No More Learning

"

(The late Bishop of Lincoln. )

There is no uncertainty as to the year in which the later books were
written; but there is considerable difficulty in fixing the precise date
of the earlier ones. Writing from Grasmere to his friend Francis
Wrangham--the letter is undated--Wordsworth says,

"I am engaged in writing a poem on my own earlier life, which will
take five parts or books to complete, three of which are nearly
finished. "

The late Bishop of Lincoln supposed that this letter to Wrangham was
written "at the close of 1803, or beginning of 1804. " (See 'Memoirs of
Wordsworth,' vol. i. p. 303. ) There is evidence that it belongs to 1804.
At the commencement of the seventh book, p. 247, he says:

_Six changeful years_ have vanished since I first
Poured out (saluted by that quickening breeze
Which met me issuing from the City's walls)
_A glad preamble to this Verse:_ I sang
Aloud, with fervour irresistible
Of short-lived transport, like a torrent bursting,
From a black thunder-cloud, down Scafell's side
To rush and disappear. But soon broke forth
(So willed the Muse) _a less impetuous stream,
That flowed awhile with unabating strength,
Then stopped for years; not audible again
Before last primrose-time. _

I have _italicised_ the clauses which give some clue to the dates of
composition. From these it would appear that the "glad preamble,"
written on leaving Goslar in 1799 (which, I think, included only the
first two paragraphs of book first), was a "short-lived transport"; but
that "soon" afterwards "a less impetuous stream" broke forth, which,
after the settlement at Grasmere, "flowed awhile with unabating
strength," and then "stopped for years. " Now the above passage,
recording these things, was written in 1805, and in the late autumn of
that year; (as is evident from the reference which immediately follows
to the "choir of redbreasts" and the approach of winter).
We must
therefore assign the flowing of the "less impetuous stream," to 1802; in
order to leave room for the intervening "years," in which it ceased to
flow, till it was audible again in the spring of 1804, "last
primrose-time. "

A second reference to date occurs in the sixth book, p. 224, entitled
"Cambridge and the Alps," in which he says,

_Four years and thirty, told, this very week,_
Have I been now a sojourner on earth.

This fixes definitely enough the date of the composition of _that_ part
of the work, _viz. _ April 1804, which corresponds exactly to the "last
primrose-time" of the previous extract from the seventh book, in which
he tells us that after its long silence, his Muse was heard again. So
far Wordsworth's own allusions to the date of 'The Prelude. '

But there are others supplied by his own, and his sister's letters, and
also by the Grasmere Journal. In the Dove Cottage household it was
known, and talked of, as "the Poem to Coleridge;" and Dorothy records,
on 11th January 1803, that her brother was working at it. On 13th
February 1804, she writes to Mrs. Clarkson that her brother was engaged
on a poem on his own life, and was "going on with great rapidity. " On
the 6th of March 1804, Wordsworth wrote from Grasmere to De Quincey,

"I am now writing a poem on my own earlier life: I have just finished
that part of it in which I speak of my residence at the University. "
. . . It is "better than half complete, viz. four books, amounting to
about 2500 lines.