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Orr, having been struck, it appears, by the translation of an ode from Horace made by Longfellow for the senior examination, warmly presented his name for the new chair. It is impossible to overestimate the value of these benefactions to men of talent and genius. Where would Wordsworth have been, what could he have done, without the gift bestowed upon him by Raisley Calvert!
By William Wordsworth. We need not remind the readers of the Excursion that when Wordsworth was enabled by the generous enthusiasm of Raisley Calvert to retire with a slender independence to his native mountains, there to devote himself exclusively to his art, his first step was to review and record in verse the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them.
A timely legacy enabled them to carry their purpose into effect. A friend of his, whom he had nursed in a last illness, Raisley Calvert, son of the steward of the Duke of Norfolk, who had large estates in Cumberland, died early in 1795, leaving him a legacy of £900.
In the autumn of 1795, Wordsworth, helped by the modest legacy of Raisley Calvert, was able to move with Dorothy to Racedown, and he immediately set to work on the Borderers, which I take to be the beginning of recovery. It was obviously written to exhibit the character of Oswald, the villain. He is one of a band of outlaws, and is jealous of the appointment of Marmaduke as chief.
He was averse from every profession; but the fates were kind to him, and a legacy of £900 from his friend Raisley Calvert made a man of such simple tastes as his independent, for a time at least.
An apparent accident, which looks more to us like a special Providence, determined his course. He had taken care of a young friend, Raisley Calvert, who died of consumption and left Wordsworth heir to a few hundred pounds, and to the request that he should give his life to poetry. It was this unexpected gift which enabled Wordsworth to retire from the world and follow his genius.
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