213 



much that he has given it. A ' standard of proportion ' would 

 have repressed the outflow of his genius, dwarfed his originality, 

 and checked the free course of that stream of imaginative ardour 

 to which we owe so many immortal creations, and so much of the 

 scattered wealth of his poetry. We may be thankful that the 

 greater poets have seldom had a perfect " standard of proportion." 

 The rounded completeness which comes of culture would have 

 maimed W'ordsworth altogether. 



It is refreshing to turn from the critics, and listen to the poet's 

 own estimate of his office, and of its fulfilment in the future. He 

 said to his nephew : — " Every poet must diffuse health and light ; 

 he must prophesy to his generation ; he must teach the present age 

 by counselling with the future ; he must plead for posterity."* To 

 his friend, Lady Beaumont, he writes as follows of the Lyrical 

 Ballads. The quotation is a little long, but it is so excellent that 

 I must give it in full. " It is impossible that any expectations can 

 be lower than mine concerning the immediate effect of this little 

 work upon what is called the public. I do not here take into con- 

 sideration the envy and malevolence, and all the bad passions 

 which always stand in the way of a work of any merit from a living 

 poet ; but merely think of the pure, absolute, honest ignorance in 

 which all worldlings of whatever rank and situation must be en- 

 veloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings, and images on 

 which the life of my poem depends. The things which I have 

 taken, whether from within or from without, what have they to do 

 with routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from 

 street to street, or foot or in carriage, with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, 

 Mr. Paul or Sir Francis Burdett, the \\'estminster election or the 

 borough of Honiton. . . There peither is, nor can be any 

 genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of every twenty 

 of those persons who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the 

 world, amongst those who are striving to make themselves people 

 of consideration in society. Trouble not yourself upon the 

 present reception of my poems ; of what moment is that compared 

 with what I trust is their destiny ? To console the afflicted ; to 

 * Memoir, vol. ii. p. 7. 



