“If, as you say, ‘The Waggoner’, in some sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to call forth ‘The Recluse’ from his profound dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge—­the world!”

(’The Letters of Charles Lamb’, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p. 26.)

The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is note-worthy: 

  “This defect” (of redundancy) “whenever I have suspected it or found
  it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found incurable. 
  The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception.”

The actual result—­in the Poem he had at length committed to writing—­was so far inferior to the ideal he had tried to realise, that he could never be induced to publish it.  He spoke of the MS. as forming a sort of portico to his larger work—­the poem on Man, Nature, and Society—­which he meant to call ‘The Recluse’, and of which one portion only, viz. ‘The Excursion’, was finished.  It is clear that throughout the composition of ‘The Prelude’, he felt that he was experimenting with his powers.  He wished to find out whether he could construct “a literary work that might live,” on a larger scale than his Lyrics; and it was on the writing of a “philosophical poem,” dealing with Man and Nature, in their deepest aspects, that his thoughts had been fixed for many years.  From the letter to Sir George Beaumont, December 25, 1804, it is evident that he regarded the autobiographical poem as a mere prologue to this larger work, to which he hoped to turn “with all his might” after ’The Prelude’ was finished, and of which he had already written about a fifth or a sixth (see ‘Memoirs’, vol. i. p. 304).  This was the part known in the Grasmere household as “The Pedlar,” a title given to it from the character of the Wanderer, but afterwards happily set aside.  He did not devote himself, however, to the completion of his wider purpose, immediately after ‘The Prelude’ was finished.  He wrote one book of ’The Recluse’ which he called “Home at Grasmere”; and, though detached from ‘The Prelude’, it is a continuation of the narrative of his own life at the point where it is left off in the latter poem.  It consists of 733 lines.  Two extracts from it were published in the ’Memoirs of Wordsworth’ in 1851 (vol. i. pp. 151 and 155), beginning,

  ‘On Nature’s invitation do I come,’

and

  ‘Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak.’

These will be found in vol. ii. of this edition, pp. 118 and 121 respectively.

The autobiographical poem remained, as already stated, during Wordsworth’s lifetime without a title.  The name finally adopted—­’The Prelude’—­was suggested by Mrs. Wordsworth, both to indicate its relation to the larger work, and the fact of its having been written comparatively early.

As the poem was addressed to Coleridge, it may be desirable to add in this place his critical verdict upon it; along with the poem which he wrote, on hearing Wordsworth read a portion of it to him, in the winter of 1806, at Coleorton.