beauty, contains others that are both tedious and trivial, and are tedious because they are trivial. It is because Wordsworth always found the impulse of poetry within himself that it is impossible to understand his writings without a clear understanding of the significance of his life. He boldly declared that he must be taken as a teacher or as nothing. He was no fitful singer of an idle day; he believed he had a message to deliver, as truly as ever ancient seer or prophet had. For this reason Wordsworth fulfills, more perfectly than any other modern poet, the ideal conception of the bard. According to some philologists, "minister" and "minstrel" spring from the same root, and convey the same idea. The true poet is the bard, the seer, the minister; he has a divine ordination and is sacred by a divine anointing; he is a consecrated spirit, selected and commissioned for the performance of a divine behest. This was Wordsworth's view of the function of the poet, and he endeavored to fulfill it. This is what he meant when he said that vows were made for him, and that he must be considered as a teacher or nothing. This is the secret of that prophetic force which throbs in his best verses, and which gives them a subtle and enduring charm. They are the expression of an austere and separated soul, of a spirit which dwells amid inaccessible heights of devout vision, and speaks with the accent of one who knows the peace of, lofty and satisfying purposes.

This claim of Wordsworth's-to be considered as a teacher or as nothing-was a new claim to the critics of fifty years ago, and was undoubtedly one cause, and perhaps the main cause, of their prolonged and bitter hostility. We shall see hereafter precisely what Wordsworth meant

by the claim and how he has built up a philosophy which is its justification. But in the first instance the claim was based almost as much upon the literary form of his work as on its philosophic qualities and upon a theory of literary composition which he himself has stated and developed in his prefaces with great fullness. What was that theory? Briefly put, it amounted to this: Wordsworth complained that the commonly accepted theory of poetry was both false and vicious. It had practically invented a dialect of its own, which was as far as possible removed from the ordinary dialect of the common people. It was artificial and stilted the cant of a coterie, and not the language of ordinary life. Its spirit also was wholly wrong and mistaken: it had lost hold on common life, and scorned it as low and mean; it had lost hold on nature, because it did not know how to speak of her except in ancient rhetorical phrases, which were the bronze coinage of poetry, defaced by use, and whatever might once have been true or just about them was now depraved and mutilated by unthinking use. Wordsworth held that there was sufficient interest in common life to inspire the noblest achievements of the poet, and that nature must be observed with unflinching fidelity if she was to be described with truth or freshness. He asks why should poetry be

A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal hour
Of this great consummation; and, by words

Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external world
Is fitted ;—and how exquisitely too—

Theme this but little heard of among men—
The external world is fitted to the mind.

In this noble passage from the "Recluse," the gist of Wordsworth's peculiar view of poetry is to be found. He announces a return to simplicity, to simple themes and simple language, and teaches that in the simplest sights of life and nature there is sufficient inspiration for the true poet. He speaks of nothing more than what we are, and is prepared to write nothing that is not justified by the actual truth of things. He sets himself against that species of poetry which finds its impulse and its public in theatrical passion and morbid or exaggerated sentiment. To him the "meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," and by preserving his soul in austere simplicity he aims at producing a species of poetry which will affect men by its truth rather than its passion, and will affect even the lowliest of men, because it is expressed in the plain and unadorned language of common life.

How truly Wordsworth adhered to the great principles here enunciated his life and work declare, but it will also be apparent that his theory of poetic expression hopelessly broke down after a short trial. It may be said, indeed, that occasionally even his theory of poetry itself breaks down. In the attempt to be simple he becomes childish,

and in his selection of the commonest themes he more than once has selected themes which no human genius could make poetic. In the main, however, the principles of thought which he enunciated he strictly observed throughout a long life, and his noblest effects have been produced within the limitations he invented, and which he was content to obey. But when we consider the question of his literary expression, we at once perceive that he does not use the language of common life, nor was it possible that he should. The vocabulary of the educated man is far wider than the vocabulary of the illiterate, and the vocabulary of the great poet is usually the fullest of all. Wordsworth simply could not help himself when he used forms of expression which the ploughman and peddler could never have used. It was in vain that he said: "I have proposed to myself to imitate, and as far as is possible to adopt, the very language of men. I have taken

poetic diction

as much pains to avoid what is usually called as others ordinarily take to produce it." In poems like "The Idiot Boy," or "The Thorn," he certainly fulfills this purpose; he has so entirely succeeded in avoiding poetic diction that he has produced verses which by no stretch of literary charity could be called poetry at all. Wordsworth's noblest poetry is noble in direct contravention of his own theory of poetry, and is a pertinent illustration of the futility of all such theories to bind men of real genius. His theory is, that true poetry should be merely "the language really spoken by men, with meter superadded," and he asks us, "What other distinction from prose would we have?" We reply that from the true poet we expect melody and magic of phrase the gift of musical expression which can make words a power

equal to music, in producing exquisite sensations on the ear, and which is a still higher power than music, because it can directly produce noble thoughts and passions in the soul. If Wordsworth had only given us the language of prose with meter superadded, we should not be reading his pages to-day with ever-fresh delight. It is because he discards his own theory of poetic expression, and has given us many verses written in language unmatched for purity and melody of phrase, and wholly different from the "language really spoken by men," that we have judged him a great poet.

When we consider the vehemence of that ridicule with which Wordsworth was greeted, and the virulence of that criticism with which he was pursued for nearly half a century, it is necessary, therefore, to bear in mind how absurd this theory of poetic expression is, and how doubly absurd it must have seemed to those who were the critical authorities of his day. And it must also be recollected that Wordsworth pressed his theory in season and out of season. The temper of mind which made him attach an overweening importance to the slightest incidents in his own intellectual development made him also blind to the relative values of his poems. He deliberately chose poems like "The Idiot Boy"-which were written in his worst style-and solemnly insisted on their significance as illustrative of his theory. If he had had any sense of humor, he would have perceived how absurd this was; but in humor Wordsworth was singularly deficient. There was a stiffness of controversial temper about him which refused any parley with the enemy. The consequence was, that the more strenuously Wordsworth insisted on the value of his worst poems, the more blind men became to the