Trusting in this small capital, and with nothing to look to in the future except the uncertain prospect of the payment of Lord Lonsdale's debt to the family, Wordsworth settled with his sister at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire, in the autumn of 1795, the choice of this locality being apparently determined by the offer of a cottage on easy terms. Here, in the first home which he had possessed, Wordsworth's steady devotion to poetry began. He had already, in 1792 [2], published two little poems, the _Evening Walk_: and _Descriptive Sketches_, which Miss Wordsworth, (to whom the _Evening Walk_ was addressed) criticises with candour--in a letter to the same friend (Forncett, February 1792):--
[Footnote 2: The _Memoirs_ say in 1793, but the following MS. letter of 1792 speaks of them as already published.]
"The scenes which he describes have been viewed with a poet's eye, and are portrayed with a poet's pencil; and the poems contain, many passages exquisitely beautiful; but they also contain many faults, the chief of which are obscurity and a too frequent use of some particular expressions and uncommon words; for instance, _moveless_, which he applies in a sense, if not new, at least different from, its ordinary one. By 'moveless,' when applied to the swan, he means that sort of motion which is smooth without agitation; it is a very beautiful epithet, but ought to have been cautiously used. The word _viewless_ also is introduced far too often. I regret exceedingly that he did not submit the works to the inspection of some friend before their publication, and he also joins with me in this regret."
These poems show a careful and minute observation of nature, but their versification--still reminding us of the imitators of Pope-- has little originality or charm. They attracted the admiration of Coleridge, but had no further success.
At Racedown Wordsworth finished _Guilt and Sorrow_, a poem gloomy in tone and written mainly in his period of depression and unrest,--and wrote a tragedy called _The Borderers_, of which only a few lines show any promise of future excellence. He then wrote _The Ruined Cottage_, now incorporated in the Fist Book of the _Excursion_. This poem, on a subject thoroughly suited to his powers, was his first work of merit; and Coleridge, who visited the quiet household in June 1797, pronounces this poem "superior, I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our language which in any way resembles it." In July 1797 the Wordsworths removed to Alfoxden, a large house in Somersetshire, near Netherstowey, where Coleridge was at that time living. Here Wordsworth added to his income by taking as pupil a young boy, the hero of the trifling poem _Anecdote for Fathers_, a son of Mr. Basil Montagu; and here he composed many of his smaller pieces. He has described the origin of the _Ancient Mariner_ and the _Lyrical Ballads_ in a well-known passage, part of which I must here repeat:--