Readers of Wordsworth are aware that the 1790's were years of excitement for the poet —his experiences in France during the Revolution, his love affair with Annette Vallon, his reunion with his sister Dorothy after long separation, and the heady months of talks on poetry with his new friend Coleridge—the only other first-rate poet of his generation. Equally plain is the fact that about 1805 a long decline in Wordsworth's career began: the revolutionary grew conservative, the poet often turned to mere versifying.