THE EXCURSION AND SONNETS.—­With his growing fame and riper powers, he had deviated from his own principles, especially of language; and his peaceful epic, The Excursion, is full of difficult theology, exalted philosophy, and glowing rhetoric.  His only attempt to adhere to his system presents the incongruity of putting these subjects into the lips of men, some of whom, the Scotch pedler for example, are not supposed to be equal to their discussion.  In his language, too, he became far more polished and melodious.  The young writer of the Lyrical Ballads would have been shocked to know that the more famous Wordsworth could write

    A golden lustre slept upon the hills;

or speak of

    A pupil in the many-chambered school,
    Where superstition weaves her airy dreams.

The Excursion, although long, is unfinished, and is only a portion of what was meant to be his great poem—­The Recluse.  It contains poetry of the highest order, apart from its mannerism and its improbable narrative; but the author is to all intents a different man from that of the Ballads:  as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years was from the radical youth who praised the French Revolution of 1791.  As a whole, The Excursion is accurate, philosophic, and very dull, so that few readers have the patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy its beautiful passages.

To return to the events of his life.  In 1802 he married; and, after several changes of residence, he finally purchased a place called Rydal-mount in 1813, where he spent the remainder of his long, learned, and pure life.  Long-standing dues from the Earl of Lonsdale to his father were paid; and he received the appointment of collector at Whitehaven and stamp distributor for Cumberland.  Thus he had an ample income, which was increased in 1842 by a pension of L300 per annum.  In 1843 he was made poet-laureate.  He died in 1850, a famous poet, his reputation being due much more to his own clever individuality than to the poetic principles he asserted.

His ecclesiastical sonnets compare favorably with any that have been written in English.  Landor, no friend of the poet, says:  “Wordsworth has written more fine sonnets than are to be met with in the language besides.”

AN ESTIMATE.—­The great amount of verse Wordsworth has written is due to his estimate of the proper uses of poetry.  Where other men would have written letters, journals, or prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote in verse:  an excursion to England or Scotland, Yarrow Visited and Revisited, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse.  He exhibits in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is emphatically and without cant the poet of religion and morality.  Coleridge—­a poet and an attached friend, perhaps a partisan—­claims for him, in his Biographia Literaria, “purity of language, freshness, strength, curiosa felicitas