CHAPTER X. THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM (1800-1850)No man can read such records without finding his own
boyhood again, and his own abounding joy of life, in the
poet’s early impressions.
The second period of Wordsworth’s life begins with his
university course at Cambridge, in 1787. In the third book
ofThe Preludewe find a dispassionate account of student life,
with its trivial occupations, its pleasures and general aimless-
ness. Wordsworth proved to be a very ordinary scholar, fol-
lowing his own genius rather than the curriculum, and look-
ing forward more eagerly to his vacation among the hills than
to his examinations. Perhaps the most interesting thing in
his life at Cambridge was his fellowship with the young po-
litical enthusiasts, whose spirit is expressed in his remark-
able poem on the French Revolution,–a poem which is better
than a volume of history to show the hopes and ambitions
that stirred all Europe in the first days of that mighty up-
heaval. Wordsworth made two trips to France, in 1790 and
1791, seeing things chiefly through the rosy spectacles of the
young Oxford Republicans. On his second visit he joined the
Girondists, or the moderate Republicans, and only the deci-
sion of his relatives, who cut off his allowance and hurried
him back to England, prevented his going headlong to the
guillotine with the leaders of his party. Two things rapidly
cooled Wordsworth’s revolutionary enthusiasm, and ended
the only dramatic interest of his placid life. One was the ex-
cesses of the Revolution itself, and especially the execution of
Louis XVI; the other was the rise of Napoleon, and the slavish
adulation accorded by France to this most vulgar and danger-
ous of tyrants. His coolness soon grew to disgust and oppo-
sition, as shown by his subsequent poems; and this brought
upon him the censure of Shelley, Byron, and other extrem-
ists, though it gained the friendship of Scott, who from the
first had no sympathy with the Revolution or with the young
English enthusiasts.
Of the decisive period of Wordsworth’s life, when he was
living with his sister Dorothy and with Coleridge at Alfox-