As a result, he hardened into a reactionary conservative. However, Wordsworth's enthusiasm cooled as the French Revolution lapsed into the Terror, followed by Napoleon's tyrannical rule. ![]() Like his friends Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, Wordsworth had been a political radical in his youth, supporting the republican ideals of the French Revolution. The Excursion was Wordsworth's first major publication since his 1807 Poems, in Two Volumes, and it marked a major shift in his political thinking. Upon reading it, Mary Shelley noted in her diary, responding to the new work of a once-legendary figure who had a singular influence upon her husband as well as their fellow Romantics: “He’s a slave.” Percy Shelley took that private observation of his wife one step further by composing his own poetic, emotional reaction to what was viewed as Wordsworth’s betrayal of his former radical idealism by moving further toward conservative views in the wake of the horror of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. In 1814, William Wordsworth published The Excursion. ![]() ![]() " To Wordsworth" is an altered Shakespearean sonnet, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and addressed to William Wordsworth, mourning Wordsworth's turn to reactionary politics exemplified by his 1814 book The Excursion.
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