friend Arthur Hallam, son of the histori-JAMES MONTGOMERY was born at Ir

The popularity of Mr. Tennyson has been cated at the settlement of that sect at Ful

neck, near Leeds. There he was distinguished | reer was comparatively uneventful. In 1806 for his indolence and melancholy, and, although he produced The Wanderer in Switzerland, poetry and fiction were forbidden, he contrived which quickly ran through three editions to read clandestinely Robinson Crusoe and and was subsequently followed by other and Cowper's poems. His inattention to his better works of the same nature, the chief of studies caused him to be placed by the which were The West Indies, The World beschool authorities with a shopkeeper, from fore the Flood and Greenland, a poem dewhom, in 1789, he ran away. A few scriptive of the establishment of the Moramonths afterward he sent a volume of poems vians in that desolate region, which sect he to a London bookseller, and followed it him- had again joined. In 1823 he produced Origself to the great metropolis. The poems were inal Hymns for Public, Private and Social declined, but the young poet obtained a situ- Devotion. In 1825 he resigned the editoration in the publisher's office. In 1791 he In 1791 he ship of the Sheffield Iris, whereupon he was wrote a tale, his first prose production, for the entertained at a public dinner by his fellowBee, an Edinburgh periodical, and soon after- townsmen. His interesting History of Misward published a novel, which was declined sionary Enterprise in the South Seas was because the hero gave utterance occasionally produced in 1830. Five years later he was to a strong expression. The young author offered the chair of rhetoric in the Univerwas greatly hurt at this, for he was of a sity of Edinburgh, which he declined. Sir deeply religious cast of mind, and imagined Robert Peel about the same time bestowed he had only done that which was right in upon him a pension of one hundred and fifty imitating Fielding and Smollett. He returned pounds. In 1836 he left the house of his to a situation for some time, and at length en- old employer, Gales, where he had lived tered the service of Mr. Gales, a printer and during forty years, for a more convenient bookseller at Sheffield, who permitted him to abode. He delivered several courses of lecwrite political articles for the Sheffield Regis- tures upon "The British Poets" at Newcaster, a paper conducted on what were then tle-on-Tyne and other places during some called revolutionary principles. A warrant years, but in 1841 he visited his native being issued for the apprehension of Gales, country on a missionary-tour. His last he fled to America, and Montgomery started effort was a lecture "On some Passages of a paper on peace and reform" principles, English Poetry but little known." called the Sheffield Iris, and was soon afterward indicted for producing some doggerel verses which had been brought to his printing-office to be printed. For this he was fined twenty pounds and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. On another occasion, for publishing an account of a riot at Sheffield, he was fined thirty pounds and was imprisoned for six months. His subsequent ca

THOMAS BUDD SHAW.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
ILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born

WILLIAN

on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland. His parents were of the middle class and designed him for the Church; but poetry and new prospects turned him into another path. His pursuit

through life was poetry, and his profession | he was not idle, for in the same year that that of stamp-distributor for the government witnessed the failure of his Lyrical Ballads in the counties of Cumberland and West- he wrote his "Peter Bell," though he kept it moreland. He made his first appearance as by him many years before he published it. a poet in 1793 by the publication of a thin quarto volume entitled An Evening Walk: An Epistle in Verse, addressed to a Young Lady. In the same year he published Descriptive Sketches in Verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the Alps, of which Coleridge thus writes in his Biographia Literaria: "During the last of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled Descriptive Sketches, and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." Two years after, the two poets, then personally unknown to each other, were brought together at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. Coleridge was then in his twenty-fourth and Wordsworth in his twenty-sixth year. A congeniality of pursuit soon ripened into intimacy, and in September, 1798, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth, they made a tour in Germany.

Wordsworth's next publication was the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, published just after he had left for the Continent by Joseph Cottle of Bristol, who purchased the copy right for thirty guineas. But it proved a great failure, and Cottle was a loser by the bargain. The critics were very severe upon it. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh, Byron in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," James Smith in his "Rejected Addresses," and others of less note in the literary world, all fired their shafts of reason and ridicule at him. Many years, therefore, elapsed before Mr. Wordsworth again appeared as a poet. But

Wordsworth married, in the year 1803, Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, and settled among his beloved lakes-first at Grasmere, and afterward at Rydal Mount. Southey's subsequent retirement to the same beautiful country and Coleridge's visits to his brother-poets originated the name of the " Lake School of Poetry," by which the opponents of their principles and the critics of the Edinburgh Review distinguished the three poets whose names are so intimately connected. In 1807 he put forth two volumes of his poems, and in the autumn of 1814 appeared, in quarto form, the celebrated "Excursion." It consists of sketches of life and manners among the mountains, intermingled with moral and devotional reflections. It is merely a part of a larger poem which was to be entitled "The Recluse," and to be prefaced by a minor one, delineating the growth of the author's mind, published since his death under the name of "The Prelude.' The Recluse" was to be divided into three parts. The "Excursion" forms the second of these; the first book of the first part is extant in manuscript, but the rest of the work was never completed.

No sooner did the "Excursion Excursion" appear than the critics were down upon it with a vengeance. "This will never do," was the memorable opening of the article in the Edinburgh. A few thought it "would do," and praised it; but while it was still dividing the critics "Peter Bell" appeared, to throw among them yet greater differences of opinion. The

been driven abroad by declining health and H

had never returned. Next morning he left Abbotsford, and his guests retired with sorrowful hearts. Wordsworth has preserved a memento of his feelings in a beautiful sonnet. In 1833 he visited Staffa and Iona. The year 1834 was a sort of era in his life, by the publication of his complete works in four volumes. His friends, however, now began to fall around him. That year poor Coleridge bade adieu to his weary life. This must have touched many a chord of association in Wordsworth's heart. In 1836 his wife's sister, and his constant