reveals to him far higher love-lays.'" (The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. pp. 271-281.)

In the Notes to the text I have confined myself chiefly to the explanation of obscure allusions, topographical, historical, or legendary.-Ed.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF LONSDALE, K.G., ETC. ETC.

*

OFT, through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer!
In youth I roamed, on youthful pleasures bent;
And mused in rocky cell or sylvan tent,
Beside swift-flowing Lowther's current clear.†
-Now, by thy care befriended, I appear
Before thee, LONSDALE, and this Work present,
A token (may it prove a monument !)
Of high respect and gratitude sincere.
Gladly would I have waited till my task
Had reached its close; but Life is insecure,
And Hope full oft fallacious as a dream :
Therefore, for what is here produced, I ask
Thy favour; trusting that thou wilt not deem
The offering, though imperfect, premature.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

RYDAL MOUNT, WESTMORELAND,

July 29, 1814.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1814

THE Title-page announces that this is only a portion of a poem; and the Reader must be here apprised that

* The grounds of Lowther Castle. Compare the sonnet in "Poems, composed or suggested during a Tour, in the Summer of 1833," beginning

ED.

Lowther! in thy majestic Pile are seen. The Lowther stream, rising among the Shap Fells, joins the Emont at Brougham Castle.-ED.

it belongs to the second part of a long and laborious Work, which is to consist of three parts.-The Author will candidly acknowledge that, if the first of these had been completed, and in such a manner as to satisfy his own mind, he should have preferred the natural order of publication, and have given that to the world first; but, as the second division of the Work was designed to refer more to passing events, and to an existing state of things, than the others were meant to do, more continuous exertion was naturally bestowed upon it, and greater progress made here than in the rest of the poem; and as this part does not depend upon the preceding, to a degree which will materially injure its own peculiar interest, the Author, complying with the earnest entreaties of some valued Friends, presents the following pages to the Public.

It may be proper to state whence the poem, of which The Excursion is a part, derives its Title of THE RECLUSE.-Several years ago, when the Author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being enabled to construct a literary Work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far Nature and Education had qualified him for such employment. As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them. That Work,* addressed to a dear Friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the Author's Intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished; and the result of the investigation which gave rise to it was a determination to compose a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled, The Recluse; as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.—The preparatory poem is biographical, and conducts the

*The Prelude.-ED.

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 delightTMTM

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

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 ! ' *

5

ΙΟ

15

20

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

In holiest mood.1 Urania,† I shall need

25

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.

30

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

1814.

"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

Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man—

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 f); Strabo, 1; Pliny, 6, c. 31 and 32; Horace, Odes iv., 8, v. 27; Plutarch, The Life of Sertorius.-ED.