﻿wobdswokth's mind 



31 



viously it is not Wordsworth 's egotism per se, but what it leads to, 

 which makes up the resemblance between his ideas and those of the 

 other romanticists. Since the poem takes its color from the egotism 

 of the author, it is that I shall first attempt to describe. 



' The Prelude ' is, as I have indicated, not a philosophy or a nar- 

 rative of thought for its own sake ; it sounds the depths of a strong 

 and passionate mind, and does this in the language of passion. No 

 other document in the world is more intimate, more personal, more 

 conscious of self. The 'Confessions' of Rousseau is a record not 

 more faithful to human feelings. Like that great book, the poem 

 shows the author's sense of his superior difference from others, his 

 pride in his difficult originality, his fear, at the same time, of not 

 being understood, his hope for a democracy of understanding made 

 possible by the unifying intluences of nature of which he studies to 

 be the faithful interpreter. Hence we may be sure that the narra- 

 tive is also intended to be the means of explaining his other poetry. 

 These things make up the blended strain of egotism that, so to 

 speak, motivates the whole ; and it is from this that ' The Prelude ' 

 has its chief characteristics, whether faults or virtues. 



It has been noticed, for example, that much of it is tedious and 

 unpoetical, due to Wordsworth's inability to perceive that not all 

 his faithfully recorded observations are discoveries of his own, and 

 that he could not attempt to lead a life of continuous poetical 

 thought, without as continually growing numb to the difference 

 between mere meditation and poetic vision. Mr. Arthur Symons 

 and many others, with a decided opinion as to what is and what is 

 not poetry, have therefore concluded that most of 'The Prelude' 

 should have been done in prose. As it stands, it is a journal in 

 verse, and unquestionably too much of the verse is prose. Yet to 

 Mr. Symons it might be answered that if Wordsworth were really 

 unable to tell poetry from prose, it is fortunate that he wrote in 

 the form he did since he might never have been quite sure when to 

 make the formal change, as he approached those passages of sub- 

 lime and passionate thought, or those tine single lines, in the midst 

 of his narrative. Whichever way you take it, as much of the fault 

 as remains is to be attributed to his egotism. For though Words- 

 ' worth's egotism is, of course, a form of poetic energy, it is not of 

 that sort which forces in a poet a recognition of the fact that what 

 he writes instinctively may be also mechanical in character, and 

 that the soul may have its prose as well as its poetry.^ 



iSae the Chapter on Wordsworth in 'The Romantic Movement in English Poetry,' by Arthur 

 Symons, N. Y., 1909. 



