Intended as introduction/prologue to a three-part magnum opus, The Recluse or views of Nature, Man, and Society.
"On Man, on Nature, on human Life, / Musing in Solitude" ("Prospectus" / "Home at Grasmere" 959-60).
"If WW had finished the project as planned, The Recluse would have totalled about 33,000 lines (Paradise Lost is only 10,500)" (Mandell--see source ).
In the Preface to The Excursion, WW "likened the design implicit in all his writings to the structural plan of a 'gothic church,' in which the 'preparatory poem' we now call The Prelude [a name given the work by his widow after his death] is 'the ante-chapel,' the tripartite Recluse is 'the body,' and all his 'minor Pieces,' when 'properly arranged,' are equivalent to 'little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices'" (Abrams 20).
Thus, WW "envisaged all his poems as one immense work, a poem made up of poems, written in accordance with a single comprehensive design" (Abrams 20).
"Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense / For one of conquest, losing sight of all / Which they had struggled for" (10.792-94).
Leads to tremendous disillusionment for WW.
Godwinian rationalism offers temporary alternative, but lacks emotional foundation.
Dorothy WW, STC, help him return to the restorative "bosom" of Nature.