Volume 3 — The Prelude

or, Growth of a Poet's Mind

an Autobiographical Poem

Composed 1799-1805.—Published 1850

The Poem

Advertisement The following Poem was commenced in the beginning of the year 1799, and completed in the summer of 1805. The design and occasion of the work are described by the Author in his Preface to the Excursion, first published in 1814, where he thus speaks:

"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 an 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 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."

Such was the Author's language in the year 1814. It will thence be seen, that the present Poem was intended to be introductory to the Recluse, and that the Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of Three Parts. Of these, the Second Part alone, viz. the Excursion, was finished, and given to the world by the Author. The First Book of the First Part of the Recluse still remains in manuscript; but the Third Part was only planned. The materials of which it would have been formed have, however, been incorporated, for the most part, in the Author's other Publications, written subsequently to the Excursion. The Friend, to whom the present Poem is addressed, was the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was resident in Malta, for the restoration of his health, when the greater part of it was composed. Mr. Coleridge read a considerable portion of the Poem while he was abroad; and his feelings, on hearing it recited by the Author (after his return to his own country) are recorded in his Verses, addressed to Mr. Wordsworth, which will be found in the Sibylline Leaves, p. 197, edition 1817, or Poetical Works, by S. T. Coleridge, vol. i. p. 206. Rydal Mount, July 13th, 1850.

This "advertisement" to the first edition of The Prelude, published in 1850—the year of Wordsworth's death—was written by Mr. Carter, who edited the volume. Mr. Carter was for many years the poet's secretary, and afterwards one of his literary executors. The poem was not only kept back from publication during Wordsworth's life-time, but it remained without a title; being alluded to by himself, when he spoke or wrote of it, as "the poem on my own poetical education," the "poem on my own life," etc. As The Prelude is autobiographical, a large part of Wordsworth's life might be written in the notes appended to it; but, besides breaking up the text of the poem unduly, this plan has many disadvantages, and would render a subsequent and detailed life of the poet either unnecessary or repetitive. The notes which follow will therefore be limited to the explanation of local, historical, and chronological allusions, or to references to Wordsworth's own career that are not obvious without them. It has been occasionally difficult to decide whether some of the allusions, to minute points in ancient history, mediæval mythology, and contemporary politics, should be explained or left alone; but I have preferred to err on the side of giving a brief clue to details, with which every scholar is familiar. The Prelude was begun as Wordsworth left the imperial city of Goslar, in Lower Saxony, where he spent part of the last winter of last century, and which he left on the 10th of February 1799. Only lines 1 to 45, however, were composed at that time; and the poem was continued at desultory intervals after the settlement at Grasmere, during 1800, and following years. Large portions of it were dictated to his devoted amanuenses as he walked, or sat, on the terraces of Lancrigg. Six books were finished by 1805.

"The seventh was begun in the opening of that year; ... 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."

(The late Bishop of Lincoln.) There is no uncertainty as to the year in which the later books were written; but there is considerable difficulty in fixing the precise date of the earlier ones. Writing from Grasmere to his friend Francis Wrangham—the letter is undated—Wordsworth says,

"I am engaged in writing a poem on my own earlier life, which will take five parts or books to complete, three of which are nearly finished."

The late Bishop of Lincoln supposed that this letter to Wrangham was written "at the close of 1803, or beginning of 1804." (See Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. i. p. 303.) There is evidence that it belongs to 1804. At the commencement of the seventh book, p. 247, he says:

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 Scafell'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.

I have italicised the clauses which give some clue to the dates of composition. From these it would appear that the "glad preamble," written on leaving Goslar in 1799 (which, I think, included only the first two paragraphs of book first), was a "short-lived transport"; but that "soon" afterwards "a less impetuous stream" broke forth, which, after the settlement at Grasmere, "flowed awhile with unabating strength," and then "stopped for years." Now the above passage, recording these things, was written in 1805, and in the late autumn of that year; (as is evident from the reference which immediately follows to the "choir of redbreasts" and the approach of winter). We must therefore assign the flowing of the "less impetuous stream," to 1802; in order to leave room for the intervening "years," in which it ceased to flow, till it was audible again in the spring of 1804, "last primrose-time." A second reference to date occurs in the sixth book, p. 224, entitled "Cambridge and the Alps," in which he says,

Four years and thirty, told, this very week, Have I been now a sojourner on earth.

