Wordsworth's "Preface." - One who has read even the brief account of Romanticism given above will easily imagine the author's attitude toward this criticism. In 1800 a second edition of Lyrical Ballads appeared, with a long preface by DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. Wordsworth explaining poetry in the calmest fashion men, in ordinary situa- are proper subjects for set by himself, he never once wavered in his faith and his effort. To Dove Cottage, Grasmere. In December, 1799, Wordsworth and Dorothy moved to Grasmere, "truly and vitally, biographically and spiritually, as well as scenically and physically, the center of the Lake District." In this village the poet made his home for thirteen years, for eight of them in Dove Cottage. This little house, like the Shakspere birthplace and other "shrines," is now the property museum The this mo Wordsw she had After b Carbr she set the m Souther which Her in period, pointm of the tion se end hi when h great a many Words ter on striking of The Marriage. A few years after moving to Grasmere, Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, whom he described as "A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright His devotion to wife and sister was amply deserved; for it The greater portion of WordsThe Poet's Best Period. worth's best poetry was composed at Dove Cottage, much of it in the garden: "Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair, The loveliest spot that man has ever found." Here, before 1801, he wrote Michael, Ode on Intimations of Immortality, Ode to Duty, To a Sky-Lark, and numerous other bird- and flower-lyrics, many of his best sonnets, and The Prelude. Though he wrote voluminously almost to the end of his life, there are few poems after 1808 equal to those of the Grasmere period. Full Recognition. In 1813 the poet made his last change of residence to Rydal Mount, near the hamlet of Rydal, about four miles from Grasmere. Here he spent the last thirty-seven years of his life, writing in the same key as in his earlier compositions, strangely unaffected by the many new exhibitions of the Romantic spirit, or by the modern scientific spirit. Recognition of him as the "first of living poets seems to have become general even before government so described him in offering the laureateship. Nearly all his old friends remained stanch, and many great men of the day were added to the circle. Reward financially meagre a was some 2. Th of Ryda made p appointm Westmor salary of In 1842 given to pot of a came to degrees and Oxfo Words suficiend Wordswo teen yea date giv the Age o he was, taking P of his rad vinced m principles pened w in Lyric sequent An obser fact that other men did not seem necessary to him. Legouis, Wordsworth's French biographer, says that books seemed equally unnecessary to him: "He gives us the impression that, had he lived alone on a bookless earth, he would have reached the same conclusions." He reached the point where his own poetry sufficed for his artistic life; and other notes found no responsive chord in him. A most im the RYDAL MOUNT. One of the fields in which the Poems of Humble Life. poet gave notable expression to the spirit of revolt is poems of humble life. The little cottage girl of We are Seven, the leech-gatherer in Resolution and Independence, the old shepherd in the pathetic story of Michael, and many similar figures are Wordsworth's deliberate defiance of tradition, of the so-called "established rules" by which, said his critics, poetry had been written time out of mind, and ought still to be written. He chose this kind of life, he said, "be almost w Milton. of his ear or on bri There re first ord Many o those on "Nuns |