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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: