210 



■^what is the use of obtruding our petty critical estimates ? Is it 

 said to prevent those who belong to his school, and are pleased to 

 rank as his " disciples," from a too indiscriminate eulogy ? Good : 

 an intelligible aim, and a useful end. But, surely the world has a 

 superabundance of critics and very few original minds. We are 

 all born critics, but how many are creators ? and is it difficult to 

 put even Shakespeare and Goethe, Plato and Aristotle, on the 

 Procrustes bed of criticism, and stretch them curiously about? 

 Besides, every critic has his critic ; and while admiration for ex" 

 cellence unites men, animadversion divides them. All the above- 

 mentioned faults in Wordsworth's style were noticed by Coleridge 

 long ago in his Biographia Literaria, where the enumeration of 

 blemishes is followed by one of the finest and most discriminative 

 eulogies to be found in the annals of literature, and in which — 

 with true prophetic insight — he says, " His fame belongs to another 

 age, and can neither be accelerated nor retarded."* This estimate 

 of Wordsworth by his friend Coleridge is so just (and in rigour it 

 has not been surpassed by later criticism) that I cannot do better 

 than quote to you its chief points. 



He notes '^ First, an austere purity of language, a perfect 

 appropriateness of the words to the meaning. . . . Second, a 

 corresponding weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, 

 won not from books but from the poet's own mediative observa- 

 tion. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. , . Third, 

 the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs j 



the frequent ciiriosa felicitas of his diction Fourth, 



the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions taken 

 immediately from nature. . . . -ti/th, a meditative pathos, a 

 union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility ; a sympathy 

 with man as man ; the sympathy, indeed, of a coiitemplator, rather 

 than a fellow-sufferer or co-mate, but of a contemplator, from whose 

 view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature ; 

 no injuries of wind or weather, of toil or even of ignorance, wholly 

 disguise the human face divine. The superscription and image of 

 the Creator still remain legible to him under the dark lines with 

 * Biografhia Literaria, p. 165. Ed. 1847. 



