But the grand question for Wordsworth now to solve was, how he should earn his daily bread. His poetry brought no grist to the mill; and he had no friends to fall back on. In this condition, he wrote to his friend Mathews, who was connected with the London Press, to get him employment upon one of the daily or weekly papers, but without success. He projected, likewise, several literary journals, with the same bad fortune. At last, however, Providence had ordained that a young man, named Raisley Calvert, should die, and leave the poet £900. Poor fellow! He seems to have been born for this special purpose. Wordsworth had known him previous to his illness, and the young man was so impressed with the genius and capabilities of the poet, that he bequeathed his little fortune to him, in order that he might have leisure to develope them. This was in 1795, whilst the negociations respecting the newspaper employment were still pending. It was at Mrs. Sowerby’s hostel, at the sign of the “Robin Hood,” in Penrith, where poor Calvert lay sick--where Wordsworth nursed and tended him,--and where also he died. This bequest was of the last importance to Wordsworth, for it rescued him from poverty and distress, and enabled him to _live_. All the avenues of the world were closed against him; for he was, by nature and education, unfitted for the tradesman’s service, or the clerk’s office, or the schoolman’s desk. He was a solitary dreamer; a lonely, meditative man, who thought golden thoughts, and built starry ladders to heaven, and did all sorts of strange things, similar in character, which unfortunately could not be sold as wares in the public market-place. And it was necessary, if Wordsworth was to be any thing, that he should continue this foolish habit of dreaming, of rhyming, and writing, into which he had so singularly fallen. For in her education of the poet, Nature--who is a wise teacher and developer--always adopts one regular method, although she frequently varies the process: and this method consists in impressing the mind with her manifold forms, colours, sounds, and works, that they may hereafter be reproduced in the glorious imagination of the poet, and shine, like rich mosaics, in the wisdom of his teaching. But for the friend alluded to, however, our poet could never have afforded to have gone through his initiation in the mysteries of poetry, but must have squatted down as a school-master in some suitable town (which De Quincy says he once thought of doing), and have turned professor of flogging Greek into pigmy humanities. Or, perhaps, the Poet of Rydal might have been little better than a _scribe-engro_, if I may coin a word from George Borrows’ “Romany,” and have ended his life as a political or literary hack, in some _Times’_ omnibus, or other vehicle of less note and more principle.