Editing William Wordsworth (section)

== Later career ==
===Autobiographical work and ''Poems, in Two Volumes''===
Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call ''The Recluse''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=William Wordsworth {{!}} The Asian Age Online, Bangladesh |url=http://dailyasianage.com/news/118185/?regenerate |access-date=2022-06-23 |website=The Asian Age |language=en}}</ref> In 1798–99 he started an autobiographical poem, which he referred to as the "[[The Prelude|poem to Coleridge]]" and which he planned would serve as an appendix to a larger work called ''The Recluse''. In 1804, he began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-11-18 |title=William Wordsworth – English History |url=https://englishhistory.net/poets/william-wordsworth/ |access-date=2022-06-23 |language=en-US}}</ref> He completed this work, now generally referred to as the first version of ''[[The Prelude]]'', in 1805, but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole of ''The Recluse''. The death of his brother John, also in 1805, affected him strongly and may have influenced his decisions about these works.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=O&#39 |first1=John |last2=Meara |date=2011-01-01 |title=This Life, This Death: Wordsworth's Poetic Destiny |url=https://www.academia.edu/38066667 |journal=IUniverse, Bloomington IN}}</ref>
[[File:Rydal Mount - geograph.org.uk - 959824.jpg|thumb|right|[[Rydal Mount]] – home to Wordsworth 1813–1850. Hundreds of visitors came here to see him over the years]]
Wordsworth's philosophical allegiances, as articulated in ''[[The Prelude]]'' and in such shorter works as "[[Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey]]" have been a source of critical debate. It was long supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge for philosophical guidance. However, scholars have recently suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid-1790s. In particular, while he was in revolutionary Paris in 1792, the 22-year-old Wordsworth met the mysterious traveller [[John "Walking" Stewart]] (1747–1822),<ref>[[Kelly Grovier]], "Dream Walker: A Wordsworth Mystery Solved", ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'', 16 February 2007</ref> who was nearing the end of his thirty years of wandering, on foot, from [[Madras]], India, through [[Persia]] and [[Arabia]], across Africa and Europe, and up through the fledgling United States. By the time of their association, Stewart had published an ambitious work of original materialist philosophy entitled ''The Apocalypse of Nature'' (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments may well be indebted.

In 1807, Wordsworth published ''[[Poems, in Two Volumes]]'', including "[[Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood]]". Until now, Wordsworth was known only for ''Lyrical Ballads'', and he hoped this new collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was lukewarm.

In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction,<ref name=webbio/> and in 1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. The following year, he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the stipend of £400 a year made him financially secure, albeit at the cost of political independence. In 1813, he and his family, including Dorothy, moved to [[Rydal Mount]], [[Ambleside]] (between Grasmere and Rydal Water), where he spent the rest of his life.<ref name=webbio/>

===The Prospectus===
In 1814, Wordsworth published ''[[The Excursion]]'' as the second part of the three-part work ''The Recluse'' even though he never completed the first or third parts. He did, however, write a poetic Prospectus to ''The Recluse'' in which he laid out the structure and intention of the whole work. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's most famous lines on the relation between the human mind and nature:

{{blockquote|<poem>
                      ... my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:{{mdash}}and how exquisitely, too{{mdash}}
Theme this but little heard of among Men,
The external World is fitted to the Mind;
And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish ...<ref>{{cite book|title=Poetical Works|location=London|publisher=Oxford U.P.|date=1936|series=Oxford Standard Authors|page=590}}</ref></poem>}}

Some modern critics<ref>{{Cite book|title = Wordsworth's Poetry, 1787–1814|last = Hartman|first = Geoffrey|publisher = Yale University Press|year = 1987|isbn = 9780674958210|location = New Haven|pages = 329–331}}</ref> suggest that there was a decline in his work beginning around the mid-1810s, perhaps because most of the concerns that characterised his early poems (loss, death, endurance, separation and abandonment) had been resolved in his writings and his life.<ref>Already in 1891 [[James Kenneth Stephen]] wrote satirically of Wordsworth having "two voices":  one is "of the deep", the other "of an old half-witted sheep/Which bleats articulate monotony" ("A Sonnet" ["Two voices are there"]).</ref> By 1820, he was enjoying considerable success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary critical opinion of his earlier works.

The poet and artist William Blake, who knew Wordsworth's work, was struck by Wordsworth's boldness in centring his poetry on the human mind. In response to Wordsworth's poetic programme that, “when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man- / My haunt, and the main region of my song” (''The Excursion''), William Blake wrote to his friend Henry Crabb Robinson that the passage " caused him a bowel complaint which nearly killed him”.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Abrams |first1=M.H. |title=Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature |date=1971 |publisher=Norton |page=24}}</ref>

Following the death of his friend, the painter [[William Green (painter)|William Green]] in 1823, Wordsworth also mended his relations with Coleridge.<ref>Sylvanus Urban, ''[[The Gentleman's Magazine]]'', 1823</ref> The two were fully reconciled by 1828 when they toured the [[Rhineland]] together.<ref name=webbio/> Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829 and she remained ill for the remainder of her life. Coleridge and [[Charles Lamb]] both died in 1834, their loss being a difficult blow to Wordsworth. The following year saw the passing of [[James Hogg]]. Despite the death of many contemporaries, the popularity of his poetry ensured a steady stream of young friends and admirers to replace those he lost.