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Nature, or that his characters were the mere dupHcates of himself. 

 Not only was "the mind of man," (as he says) 



The haunt and the maui region of my song ; 

 but Nature was nothing to him apart from man. Still further, 

 it was man as social, man in relation to his fellows, man organized 

 in society, that chiefly interested him. 



The charge of throwing his own subjectivity into Nature, and 

 "seeing himself in all he saw," is so foolish that it is difficult to 

 deal with it. He saw a life in Nature distinct from his own, yet 

 kindred to it, a reciprocal and complementary life. You may say, 

 if you choose, that Imagination enabled him to do this ; and that, 

 without imagination, he could not have been brought into such a 

 living rapport with Nature, as certainly, without it, he never could 

 have chronicled the things he saw. But imagination gives insight, 

 as well as creative power ; and insight must in all cases go before 

 creation, if the latter is worth anything. Poetic creation is simply 

 the embodiment in an imaginative form, or in an intellectual and 

 aesthetic shape what has previously been discerned or divined. 

 Now Wordsworth's very speciality as a poet lay in this, that he 

 interpreted the universe in terms of humanity, without throwing 

 over it the mantle of his own subjectivity. He read its secret, by 

 the use of his own faculties of course, and with the aid of the 

 'auxiliar light' which 'came from his mind,' but not by a process 

 of mere idealisation. He saw Nature through his own lens — less 

 he could not do without ceasing to be a poet, or even a man- 

 But he did more than this. He saw into Nature's innermost heart, 

 and was throughout and pre-eminently, a' seer, and not an idealiser. 

 He perceived that the universe is animated by a living and recog- 

 nisable soul; that we do not err in describing it as, at least, quasi- 

 human : and conversely, he not only desired to bring humanity 

 into vital contact with the sunshine of the broad world, and to 



Feed it, 'mid nature's old fehcities ; 

 but he saw that human life finds its deepest interpretation, in direct 

 relation to nature. Thus Nature reveals man, while Man mirrors 

 nature. 



Not only so : not only was Nature, according to Wordsworth, 



