A good many people were pleased--not without malice--when Professor Harper discovered a few years ago that Wordsworth had an illegitimate daughter. It was like hearing a piece of scandal about an archbishop. As a matter of fact, the story, as Professor Harper tells it, is not a scandal; it is merely a puzzle. The figures in the episode are names and shadows: we know almost nothing as regards their feelings for each other or what it was that prevented the lovers from marrying. Professor Harper believes that Wordsworth has left a disguised version of the story in _Vaudracour and Julia_. Wordsworth himself says of _Vaudracour and Julia_ that “the facts are true,” and the main “facts” in the poem are that the lovers wish to marry, cannot gain their parent’s consent, and give way to passion, and that after this their parents, instead of softening in their attitude, insist more harshly than ever on keeping them apart. Wordsworth is vehement in his contention that Vaudracour was no common seducer yielding to the lusts of the flesh, and the suggestion is fairly clear that the youth thought he was taking the only way to make marriage inevitable. Consider these lines, which impute honourable motives, if not honourable conduct, to the lover: So passed the time, till whether through effect Of some unguarded moment that dissolved Virtuous restraint--ah, speak it, think it, not! Deem rather that the fervent youth, who saw So many bars between his present state And the dear haven where he wished to be In honourable wedlock with his love, Was in his judgment tempted to decline To perilous weakness, and entrust his cause To nature for a happy end of all; Deem that by such fond hope the youth was swayed And bear with their transgression, when I add That Julia, wanting yet the name of wife, Carried about her for a secret grief, The promise of a mother. These lines have an ethical rather than a poetical interest. Whether Wordsworth, in writing them, was consciously or subconsciously attempting his own moral justification, we do not know. But Professor Harper has collected a number of facts that make it appear likely that he was. Certainly, the story of Wordsworth and Marie-Anne Vallon at Orleans in 1792, so far as we know it, might without violence be dramatised as the story of Vaudracour and Julia.