history of the Author's mind to the point when he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufficiently matured for entering upon the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two Works have the same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as the ante-chapel has to the body of a gothic church. Continuing this allusion, he may be permitted. to add, that his minor Pieces, which have been long before the Public, when they shall be properly arranged,* will be found by the attentive Reader to have such connection with the main Work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices.

The Author would not have deemed himself justified in saying, upon this occasion, so much of performances either unfinished, or unpublished, if he had not thought that the labour bestowed by him upon what he has heretofore and now laid before the Public, entitled him to candid attention for such a statement as he thinks necessary to throw light upon his endeavours to please and, he would hope, to benefit his countrymen.-Nothing further need be added, than that the first and third parts of The Recluse will consist chiefly of meditations in the Author's own person; and that in the intermediate part (The Excursion) the intervention of characters speaking is employed, and something of a dramatic form adopted.

It is not the Author's intention formally to announce a system: it was more animating to him to proceed in a different course; and if he shall succeed in conveying to the mind clear thoughts, lively images, and strong feelings, the Reader will have no difficulty in extracting the system for himself. And in the mean time the following passage, taken from the conclusion of the first book of The Recluse, may be acceptable as a kind of Prospectus of the design and scope of the whole Poem.

*As they were-according to their Author's somewhat arbitrary classification-in the editions of 1815 and subsequent years.-ED.

"On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive

Fair trains of imagery before me rise,
Accompanied by feelings of delight

Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed;
And I am conscious of affecting thoughts

5

And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes
Or elevates the Mind, intent to weigh
The good and evil of our mortal state.

-To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come,
Whether from breath of outward circumstance,
Or from the Soul-an impulse to herself
I would give utterance in numerous verse.

Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope,
And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith;
Of blessed consolations in distress ;
Of moral strength, and intellectual Power;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;

Of the individual Mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there

To Conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence which governs all-

I sing :-'fit audience let me find though few !' *

ΙΟ

15

20

"So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard—

In holiest mood.1 Urania,† I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven !
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep-and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.

1 1845.

Holiest of Men.

* See Paradise Lost, book vii. 1. 31.-ED.

1814.

25

30

t "Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne. She was regarded as the Muse of Astronomy, and was represented with a celestial globe, to which she points with a little staff" (Hirt. Mythol. Bilderb. p. 210).-ED.

All strength-all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form-
Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir
Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones-
I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,

Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out

By help of dreams—can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look

35

Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-The he

Swestrell within,"

My haunt, and the main region of my song.
-Beauty-a living Presence of the earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms
Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed
From earth's materials-waits upon my steps;
Pitches her tents before me as I move,
An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fields-like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main *—why should they be
A history only of departed things,

Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
-I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation :—and, by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World

* Compare The Prelude, book i. 1. 191 (see vol. iii. p. 138, notes * and †); Strabo, 1; Pliny, 6, c. 31 and 32; Horace, Odes iv., 8, v. 27; Plutarch, The Life of Sertorius.-ED.

Is fitted :—and how exquisitely, too—
Theme this but little heard of among men—
The external World is fitted to the Mind ;
And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish :-this is our high argument.
-Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft

Must turn elsewhere-to travel near the tribes
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights
Of madding passions mutually inflamed;
Must hear Humanity in fields and groves
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang
Brooding above the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore

Within the walls of cities—may these sounds
Have their authentic comment; that even these
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!—
Descend, prophetic Spirit!1 that inspir'st
The human Soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come;
* and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts
Of mighty Poets: upon me bestow

A gift of genuine insight; that my Song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine,
Shedding benignant influence, and secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect

Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere !—And if with this
I mix more lowly matter; with the thing
Contemplated, describe the Mind and Man
Contemplating; and who, and what he was—
The transitory Being that beheld

This Vision; when and where, and how he lived ;Be not this labour useless. If such theme

70

75

80

85

90

95

1 1827.
-Come thou prophetic Spirit,

1814.

* See Wordsworth's note (p. 383).-ED.

May sort with highest objects, then-dread Power!
Whose gracious favour is the primal source
Of all illumination—may my Life

Express the image of a better time,

More wise desires, and simpler manners ;- -nurse

ΙΟΙ

My Heart in genuine freedom :-all pure thoughts 105
Be with me ;-so shall thy unfailing love
Guide, and support, and cheer me to the end!"

Book First

THE WANDERER *

ARGUMENT

A summer forenoon-The Author reaches a ruined Cottage upon a Common, and there meets with a revered Friend, the Wanderer, of whose education and course of life he gives an account1- The Wanderer, while resting under the shade of the Trees that surround the Cottage, relates the History of its last Inhabitant.

'TWAS summer, and the sun had mounted high:
Southward the landscape indistinctly glared
Through a pale steam; † but all the northern downs,

In clearest air ascending, showed far off

A surface dappled o'er with shadows flung

1 1836.

the Wanderer, of whom he gives an account―

1814.

5

* In a copy of the quarto edition of The Excursion (1814) bequeathed by the Poet to his grandson, the Rev. John Wordsworth, there are numerous changes of text in his own handwriting, or that of his wife. The majority of these were incorporated in later editions. Several of them, however, were not. These are reproduced in this edition, wherever it has been thought expedient to preserve them, and are indicated as "MS." readings. On the fly-leaf of the same presentation copy of the 1814 edition, Mrs. Wordsworth wrote out Mr. R. P. Gillies' sonnet, addressed to the author of The Excursion.-ED.

+ Compare An Evening Walk (vol. i. p. 9)—–

When, in the south, the wan noon, brooding still,
Breathed a pale steam around the glaring hill,

ED.