a true impression of the poet's personality.]

Without further preface I now begin my story of Wordsworth's life,
in words which he himself dictated to his intended biographer.
"I was born," he said, "at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7th,
1770, the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney-at-law--as
lawyers of this class were then called--and law-agent to Sir James
Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. My mother was Anne, only
daughter of William Cookson, mercer, of Penrith, and of Dorothy,
born Crackanthorp, of the ancient family of that name, who from the
times of Edward the Third had lived in Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland.
My grandfather was the first of the name of Wordsworth who came into
Westmoreland, where he purchased the small estate of Sockbridge. He
was descended from a family who had been settled at Peniston, in
Yorkshire, near the sources of the Don, probably before the Norman
Conquest. Their names appear on different occasions in all the
transactions, personal and public, connected with that parish; and I
possess, through the kindness of Colonel Beaumont, an almery, made in
1525, at the expense of a William Wordsworth, as is expressed in a
Latin inscription carved upon it, which carries the pedigree of the
family back four generations from himself. The time of my infancy
and early boyhood was passed, partly at Cockermouth, and partly with
my mother's parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778,
died of a decline, brought on by a cold, in consequence of being put,
at a friend's house in London, in what used to be called 'a best
bedroom.' My father never recovered his usual cheerfulness of mind
after this loss, and died when I was in my fourteenth year, a
schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I had been sent with
my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year."