Excerpt from William Wordsworth The place of Wordsworth's birth was on the banks of the Derwent, which he calls fairest of all rivers. Little is known of his child-life beyond the fact that when five years old he was permitted to spend his summer days bathing in a mill-race on the banks of the Derwent, There he was to be seen, now in the water, now out of it, now scouring the sandy fields naked as a savage, while the hot thundery noon was bronzing distant Skiddaw, and then plunging in once more. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.