ABSTRACT
Wordsworth's claim to preeminence among modern English poets has often been made to rest upon qualities not strictly poetical. He has been loved and revered as a far-seeing statesman, a penetrating moralist, a great critic, a philosopher, a guide and counselor to multitudes of readers. But by success in none of these roles is a poet rightly judged. He was also a great, albeit not always dependable, artist. In recent criticism this has not always been remembered. He has been made the subject and sometimes the prey of the psychologist and the historian of ideas. The disclosure in 1916 of his French love affair provided “psychoanalytical” biographers with an explanation of his revolutionary enthusiasm, subsequent despondency, socalled “apostasy,” and loss of poetic power. This explanation has not survived calm scrutiny, and today the obsession with Annette Vallon is disappearing. More important was the appearance in 1926 of the original version of The Prelude, a poem which had hitherto been known only as altered into conformity with the poet's later beliefs.
