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seems to have penetrated to the very core of philosophical ideas, 

 not by laboured argumentation, but by intuitive discernment — both 

 intellectual and moral — which began early and developed rapidly, 

 keeping pace with the growth of his imagination. By that con- 

 summate vision, which is superior to all processes of reasoning, he 

 reached the ultimate data of speculative Philosophy and Theology. 



Further, in dealing with the perennial problems, Wordsworth 

 almost always keeps to their elements. He therefore moves within 

 a verifiable region; and hence his treatment of the questions cannot 

 be superseded. His poetry is intrinsically durable ; not only 

 because— like all poetry of the first magnitude — it is a joy to the 

 human race for ever; but also because it has no mythological 

 elements, which Science may some day compel us to lay aside. 

 He carries us into a region altogether unaffected by the discoveries, 

 which imperil a merely traditional faith. Let Science march 

 forward as it may, and where it may, Wordsworth's poetry moves 

 in a sphere unaffected by its conclusions, a sphere indeed to which 

 its widest generalisations bear witness, and pay tribute. 



And this leads me to speak of the bracing effect, the moral 

 tonic, to be found in his poetry. It presents a high ideal of life, 

 elevated alike above the sordid and the capricious, above the trivial, 

 the artificial and the ignoble. Hence there is no ennui, no tedium 

 vita, in Wordsworth. Every one knov/s his reference in the sonnet 

 to 'plain living and high thinking:' but few have adequately 

 realised the immense serenity, the large divine tranquillity, and the 

 indefinite hopefulness, that breathe through all his writings. In 

 him, aspiration blends with contentment ; placidity and calm, with 

 effort to be other than we are, and with a belief in the endless 

 possibilities of human nature. This is the secret of what Mr. 

 Arnold has so happily called his ' healing power.' You feel it, 

 just as you feel the effect of mountain air after languishing in a city. 

 The ' strength of the hills ' is in almost everything he wrote. And 



numerous passages in The Prebtde and The Excursion, as well as in the minor 

 poems, which condense within them the essence of the great ideal systems of 

 Plato, Spinosa, and Kant. Many a single line of Wordsworth's contains a 

 precise and singularly felicitous embodiment of the philosophical ideas which 

 lie at the heart of these systems. 



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