For five years after the condemnation of The Excursion Wordsworth published almost nothing that had not been composed before. The chief exception is the Thanksgiving Ode of 1816. In 1815 he published a new edition of his poems, in the arrangement according to faculties and feelings in which they have since stood; and he sought to explain his purposes more completely than before in an essay on “Poetry as a Study.” In the same year he was persuaded to publish The White Doe of Rylstone, written mainly eight years before. In purely poetic charm The White Doe ought to be ranked among the most perfect of Wordsworth's poems. But Jeffrey, who was too busy to enter into a vein of poetry so remote from common romantic sentiment, would have none of The White Doe: he pronounced it “the very worst poem ever written,” and the public too readily endorsed his judgment. Two other poems, with which Wordsworth made another appeal, were not more successful. Peter Bell, written in 1798, was published in 1819; and at the instigation of Charles Lamb it was followed by The Waggoner, written in 1805. Both were mercilessly ridiculed and parodied. These tales from humble life are written in Wordsworth's most unconventional style, and with them emphatically “not to sympathize is not to understand.”
Meantime, the great design of The Recluse languished. The neglect of what Wordsworth himself conceived to be his best and most characteristic work was not encouraging; and there was another reason why the philosophical poem on man, nature, and society did not make progress. Again and again in his poetry Wordsworth celebrates the value of constraint, and the disadvantage of “too much liberty,” of “unchartered freedom.”[1] The formlessness of the scheme prevented his working at it continuously. Hence his “philosophy” was expressed in casual disconnected sonnets, or in sonnets and other short poems connected by the simplest of all links, sequence in time or place. He stumbled upon three or four such serial ideas in the latter part of his life, and thus found beginning and end for chains of considerable length, which may be regarded as fragments of the project which he had not sufficient energy of constructive power to execute. The Sonnets on the River Duddon, written in 1820, follow the river from its source to the sea, and form a partial embodiment of his philosophy of nature. The Ecclesiastical Sonnets, written in 1820-1821, trace the history of the church from the Druids onwards, following one of the great streams of human affairs, and exhibit part of his philosophy of society. A tour on the continent in 1820, a tour in Scotland in 1831, a tour on the west coast in 1833, a tour in Italy in 1837, furnished him with other serial forms, serving to connect miscellaneous reflections on man, nature and society; and his views on the punishment of death were strung together in still another series in 1840.
It was Coleridge's criticism in the Biographia Literaria (1817), together with the enthusiastic and unreserved championship of Wilson in Blackwood's Magazine in a series of articles between 1819 and 1822 (Recreations of Christopher North), that formed the turning-point in Wordsworth's reputation. From 1820 to 1830 De Quincey says it was militant, from 1830 to 1840 triumphant. On the death of Southey in 1843 he was made poet laureate. He bargained with Sir Robert Peel, before accepting, that no official verse should be required of him; and his only official composition, an ode on the installation of the Prince Consort as chancellor of Cambridge university in 1847, is believed to have really been written either by his son-in-law Edward Quillinan or by his nephew Christopher (afterwards bishop of Lincoln). He died at Rydal Mount, after a short illness, on the 23rd of April 1850, and was buried in Grasmere churchyard. His wife survived him till 1859, when she died in her 90th year. They had five children, two of whom had died in 1812; the two surviving sons, John (d. 1875) and William (d. 1883), had families; the other child, a daughter, Dora, Wordsworth's favourite, married Edward Quillinan in 1841 and died in 1847.
Professor Knight brought out in 1882-1886 an eight-volume edition of the Poetical Works, and in 1889 a Life in three volumes. The Memoirs of the poet were published (1851) by his nephew, Bishop Christopher Wordsworth. The “standard text” of the works is the edition of 1849-1850. The “Aldine” edition (1892) is edited by Edward Dowden. The one-volume “Oxford” edition (1895), edited by Thomas Hutchinson, contains every piece of verse known to have been published or authorized by Wordsworth, his Prefaces, &c., and a useful chronology and notes. Among critics of Wordsworth especially interesting for various reasons we may mention De Quincey (Works, vols. ii. and v.), Sir Henry Taylor (Works, vol. v.), Matthew Arnold (preface to Selection), Swinburne (Miscellanies), F. W. H. Myers (“Men of Letters” series), Leslie Stephen (Hours in a Library, 3rd series, “Wordsworth's Ethics”), Walter Pater (Appreciations), Walter Raleigh (Wordsworth, 1903). Wordsworth's writings in prose were collected by Dr Grosart (London, 1876). This collection contained the previously unpublished Apology for a French Revolution, written in 1793, besides the scarce tract on the Convention of Cintra (1809) and the political addresses To the Freeholders of Westmoreland (1818). Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes originally appeared in 1810 as an introduction to Wilkinson's Select Views, and was first published separately in 1822. (W. M.; H. Ch.)
WORKINGTON, a municipal borough, seaport and market town in the Cockermouth parliamentary division of Cumberland, England, 34 m. S.W. of Carlisle, served by the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith, the London & North-Western and the Cleator & Workington Junction railways. Pop. (1901) 26,143. It lies on the S. bank of the river Derwent, at its outflow into the Irish Sea. The harbour is safe, being protected by a stony beach and by a breakwater. The Lonsdale dock is 412 acres in extent. The port was made subordinate to that of Maryport in 1892. There are large collieries in the neighbourhood of the town, the workings in some cases extending beneath the sea, and blast furnaces, engineering works, cycle and motor works, shipbuilding yards and paper mills. The borough is under a mayor, 7 aldermen and 21 councillors. Area, 2245 acres. Near the town is Workington Hall, a castellated structure retaining some of the ancient rooms, including that in which Mary, queen of Scots, is said to have slept when she escaped to England after the battle of Langside in May 1568.
WORKS AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS, BOARD OF, an administrative department in England. In 1832 the public works and buildings of Great Britain were for the first time placed under the control of a responsible minister of the crown, and were assigned to the commissioners of woods and forests. In 1851 the department of public works was erected into a board under the name of Office of Works and Public Buildings. The first commissioner of works is the head of the board, and has the custody of the royal palaces and parks and of all public buildings not specially assigned to other departments; he is a member of the government and frequently has a seat in the cabinet.
WORKSOP, a market town in the Bassetlaw parliamentary division of Nottinghamshire, England, on the Great Central and the Midland railways, and on the Chesterfield Canal, 15½ m. E.S.E. of Sheffield. Pop. of urban district (1901) 16,112. To the S. lies that portion of Sherwood Forest popularly known as the dukeries. The church of St Mary and St Cuthbert is an old priory church, once divided internally into two parts, the E. dedicated to St Mary being for the use of the canons, and the W. dedicated to St Cuthbert for the parishioners. At the Reformation only the W. portion of the church was spared, and for many years it was in a dilapidated condition until it was restored with Perpendicular additions. Behind it are the ruins of the lady chapel, containing some fine Early English work. The priory gatehouse, chiefly in the Decorated style, now form the entrance to the precincts of the church. It is supposed to have been built early in the 14th century by the 3rd Lord Furnival, when the market was established. Of the priory itself the only remains are a wall at the N.W. corner of the church which includes the cloister gateway. There was formerly a Norman keep on the castle hill. The manor-house, built by John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury, and occasionally occupied by Mary, queen of Scots, during her captivity under the 6th earl, was in great part destroyed by fire in 1761, and when the estate came into the possession of the duke of Newcastle in 1840 the ruined portion was removed and a smaller mansion built.
- ↑ See the Sonnet, Nuns fret not, &c., The Pass of Kirkstone and the Ode to Duty.
