Born 1770.—Died 1850.—George III.—George IV.—William IV.—Victoria.

This eminent poet is the chief founder of what is called the “Lake School” of poetry. Throwing off the fetters of conventional and “fine” language, and clothing the reality of thought in the simplest words, Wordsworth, as a poet, is the greatest moral teacher of modern times, and no one can make a study of his works without finding himself the better for it. The Excursion, the White Doe of Rylstone, The Brothers, and a multitude of smaller poems, are well known. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were all strict and intimate friends; but the former outlived most of his early companions, dying at Rydal at eighty years of age. It is much to be regretted that his poems are not spread in cheap forms.