nature of the recluse to its depths, and Coleridge's
quick and generous appreciation of his power gave him precisely the
encouragement that he needed.

It is interesting to compare with what he actually accomplished, the
plan of life-work with which Wordsworth finally settled at Grasmere,
in the last month of the eighteenth century. The plan was definitely
conceived as he left the German town of Goslar, during a trip on the
Continent, in the spring of 1799. Tired of the wandering, unsettled
life that he had led hitherto; dissatisfied also with the fragmentary,
occasional, and disconnected character of his lyrical poems, he longed
for a permanent home among his native hills, where he might, as one
called and consecrated to the task, devote his powers continuously to
the composition of a great philosophical poem on Man, Nature, and
Society. The poem was to be called "The Recluse." He communicated the
design to Coleridge, who gave him enthusiastic encouragement to
proceed. In the first transport of the conception he felt as if he
needed only solitude and leisure for the continuous execution of it.
But, though he had still before him fifty years of peaceful life amid
his beloved scenery, the work in the projected form at least was
destined to remain incomplete. Doubts and misgivings soon arose, and
favorable moments of felt inspiration delayed their coming. To sustain
him in his resolution he thought of writing as an introduction, or, as
he put it, an antechapel to the church which he proposed to build, a
history of his own mind up to the time when he recognized the great
mission of his life. It appears from a letter to his friend, Sir
George Beaumont, that his health was far from robust, and in
particular that he could not write without intolerable physical
uneasiness. We should probably not be wrong in connecting his physical
weakness with his rule of waiting for favorable moments. His next
start with "The Prelude," in the spring of 1804, was more prosperous;
he dropped it for several months, but, resuming again in the spring of
1805, he completed it in the summer of that year. But still the
composition of the great work to which it was intended to be a portico
proceeded by fits and starts. It was not till 1814 that the second of
the three divisions of "The Recluse," ultimately named "The
Excursion," was ready for publication; and he went no further in the
execution of his great design.

We shall speak presently of the