328 IS POETRY AT BOTTOM 



When he writes a poem on a flower, it is to draw forth 

 thoughts of joy or strength, or consolation. His ' Daffodils ' 

 have not the pathos which belongs to Herrick's, nor has he 

 composed anything in this style to match the sublimity of 

 Leopardi's ' Ginestra.' But Leopardi crushes the soul of 

 hope out of us by the abyss of dreadful contemplation into 

 which the broom upon the lava of Vesuvius plunges him. 

 Wordsworth never does this. The worst that can be said of 

 him is that, as Mr. Swinburne said in a preface to Byron, he 

 shreds Nature's vegetables into a domestic saucepan for daily 

 service. Still the homely pot au feu of the moralist has no 

 less right to exist than a wizard's cauldron of sublimity, and 

 probably will be found to last and wear longer. Wordsworth 

 has said nothing so exquisite as Poliziano upon the fragility 

 of rose-leaves, nor has he used the rose, like Ariosto, for 

 similitudes of youthful beauty. But the moralising of these 

 Italian amourists softens and relaxes. Wordsworth's poems 

 on the Celandine brace and invigorate. His enthusiasms are 

 sober and solid. Excepting the ode on Immortality, where 

 much that cannot be proved is taken for granted, and excepting 

 an occasional exaggeration of some favourite tenet, as in this 

 famous stanza 



One impulse from a vernal wood 



May teach you more of man, 

 Of moral evil, and of good, 



Than all the sages can 



his impulsive utterances are based on a sound foundation, 

 and will bear the test both of experience and analysis. In 

 this respect he differs from Shelley, whose far more fiery and 

 magnetic enthusiasms do not convince us of their absolute 

 sincerity, and are often at variance with probability. In the 

 case of Shelley we must be contented with the noble, the 

 audacious ardour he communicates. The further satisfaction 

 of feeling that his judgments are as right as his aspirations 

 are generous, is too frequently denied. Wordsworth does not 

 soar so high, nor on so powerful a pinion, but he is a safer 

 guide. His own comparison between the nightingale and the 

 stock-dove might be used as an allegory of the two poets, 



