is to be run.  The destruction of those institutions which I condemn appears to me to be hastening on too rapidly.  I recoil from the very idea of a revolution.  I am a determined enemy to every species of violence.  I see no connection, but what the obstinacy of pride and ignorance renders necessary, between justice and the sword, between reason and bonds.  I deplore the miserable condition of the French, and think that we can only be guarded from the same scourge by the undaunted efforts of good men....  I severely condemn all inflammatory addresses to the passions of men.  I know that the multitude walk in darkness.  I would put into each man’s hands a lantern, to guide him; and not have him to set out upon his journey depending for illumination on abortive flashes of lightning, or the coruscations of transitory meteors.’[31]

11. At Milkhouse, Halifax:  ‘Not to take orders.’

‘My sister,’ he says, in a letter to Mathews (February 17th, 1794), ’is under the same roof with me; indeed it was to see her that I came into this country.  I have been doing nothing, and still continue to do nothing.  What is to become of me I know not.’  He announces his resolve not to take orders; and ’as for the Law, I have neither strength of mind, purse, or constitution, to engage in that pursuit.’[32]

12. Literary Work:  Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches:  1794.

In May, 1794, William Wordsworth was at Whitehaven, at his uncle’s, Mr. Richard Wordsworth’s; and he then proposes to his friend Mathews, who was resident in London, that they should set on foot a monthly political and literary Miscellany, to which, he says, ’he would communicate critical remarks on poetry, the arts of painting, gardening, &c., besides essays on morals and politics.’  ‘I am at present,’ he adds, ’nearly at leisure—­I say nearly, for I am not quite so, as I am correcting, and considerably adding to, those poems which I published in your absence’ (’The Evening Walk’ and ’Descriptive Sketches’).  ’It was with great reluctance that I sent those two little works into the world in so imperfect a state.  But as I had done nothing by which to distinguish myself at the university, I thought these little things might show that I could do something.  They have been treated with unmerited contempt by some of the periodicals, and others have spoken in higher terms of them than they deserve.’[33]

[31] Extract of letter to Mathews, Memoirs, i. 79-80.

[32] Memoirs, i. 82.

[33] Ibid. i. 82-3.

13. Employment on a London Newspaper.