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Chapter 4ImaginationI. Images and ImaginationsIn 1814, having spent the previous seven years in something of a state of exile from his publicduties as a Poet, Wordsworth published The Excursion, which was announced as being the second partof his projected magnum opus, ‘The Recluse’. 1 The work was prefaced by a dedication to LordLonsdale, some brief introductory remarks referring to the genesis of the poem, and an inspiringProspectus describing Wordsworth’s subject matter: ‘On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life’. God,conceived of in Christian terms as a transcendent deity, is not mentioned, and although ‘Jehovah’ isnamed, he is bypassed ‘unalarmed’ as the poet, rather irreverently, announces that his subject matter iseven more awe-full; it concerns what takes place within the ‘Mind of Man / My haunt and main regionof my song’ (PW V 4). 2The lines comprising the Prospectus were written some fourteen years earlier, and presentideas that inspired Wordsworth at a time when he was also defining his theory of poetry. Some of themore pious readers of The Excursion would have considered his remarks in the Prospectus to be atodds with the Christian sentiments expressed by the Pastor at the close of the poem. And Wordsworthwas questioned, at the time, as to whether or not the poem suggested the worship of Nature, ratherthan God. Around the time the lines were originally written Wordsworth would still have beendescribed as a ‘semi-Atheist’ by Coleridge, and held strong sympathies for ‘pagan’ ideas aboutreligion that were in conflict with Coleridge’s explicit Christian beliefs. Where Coleridge looked toAugustine, who saw everything as pre-ordained by God, Wordsworth was more Celtic in hisChristianity. Like the Cambrian theologian Pelagius – who Augustine accused of defining aChristianity that was no more than an extension of Celtic druidism – Wordsworth believed that humanbeings also had moral responsibility for their own actions because ‘God’ had given them free-will. 3Coleridge, who was notoriously lacking in will, found Augustine’s notion of salvation for truebelievers a more promising means of saving his own soul.Pelagius’ belief that there was something of a struggle between the grace of God and the willof his people (the Pelagian heresy), lay at the heart of Celtic Christianity, and Wordsworth’sChristianity, when he later accepted the need for the state religion (the Anglican Church) to direct themores of the British people, remained more Pelagian than Augustinian. Standing in his churchyard inthe mountains Wordsworth would have believed that God’s grace was to be seen in all aspects of the1 In the wake of Francis Jeffrey’s attacks on Poems in Two Volumes, Wordsworth refrained from publishing anymore poetry until he had completed The Excursion.2 Meyer Abrams made his interpretation of the argument of Prospectus central to his thesis about Wordsworth’sRomantic identity in Natural Supernaturalism.3 For a brief discussion of Pelagius, see ‘The Pelagian Controversy’ in Bertrand Russell, The History of WesternPhilosophy, pp. 383-5.94