Ye will forgive the weakness of that hour, In some of its unworthy vanities, Brother to many more.” It is interesting to know all this--to be assured that although Wordsworth was in after life as temperate as Milton--drinking nothing but water, and requiring, indeed, no stimulants but that which healthy and robust exercise afforded--I say it is pleasant to be assured that once in his life our poet did really link himself with the imperfections of man, and by an excess of sympathy got drunk--or as De Quincy calls it, “boozy,”--to the honour and glory of Milton. It is a thing to be pardoned, and is almost the only anecdote of Wordsworth which possesses a really human interest. The rooms which Wordsworth occupied at St. John’s were so situated, that had he been a hard student instead of a gay gownsman, the circumstances which environed them might very materially have affected his studies; for immediately below him ran the great college kitchen, which was continually in an uproar of dissonance with the voices of cooks, and their preparations for the eating necessities of the college members. To atone, however, for this animal riot, the poet could look forth from his pillow by the light “Of moon or favouring stars,” and there behold through the majestic windows of Trinity Chapel, the pale statue “Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.” It must not be supposed, however, from what has now been stated respecting the _gay_ life of Wordsworth, that he committed any of those excesses which are so common to the undergraduates of Cambridge. He was not a Barnwell-man, nor a Newmarket jockey, nor a gambler, nor gay, indeed, at all, in the gross meaning of that word. He was more idle and genial than this; and a lover of generous society. It was not in his nature, which was always high and pure, and which had been strengthened and solemnised by his converse with the majestic scenery of his childhood,--to descend to the low forms of vice; on the contrary, he had always a dread, horror, and loathing for vice, and vicious society. And, perhaps, one primal cause of his carelessness at Cambridge, lay in his contempt for its scholastic discipline, and for the character and conduct of its chiefs and professors. He felt that Cambridge could teach him but little--that he was “not for that hour, or that place,” as he himself expresses it; but for quite another hour and another place. The dead, cold formality of its religious services,--the absence from chapel of those who “ate the bread of the founders of the colleges, and had sworn to administer faithfully their statutes;” whilst the students were required, under penalties, to attend the senseless mummery;--all these things, and others, revolted Wordsworth’s mind against them, and made him regard the whole system, of which they were part, with distrust and abhorrence.