named it _The Prelude_, indicating thus the relation which it bears
to the _Excursion_--or rather, to the projected poem of the _Recluse_,
of which the _Excursion_ was to form only the Second out of three
Divisions. One Book of the First Division of the _Recluse_ was
written, but is yet unpublished; the Third Division was never even
begun, and "the materials," we are told, "of which it would have
been formed have been incorporated, for the most part, in the
author's other publications." Nor need this change of plan be
regretted: didactic poems admit easily of mutilation; and all that
can be called plot in this series of works is contained in the
_Prelude_, in which we see Wordsworth arriving at those convictions
which in the _Excursion_ he pauses to expound.

It would be too much to say that Wordsworth has been wholly
successful in the attempt--for such the _Prelude_ virtually is--to
write an epic poem on his own education. Such a poem must almost
necessarily appear tedious and egoistic, and Wordsworth's manner has
not tact enough to prevent these defects from being felt to the full.
On the contrary, in his constant desire frugally to extract, as it
were, its full teaching from the minutest event which has befallen
him, he supplements the self-complacency of the autobiographer with
the conscientious exactness of the moralist, and is apt to insist on
trifles such as lodge in the corners of every man's memory, as if
they were unique lessons vouchsafed to himself alone.

Yet it follows from this very temper of mind that there is scarcely
any autobiography which we can read with such implicit confidence as
the _Prelude_. In the case of this, as of so many of Wordsworth's
productions, our first dissatisfaction at the form which the poem
assumes yields to a recognition of its fitness to express precisely