20t 



substantial part of the idea remaining unaltered ; and it became 

 the increasing purpose of his life to proclaim it to his contemp- 

 oraries, carrying it out through a long literary career, against all 

 adverse critfcism and the want of popular appreciation, and 

 embodying the result in a series of immortal poetic creations. 



It is the easiest thing in the world to criticise Wordsworth as 

 Jeffrey did, — the acute Edinburgh lawyer, blind of one eye, who 

 neither "saw life steadily nor saw it whole" and for whom nature 

 contained no oracle or shrine. It is poor criticism even to say, as 

 others have done, that Wordsworth had no humour, and no 

 dramatic faculty; and that he, therefore, belongs to the secondary 

 rank of genius. Humour is doubtless a great power, and Words- 

 worth had little or none of it. But though the sunny laughter of 

 the humourist is a source of inexhaustible delight to men who have 

 to face much vanity and vexation of spirit, it is intrinsically a poorer 

 thing to resuscitate our cheerfulness by laughter, than to rouse our 

 flagging energies by insight, and fellowship with nature. It is true 

 that Wordsworth would have had comparatively little appreciation 

 of the intricate culture of our age, an age that is daily growing more 

 involved. His poetry traverses a few great lines of thought and 

 feeling, more profoundly than any other poetry does ; but its area 

 is not wide. The complex civilisation of the nineteenth century, 

 with its endless detail, was on the whole distasteful to him ; and 

 jts best side, its redeeming side, was probably not understood. On 

 the other hand, the cure for the fever and fret of the nineteenth 

 (or of any) century was weft known, and profoundly grasped by 

 him. The best antidote to the distractions of life — to the frittering 

 away of strength, and the dissipation of energy in trifles — was 

 understood ; and by no writer, ancient or modem, has it been more 

 nobly uttered. 



It is, perhaps, useless to revive the criticisms of half a century 

 ago, the long-buried judgments that were passed, by the guides of 

 literary opinion in their time, on the merits of this new poet ; 

 except, in so far as they afford one of the most significant instances 

 on record, of the powerlessness of hostile or partisan reviews to 

 extinguish original genius, and the certainty of a reversal of their 



