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Elective English—IV

Notes and up through the fledgling United States. By the time of their association, Stewart had published
an ambitious work of original materialist philosophy entitled The Apocalypse of
Nature (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth’s philosophical sentiments are likely
indebted.

In 1807, his Poems in Two Volumes were published, including “Ode: Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood”. Up to this point Wordsworth was known publicly only
for Lyrical Ballads, and he hoped this collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was
lukewarm, however. For a time (starting in 1810), Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged
over the latter’s opium addiction. Two of his children, Thomas and Catherine, died in 1812. The
following year, he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the
£400 per year income from the post made him financially secure. His family, including Dorothy,
moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water) in 1813, where he
spent the rest of his life.

9.1.7 The Prospectus

In 1814 he published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part The Recluse. He had not
completed the first and third parts, and never would. He did, however, write a poetic Prospectus
to “The Recluse” in which he lays out the structure and intent of the poem. The Prospectus
contains some of Wordsworth’s most famous lines on the relation between the human mind and
nature:

My voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:—and how exquisitely, too,
Theme this but little heard of among Men,
The external World is fitted to the Mind.

Some modern critics recognise a decline in his works beginning around the mid-1810s. But this
decline was perhaps more a change in his lifestyle and beliefs, since most of the issues that
characterise his early poetry (loss, death, endurance, separation and abandonment) were resolved
in his writings. But, by 1820, he enjoyed the success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary
critical opinion of his earlier works. Following the death of his friend the painter William
Green in 1823, Wordsworth mended relations with Coleridge. The two were fully reconciled by
1828, when they toured the Rhineland together. Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829
that rendered her an invalid for the remainder of her life. In 1835, Wordsworth gave Annette and
Caroline the money they needed for support.

9.1.8 The Poet Laureate and Other Honours

Wordsworth received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838 from Durham University
and the same honour from Oxford University the next year. In 1842 the government awarded
him a civil list pension amounting to £300 a year. With the death in 1843 of Robert Southey,
Wordsworth became the Poet Laureate. He initially refused the honour, saying he was too old,
but accepted when Prime Minister Robert Peel assured him “you shall have nothing required of
you” (he became the only laureate to write no official poetry). When his daughter, Dora, died in
1847, his production of poetry came to a standstill.

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