The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 2 (of 8) — Background and Themes

Wordsworth's Defense of the Ordinary

The prefatory material to 'Peter Bell' articulates a central tension in this volume. Wordsworth insists that the imagination does not require 'supernatural agency' to be exercised; rather, 'incidents, within the compass of poetic probability, in the humblest departments of daily life' can produce 'kindred results of pleasure.' This is a pointed rejoinder to poets like Southey, whom Wordsworth acknowledges as a 'Master in that province of the art'—the supernatural. The letter frames the volume as an experiment in poetic method, one that risks being judged by its contrast with more spectacular modes. Wordsworth's phrasing—'whether from contrast or congruity'—leaves open the possibility that his own work and Southey's might be complementary rather than opposed.

The Making of 'Michael': A Two-Month Labor

Knight's notes include a remarkable sequence from Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, tracking the composition of 'Michael' from October 11 to December 9, 1800. The entries record daily progress with unusual candor: 'William composing in the evening'; 'W. composed a little'; 'W. worked all the morning at the sheepfold, but in vain'; 'W. was not successful in composition in the evening.' The sheepfold itself—described as 'built nearly in the form of a heart unequally divided'—becomes a material anchor for the poem's emotional geometry. Knight also quotes Wordsworth's letter to Charles James Fox, where he explains that the poem depicts 'small independent proprietors of land, here called "statesmen"' whose 'domestic affections' are strengthened by their ancestral properties. The poem, Wordsworth says, attempts to 'draw a picture' of affections 'inconceivable by those who have only had an opportunity of observing hired labourers, farmers, and the manufacturing poor.'

Editorial Framing and the Question of Place

Knight's editorial notes repeatedly emphasize the physical sites that inspired the poems. For 'Michael,' he directs readers to 'ascend the ghyll till it almost reaches the top of Fairfield' to 'realize the spirit of the poem'—a gesture that treats landscape as a necessary interpretive key. He also records Wordsworth's remark that the poem was 'founded on the son of an old couple having become dissolute, and run away from his parents.' This biographical kernel, combined with the journal's record of failed and successful days, presents the poem as a slow accretion of observation and revision. The volume thus offers not only the finished poems but a layered record of their making—a feature that distinguishes this edition from a simple collection of texts.

Readers approaching this volume will find that the editorial matter—letters, journal extracts, and notes—functions almost as a second text, shadowing the poems with evidence of their construction. The tension between Wordsworth's stated aims and his actual practice, visible in the laborious composition of 'Michael,' invites a reading that attends as much to process as to product. The volume rewards those who move between poem and apparatus, tracing the connections Wordsworth himself insisted upon between place, affection, and the work of making.

I remember evenings with Wordsworth’s Michael, that quiet faith in simple endurance, and somehow it always brings to mind another old friend, Lyrics of Earth — Text and Context, whose verses feel like stones worn smooth by the same patient stream of years. Both speak of roots holding fast in ordinary ground, a kinship I have treasured.