mainly that literature owes the solemn inauguration of the worship of Nature. He threw down, and he built up. Though undoubtedly heralded by Cowper, he substantially opened the new age of English verse, which closes for us with Tennyson. His famous brethren in song, more or less unconsciously, even mocking Byron, underwent his influence, while they vaunted their independence. The later poetry of the nineteenth century has been, as a whole, though with an addition of melody, of his house and lineage. He accomplished a grand work in virtue of splendid poetic gifts, extraordinary philosophic insight, and obstinate, indomitable courage. As necessary a property for him, I fear, was, as for many great poets, an absolute, and, in his case, innocent, incapacity for recognizing the existence of singers besides himself. Is it an intelligible contradiction in terms to say that, while he was addicted to warm moral indignation, and admiration, he had a cold heart? An absence of the sense of humour was a part of his equipment which was, perhaps, essential. If it blinded him to absurdities in the exaggeration of his critical principles, it also steeled him against ignorant ridicule. Gallantly he flung down before adversaries, whom his inspiration bewildered and enraged no less than his eccentricities, the gauntlet of his Peter Bell, weathercockless Kilve, Childless Timothy, Expostulation and Reply, with divers more as strange! Then, when the poet ceased to sing unless to an inner circle, what wisdom still, what understanding of the soul of things! The priest remained, with the inherent sanctity which had justified his original investiture with the poet's mantle. We feel him ready to go on prophesying should the commission be renewed; blissfully unconscious of the probable Never. Literary history shows few more pathetic figures than the old man, when visible within the diminished circle of his disciples; a righteous witness and zealot, eager to defend the cause of poetical truth as in youth; with no foes to mock and persecute him; none for him to ban and burn : clad in sacerdotal robes above his armour; seeming to a careless, ungrateful world to be sacrificing cold-dead victims on a cold-dead altar. I cannot but recognize that the mass of his verse has ceased to please. That is the common fate of poetry in bulk. It must be conceded that the rule applies especially here. Ordinary readers even with a taste for poetry are satisfied with a fraction of his. As it happens, the few favourites are generally the fruit of earlier years. But comparisons of age may well be of interest for students of literature; they do not affect the question of absolute merit. When I am choosing pieces to make my own, and love, I do not consider dates. Similarly I do not concern myself with Wordsworth's philosophy, unless so far as it was the motive for a poem, and colours it. As it happened, the philosophy was of a kind to bear a very intimate relation to the poetry. The scheme of it was the pre-existence of spirit in an angelic state, and its new birth into a new order of Nature prepared for it by the Divine Architect. The fabric, with its appointed centre and lord, was designed to be admirably fair and happy. In all its constituents, from man to beast, to the flowers of the field, mountain and valley, winds and waters, it was meant to develop by the law of its being into beauty, mutually grateful loving-kindness, sympathy, symmetry, and harmony. As a thinker he seems to have fashioned for himself some such system as this for our globe. Being a poet born he was in the habit of summoning inspiration to minister to the idea. I can understand the fascination to his elect disciples of watching the relation in his verse of the two powers, the two characters. A distinct chapter in psychology might be devoted to the manner in which the theory now and again subdues imagination to its service; now and again, though more in youth than age, while answering the summons, snatches up the Philosopher, and carries him, not where he, but where the Poet, would. It is not our province here to inquire whether he were primarily Poet because Philosopher, or Philosopher because Poet. For our purpose it is enough to appreciate his doctrine that Nature loves to clothe all her works with beauty; that she wishes her principal creature, man, to see it, enjoy it, complete it; to imitate her in love and goodness to all; that he ought to learn from the excellence of Divine origin-in her and hers, how closely he is linked to Heaven. We need not, to discover the Poet in him, endeavour to piece together a complete system out of his verse. Let us delight ourselves with its charm, wherever we find it-not quarrelling with the sweetness because the honeycomb may be hidden among the bones of a dead lion of thought. To take offence at Wordsworth because the philosopher in him is, it must be acknowledged, never very far off, would be to banish ourselves from his kingdom of poetry altogether. Ideas, vast and lofty, are constantly discernible, willing to hold aloof or approach, as the reader will. Where any of them insist upon associating themselves with the melody, welcome them; for the claim proves them and the inspiration to be one. Throughout ample spaces of garden-land where he reigns, thought, even for those who do not delve and mine in it, adds atmosphere and a sense of mystery. Who can account it ill in a poet that to his eyes Nature is always longing to demonstrate herself to be both delightful and beneficent! In a legion of instances he could not have done better poetically had he been searching for beauty with as little heed to a lesson from it as an Elizabethan minstrel of love. He could have produced no more spontaneous apparitions of metrical sweetness! Lucy is not the less lyrically lovely that she impersonates Nature's ideal workmanship: The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the Storm Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.1 Doom to an early death has not the less pathos in it that it may exemplify Nature's serene composure in bringing forth flowers not the less exquisite that they will fade: She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me ! 2 Here is an analysis of the stages of perfect womanhood: She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; With something of angelic light.3 With its wealth of insight, it stands on a level, neither higher nor lower, in poetical enchantment-since both are in that supreme-with the vision of the unknown Highland Reaper: Behold her, single in the field, No Nightingale did ever chaunt |