Long before this time he had discarded his early ideals and become the upholder of conservatism. Perhaps he is not “the lost leader” whose recantation Browning bewails with rather theatrical woe; but he lived to deplore the Reform Bill and to oppose the causes to which his early genius had been dedicated. Throughout his life, however, he never wavered in his faith in himself and his immortality as a poet. He lived to see his own belief in his powers triumphantly justified. It is seldom indeed that such gigantic egoism is so amply and so justly repaid.
2. His Poetry. He records that his earliest verses were written at school, and that they were “a tame imitation of Pope’s versification.” This is an interesting admission of the still surviving domination of the earlier poet. At the university he composed some poetry, which appeared as The Evening Walk (1793) and Descriptive Sketches (1793). In style these poems have little originality, but they already show the Wordsworthian eye for nature. The firstfruits of his genius were seen in the Lyrical Ballads (1798), a joint production by Coleridge and himself, which was published at Bristol.
Regarding the inception of this remarkable book both Wordsworth and Coleridge have left accounts, which vary to some extent, though not materially. Coleridge’s may be taken as the more plausible. He says in his Biographia Literaria:
It was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of the imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr Wordsworth was to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday life by awakening the mind’s attention to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us.
This volume is epoch-making, for it is the prelude to the Romantic movement proper. Wordsworth had the larger share in the book. Some of his poems in it, such as The Thorn and The Idiot Boy, are condemned as being trivial and childish in style; a few, such as Simon Lee and Expostulation and Reply, are more adequate in their expression; and the concluding piece, Tintern Abbey, is one of the triumphs of his genius.
During his visit to Germany in 1798–99 Wordsworth composed such typical poems as Lucy Gray, Ruth, and Nutting, which along with a large number of the same kind were issued in two volumes in 1807. This work, which comprises the flower of his poetry, was sharply assailed by the critics; but on the whole it amended the puerilities of the earlier volume, and set in motion the steady undercurrent of appreciation that was finally to overwhelm his detractors. While he was in Germany he planned The Prelude, which was not concluded till 1805, and remained unpublished during his lifetime. The Prelude, which dealt with his education and early ideals, was meant to be the introduction to an enormous blank-verse poem, chiefly on himself. The entire work was to be called The Recluse, and The Excursion (1814) was the second and only other completed part of it. It is on the whole fortunate that the entire poem was never finished. The Excursion is in itself a huge poem of nine books, and long stretches of it are dull and prosaic. It is inferior to The Prelude, which, though it is unequal in style, has some of the very best Wordsworthian blank verse; and it is only reasonable to imagine that further instalments of The Recluse would mark an increasing decline in poetic merit.
After the publication of The Excursion Wordsworth’s poetical power was clearly on the wane, but his productivity was unimpaired. His later volumes include The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), The Waggoner (1819), Peter Bell (1819), Yarrow Revisited (1835), and The Borderers (1842), a drama. The progress of the works marks the decline in an increasing degree. There are flashes of the old spirit, such as we see in his lines upon the death of “the Ettrick Shepherd”; but the fire and stately intonation become rarer, and mere garrulity becomes more and more apparent.
3. His Theory of Poetry. In the preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry, and to this theory he continued to do lip-service, while in practice he constantly violated it. The Wordsworthian dogma can be divided into two portions, concerning (a) the subject and (b) the style of poetry.
(a) Regarding subject, Wordsworth declares his preference for “incidents and situations from common life”; to obtain such situations “humble and rustic life is generally chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil.” In this respect Wordsworth was staunch to his declared opinions, because the majority of his poems deal with humble and rustic. life, including his own.
(b) With regard to style, Wordsworth declares that the language of poetry ought to be “the language really used by men,” especially by rustics, because the latter “speak a plainer and more emphatic language.” A little reflection will show that this contention is at best only half true, and Wordsworth laid himself open to deadly criticism. It was this part of his theory, moreover, that he himself constantly violated. Coleridge, who was Wordsworth’s great friend, but who held his critical faith higher than personal predilection, had but to quote Wordsworth’s own poems to condemn him. No doubt Wordsworth in such pieces as Lucy Gray and We are Seven does use the language of ordinary men; but in his greatest poems he prefers a language of a certain stiff ornateness, fired and fused by the passion of his imaginative insight. As Coleridge pointed out, it is not likely that a rustic would say