811 



WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM. 



WORM, OLAUS. 



812 



secure still more perfectly their great, end of giving pleasure, while 

 they excite emotion, poets use the artificial assistance of metre and 

 rhyme." In illustrating these views, as to the true nature of poetic 

 subjects, and the true nature of poetic diction, Wordsworth was very 

 severe in his criticism of the poets of the 18th century. Very few of 

 them, he said, had looked at nature for themselves, satisfied with 

 repeating over and over again images and allusions which had become a 

 kind of property of the poetic corporation or guild, and which, though 

 originally they might have arisen from genuine observation of nature, 

 had by incessant repetition and attrition become mere lying artificiali- 

 ties; and so, also, very few of them had employed a diction at all 

 resembling the language of real men and women under any circum- 

 stances, counting it rather the essence of their craft to use a certain 

 conventional phraseology, called poetic diction, in which words were 

 distorted out of their natural order, and the distortion regarded as 

 metrical art. 



These views naturally provoked opposition, as similar views had 

 already done when urged by Bowles ; and Wordsworth's own poeins, 

 exemplifying the views, were either neglected or severely criticised. 

 In the interest of his views he had selected, for many of his pieces, 

 very simple subjects, and had written a language as close as possible 

 to that of real life ; and these pieces were fastened on by the adverse 

 critics and held up to ridicule as childish, grotesque, &c. Thus began 

 the great literary controversy as to Wordsworth's poetry a contro- 

 versy which lasted almost to the end of Wordsworth's life, though by 

 that time hia triumph was, on the whole, decisive, and his admirers 

 included the best part of the nation. The triumph was partly the 

 result of time as affecting the appreciation of what he had already 

 published, partly of the appearance of other poems, thrown out at 

 intervals from his retreat among the Lakes, each making a new im- 

 pression and some revealing the poet's powers dissociated from those 

 peculiarities which had jarred most on the critics of the old school. 

 In 1813, he took up his residence at Rydal Mount, not far from his 

 former habitations; and here he remained till his death, allowing for 

 occasional visits to London, a second tour in Scotland in 1814, a new 

 continental tour in 1820, a tour in Holland and Belgium in 1823, in 

 North Wales in 1824, on the Rhine in 1828, in Ireland in 1829, in 

 Scotland again in 1833, in Italy in 1837, &c. Before his removal to 

 Rydal Mount, his children Catharine and Thomas had died, leaving 

 two sons and a daughter still alive. His poems were as yet no source 

 of income to him ; but just at the time of his removal to Rydal 

 Mount, he was appointed, through Lord Lonsdale's influence, to the 

 distributorship of stamps for the county of Westmoreland, a post 

 which, with light duties and the advantage of permitting him to 

 remain in the district of his affections, afforded him about 500L a 

 year. In 1814 he published his great philosophical poem of 'The 

 Excursion.' It had little commercial success, and drew down the 

 critics upon him more than before including Jeffrey's famous verdict 

 " this will never do ; " but here and there it found readers who did not 

 hesitate to recognise in it, as the world now recognises in it, one of the 

 greatest poems in the English language. It was followed in 1815 by 

 'The White Doe of Rylstone;' this in 1819 by 'Peter Bell,' dedi- 

 cated to Southey, and which, though not less attacked than his former 

 poems, was more immediately popular ; this, very shortly, by ' The 

 Waggoner,' dedicated to Charles Lamb, and 'Sonnets on the River 

 Duddon.' These poems had, most of them, been in manuscript long 

 before they were published. In 1822 (by which time there had been 

 new editions of some of the previous volumes, and in spite of all 

 opposition, Wordsworth's name was pronounced everywhere as that 

 of a literary power of the highest order) appeared Sonnets and other 

 Poems under the title of 'Memorials of a Tour ou the Continent;' 

 several years afterwards appeared his noble series of ' Ecclesiastical 

 Sonnets,' increased in subsequent editions ; and in 1835, he published 

 and dedicated to Rogers ' Yarrow Revisited and other Poems,' the 

 result chiefly of his recent Scottish tour. Other collections of the 

 pieces which he either had written long before or had recently penned 

 were subsequently published ; and in 1842 he published a collected 

 edition of his poems in seven volumes, re-arranging them in a new 

 order on a peculiar principle of his own, and with new titles to the 

 separate divisions. Various editions of the whole, in different shapes, 

 have been since published ; and after Wordsworth's death appeared 

 his autobiographical poem, ' The Prelude,' written in the early part of 

 the century, and bringing down the narrative of his life till the period 

 of his determination to Poetry after his first political schemes. The 

 death of Wordsworth took place at Rydal Mount on the 23rd of April 

 1850, when he had just completed his eightieth year; and he was 

 buried in Grasmere Churchyard. In 1839 he had been made D.C.L. of 

 Oxford; in 1842 he had resigned his post of Distributor of Stamps in 

 favour of his younger son, receiving a pension of 300. a year ; and in 

 1843 he had succeeded Southey as Poet-Laureate. His wife and his 

 sister and his two sons survived him. His only daughter Dora had 

 married in 1841 Edward Quillinan, Esq., a gentleman who had been in 

 the army and who is known by various literary works. She was taken 

 for her health to Portugal and Spain, of her travels in \*hich countries 

 she published a journal; and after her return she died in 1847. 



