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As has already been noted, when later nineteenth-century critics first grappled with thepublished Prelude they quickly turned to Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria for clarification of whatWordsworth was intending when writing about ‘imagination’ in the final section of his poem. Ascontemporaries of Tennyson they puzzled over a work composed half a century earlier, and consideredit more as a curiosity of Wordsworth’s radical youth than as a masterpiece. 2 But nearly half a centurylater, in the first major study of the poem, Émile Legouis celebrated Wordsworth’s ‘Imagination’ in nouncertain terms, as a transcendental power of the mind. 3 And in defining his own views aboutWordsworth, he also expressed a sincere debt to Coleridge:To be complete, an appreciation of Wordsworth’s theory of poetry would involve a systematicstatement of the laws of poetics in general…. Almost an entire work, moreover has alreadybeen devoted to it - a volume so admirable in its critical chapters as to be almost a standardwork, and in any case greatly superior to anything which has since been written on the samesubject; I mean the Biographia Literaria of Coleridge. (444)Legouis’ reliance on Coleridge was to prove disastrous to his intention to write about Wordsworth’simagination. His ‘Study of The Prelude’ was highly regarded and extremely influential. It wouldlargely define attitudes towards the poem, and readings of Wordsworth’s understanding ofImagination, in the early years of the twentieth-century. Although it might not be widely read today,Legouis’ study contains a number of opinions, based on his comprehensive scholarship, that stillremain commonplaces of Wordsworth criticism. Some of his own personal assertions were presentedwith such conviction that they came to assume canonical authority, and later twentieth-century criticshave continued to reproduce them as self-evident facts of the matter. Legouis’ scholarship wasexceptional for its time, and all later biographers were indebted to the detail he brought to his study ofWordsworth’s early life. 4 But his critical judgement was overshadowed by the awe with which hecelebrated Wordsworth’s ‘Power of the Imagination, which alone can penetrate reality’ (xii). 5Legouis can be credited with having laid out the necessary critical foundations for thedevelopment of the High Romantic criticism that would later see Wordsworth defined as the greatpoet of the imagination. Many of the ideas that inform Abrams’ studies, especially those relating tobelief in the ‘creative imagination’, can be found in Legouis’ work. The Early Life of WilliamWordsworth is necessary reading for anyone contemplating a critical study of The Prelude, in orderthat they may discover the basis for so many of the later assumptions about the state of Wordsworth’smind, that have been taken for granted on the basis of Legouis’ authority. Legouis interprets themeditation on Snowden in the last Book of The Prelude, as some kind of mystical, ecstatic vision;Wordsworth is a ‘seer’, one of the elect, an ‘unrecognised prophet’ who speaks ‘with the tones and2 See Herbert Lindenberger’s essay, ‘The Reception of The Prelude,’ Bulletin of the New York Public Library,64 (1960), 196-208.3 The Early Life of William Wordsworth 1770-1798: A Study of ‘The Prelude’ - originally published in French in1896 and translated into English in1897.4 The Libris reprint, published in London in 1988 has a useful Introduction by Nicholas Roe.5 A study of the Table of Contents to Legouis’ book gives a good idea of the orientation of his interpretation ofWordsworth’s text. His layout, his chapter headings, and the descriptions given of the sections within thechapters, provide an eloquent snapshot of his particular ‘Romantic’ perspective, as he charts the course ofWordsworth’s life according to the narrative of The Prelude.131