divine wisdom. And although he was always a wayward and lonely boy, yet he _was_ a boy, and his roots did not strike up precociously, and burst him into a man at once; but took time to grow; so that the boy was father to the man. Neither would Nature allow him to brood too intently over her wonders and loveliness, but took him gently captive, in a sort of side-winds, or brief revelations of herself, in his rambles and hunting sports; for he was made of too good stuff to be spoilt by any over-doings--and she was jealous of her favourite. It was very fortunate for Wordsworth that his early life was cast in the midst of such magnificent scenery, as that of Cumberland, for it acted powerfully upon his mind, and helped to mould his character, and develope his genius. School did very little for him, nor College, nor even books, until a comparatively late period of his life. But both nature and poetry had always a great and transcendent charm for him. As a boy, at Cockermouth he obtained the rudiments of learning from the Rev. W. Gillbanks; and his father, who was a man of vigorous character, and considerable culture and scholarship, initiated him into the pantheon of poetry, by repeating to him the finest passages of Shakspeare, Milton, and Spenser, which the boy subsequently committed to memory. But he was frequently refractory in his conduct, and peevish in his temper. His mother, whom he loved much, and who died before he was eight years of age, had at times terrible misgivings about her darling son, on these accounts, although I find no record to justify her in her forebodings. He was certainly a wild little fellow, full of animal spirits, which never flagged, with a little of the dare-devil in him: but this is natural enough in a healthy boy. Wordsworth, in alluding to his mother’s dread of the “evil chance” of his life, gives us an anecdote, with the intention of justifying her, which seems to me very comical in such connection. “I remember going once,” he says, “into the attics of my grandfather’s house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in my hand, but my heart failed me.