WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, poet, born at Cockermouth, of a Yorkshire stock; educated at Hawkshead Grammar School and at St. John’s College, Cambridge; travelled in France at the Revolution period, and was smitten with the Republican fever, which however soon spent itself; established himself in the S. of England, and fell in with Coleridge, and visited Germany in company with him, and on his return settled in the Lake Country; married Mary Hutchinson, who had been a school-fellow of his, and to whom he was attached when a boy, and received a lucrative sinecure appointment as distributor of stamps in the district, took up his residence first at Grasmere and finally at Rydal Mount, devoting his life in best of the Muses, as he deemed, to the composition of poetry, with all faith in himself, and slowly but surely bringing round his admirers to the same conclusion; he began his career in literature by publishing along with Coleridge “Lyrical Ballads”; finished his “Prelude” in 1806, and produced his “Excursion” in 1814, after which, from his home at Rydal Mount, there issued a long succession of miscellaneous pieces; he succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically the poet of external nature and of its all-inspiring power, and it is as such his admirers regard him; Carlyle compares his muse to “an honest rustic fiddle, good and well handled, but wanting two or more of the strings, and not capable of much”; to judge of Wordsworth’s merits as a poet the student is referred to Matthew Arnold’s “Selections” (1770-1850).

WORLD, THE, the name applied in the New Testament to the collective body of those who reject and oppose the spirit of Christ, who practically affirm what He denies, and practically deny what He affirms, or turn His Yea into Nay, and His Nay into Yea.

WORMS (25), an old German town in Hesse-Darmstadt, in a fertile plain on the left bank of the Rhine, 40 m.  SE. of Mainz, with a massive Romanesque cathedral having two domes and four towers; it was here the Diet of the empire was held under Charles V., and before which Martin Luther appeared on 17th April 1521, standing alone in his defence on the rock of Scripture, and deferentially declining to recant:  “Here stand I; I can do no other; so help me God.”

WORSAAE, JANS JACOB, eminent Danish archaeologist, born in Jutland; has written on the antiquities of the North, specially in a Scandinavian reference (1821-1885).

WORTHING (16), a fashionable watering-place on the Sussex coast, 101/2 m.  SW. of Brighton; has a mild climate, fine sands, and a long wide parade.

WOTTON, SIR HENRY, diplomatist and scholar, born in Kent; was ambassador of James I. for 20 years, chiefly at Venice; visited Kepler (q. v.) on one occasion, and found him a very “ingenious person,” and came under temporary eclipse for his definition of an ambassador, “An honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country”; was ultimately provost of Eton, and was a friend of many good men, among others Isaac Walton, who wrote his Life; he wished to be remembered as the author of the saying, “The itch of controversy is the scab (scabies) of the Churches,” and caused it to be insculpt in his epitaph (1568-1630).