revolution.

Shortly after leaving the University, in November, 1791, Wordsworth
returned to France, remaining there until December of the following
year. During this period he was completely won over to the principles
of the revolution. The later reaction from these principles
constituted the one moral struggle of his life.

In 1793 his first work appeared before the public--two poems, entitled
_The Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_. Coleridge, who read
these pieces at Cambridge, divined that they announced the emergence of
an original poetical genius above the horizon. Readers of the poems
to-day, who are wise after the event, could scarcely divine as much.
At about this period Wordsworth received a bequest of 900 pounds from
Raisley Calvert, which enabled him and his sister Dorothy to take a
small cottage at Racedown in Dorsetshire. Here he wrote a number of
poems in which he worked off the ferment of his revolutionary ideas.
These ideas can scarcely be said to have troubled him much in later
years.

An important incident in his life, hardly second in importance to the
stimulating companionship of his sister, was his meeting with
Coleridge, which occurred probably towards the close of 1795.
Coleridge, who was but little younger than Wordsworth, had the more
richly equipped, if not the more richly endowed, mind. He was living
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