He
was graduated in 1791, with the degree of B.A., and went over to France,
where he, among others, was carried away with enthusiasm for the French
Revolution, and became a thorough Radical. That he afterwards changed his
political views, should not be advanced in his disfavor; for many ardent
and virtuous minds were hoping to see the fulfilment of recent predictions
in greater freedom to man. Wordsworth erred in a great company, and from
noble sympathies. He returned to England in 1792, with his illusions
thoroughly dissipated. The workings of his mind are presented in _The
Prelude_.
In the same year he published _Descriptive Sketches_, and _An Evening
Walk_, which attracted little attention. A legacy of L900 left him by his
friend Calvert, in 1795, enabled the frugal poet to devote his life to
poetry, and particularly to what he deemed the emancipation of poetry from
the fetters of the mythic and from the smothering ornaments of rhetoric.
In Nov., 1797, he went to London, taking with him a play called _The
Borderers_: it was rejected by the manager.
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