As for the identity of the heroine of that puzzling series of poems written by Wordsworth and called the 'Lucy' poems, there have been presented three kinds of hypothesis: (I), that which regards 'Lucy' as a woman (though one of the theories of this sort ventures to identify her as a man 1) who actually existed and was loved by Wordsworth; (2), that which regards her as a purely ideal creation of the poet, embodying some spiritual or emotional ideal of his; and (3), that which regards 'Lucy' as Wordsworth's borrowing from some poem or poems belonging to a group of 18th century English ballads of tragic love all of which centre round a girl of the name 'Lucy'. When we examine these three kinds of hypothesis, we find all of them, in the cases of the most well-grounded ones, having an undeniable truthfulness, though, at the same time, all of them have questionable weak points. Of the theories of the first category, the most probable one is that which regards Dorothy as the identity of 'Lucy'. According to Mary Moorman, one of the 'Lucy' poems, Strange Fits of Passion I have known, is "probably a memory of Racedown." The early death of 'Lucy' has been deemed quite contradictory to the actual fact of Dorothy's life, but the contradiction now seems to have been resolved by F. W. Bateson's recent theory of 'quasi-incestuous relationship' between William and Dorothy. However, the view which regards Mary Hutchinson as the identity of 'Lucy', too, seems to have truth in some respects. In the 'ideal creation' theories, Garrod called 'Lucy' "Nature's Child" and John Cowper Powys "an Elemental", while J. C. Smith described her as "an ideal of English maidenhood" and Florence Marsh as "the living embodiment of English landscape." Though they are thus divided, I cannot but recognize significance in either of these views. The 18th century 'Lucy' ballad theory, too, seems to be well-grounded, evidenced by the poems of Robert Anderson, Samuel Rogers, Robert Merry, etc. Such being the case, the truth of the 'Lucy' poems seems to me to lie in the adequate synthesis of those three kinds of hypothesis, and I conclude: the 'Lucy' poems are the poems in which Wordsworth, utilizing the 'Lucy' ballad often used by this 18th century predecessors, symbolically expressed, in the first four of the poems in question, his emotion and attitude toward Dorothy envisioned as "Nature's Child" or "an Elemental", and in I travelled among unknown men, which was written after he had returned to England, those toward Mary as "an ideal of English maidenhood" or "the living embodiment of English landscape."
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