CHAPTER XV.

RETURN TOWARDS ENGLAND. COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRELUDE."

In the beginning of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister were preparing to leave Goslar, which they quitted on the 10th February of that year.

He felt inspirited by the change of place. When he set forth from this imperial city, so dull and dreary as it had been to him, and when the prospect of a transition from its frost and snow to a more genial climate opened upon him, he seemed to be like one emancipated from the thraldom of a prison: it gave new life and alacrity to his soul. He had been composing Minor Poems; but he now projected something of a higher aim, and more comprehensive scope. He was about to enter his thirtieth year. It was time that he should ascertain for himself whether he was justified in choosing a poet's life as a profession; he would, therefore, make some serious essay, for the purpose of testing his own strength. What should be the argument? After much consideration, he chose his own intellectual being as his subject, "The growth of his own mind." He would review his own metaphysical history, from infancy through boyhood, school time, and college life: his travels, his hopes and aspirations, his disappointments and distresses, his inward conflicts and perplexities, the restoration of health and freshness to a disordered and drooping imagination - these should be the topics

which he would treat. And the proposed poem should be addressed to one who would sympathise with him as a poet and a friend S. T. COLERIDGE.

Hence, therefore, scarcely having issued from the gates of Goslar, he poured forth the impassioned strain which forms the commencement of "The Prelude."

"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.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast City, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,

Free as a bird to settle where I will.

For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven
Was blowing on my body, felt within

A correspondent breeze, that gently moved
With quickening virtue, but is now become
A tempest, a redundant energy,

Vexing its own creation. Thanks to both,
And their congenial powers, that, while they join
In breaking up a long-continued frost,
Bring with them vernal promises, the hope
Of active days urged on by flying hours, —
Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought
Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high,
Matins and vespers of harmonious verse!

"Thus far, O Friend! did I, not used to make

A present joy the matter of a song,

Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains
That would not be forgotten, and are here
Recorded: to the open fields I told

A prophecy poetic numbers came

Spontaneously, to clothe in priestly robe
A renovated spirit singled out,

Such hope was mine, for holy services.

My own voice cheered me, and far more, the mind's
Internal echo of the imperfect sound;

To both I listened, drawing from them both

A cheerful confidence in things to come."

The poem, thus commenced, proceeded for a while with a regular pace: it then paused for a considerable interval. Of the fourteen books, which now complete it, six had been written in 1805, and the seventh was begun in the spring of that year; it opens with the following lines 1:

"Six changeful years have vanished, since I first
Poured out (saluted by that quickening breeze
Which met me issuing from the City's walls)
A glad preamble to this verse: I sang
Aloud, with fervour irresistible

Of short-lived transport, like a torrent bursting
From a black thunder-cloud, down Scawfell's side
To rush and disappear. But soon broke forth
(So willed the Muse) a less impetuous stream,
That flowed awhile with unabating strength;
Then stopped for years; not audible again
Before last primrose-time. Beloved Friend!

The assurance which then cheered some heavy thoughts
On thy departure to a foreign land

Has failed; too slowly moves the promised work.”

The seventh book and the remaining seven were written before the end of June, 1805, when his friend Coleridge was in the island of Malta, for the restoration of his health.

1 Prelude, book vii. p. 171.

Having given this brief outline of "The Prelude," I will reserve further notice of it to a later stage of the narrative.

Early in the spring of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister returned to England. "We are now," he says in a letter to Cottle, "in the county of Durham, just upon the borders of Yorkshire. We left Coleridge well at Göttingen a month ago. We have spent our time pleasantly enough in Germany, but we are right glad to find ourselves in England - for we have learnt to know its value."

CHAPTER XVI.

SETTLEMENT AT GRASMERE.

THE Poet Gray visited Grasmere in October, 1769. He came from Keswick, over Dunmail Raise, and thus describes what he then saw1:"Oct. 8. . . I entered (coming from Keswick) Westmoreland, a second time, and now began to see Helm-crag, distinguished from its rugged neighbours, not so much by its height as by the strange broken outlines of its top, like some gigantic building demolished, and the stones that composed it flung across each other in wild confusion. Just beyond it opens one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever attempted to imitate. The bosom of the mountains spreading here into a broad bason discovers in the midst Grasmere-Water. Its margin is hollowed into small bays, with bold eminences, some of rock, some of soft turf, that half conceal and vary the figure of the little lake they command. From the shore, a low promontory pushes itself far into the water, and on it stands a white village, with the parish church rising in the midst of it. Hanging inclosures, corn fields, and meadows, green as an emerald, with their trees, and hedges, and cattle, fill up the whole space from the edge of the water; and just opposite to you is a large farm-house, at the bottom of a steep smooth lawn, embosomed in old woods which climb halfway up the mountain's side, and discover above

Gray's Works, ed. Mathias London, 1814, p. 459.