At age 28, William Wordsworth had neither a settled income nor the professional qualifications needed to secure one. He had no home, and he could not support the illegitimate child he had fathered during an impetuous love affair in France. The major part of a slim, anonymously issued volume of Lyrical Ballads was all he had to show for the years since he had left Cambridge, and yet he was convinced that he was called to be a major poet. Recognition...