The boys were boarded among
the dames of the village, thus enjoying a freedom from scholastic
restraints, which could be nothing but beneficial in a place where the
temptations were only to sports that hardened the body, while they
fostered a love of nature in the spirit and habits of observation in the
mind. Wordsworth's ordinary amusements here were hunting and fishing,
rowing, skating, and long walks around the lake and among the hills, with
an occasional scamper on horseback.[325] His life as a school-boy was
favorable also to his poetic development, in being identified with that
of the people among whom he lived. Among men of simple habits, and where
there are small diversities of condition, the feelings and passions are
displayed with less restraint, and the young poet grew acquainted with
that primal human basis of character where the Muse finds firm foothold,
and to which he ever afterward cleared his way through all the overlying
drift of conventionalism. The dalesmen were a primitive and hardy race
who kept alive the traditions and often the habits of a more picturesque
time. A common level of interests and social standing fostered
unconventional ways of thought and speech, and friendly human sympathies.
Solitude induced reflection, a reliance of the mind on its own resources,
and individuality of character.
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