The ' Memoirs of Wordsworth ' in two volumes were published by 

 his nephew Canon Wordsworth in 1851 ; and contain many letters, 

 dictations, and conversations, illustrative of the occasions of hia 



poemo, of his character and habits generally, and of his progressive 

 views of men and things. Though his life was one of stately retire- 

 ment, be was a shrewd and diligent observer of all that occurred at 

 home and abroad ; and he expressed strong and decided views on the 

 great political events and movements of his time, such as the war 

 with Napoleon, Catholic Emancipation, the French Revolution of 

 1830, the Reform Bill, the Railway Mania, &c. His views on these 

 subjects were generally Conservative and in contrast with those which 

 he had held so strongly in early life ; and in some of his letters and 

 conversations he alludes to this apparent change and gives the philo- 

 sophy of it. In 1818 he even mixed himself up with local politics in 

 the Conservative interest by publishing ' Two Addresses to the Free- 

 holders of Westmoreland.' Ho was during the last forty or fifty years 

 of his life a zealous and devout supporter of the Established Church 

 of England. A lofty and serene toleration however pervaded all his 

 views ; and his whole life was consecrated from first to last to tho 

 service of the great, the permanent, and the noble. His influence on 

 the literature and especially on the poetry of Britain and America in 

 this century, has been immense, and is far yet from being exhausted. 



WORLIDQE, THOMAS, an English painter and etcher, born at 

 Peterborough in Northamptonshire in 1700. He was first a pupil of 

 Grimaldi, and then of Boitard, a scholar of La Page. Worlidge is 

 chiefly known for his drawings and etchings in imitation of Rem- 

 brandt. He copied also some of Rembrandt's most celebrated prints ; 

 there is a very good copy by him of the so-called Hundred Guilders. 



Worlidge drew in black-lead and with Indian ink, on vellum, with 

 extraordinary neatness. He made a set of 180 beautiful drawings of 

 antique gems. His etchings, which are all in the style of Rembrandt, 

 amount to 140 ; there are also several good portraits by him, likewise 

 exact imitations of Rembrandt. Some of his admirers in his own 

 time used to call him the English Rembrandt. Walpole says of him, 

 " Thomas Worlidge for the greater part of his life painted portraits 

 in miniature ; he afterwards with worse success performed them in oil ; 

 but at last acquired reputation and money by etchings in the manner 

 of Rembrandt, proved to be a very easy task by the numbers of men 

 who have counterfeited that master so as to deceive all those who did 

 not know his works by heart. Worlidge's imitations and his heads in 

 black-lead have grown astonishingly into fashion. His best piece is 

 the whole length of Sir John Astley, copied from Rembrandt : his 

 print of the Theatre at Oxford and the act there, and his statue of 

 Lady Pomfret's Cicero, are very poor performances." Worlidge's wife 

 worked pictures in needlework with great skill. Worlidge died at 

 Hammersmith in 1666. 



WORM, OLAUS, Latinised WORMIUS, a distinguished Danish 

 historian and antiquary, was born on the 13th of May 1588, at Aarhuus 

 in Jutland, where his father was alderman ; his family was originally 

 from Guelderland. He was educated successively at the schools of 

 Aarhuus, Liineberg, and Emmerich on the Lower Rhine, where he 

 lived three years under the care of some learned relations and friends 

 of his father. In 1605 he went to the University of Marburg in 

 Hesse, where he studied divinity; but he afterwards left divinity for 

 medicine, and visited successively the universities of Giessen, Strass- 

 bourg, Basel, and Padua. The corporation of the German students at 

 Padua chose him then: procurator and consiliarius anatomicus. After 

 having travelled through Italy he went to Montpellier and Paris, and 

 in both places he attended the medical schools. In Paris he became 

 acquainted with Isaac Casaubon. He also visited the Netherlands 

 and England. He was going to take the degree of M.D. at Marburg 

 in 1611 when the plague compelled him to retire to Basel, where he 

 became Doctor of Medicine in the course of the same year. As he 

 had studied history and languages with great success, he was appointed, 

 in 1613, professor of Literse Humaniores in the University of Copen- 

 hagen, where he lived till his death, teaching successively literature, 

 medicine, chemistry and physic. Five times he held the office of 

 rector of the university. Cardinal Mazarin bestowed a pension upon 

 him ; and King Christian IV. of Denmark made him a dean of the 

 chapter at Lund in Scauia, and appointed him his private physician, 

 which office he held till his death, under the successor of Christian IV., 

 Frederick III. He died on the 31st of August 1654. Olaus Wormius 

 is best known as an historian and antiquarian, although his merits as 

 a physician were far from being inconsiderable. He is known in the 

 history of anatomy by the bones of the skull named after him, ossa 

 Wormiana, which he particularly described, though he did not, as is 

 commonly supposed, discover them. The chief object of his studies 

 was the earlier history and antiquities of Denmark, and in this depart- 

 ment he has obtained a high rank. He also wrote on the history of 

 Norway. His collection of Scandinavian and especially Danish anti- 

 quities was very rich; he made another collection of objects referring 

 to the natural history of Denmark and the adjacent countries. These 

 collections are described in the ' Musseum Wormianum,' Leyden, folio, 

 1655, which was edited by William Worm, the son of Olaus. Albert 

 Bartholin, in his work 'De Scriptis Danorum (Liber Posthumus),' p. 

 112, &c., gives a complete catalogue of the works of Olaus Worm: 

 the principal are I. Works on medicine, natural history, &c. : 1, 

 'Liber de Mundo: Commentarii in Aristotelem,' Rostock, 8vo, 1625; 

 2, ' Excrcitationes Physicrc,' Copenhagen, 4to, 1623 ; 3, 'SelectaCon- 

 troversiarum Medicarum Centuria,' Basel, 4to, 1611. II. Works on 

 history, antiquities, &c. : 4, 'Literature Danica antiquissima, vulgo 



