Parallels between the Poetry of William Wordsworth and the English School of Landscape Painters

It was originally planned that this paper should be a study of the influence of the fine arts upon several English Romantic Poets as indicated by references in their work; but as the reading in poetry progressed, and the enormity of the task became apparent, the need of setting up some metes and bounds became necessary, so that eventually the idea became metamorphosed into a study of the work of one poet alone and its similarity to contemporary painting. For often, in the last two years, while I have been gathering these allusions to the fine arts, my attention has been arrested by elusive descriptive material, certainly not definitely a reference to painting as an art, but just as surely potential picture material. For a time I kept a file of such passages in Wordsworth's poetry, in the way of grasping at straws which might be useful, later, in establishing proof of his interest in painting, or in what makes a picture; but I discontinued it as the references to painting were actually so few that the very opposite of the thing I was hoping to find seemed more likely to be the truth - that Wordsworth was apparently only slightly interested in painting, itself. And yet, although the references to specific pictures were rather few, evidence of his interest in the material out of which pictures are certainly suggested and perhaps later created, was so abundant as to be found on almost every page; so that finally I gave up pursuing any farther my earlier idea of working out the interest of these several poets. It was becoming rather an oppressive cataloguing job, anyway, and I was finding that this other and less definitely organized, potential picture material presented a more enticing problem beginning to take shape in my mind.