the time when he
resolved to labor with all his powers in the office of poet. The first
two years, during which he lived with his self-sacrificing sister at
Racedown, in Dorset, were spent in half-hearted and very imperfectly
successful experiments--satires in imitation of Juvenal, the tragedy
of "The Borderers," and a poem in the Spenserian stanza, the poem now
entitled "Guilt and Sorrow." How much longer this time of doubtful,
self-distrustful endeavor might have continued is a subject for
curious speculation; an end was put to it by a fortunate incident, a
visit from Coleridge, who had read his first publication, and seen in
it, what none of the public critics had discerned, the advent of "an
original poetic genius." It would be impossible to exaggerate the
importance for Wordsworth of the arrival of this enthusiastic
Columbus. Under his sister's genial influence he was groping his way
doubtfully out of the labyrinth of poetic conventions, beginning to
see a new pathos and sublimity in human life, but not yet convinced,
except by fits and starts, of the rightness of his own vision.
Stubborn and independent as Wordsworth was, he needed some friendly
voice from the outer world to give him confidence in himself.
Coleridge rendered him this indispensable service. He read to his
visitor one of his experiments, the story of the ruined cottage,
afterward introduced into the first book of "The Excursion."
Coleridge, who had already seen original poetic genius in the poems
published before, was enthusiastic in his praise of them as having "a
character by books not hitherto reflected," and his praise gave new
heart and hope to the poet, hitherto hesitating and uncertain.

June, 1797, was the date of this memorable visit. So pleasant was the
companionship on both sides that, when Coleridge returned to Nether
Stowey, in Somerset, Wordsworth, at his instance, changed his quarters
to Alfoxden, within a mile and a half of Coleridge's temporary
residence, and the two poets lived in almost daily intercourse for the
next twelve months. During that period Wordsworth's powers rapidly
expanded and matured; ideas that had been gathering in his mind for
years, and lying there in dim confusion, felt the stir of a new life
and ranged themselves in clearer shapes under the fresh, quickening
breath of Coleridge's swift and discursive dialect. The radiant
restless vitality of the more variously gifted man stirred the stiffer
and more sluggish