No years of his life, perhaps,
were richer in strong impressions; but they were impressions derived
neither from books nor from companions, but from the majesty and
loveliness of the scenes around him;--from Nature, his life-long
mistress, loved with the first heats of youth. To her influence we
shall again recur; it will be most convenient first to trace
Wordsworth's progress through the curriculum of ordinary education.
It was due to the liberality of Wordsworth's two uncles, Richard
Wordsworth and Christopher Crackanthorp (under whose care he and his
brothers were placed at there father's death, in 1783), that his
education was prolonged beyond his school-days. For Sir James
Lowther, afterwards Lord Lonsdale,--whose agent Wordsworth's father,
Mr. John Wordsworth, was--becoming aware that his agent had about
5000L at the bank, and wishing, partly on political grounds, to
make his power over him absolute, had forcibly borrowed this sum of
him, and then refused to repay it. After Mr. John Wordsworth's death
much of the remaining fortune which he left behind him was wasted in
efforts to compel Lord Lonsdale to refund this sum; out it was never
recovered till his death in 1801, when his successor repaid 8500L
to the Wordsworths, being a full acquittal, with interest, of
the original debt.
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