depressed me much; above all, many heavy thoughts of my poor departed brother hung upon me, the joy which I should have had in showing him the manuscript, and a thousand other vain fancies and dreams. I have spoken of this, because it was a state of feeling new to me, the occasion being new. This work may be considered as a sort of portico to 'The Recluse,' part of the same building, which I hope to be able, ere long, to begin with in earnest; and if I am permitted to bring it to a conclusion, and to write, further, a narrative poem of the epic kind, I shall consider the task of my life as over, I ought to add, that I have the satisfaction of finding the present poem not quite of so alarming a length as I apprehended."

These letters explain the delay in the publication of The Prelude. They show that what led Wordsworth to write so much about himself was not self-conceit, but self-diffidence. He felt unprepared as yet for the more arduous task he had set before himself. He saw its faults as

clearly, or more clearly, than the critics who condemned him. He knew that its length was excessive. He tried to condense it; he kept it beside him unpublished, and occasionally revised it, with a view to condensation, in vain. The text received his final corrections in the year 1832.

The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is noteworthy:— "This defect" (of redundancy) "whenever I have suspected it, or found it to exist in my writings, I have always found incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception." The actual result in the Poem he had at length committed to writing-was so far inferior to the ideal he had tried to realise, that he could never be induced to publish it. He spoke of the MS. as forming a sort of portico to his larger work-the poem on Man, Nature, and Society-which he meant to call "The Recluse," and of which one portion only, viz., The Excursion, was finished. It is clear that throughout the composition of The Prelude, he felt that he was experimenting with his powers. He wished to find out whether he could construct a literary work that might live," on a larger scale than his Lyrics; and it was on the writing of a "philosophical poem," dealing with Man and Nature, in their deepest aspects, that his thoughts had been fixed for many years. From the letter to Sir George Beaumont, December 25, 1804, it is evident that he regarded the autobiographical poem as a mere prologue to this larger work, to which he hoped to turn "with all his might" after The Prelude was finished, and of which he had already written about a fifth or a sixth (see Memoirs, Vol. I., p. 304). This was the part known in the Grasmere household as The Pedlar, a title given to it from the character of the Wanderer, but afterwards happily set aside. He did not devote himself, however, to the completion of his wider purpose, immediately after The Prelude was finished. He wrote one book of The Recluse which is still unpublished. It is

entitled, "Home at Grasmere ;" and, though detached from The Prelude, it is a continuation of the narrative of his own life at the point where it is left off in the latter poem. It consists of 733 lines. The following extract from it was published in the Memoirs in 1850 (Vol. I. p. 155) :— "Bleak season was it, turbulent and wild,

When hitherward we journeyed, side by side,

Through bursts of sunshine and through flying showers,
Paced the long vales, how long they were, and yet
How fast that length of way was left behind,
Wensley's rich vale and Sedberge's naked heights.
The frosty wind, as if to make amends

For its keen breath, was aiding to our steps,
And drove us onward as two ships at sea;
Or, like two birds, companions in mid-air,
Parted and reunited by the blast.

Stern was the face of Nature: we rejoiced

In that stern countenance; for our souls thence drew

A feeling of their strength. The naked trees,

The icy brooks, as on we passed, appeared

To question us, 'Whence come ye? To what end?'"

The autobiographical poem remained, as already stated, during Wordsword's life-time without a title. The name finally adopted-The Prelude was suggested by Mrs Wordsworth, both to indicate its relation to the larger work, and the fact of its having been written comparatively early. As the poem was addressed to Coleridge, it may be desirable to add in this place his critical verdict upon it; along with the poem which he wrote, on hearing Wordsworth read a portion of it to him, in the winter of 1806, at Coleorton.

In his Table Talk (London, 1835, Vol. II., p. 70), Coleridge's opinion is recorded thus:

"I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not first publish his thirteen (fourteen) books on the growth of an individual mindsuperior, as I used to think, upon the whole to 'The Excursion.' You may judge how I felt about them by my own Poem upon the occasion. Then the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly suggested by me, was, that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man in mental repose, one whose principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man,—a subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste in contact with external nature, and informing the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out of the senses; then he was to describe the pastoral and other states of society, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the high civilization of cities and towns, and opening a melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence he was to infer and reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole state of man

and society being subject to, and illustrative of, a redemptive process in operation, showing how this idea reconciled all the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration. Something of this sort was, I think, agreed on. It is, in substance, what I have been all my life doing in my system of philosophy.

"I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great Philosopher than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly-perhaps, I might say exclusively fitted for him. His proper title is Spectator ab extra."

The following are Coleridge's Lines addressed to Wordsworth :

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND.

Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!

Into my heart have I received that lay

More than historic, that prophetic lay

Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind
By vital breathings secret as the soul
Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
Thoughts all too deep for words !—

Theme hard as high,

Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears

(The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth),
Of tides obedient to external force,

And currents self-determined, as might seem,

Or by some inner power; of moments awful,

Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,

When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received
The Light reflected, as a light bestowed—
Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens,
Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,
The guides and the companions of thy way!

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
Distending wide, and man beloved as man,
Where France in all her towns lay vibrating
Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst
Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the main.

For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,

When from the general heart of humankind
Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!

-Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,

So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure, From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self, With light unwaning on her eyes, to look

Far on-herself a glory to behold.

The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and joy !-An Orphic song indeed,

A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted!

O great Bard!

Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men. The truly great
Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and Time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.
Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old,
And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
Among the archives of mankind, thy work
Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes !
Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,

The pulses of my being beat anew :

And even as life returns upon the drowned,

Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains→→
Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;

And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain ;

And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out-but flowers
Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

Eve following eve,

Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed,
And more desired, more precious for thy song,
In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive, by thy various strain
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
With momentary stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated foam, still darting off
Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.

And when! O Friend! my comforter and guide!
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength !——
Thy long-sustained Song finally closed,

And thy deep voice had ceased-yet thou thyself
Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces-
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
I sate, my being blended in one thought
(Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)
Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound--
And when I rose I found myself in prayer.

It was at Coleorton, in Leicestershire,-where the Wordsworths lived during the winter of 1806, in a farm-house belonging to Sir George Beaumont, and where Coleridge visited them,-that The Prelude was read aloud by its author, on the occasion which gave birth to these lines.-ED.

Book First.

INTRODUCTION.-CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-TIME.

O THERE is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek

Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.