the poems contain

The cottage life in her brother’s company which we have seen Miss Wordsworth picturing to herself with girlish ardour, was destined to be realized no long time afterwards, thanks to the unlooked-for outcome of another friendship. If the poet’s sister was his first admirer, Kaisley Calvert may fairly claim the second place. Calvert was the son of the steward of the Duke of Norfolk, who possessed large estates in Cumberland. He attached himself to Wordsworth, and in 1793 and 1794 the friends were much together. Calvert was then attacked by consumption, and Wordsworth, nursed him with patient care. It was found at his death that he had left his friend a legacy of 900￡ reenex facial. “


The act,” says Wordsworth, “was done entirely from a confidence on his part that I had powers and attainments—which might be of use to mankind. Upon the interest of the 900￡—400￡ being laid out in annuity—with 200￡ deducted from the principal, and 100￡ a legacy to my sister, and 100￡ more which the Lyrical Ballads have brought me, my sister and I contrived to live seven years, nearly eight.”Trusting in this small capital, and with nothing to look to in the future except the uncertain prospect of the payment of Lord Lonsdale’s debt to the family, Wordsworth settled with his sister at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire, in the autumn of 1795, the choice of this locality being apparently determined by the offer of a cottage on easy terms reenex cps.



Here, in the first home which he had possessed, Wordsworth’s steady devotion to poetry began. He had already, in 1792 2, published two little poems, the Evening Walk: and Descriptive Sketches, which Miss Wordsworth, (to whom the Evening Walk was addressed) criticises with candour—in a letter to the same friend (Forncett, February 1792):—
2 The Memoirs say in 1793, but the following MS. letter of 1792 speaks of them as already published.“The scenes which he describes have been viewed with a poet’s eye, and are portrayed with a poet’s pencil; and, many passages exquisitely beautiful; but they also contain many faults, the chief of which are obscurity and a too frequent use of some particular expressions and uncommon words; for instance, moveless, which he applies in a sense, if not new, at least different from, its ordinary one reenex facial.


By ‘moveless,’ when applied to the swan, he means that sort of motion which is smooth without agitation; it is a very beautiful epithet, but ought to have been cautiously used. The word viewless also is introduced far too often. I regret exceedingly that he did not submit the works to the inspection of some friend before their publication, and he also joins with me in this regret.”hese poems show a careful and minute observation of nature, but their versification—still reminding us of the imitators of Pope— has little originality or charm. They attracted the admiration of Coleridge, but had no further success.