had been afoot for at least half a century when the Lyrical Ballads were published. He himself in his half-fledged efforts, referred to above, had indulged in a romantic melancholy, adopted, no doubt unconsciously, as part of the conventional trappings of a poet, and sufficiently belied by his letters of the same period. But the mawkish sentimentality and disorderliness of the prevalent romantic style, he could not abide; and its more legitimate appeal to the spirit of adventure, even when controlled by the manly sense of a Walter Scott, always seemed to him somewhat too trivial to be the function of so high a power as poetry.1 One characteristic of his own poems which in his opinion distinguished them from the popular poetry of the day,' was 'that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling.'2 Out of the Lyrical Ballads and their short Advertisement, which was written by Wordsworth, grew the larger Preface and Essay, in which at a later date the poet maintained and developed his theory of poetry. That strain of obstinacy, which was a part of his self-dependence, made him undaunted but not always perfectly judicious in polemics. Coleridge, who was both the surer and the subtler critic, modified for himself, and attempted to explain away in some measure for his friend, so much as seemed exaggerated in the new doctrine, or gave any handle to such mockery as Byron's description of the poet Who both by precept and example shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose. The Lyrical Ballads obtained a somewhat mixed reception, in which disfavour predominated. Southey, who was acquainted with Wordsworth and brother-in-law to Coleridge, younger than both, and far more self-satisfied than either, 1 Cp. his letter to Scott in Lockhart's Life of Scott, ch. xvi. reviewed them with all the superiority of a clever but somewhat commonplace young man. The Ancyent Marinere is called a Dutch attempt at German sublimity."1 There seems little doubt but that there was a spice of malice in Southey's criticism; and, estimable as was his character in many respects, he was both young and vain: but the limitations of the author of Madoc would perhaps scarcely have left room for appreciation of a work of genius, which even now that it has become familiar in our mouths as household words,' is perhaps the most startling poem in the English language. It should in fairness be added that Wordsworth himself was not very much less in the dark than Southey and the rest of the critics, and spent some pains, in a note to the second edition of the Ballads, to point out the four 'great defects' of the poem.2 But whatever may have been the importance of the Lyrical Ballads in the history of English literature, they are the firstfruits of Wordsworth's own true harvest. From this time onwards his life never suffers from unsteadiness of aim. Without neglecting everyday interests and duties, he lived the life of a poet as completely as any other who has borne the name. And, as was natural, he soon reverted to the original home and nursery of his genius. After a visit of some seven months to Germany, mainly remarkable for the excellence and the essentially English character of the poems which he wrote during a cold and dull winter at Goslar, he returned with Dorothy to England, and at the end of the same year, 1799, settled with her in that little cottage in the vale of 1 Quoted by Mr. Hutchinson: op. cit. p. xviii. 2 Mr. Hutchinson: op. cit. p. xxvi. note. 3 E.g. Lucy Gray, the 'Lucy' set of poems, Ruth. 4 3 4 Dove Cottage, in Wordsworth's time known as Town-End, was originally a small public-house, with the sign of the Dove and Olive Bough, standing at the foot of the high road from Ambleside to Grasmere where it came close down to the lake. The more modern road, made in Wordsworth's time, is lower down, between Dove Cottage and the lake. For the Dove and Olive Bough cp. The Waggoner, Canto I. 11. 52-60, below, vol. 1. p. 285. Grasmere which has within the last few years been secured and restored as the Mecca of Wordsworthians. Here for the greater part of eight years he lived with the frugality of a peasant, but rich in thoughts and affections, free of Nature's most exquisite and noblest territories. Here in 1802 he brought Mary Hutchinson, his wife— no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart, Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars, Here three of their children were born. Here he was visited by Walter Scott, after first visiting him on that tour in Scotland which produced among others the poems about Burns, The Solitary Reaper, and Yarrow Unvisited. Here the intimacy with Coleridge was continued, and Book I. of The Recluse, a large part of The Excursion, practically all The Prelude, and many of the best of the shorter poems, were written. Here, too, the discipline and consummation of a Poet's mind' were, so far as it is possible to mark off distinct stages in the life of the mind, completed by the first great personal grief which Wordsworth was called upon to suffer. In 1805 his brother John, nearest and dearest of his family after Dorothy, went down in the East Indiaman, Earl of Abergavenny, of which he was captain, off the Bill of Portland.2 The years at Dove Cottage will always be that part of Wordsworth's life upon which imagination most fondly lingers. That 'little Nook of mountain-ground,' so tiny that it is filled to overflowing with the memories that haunt it, seems to shine with the very radiance of love and joy. Nor is this 1 Prelude, xiv. 268. Cf. 