Poems of Nature. It is to his work as poet of nature that Wordsworth chiefly owes his general fame. There had, of course, been numerous poets who had loved and described natural objects and scenes; even the eighteenth century was not entirely without them. Other nature poets had been capable also of faithful, accurate description. The new, that is, the Romantic, element in Wordsworth's nature poetry is the expression in words of sensations aroused by observation of the beauties of the external world. This individual interpretation of nature, even if something like it had before occurred to poets, had not found voice.

"The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dew-drop from the sun."

"For thou art worthy,

Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,

And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee."

Arnold's

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Almost his whole philosophy of nature is summed up in this stanza from The Tables Turned:

called forth by Wordsworth's death two of the most beautiful came from Matthew Arnold, a young poet whose admira

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1772-1834

He

In Lamb's Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago is drawn a picture of Coleridge when a boy at school. He early showed the interest in philosophic studies that made him as a man a deep thinker and close reasoner. loved his Greek studies, and impressed all hearers by his reading of Homer and Pindar. So strongly did his personality attract people that he was known as the "inspired charity boy."

- He was born at Ottery St. Character of his Father. Mary, Devonshire, the youngest of thirteen children. His studious bent was inherited from his father, who was minister of the town, head-master of the grammar school, and a selid The image of my father," the son wrote, “my scholar. revered, kind, learned, simple-hearted father, is a religion. to me."

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At Christ's Hospital. After the father's death, and before his own tenth year, Samuel Taylor was admitted to Christ's Hospital, the charity-school immortalized by Lamb, who also entered the school on the same day. His intellectual

1 The stream flowing through Grasmere, close to the churchyard where Wordsworth is buried.