138 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS To return, however, to the course of his life from the time when he resolved to labor with all his powers in the office of poet. The first two years, during which he lived with his self-sacrificing sister at Racedown, in Dorset, were spent in half-hearted and very imperfectly successful experiments satires in imitation of Juvenal, the tragedy of "The Borderers," and a poem in the Spenserian stanza, the poem now entitled "Guilt and Sorrow." How much longer this time of doubtful, self-distrustful endeavor might have continued is a subject foi curious speculation ; an end was put to it by a fortunate incident, a visit from Coleridge, who had read his first publication, and seen in it, what none of the public critics had discerned, the advent of "an original poetic genius. It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance for Wordsworth of the arrival of this enthusiastic Columbus. Under his sister's genial influence he was groping his way doubtfully out of the labyrinth of poetic conventions, beginning to see a new pathos and sublimity in human life, but not yet convinced, except by fits and starts, of the Tightness of his own vision. Stubborn and independent as Words- worth was, he needed some friendly voice from the outer world to give him con fidence in himself. Coleridge rendered him this indispensable service. He read to his visitor one of his experiments, the story of the ruined cottage, afterward introduced into the first book of " The Excursion." Coleridge, who had already seen original poetic genius in the poems published before, was enthusiastic in his praise of them as having "a character by books not hitherto reflected," and his praise gave new heart and hope to the poet, hitherto hesitating and uncertain. June, 1797, was the date of this memorable visit. So pleasant was the com- panionship on both sides that, when Coleridge returned to Nether Stovvey, in Somerset, Wordsworth, at his instance, changed his quarters to Alfcxden, within a mile and a half of Coleridge's temporary residence, and the two poets lived in almost daily intercourse for the next twelve months. During that period Words- worth's powers rapidly expanded and matured ; ideas that had been gathering in his mind for years, and lying there in dim confusion, felt the stir of a new life and ranged themselves in clearer shapes under the fresh, quickening breath of Coleridge's swift and discursive dialect. The radiant restless vitality of the more variously gifted man stirred the stiffer and more sluggish nature of the recluse to its depths, and Coleridge's quick and generous appreciation of his power gave him precisely the encouragement that he needed. - It is interesting to compare with what he actually accomplished, the plan of life-work with which Wordsworth finally settled at Grasmere, in the last month of the eighteenth century. The plan was definitely conceived as he left the Ger- man town of Goslar, during a trip on the Continent, in the spring of 1 799. Tired of the wandering, unsettled life that he had led hitherto ; dissatisfied also with the fragmentary, occasional, and disconnected character of his lyrical poems, he longed for a permanent home among his native hills, where he might, as one called and consecrated to the task, devote his powers continuously to the composition of a great philosophical poem on Man, Nature, and Society. The poem was to be called "The Recluse." He communicated the design to Coleridge, who gave
