182 LITERARY VALUES 



made by a commonplace thought veiled and hidden 

 by ambiguity of phrase, and that made by " some- 

 thing far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is 

 the light of setting suns." Great poets give us a 

 sense of depth and height, of the far and the rare, 

 Meredith does at times, but oftener he gives us only 

 a sense of the dense and the foggy. 



There are two reasons why we may not understand 

 a man. In one case the fault is in him, — in his 

 clouded and ambiguous way of thinking, such as I 

 have already spoken of. In the other case the 

 fault, or rather the difficulty, is in us. The man 

 may live and move upon a different spiritual plane, 

 he may have an atmosphere and cherish ideals that 

 belong to another world than ours. Thus the solid 

 men of Boston did not understand Emerson, but 

 said their daughters did. The daughters were ha- 

 bitually more familiar with Emerson's ideal values 

 than the fathers were. Thus Scott said he did 

 not understand Wordsworth, could not follow his 

 " abstruse ideas ; " Campbell suited him better. 

 Scott belonged to another type of mind than that 

 of Wordsworth's, lived in another world. There 

 was no sense of mystery in his mind, — of that 

 haunting, elusive something which Wordsworth felt 

 in all outward nature. There was no religion in 

 Scott's love of nature, and it is this probably that 

 baffled him in Wordsworth. Both were born country- 

 men and equal lovers of common, rural things, but 

 Wordsworth associated them with his spiritual and 

 ideal joys and experiences, while Scott found in 



