In 1832-33 Maurice de Guérin, fresh from the reading of the _Consolations_, and De la Morvonnais, who came to be a direct admirer of the Lake Poets, and chiefly of Wordsworth, set to write short poems which they aspired to make as little different from prose as possible, rejecting all traditional ornaments, and making little of the rhythmical improvements of the _Romantiques_ proper. Some of those pieces were inserted in a local paper as downright prose (no stop intervening at the end of the lines), whereas the said paper would not have made room for verse.[583] This looks like trifling, but the earnestness of this attempted revolution is shown in the interesting poems of Maurice de Guérin. Another outcome of this was an intended publication on Wordsworth, of which it is impossible to say whether it was to be a criticism, or a translation, of the English Poet. It is thus mentioned in a letter of Guérin to De la Morvonnais of June 30, 1836: “Nous avons adressé des circulaires à un grand nombre d’éditeurs pour l’impression Wordsworth. Nous attendons la réponse d’un moment à l’autre.” The answer must have been unfavourable, as nothing more was heard of the intended publication. The early death of Guérin left it for De la Morvonnais alone to spread the influence of Wordsworth’s poetry in France. Of him we read in Sainte-Beuve’s _Étude sur Maurice de Guérin_:-- “La Morvonnais, vers ce temps même (1834), en était fort préoccupé (des lakistes et de leur poésie), au point d’aller visiter Wordsworth à sa résidence de Rydal Mount, près des lacs du Westmoreland, et de rester en correspondance avec ce grand et pacifique esprit, avec ce patriarche de la Muse intime. Guérin, sans tant y songer, ressemblait mieux aux Lakistes en ne visant nullement à les imiter.” Of the supposed correspondence between Wordsworth and De la Morvonnais no trace remains. M. Hippolyte de la Blanchardière, De la Morvonnais’ grandson, has informed me that in the collection of his grandfather’s letters there is no letter of Wordsworth to be found. That at least a Study of Wordsworth existed at the time is proved by the following preface to his poem _La Thébaïde des Grèves_, written by his friend A. Duquesnel (ed. by Didier, Quai des Augustins. 1864. p. xxvii.)