He continued to live at Grasmere,
conscientiously diligent in the composition of poems, secure of finding
the materials of glory within and around him; for his genius taught him
that inspiration is no product of a foreign shore, and that no adventurer
ever found it, though he wandered as long as Ulysses. Meanwhile the
appreciation of the best minds and the gratitude of the purest hearts
gradually centred more and more towards him. In 1802 he made a short
visit to France, in company with Miss Wordsworth, and soon after his
return to England was married to Mary Hutchinson, on the 4th of October
of the same year. Of the good fortune of this marriage no other proof is
needed than the purity and serenity of his poems, and its record is to be
sought nowhere else.
On the 18th of June, 1803, his first child, John, was born, and on the
14th of August of the same year he set out with his sister on a foot
journey into Scotland Coleridge was their companion during a part of this
excursion, of which Miss Wordsworth kept a full diary. In Scotland he
made the acquaintance of Scott, who recited to him a part of the "Lay of
the Last Minstrel," then in manuscript. The travellers returned to
Grasmere on the 25th of September. It was during this year that
Wordsworth's intimacy with the excellent Sir George Beaumont began.
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