290. To William Wordsworth Pub. Memoirs of Wordsworth, i. 159. [Circa 10 September 1799] 1 I am anxiously eager to have you steadily employed on "The Recluse". . . . My dear friend, I do entreat you go on with "The Recluse"; and I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes. It would do great good, and might form a part of "The Recluse", for in my present mood I am wholly against the publication of any small poems.