A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 325 



the critical importance of his essay consists mainly in the 

 broad and clear distinction he has made between what is 

 more and less valuable in his work. ' In Wordsworth's case, 

 the accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration is 

 of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, is so evidently 

 filled with a new and sacred energy when the inspiration is 

 upon him ; no poet, when it fails him, is so left "weak as 

 is a breaking wave." ' The object, therefore, of Mr. Arnold is 

 * to disengage the poems which show his power, and to present 

 them to the English-speaking public and to the world.' 

 He thinks that the volume ' contains everything, or nearly 

 everything, which may best serve him with the majority of 

 lovers of poetry, nothing which may disserve him.' Tastes 

 will differ considerably about both clauses of this sentence ; 

 for while Words worthians may complain that too much has 

 been omitted, others who are anxious that our great and 

 beloved poet should appear before the world with only his 

 best singing robes around him, may desire an even stricter 

 censorship than Mr. Arnold's. In the second lyric, ' To a 

 Butterfly,' we find this stanza : 



Float near me ; do not yet depart ! 



Dead times revive in thee : 



Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art, 



A solemn image to my heart, 



My father's family ! 



No excellence of moral sentiment can redeem the banality 

 of these lines. The last verse, sincerely felt as it may be, 

 respectable as is the emotion it expresses, is from the point of 

 view of art a bathos. A really fine narrative, the ' Brothers,' 

 contains abundance of writing which, were it not Words- 

 worth's, might be described, in the favourite phrase of ' tenth- 

 rate critics,' as prose cut into lengths of ten syllables : 



And now, at last 



From perils manifold, with some small wealth 

 Acquired by traffic 'mid the Indian isles, 

 To his paternal home he is returned, 

 With a determined purpose to resume 

 The life he had lived there. 



