It need not, therefore, surprise us to find the classical models
becoming more and more dominant in Wordsworth's mind, till the poet
of _Poor Susan_ and _The Cuckoo_ spends months over the attempt to
translate the _AEneid_,--to win the secret of that style which he
placed at the head of all poetic styles, and of those verses which
"wind," as he says, "with the majesty of the Conscript Fathers
entering the Senate-house in solemn procession," and envelope in
their imperial melancholy all the sorrows and the fates of man.
And, indeed, so tranquil and uniform was the life which we are now
retracing, and at the same time so receptive of any noble influence
which opportunity might bring, that a real epoch is marked in
Wordsworth's poetical career by the mere re-reading of some Latin
authors in 1814-16 with a view to preparing his eldest son for the
University. Among the poets whom he thus studied was one in whom he
might seem to discern his own spirit endowed with grander proportions,
and meditating on sadder fates. Among the poets of the battlefield,
of the study, of the boudoir, he encountered the first Priest of
Nature, the first poet in Europe who had deliberately shunned the
life of courts and cities for the mere joy in Nature's presence, for
"sweet Parthenope and the fields beside Vesevus' hill.
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