This fixes definitely enough the date of the composition of that part of the work, viz. April 1804, which corresponds exactly to the "last primrose-time" of the previous extract from the seventh book, in which he tells us that after its long silence, his Muse was heard again. So far Wordsworth's own allusions to the date of The Prelude. But there are others supplied by his own, and his sister's letters, and also by the Grasmere Journal. In the Dove Cottage household it was known, and talked of, as "the Poem to Coleridge;" and Dorothy records, on 11th January 1803, that her brother was working at it. On 13th February 1804, she writes to Mrs. Clarkson that her brother was engaged on a poem on his own life, and was "going on with great rapidity." On the 6th of March 1804, Wordsworth wrote from Grasmere to De Quincey,

"I am now writing a poem on my own earlier life: I have just finished that part of it in which I speak of my residence at the University." ... It is "better than half complete, viz. four books, amounting to about 2500 lines."^A

On the 24th of March, Dorothy wrote to Mrs. Clarkson, that since Coleridge left them (which was in January 1804), her brother had added 1500 lines to the poem on his own life. On the 29th of April 1804, Wordsworth wrote to Richard Sharpe,

"I have been very busy these last ten weeks: having written between two and three thousand lines—accurately near three thousand—in that time; namely, four books, and a third of another. I am at present at the Seventh Book."

On the 25th December 1804, he wrote to Sir George Beaumont,

"I have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks."

We thus find that Books I. to IV. had been written by the 6th of March 1804, that from the 19th February to the 29th of April nearly 3000 lines were written, that March and April were specially productive months, for by the 29th April he had reached Book VII. while from 16th October to 25th December he wrote over 2000 lines. Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth transcribed the earlier books more than once, and a copy of some of them was given to Coleridge to take with him to Malta. It is certain that the remaining books of The Prelude were all written in the spring and early summer of 1805; the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and part of the twelfth being finished about the middle of April; the last 300 lines of book twelfth in the last week of April; and the two remaining books—the thirteenth and fourteenth—before the 20th of May. The following extracts from letters of Wordsworth to Sir George Beaumont make this clear, and also cast light on matters much more important than the mere dates of composition.

Grasmere, Dec. 25, 1804. "My dear Sir George,—You will be pleased to hear that I have been advancing with my work: I have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks. I do not know if you are exactly acquainted with the plan of my poetical labour: It is twofold; first, a Poem, to be called The Recluse; in which it will be my object to express in verse my most interesting feelings concerning man, nature, and society; and next, a poem (in which I am at present chiefly engaged) on my earlier life, or the growth of my own mind, taken up upon a large scale. This latter work I expect to have finished before the month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my might on the former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts have been fixed these many years. Of this poem, that of The Pedlar, which Coleridge read to you, is part; and I may have written of it altogether about 2000 lines. It will consist, I hope, of about ten or twelve thousand."

Grasmere, May 1, 1805. "Unable to proceed with this work,^B I turned my thoughts again to the Poem on my own Life, and you will be glad to hear that I have added 300 lines to it in the course of last week. Two books more will conclude it. It will not be much less than 9000 lines,—not hundred but thousand lines long,—an alarming length! and a thing unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself. It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has induced me to do this, but real humility. I began the work because I was unprepared to treat any more arduous subject, and diffident of my own powers. Here, at least, I hoped that to a certain degree I should be sure of succeeding, as I had nothing to do but describe what I had felt and thought, and therefore could not easily be bewildered. This might have been done in narrower compass by a man of more address; but I have done my best. If, when the work shall be finished, it appears to the judicious to have redundancies, they shall be lopped off, if possible; but this is very difficult to do, when a man has written with thought; and this defect, whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found it incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception."

Grasmere, June 3, 1805. "I have the pleasure to say that I finished my poem about a fortnight ago. I had looked forward to the day as a most happy one; ... But it was not a happy day for me; I was dejected on many accounts: when I looked back upon the performance, it seemed to have a dead weight about it,—the reality so far short of the expectation. It was the first long labour that I had finished; and the doubt whether I should ever live to write The Recluse, and the sense which I had of this poem being so far below what I seemed capable of executing, 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. Wordsworth's reluctance to publish these portions of his great poem, The Recluse, other than The Excursion, during his lifetime, was a matter of surprise to his friends; to whom he, or the ladies of his household, had read portions of it. In the year 1819, Charles Lamb wrote to him,

"If, as you say, The Waggoner, in some sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to call forth The Recluse from his profound dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge—the world!"

(The Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p. 26.) The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is note-worthy:

"This defect" (of redundancy) "whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, 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 he called "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. Two extracts from it were published in the Memoirs of Wordsworth in 1851 (vol. i. pp. 151 and 155), beginning [Volume 2 links:],

'On Nature's invitation do I come,'

and

'Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak.'

These will be found in vol. ii. of this edition, pp. 118 and 121 respectively. The autobiographical poem remained, as already stated, during Wordsworth's lifetime 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 mind—superior, 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 civilisation 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 rhe 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 stedfast 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, [C] 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 1806-7, 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.

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