“My landlord, who dwells next door, has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories, encyclopedias, and all the modern poetry, etc. etc. etc.  A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier, by hard labour, and by pennies and pennies.  He is one instance among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge—­he was from a boy a lover of learning.”

(See ‘Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey,’ vol. ii. pp. 147, 148.)

Charles Lamb—­to whom ‘The Waggoner’ was dedicated—­wrote thus to Wordsworth on 7th June 1819: 

  “My dear Wordsworth,—­You cannot imagine how proud we are here of the
  dedication.  We read it twice for once that we do the poem.  I mean all
  through; yet ‘Benjamin’ is no common favourite; there is a spirit of
  beautiful tolerance in it.  It is as good as it was in 1806; and it
  will be as good in 1829, if our dim eyes shall be awake to peruse it. 
  Methinks there is a kind of shadowing affinity between the subject of
  the narrative and the subject of the dedication.
   ... 
  “I do not know which I like best,—­the prologue (the latter part
  especially) to ‘P.  Bell,’ or the epilogue to ‘Benjamin.’  Yes, I tell
  stories; I do know I like the last best; and the ‘Waggoner’ altogether
  is a pleasanter remembrance to me than the ‘Itinerant.’
  ... 
  “C.  LAMB.”

(See ‘The Letters of Charles Lamb,’ edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. pp. 24-26.)

To this may be added what Southey wrote to Mr. Wade Browne on 15th June 1819: 

“I think you will be pleased with Wordsworth’s ‘Waggoner’, if it were only for the line of road which it describes.  The master of the waggon was my poor landlord Jackson, and the cause of his exchanging it for the one-horse cart was just as is represented in the poem; nobody but Benjamin could manage it upon these hills, and Benjamin could not resist the temptations by the wayside.”

(See ‘The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey’, vol. iv. p. 318.)—­Ed.

* * * * *

THE PRELUDE,

OR, GROWTH OF A POET’S MIND;

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM

Composed 1799-1805.—­Published 1850

ADVERTISEMENT

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: