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add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier ; to teach 

 the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, 

 and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous ; this 

 is their office, which, I trust, they will faithfully perform, long after 

 we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves. 

 . . . Never forget what was observed by Coleridge, that every 

 great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, 

 must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished, 



he must teach the art by which he is to be known 



My ears are stone-deaf to their idle buzz, and my flesh as insen- 

 sible as iron to their petty stings. I doubt not that you will share 

 with me an invincible confidence that my writings (and among 

 them these little poems) will co-operate with the benign tendencies 

 in human nature and society wherever found ; and that they will, 

 in their degrees, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and 

 happier." 



Again, in the same strain, to Sir George Beaumont he Avrites : 

 "Let the poet first consult his own heart, as I have done, and leave 

 the rest to posterity — to, I hope, an approving posterity." 



No one can fail to be struck with the nobleness, I might 

 almost say the sublimity, of these thoughts. The grandeur of 

 dedicating life to 'W07-k has been taught us by Carlyle in a very 

 significant manner ; but to consecrate it to thought and communion 

 with Nature ; to prolonged, devoted, wistful fellowship with her, in 

 her ever-changeful moods, while at the time faithful to the moral 

 ideal; this is -a still grander aim, and a yet nobler achievement. 



I shall not say much about Wordsworth's special theory ol 

 poetry. He believed that it takes its origin in "emotion recollected 

 in tranquillity." The poet, he held, should represent the incidents 

 or scenes of real life, in which the emotions are at their natural 

 height, or in their intensest outflow. To this, few discriminating 

 minds can take exception. But then, he went on to say, that since 

 at these times men naturally use a language precisely adapted to 

 the situation, the poet ought to use the same language, modifying 

 it only to tliis extent, that he must omit the disagreeable 

 remembering that his function is to give pleasure. Further, the 