'She was a Phantom of delight,' vol. 1. p. 310. merely the work of fancy, the contrast of the peasant's cottage and the poet's life. Although the gift of the many years that followed1 was rich in beauty and strength and consolation, there are both an exuberance and a reserve of power which mark, as is only natural, the poetry of the prime of the poet's manhood. The period between Wordsworth's beginning of friendship with Coleridge and his removal from Dove Cottage -the second of which dates is of course merely convenient where accuracy is impossible-has been truly enough called 'the spring-time of his genius';2 and although each season has its proper honours, none can stir us with the joy of life and the mystery of promise, the 'part seen, imagined part,' so subtly as the spring. At the same time it is as true of Wordsworth as of Walter Scott, that, for a poet, his genius flowered late.' There is therefore a fullness of thought and a strength about the poems of this great decade which are sometimes wanting in poets whose genius is full-fledged before their manhood. Few words need be said of Wordsworth's later life in an essay which pretends only to serve as an introduction to his poetry. His growing family, of which his wife's sister, Sara Hutchinson, became an almost constant member in 1805, compelled him to find a larger home than Dove Cottage. Accordingly he moved in 1808 to Allan Bank, a new house, less than half a mile from Grasmere, on the way to Easedale; and in 1811 to the Rectory, close by the church, where two of his children, Catherine and Thomas, died within six months, in 1812. For some This was a time of much care to Wordsworth. years past Coleridge's unhappy malady, his inability to settle down to steady work or to domestic contentment, had given 1 E.g. Laodamia, Dion, the later Skylark, Yarrow Visited and Revisited, the Evening Voluntaries, and a great quantity of the sonnets. 2 By Principal Shairp: quoted by Prof. Dowden in Aldine Edition of Words worth, vol. 1. p. lxxii. increasing anxiety to the Wordsworth circle. In the autumn of 1810 some well-meant remarks of Wordsworth to Basil Montagu, with whom Coleridge was intending to stay, were indiscreetly, and, beyond doubt, inaccurately, repeated to Coleridge. The result was a misunderstanding and a breach in the relations of the two friends for upwards of a year and a half. In May 1812, when Wordsworth was in London, they were reconciled through the good offices of Henry Crabb Robinson, an admirer of Wordsworth, and from about this time one of his most constant correspondents and visitors. But although the mutual affection of two such men was too deeply founded to be uprooted by any shock, their ideas and opinions, as well as their ways of life, had developed in directions too widely apart, and their natural differences of character had become too stereotyped, for any complete recovery of the 'glad, confident morning' of their intimacy. Wordsworth, like Southey, continued to show unstinted kindness to Coleridge's family; and Coleridge continued to feel and express his old veneration and love of Wordsworth. But with his perfect loyalty and his tenacity of character, Wordsworth had a certain lack of sympathy, a certain aloofness in his self-dependence, which in this middle period of his life was in danger of becoming a somewhat puritanical self-esteem, owing, as his friends saw, to the remoteness of his daily life from the give-and-take of ordinary society, and, we may add, to his struggle with poverty and the slow progress of his poetry in the estimation of the public.1 In his later years, while retaining the austerity 1 Space forbids me to enter into details, but among the many indications upon which the above passage is founded I will refer the reader to the following passages quoted in Prof. Knight's Life of Wordsworth, vol. 1. (x.):-p. 178 (from Crabb Robinson's Diary, May 9, 1812:-'A call on C. Lamb. He is of opinion that any attempt to bring W. and C. together must prove ineffectual. Perhaps he thinks it mischievous. He thinks W. cold. It may be so. Healthful coolness is preferable to the heat of disease.' Ibid. p. 186. Letter of Mrs. Clarkson, March 29, 1813:-'... Indeed, I see in the effects of these losses [of the two children] upon them [the Wordsworths] the evil of living so entirely out of the world, especially in that country. . . . Those mountains give a character of permanency to everything |