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 so 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."
During the next few years, Wordsworth published "The Waggoner," and very many other shorter poems. They sold better than the "Lyrical Ballads;" but he was not one of those whom literature ever directly paid. His was an unmarketable genius, meant to reap its reward from a near if not a late posterity. When about the age of fifty, he says somewhere incidentally: "I have never been much of a salesman in matters of literature, the whole of my returns—I do not say net profits, but returns—from the writing trade not amounting to seven score pounds."
Notwithstanding the unremunerative nature of his writings, the claims upon his purse grew more numerous, for his family rapidly increased; and the cottage at Grasmere being too small for them all to winter in, they took up their quarters at Coleorton, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, in a house, the property of Sir G. Beaumont. On their return to Grasmere, they moved into a new house at Allan Bank, where they appear to have lived in great discomfort for upwards of three years. In 1811, they took up their abode in Grasmere Parsonage; and quitting in two years a place where every association was painful, because of the death of two of the children, they finally settled down at Rydal Mount. It was in the smoke-infested house at Allan Bank that Wordsworth wrote his pamphlet on the Convention at Cintra, and Coleridge commenced his now celebrated work "The Friend." The pamphlet on the
