These letters explain the delay in the publication of 'The Prelude'. They show that what led Wordsworth to write so much about himself was not self-conceit, but self-diffidence. He felt unprepared as yet for the more arduous task he had set before himself. He saw its faults as clearly, or more clearly, than the critics who condemned him. He knew that its length was excessive. He tried to condense it; he kept it beside him unpublished, and occasionally revised it, with a view to condensation, in vain. The text received his final corrections in the year 1832. Wordsworth's reluctance to publish these portions of his great poem, 'The Recluse', other than 'The Excursion', during his lifetime, was a matter of surprise to his friends; to whom he, or the ladies of his household, had read portions of it. In the year 1819, Charles Lamb wrote to him, "If, as you say, 'The Waggoner', in some sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to call forth 'The Recluse' from his profound dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge--the world!" ('The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p. 26.) The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is note-worthy: "This defect" (of redundancy) "whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, _I have always found incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception_." The actual result--in the Poem he had at length committed to writing--was so far inferior to the ideal he had tried to realise, that he could never be induced to publish it. He spoke of the MS. as forming a sort of _portico_ to his larger work--the poem on Man, Nature, and Society--which he meant to call 'The Recluse', and of which one portion only, _viz._ 'The Excursion', was finished. It is clear that throughout the composition of 'The Prelude', he felt that he was experimenting with his powers. He wished to find out whether he could construct "a literary work that might live," on a larger scale than his Lyrics; and it was on the writing of a "philosophical poem," dealing with Man and Nature, in their deepest aspects, that his thoughts had been fixed for many years. From the letter to Sir George Beaumont, December 25, 1804, it is evident that he regarded the autobiographical poem as a mere prologue to this larger work, to which he hoped to turn "with all his might" after 'The Prelude' was finished, and of which he had already written about a fifth or a sixth (see 'Memoirs', vol. i. p. 304). This was the part known in the Grasmere household as "The Pedlar," a title given to it from the character of the Wanderer, but afterwards happily set aside. He did not devote himself, however, to the completion of his wider purpose, immediately after 'The Prelude' was finished. He wrote one book of 'The Recluse' which he called "Home at Grasmere"; and, though detached from 'The Prelude', it is a continuation of the narrative of his own life at