297. To William Wordsworth

Pub. Memoirs of Wordsworth, i. 159.

Oct. 12. 1799

I long to see what you have been doing. O let it be the tail-piece of 'The Recluse!' for of nothing but 'The Recluse' can I hear patiently. That it is to be addressed to me makes me more desirous that it should not be a poem of itself. To be addressed, as a beloved man, by a thinker, at the close of such a poem as 'The Recluse,' a poem non unius populi, is the only event, I believe, capable of inciting in me an hour's vanity -- vanity, nay, it is too good a feeling to be so called; it would indeed be a self-elevation produced ab extra. 1