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is no spot in all your district, to which he has referred, which he 

 has not interpreted, illumining it with 



The light that never was on sea or land. 



It is this element of local colour, in his poems, that has made the 

 whole region of the English Lakes pre-eminently classic ground. 

 There is no place in Scotland associated with the genius of Burns 

 or of Scott — Ayrshire, Tweedside, Loch Katrine, or the Western 

 Isles — over which the ethereal light of imagination still broods, as 

 it lingers amongst the hills and dales of Cumberland and West- 

 moreland. And if the remark of Mr. Lowell, that the poet was 

 " the historian of Wordsworthshire," has any force, it is part of 

 his imperishable renown that he created such a shire, and gave 

 it a meaning vastly more interesting than those geographical 

 county boundaries, to which the poet's work as stamp-collector 

 was confined. 



Wordsworth possessed, first of all, a wide knowledge of nature; 

 a knowledge that was broad, intimate, minute, and thorough. 

 Hence the perfect truth of his description of the external aspects 

 of a scene, before he sought its inner meaning, or its " soul." 

 Without such accuracy of perception and report, no divination was 

 possible. He was unerring in the fidelity with which he observed 

 the minute features of nature, which other eyes failed to see. One 

 day some one told him he had heard that he (Wordsworth) had 

 written a poem upon a daisy. " No," said the poet indignantly, 

 "it was on the daisy, a very different thing !" He had unustially 

 fine physical senses ; and, with rapid intuition, he pierced beyond 

 the reports they brought him, of form, colour, sound, etc., that he 

 might discern the underlying suggestions, with which the scene was 

 charged. His special greatness, as an interpreter of Nature, lay in 

 his power of divining the genius loci, — that subtle arrowy glance 

 going direct to the very core, always adequate, and usually 

 profound, often tenderly human ; in every instance bringing back 

 some secret, and disclosing the immeasurable significance of com- 

 mon things. He was never contented with deciphering outward 

 featvures. Forms, colours, sounds, always led up to some 



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