has induced me to do this, but real humility.  I began the work because I was unprepared to treat any more arduous subject, and diffident of my own powers.  Here, at least, I hoped that to a certain degree I should be sure of succeeding, as I had nothing to do but describe what I had felt and thought, and therefore could not easily be bewildered.  This might have been done in narrower compass by a man of more address; but I have done my best.  If, when the work shall be finished, it appears to the judicious to have redundancies, they shall be lopped off, if possible; but this is very difficult to do, when a man has written with thought; and this defect, whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found it incurable.  The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception.”

  GRASMERE, June 3, 1805.

“I have the pleasure to say that I finished my poem about a fortnight ago.  I had looked forward to the day as a most happy one; ...  But it was not a happy day for me; I was dejected on many accounts:  when I looked back upon the performance, it seemed to have a dead weight about it,—­the reality so far short of the expectation.  It was the first long labour that I had finished; and the doubt whether I should ever live to write ‘The Recluse’, and the sense which I had of this poem being so far below what I seemed capable of executing, depressed me much; above all, many heavy thoughts of my poor departed brother hung upon me, the joy which I should have had in showing him the manuscript, and a thousand other vain fancies and dreams.  I have spoken of this, because it was a state of feeling new to me, the occasion being new.  This work may be considered as a sort of portico to ‘The Recluse’, part of the same building, which I hope to be able, ere long, to begin with in earnest; and if I am permitted to bring it to a conclusion, and to write, further, a narrative poem of the epic kind, I shall consider the task of my life as over.  I ought to add, that I have the satisfaction of finding the present poem not quite of so alarming a length as I apprehended.”

These letters explain the delay in the publication of ‘The Prelude’.  They show that what led Wordsworth to write so much about himself was not self-conceit, but self-diffidence.  He felt unprepared as yet for the more arduous task he had set before himself.  He saw its faults as clearly, or more clearly, than the critics who condemned him.  He knew that its length was excessive.  He tried to condense it; he kept it beside him unpublished, and occasionally revised it, with a view to condensation, in vain.  The text received his final corrections in the year 1832.

Wordsworth’s reluctance to publish these portions of his great poem, ‘The Recluse’, other than ‘The Excursion’, during his lifetime, was a matter of surprise to his friends; to whom he, or the ladies of his household, had read portions of it.  In the year 1819, Charles Lamb wrote to him,