“I have been very busy these last ten weeks:  having written between two and three thousand lines—­accurately near three thousand—­in that time; namely, four books, and a third of another.  I am at present at the Seventh Book.”

On the 25th December 1804, he wrote to Sir George Beaumont,

  “I have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks.”

We thus find that Books I. to IV. had been written by the 6th of March 1804, that from the 19th February to the 29th of April nearly 3000 lines were written, that March and April were specially productive months, for by the 29th April he had reached Book VII. while from 16th October to 25th December he wrote over 2000 lines.

Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth transcribed the earlier books more than once, and a copy of some of them was given to Coleridge to take with him to Malta.

It is certain that the remaining books of ‘The Prelude’ were all written in the spring and early summer of 1805; the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and part of the twelfth being finished about the middle of April; the last 300 lines of book twelfth in the last week of April; and the two remaining books—­the thirteenth and fourteenth—­before the 20th of May.  The following extracts from letters of Wordsworth to Sir George Beaumont make this clear, and also cast light on matters much more important than the mere dates of composition.

  GRASMERE, Dec. 25, 1804.

“My dear Sir George,—­You will be pleased to hear that I have been advancing with my work:  I have written upwards of 2000 verses during the last ten weeks.  I do not know if you are exactly acquainted with the plan of my poetical labour:  It is twofold; first, a Poem, to be called ‘The Recluse;’ in which it will be my object to express in verse my most interesting feelings concerning man, nature, and society; and next, a poem (in which I am at present chiefly engaged) on my earlier life, or the growth of my own mind, taken up upon a large scale.  This latter work I expect to have finished before the month of May; and then I purpose to fall with all my might on the former, which is the chief object upon which my thoughts have been fixed these many years.  Of this poem, that of ‘The Pedlar,’ which Coleridge read to you, is part; and I may have written of it altogether about 2000 lines.  It will consist, I hope, of about ten or twelve thousand.”

  GRASMERE, May 1, 1805.

“Unable to proceed with this work, [B] I turned my thoughts again to the ‘Poem on my own Life’, and you will be glad to hear that I have added 300 lines to it in the course of last week.  Two books more will conclude it.  It will not be much less than 9000 lines,—­not hundred but thousand lines long,—­an alarming length! and a thing unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself.  It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that