249 years ago today William Wordsworth, the great poet of English Romanticism, was born.
Our archives hold a precious letter from Wordsworth to Hugh Seymour Tremenheere. The pair were introduced by Harriet Martineau in the autumn of 1845. As well as belonging to a distinguished Cornish family, Tremenheere was an academic, barrister & school inspector.
It is in the latter capacity that Wordsworth writes to him to suggest that “Knowledge inculcated by the Teacher or derived under her management from books” may be “too exclusively dwelt upon, so as almost to put of sight that which comes without being sought for from intercourse with nature”. And he goes on to say that “too little attention is paid to books of imagination” for “we must not only have knowledge, but the means of wielding it” which is done “more through the imaginative faculty assisting both in the collection and application of facts than is generally believed”.
The importance of the imagination and experiencing the natural world, particularly for children, is ever present in Wordsworth’s oeuvre, and in his own poetic and personal growth as depicted in works like The Prelude.