“The second half of William Wordsworth’s life was the longest, dullest decline in literary history.” Jonathan Bate must be Wordsworth’s greatest champion, but such is his considered opinion. The decline was certainly long. Wordsworth was born 250 years ago, in 1770. In his revelatory biography, Bate devotes more than 260 pages to the poet’s first 36 years, a formative and surprisingly political period. A mere 94 pages dispose of the four further decades until his death in 1850. By then Wordsworth had become a “Lake Poet”, growing in fame as he slid into Toryism and ease.
But those early years and his posthumous influence are astonishing. As when a conservator carefully swabs away from an oil painting the crusty accretions and gunk of ages to reveal shining colours and unexpected detail – so Jonathan Bate sets about the youthful Wordsworth, and shows us, page by page, just how world-changing he really was. Gone are the daffodils forced upon resentful school-children. Out steps a master poet of self, memory, loss, revolution and the natural world.
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