supreme excellence of his best. They accepted his worst poems as typical of his genius, and it was easy to turn them into ridicule. If poetry were, indeed, only prose with meter superadded, it was obvious that any prose-man could become a poet at will; and the facile retort rose to the lips that Wordsworth had justified his theory by writing prose under the delusion that it was poetry. The astonishing thing is, that men of genuine critical ability were so slow to recognize that among many poems which were little better than prose cut up into metrical lengths, there were other poems of great and enduring excellence, which the greatest poets of all time might be proud to claim. However, a truce has long since been called to such contentions. No one cares much to-day what particular poetic fads Wordsworth may have advocated; the fact that has gradually grown clear and clearer to the world is, that in Wordsworth we possess a poet of profound originality and of supreme genius, and his greatness is generally recognized. It is also generally recognized that, more than any other modern poet, Wordsworth has expressed in his poems a noble philosophy; and it is to the study of that philosophy that I invite those who would read Wordsworth with a seeing eye and an understanding heart.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. How was the poetry of Wordsworth received by the critics of his day?

2. Why is it very necessary to study Wordsworth's life in connection with his poetry?

3. What was Wordsworth's idea of the function of a poet? 4. What fault did he find with much of the poetry of his time?

5. What were his theories as to what poetry should be? 6. How did he fall short of his own theory of poetic expression?

7. How does this explain in some measure the views of his critics?

8. What important qualities of his work did many of his critics fail to see?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ward's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R. W. Church. and Selections.

The Poets and the Poetry of the Century. A. H. Miles. Vol. I.

Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters

Series.)

Wordsworthiana. Papers read to the Wordsworth Society. Edited by Wm. Knight.

Poems of Wordsworth. Chosen and selected, with introductory essay, by Matthew Arnold. (Golden Treasury Series.) Wordsworth's Complete Poetical Works. I Vol. Edited by John Morley.

William Wordsworth. A biographical sketch, with selections from his writings. A. J. Symington.

Wordsworth's Poetry. Francis Jeffrey. (Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, 1807-1814. These are the most famous of the early attacks on Wordsworth.)

CHAPTER II

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDS-
WORTH'S LIFE AND HIS POETRY

I have already said that with Wordsworth, more than with most poets, the life of the poet must be considered in connection with his poetry. Let us now look at this subject a little more closely. Wordsworth was born on the borders of that Lake Country which he loved so well, at Cockermouth, on April 7, 1770. From his boyhood he was familiar with English mountain scenery, and the subduing spirit of its beauty touched his earliest life. himself tells us

Nothing at that time

So welcome, no temptation half so dear

As that which urged me to a daring feat.

Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms and dizzy crags,
And tottering towers: I loved to stand and read
Their looks forbidding, read and disobey.

He

It is a vivid picture of the wild child of Nature, awed and yet exhilarated in her presence, which Wordsworth paints in these lines. The boyish Wordsworth described in the "Recluse" is a true boy, touched more perhaps than a boy should be with a sense of mystery in nature, but not distinguished by any unwholesome precocity or unnatural meditativeness. The awe of nature seems to have been a feeling early developed in him, and it never left him. He tells us how one day while nutting he penetrated into a

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distant solitude of the wood, where the silence and sense of sacredness were so profound that he hastily retreated, with the feeling that he had invaded a sanctuary. But in other passages, such as the above, the idea left upon the mind is of a sturdy youth, rejoicing in his strength of limb and sureness of foot, and taking a thoroughly healthy delight in outdoor life. He has the wholesome blood of the Cumberland dalesman in his veins, and loves the mountains as only those love them whose life has thriven beneath their shadows; and even as a boy he learned to feel something of that healing serenity which Nature breathes into the soul that loves her. He felt that "whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace"; or, to quote his own memorable words:

But me hath Nature tamed, and bade to seek
For other agitations, or be calm ;

Hath dealt with me as with a turbulent stream,
Some nursling of the mountains, which she leads
Through quiet meadows, after he has learnt
His strength, and had his triumph and his joy,
His desperate course of tumult and of glee.

The first noticeable thing, therefore, is that Wordsworth was a true "nursling of the mountains," and the influence of natural beauty and pastoral life was one of the earliest influences which shaped his mind. He had no love of cities, and knew little of them. of them it was with reluctance and brooded

When he spoke compassion; he

Above the fierce confederate storm

Of sorrow, barricadoed ever more
Within the walls of cities;

He

for it seemed to him that cities were the natural homes of sorrow, and the open fields the true abodes of peace. had a passionate love for an outdoor life, and his mind naturally lent itself to that deep meditativeness which is a common characteristic of those who spend many hours of every day in the loneliness of nature. Strangely enough, in one who is known to fame as a man of letters, it was nevertheless true that the three things most difficult for him to do, to the very end of his life, were reading, writing, and the toil of literary composition. When he is a young man of thirty-three, he writes to Sir George Beaumont that he never has a pen in his hand for five minutes without becoming a bundle of uneasiness, and experiencing an insufferable oppression. "Nine-tenths of my verses," he writes forty years later, "have been murmured out in the open air." When a visitor at Rydal Mount asked to see Wordsworth's study, the reply was that he could see his "library, where he keeps his books, but his study is out of doors." The peculiarities thus described are the typical peculiarities of the sturdy dalesman, and such in many respects Wordsworth was to the end of his days. When he described the peasants and farmers of the mountains, it was no fanciful love that attracted him to them: he spoke of men whom he thoroughly understood, because he was physically akin to them. The sturdy fiber of his mind, his intellectual honesty, his independence, his power of contemplation, his sufficiency-not the coarse sufficiency of the vulgar egoist, but the habitual sufficiency of a wellpoised and self-reliant nature-all these were the distin