at Nether Stowey, and in order to benefit by the stimulus which such a
friendship offered, the Wordsworth's moved to Alfoxden, three miles
away from Stowey (July, 1797). It was during a walking expedition to
the Quantock Hills in November of that year that the poem of _The
Ancient Mariner_ was planned. It was intended that the poem should be
a joint production, but Wordsworth's contribution was confined to the
suggestion of a few details merely, and some scattered lines which are
indicated in the notes to that poem. Their poetic theories were soon
to take definite shape in the publication of the famous _Lyrical
Ballads_ (September, 1798), to which Coleridge contributed _The Ancient
Mariner_, and Wordsworth some characteristic lyrical, reflective, and
narrative poems. The excessive simplicity and alleged triviality of
some of these poems long continued to give offence to the conservative
lovers of poetry. Even to-day we feel that Wordsworth was sometimes
the victim of his own theories.

In June of this same year (1798) Wordsworth and his sister accompanied
Coleridge to Germany. They soon parted company, the Wordsworths
settling at Goslar, while Coleridge, intent upon study, went in search
of German metaphysics at Gottingen. Wordsworth did not come into any
contract with German life or thought, but sat through the winter by a
stove writing poems for a second edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_.
April, 1799, found the brother and sister again in England. In
December they settled down at Dove Cottage, Town End, Grasmere, and
never, save for brief intervals, abandoned the Lake Country. In 1802,
as has been said, a slight accession of fortune fell to Wordsworth by
the settlement of the Lonsdale claim. The share of each of the family
was 1,800 pounds. On the strength of this wind-fall the poet felt that
he might marry, and accordingly brought home Mary Hutchinson as his
wife.

The subsequent career of Wordsworth belongs to the history of poetry.
Of events in the ordinary sense there are few to record. He
successively occupies three houses in the Lake Country after abandoning
Dove Cottage. We find him at Allan Bank in 1808, in the Parsonage at
Grasmere in 1810, and at Rydal Mount from 1813 to his death in 1850.
He makes occasional excursions to Scotland or the Continent, and at
long intervals visits London, where Carlyle sees him and records his
vivid impressions. For many years Wordsworth enjoys the sinecure of
Di