e (Wordsworth, William DISCovering). The single most influential person in William's apprenticeship, though, was Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Critics view their friendship as one of the most remarkable in English literature (Matlak 86). It was when Wordsworth moved to Nether Stowey to be near Coleridge that he began a period of remarkable creativity. Together they published Lyrical Ballads, an anonymously published collection of poems written, for the most part, by Wordsworth, including the illustrious preface. Using the principles that he set in the Preface, Wordsworth focused his poetry on subjects of "humble and rustic life" (Compton's).In 1802, Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson and Sir George Beaumont. Beaumont expedited the publication of The Poems in 1807. In this book of poems, Wordsworth demonstrated his fantastic ability to create natural or pastoral settings and to add mysticism to ordinary events. Familiar with human psychology, he pointed out the influence of the childhood memories on adult outlooks, this is seen best in the famous quote, "The child is father of the man (McCracken 167)."Wordsworth continued to write during his later years, but his career is generally viewed as a decline after 1810 (Matlak 63). In 1814 he wrote The Excursion and The Poems, in 1815, came the three narrative poems: "The White Doe of Rylstone," "Peter Bell," and "The Waggoner." Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems, written in 1835, and The Sonnets of William Wordsworth, written in 1838, were both accepted well publicly and Wordsworth's sonnets were compared with those of Shakespeare and Milton (DISCovering). He was given honorary degrees from the University of Durham and Oxford University, and in 1843, he became poet laureate. He retired to Rydal in 1848 and died in 1850.William Wordsworth is widely considered one of the most influential English romantic poets. In the preface of his book, Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, Wordsworth decl...
