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WORDSWORTH. 

 By the Rev. PROFESSOR WILLIAM KNIGHT. 



( Lecture ddivertd in May, 1878, at Cockermotdh, during the Annual 

 Meeting of the Association. ) 



So much has been said about the genius and poetic mission of 

 Wordsworth-and said so well-that I daresay some of you, who 

 hve in his birthplace, may think that the subject is exhausted. After 

 the critcisims of Coleridge and De Quincey, of Sir Henry Taylor, 

 of Brimley, Clough, Robertson, Lowell, and above all of Mr.' 

 Stopford Brooke, and the late and the present Professors of Poetiy 

 at Oxford, there seems little need to say more. 



And yet, there is no possibility of exhausting Wordsworth, any 

 more than of exhausting Plato. When the time comes for the 

 world to feel that the last word has been said about the great 

 idealist of antiquity, men may perhaps think that Wordsworth also 

 is exhausted. Plato, indeed, moves in a sphere, and speaks in a 

 dialect, that is philosophically more profound; but he never soars 

 into a more ethereal region. He does not interpret Nature or 

 human Life more adequately, nor does the student of his works 

 breathe a more untroubled air, than that in which Wordsworth 

 lived and had his being. 



In order to a just appreciation of this poet, two things are 

 necessary. First, we must mark the growth and developement in 

 his own mind of a new attitude towards Nature, and Man in 

 relation to nature, as this is disclosed in his autobiographical poem, 

 Tfte Prelude,~hy far the greatest work of its kind ever contributed 

 to literature. Secondly, we must ascertain the relation in which he 



