18 REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; 



given voice to the universal sentiment, stamping forever 

 into language what had floated in men's minds from the 

 beginning. Poets are the mouthpieces of mankind, their 

 utterances become the common coin. Shelley has nobly 

 set forth this in the Defence of Poetry, the function of 

 his art to elevate mankind to pedestals from which wider 

 and wider horizons are viewed and glimpses of the 

 end. 



Wordsworth, after describing the aspect of the mighty 

 city at this unusual hour, works himself into a high key 

 and is caught up into a tumult of emotion ; the words 

 burn under him : 



11 Dear God ! The very houses seem asleep ; 

 And all this mighty heart is lying still." 



So at Venice a like universal pathos is given voice to in 

 these memorable lines. Venice is at his feet, a past 

 London, a splendid vision midway east and west in the 

 sea, once so great, now in decay. Says the poet : 



" Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade 

 Of that which once was great has pass'd away." 



Wordsworth is as quotable for high emotions as Pope 

 for sententious point. The one is the poet of the feelings 

 the other of the understanding. Pope to Wordsworth is 

 as varnish to oil painting. But he anticipated modern 

 liberality and emancipation, a catholic in protestant Eng- 

 land. He fills no need of the heart, nor does he satisfy 

 any craving of the imagination. 



Byron is memorable for passion. In one outburst he 

 writes lines worthy to be inscribed over modern times for 

 comprehensiveness and felicity, having every character- 

 istic of the most consummate art without the conscious- 

 ness of it, so different from and so superior to Tennyson ; 



