WILLIAM MEMOIRS OF WORDSWORTH. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. In the autumn of the year 1847, when the author of this Memoir was on a visit at Rydal Mount, the conversation turned on the Biography of departed poets a subject which has been handled by Mr. Wordsworth in his Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns, published in the year 1816.1 It was to be expected that this topic would not be dismissed without some reference to himself. Whether any, and if any - what kind of memorial should be given to the world of his life - this was a question which often presented itself to the mind of his nearest friends, as doubtless it did to his own. On that occasion, as on many others, he expressed an opinion, that a poet's Life is written in his WORKS; and this is undoubtedly true, in a remarkable manner, in his own particular case. 1 London, Longmans, pp. 37. It is dated Rydal Mount, January, 1816. His life had not been a stirring one. It had been passed, for the most part, amid natural scenes of quiet beauty; and what Horace has said of the poet Lucilius was very applicable to him. He confided his secrets to his lyre 1; to it he communicated his feelings and his thoughts on every occasion of interest, public and private; and hence his LIFE is written in his WORKS. Nor is this all. One Poem, especially — that which has been given to the world subsequently to his death -the PRELUDE, - is designed to exhibit the growth of his mind from his infancy to the year 1799, when, if we may so speak, he entered upon his mission and ministry, and deliberately resolved to devote his time and faculties to the art and office of a POET. His Works, therefore, are his Life. And it would be a superfluous and presumptuous enterprise to encroach upon this their province, and to invade the biographical eminence on which his Poems stand. Let them retain their supremacy in this respect; and let no other LIFE of WORDSWORTH be composed beside what has thus been written with his own hand. This being borne in mind, it ensues as a matter of course, that the present Work does not claim for itself the title of a Life of Wordsworth. Nor, again, does it profess to offer a critical review of his Poems; or to supply an elaborate exposition of the principles on "Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris; neque, si malè cesserat, usquam VITA Senis." HORAT. Satir. II. i. 30. |