" He constantly endeavours to bring his
language nearer to the real language of men; but it is to the real
language of men, not on the dead level of their ordinary intercourse,
but in certain select moments of vivid sensation, when this language
is winnowed and ennobled by sentiment. There are poets who have
chosen rural life for their subject for the sake of its passionless
repose; and there are times when Wordsworth himself extols the mere
calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest aim of
poetical culture. But it was not for such passionless calm that he
preferred the scenes of [103] pastoral life; and the meditative poet,
sheltering himself from the agitations of the outward world, is in
reality only clearing the scene for the exhibition of great emotions,
and what he values most is the almost elementary expression of
elementary feelings.
In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of The
Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended
to be introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if
completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is
The Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the first book
of the first part was left in manuscript by Wordsworth--though in
manuscript, it is said, in no great condition of forwardness for the
printers.
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