The Politics of ‘New Morality’ Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth

Abstract

Émile Legouis began his Early Life of William Wordsworth by detailing the poet’s hopes for The Recluse as a poem of philosophic consolation amid revolutionary defeat. The intersection of revolutionary politics and poetry was, of course, a recurrent concern in Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age and, with particular reference to Wordsworth and. Coleridge, in his essay ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’. But Legouis was the first critic to present a detailed exploration of the links between political disappointment and the genesis of The Recluse and The Prelude. This is a subject that has now become so familiar that it is worth stressing Legouis’ role in establishing this radical political context for Wordsworth’s poetry.

… many a remembered kindness

(Marrs, i. 117)