William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770. His father, John Wordsworth, was an attorney, and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, who was afterwards raised to the peerage, and created Earl of Lonsdale. His mother’s name was Anne Cookson, only daughter of William Cookson, a mercer of Penrith, and of “Dorothy, born at Crackenthorpe, of the ancient family of that name, who, from the time of Edward the Third, had lived in Newbiggen Hall, Westmorland.”[B] His grandfather was the first of the name of Wordsworth who came into Westmorland, where he purchased the small estate of Stockbridge. His ancestors had lived at Peniston, in Yorkshire, probably before the time of the Norman Conquest. “Their names,” says Wordsworth, in his _Autobiographic Memoranda_, “appear on different occasions in all the transactions, personal and public, connected with that parish; and I possess, through the kindness of Colonel Beaumont, an almery made in 1525, at the expense of a William Wordsworth, as is expressed in a Latin inscription carved upon it, which carries the pedigree of the family back four generations from himself.” The poet was second son of his father, and spent most of his early days at Cockermouth. He was subsequently removed to Hawkshead grammar school. And here, properly speaking, his true history begins. In the “Prelude,” a poem but lately published, we have a full account of his boyish ways, and experiences, and a complete record of the development of his mind. This poem is, therefore, doubly valuable, both as a psychological and literary performance. True it is that, like all Wordsworth’s poems, on their first appearance, it has been exceedingly well abused, and that too by men who have eyes to see, and understandings wherewith to understand; which is singular; but the poem is not the less a great vestibule, or outer porch to a great poetic temple for all that. In reading it, I seem to be walking up through the long dim avenues of eternity with the young soul of the poet, and listening to its half remembered ideas of the unspeakable glory from which it has come--itself radiant with immortal lustres--and bursting out, ever and anon, in an ecstacy of rapturous wonder at the mystic and beautiful revelations of Time--the grand and everflowing pageantry of nature,--its woods, mountains, streams, and heavenly hosts of stars. For it is certain that this, or something like this, is the impression one receives, whilst following the poet, in the manifold disclosures which he makes of his own spiritual and mental development: he will not let go the glory of his birth, but cleaves to it, as to the title of some grand heritage, which he shall one day possess. And it is this, and its kindred spiritual ideas, which give the mystic tinge and colouring to all Wordsworth’s higher poetry, as if it had been baptised in an element altogether alien to sensuous experience, and to the common world of man.