halo of feeling the thought may be surrounded
and glorified, the thought itself is always the conspicuous object;
while the poetry of a poet is Feeling itself, employing Thought only
as the medium of its expression. In the one, feeling waits upon
thought; in the other, thought upon feeling. The one writer has a
distinct aim, common to him with any other didactic author; he desires
to convey the thought, and he conveys it clothed in the feelings which
it excites in himself, or which he deems most appropriate to it. The
other merely pours forth the overflowing of his feelings; and all the
thoughts which those feelings suggest are floated promiscuously along
the stream.

It may assist in rendering our meaning intelligible, if we illustrate
it by a parallel between the two English authors of our own day who
have produced the greatest quantity of true and enduring poetry,
Wordsworth and Shelley. Apter instances could not be wished for; the
one might be cited as the type, the _exemplar_, of what the poetry of
culture may accomplish: the other as perhaps the most striking example
ever known of the poetic temperament. How different, accordingly, is
the poetry of these two great writers! In Wordsworth, the poetry is
almost always the mere setting of a thought. The thought may be more
valuable than the setting, or it may be less valuable, but there can
be no question as to which was first in his mind: what he is impressed
with, and what he is anxious to impress, is some proposition, more or
less distinctly conceived; some truth, or something which he deems
such. He lets the thought dwell in his mind, till it excites, as is
the nature of thought, other thoughts, and also such feelings as the
measure of his sensibility is adequate to supply. Among these thoughts
and feelings, had he chosen a different walk of authorship (and there
are many in which he might equally have excelled), he would probably
have made a different selection of media for enforcing the parent
thought: his habits, however, being those of poetic composition, he
selects in preference the strongest feelings, and the thoughts with
which most of feeling is naturally or habitually connected. His
poetry, therefore, may be defined to be, his thoughts, coloured by,
and impressing themselves by means of, emotions. Such poetry,
Wordsworth has occupied a long life in producing. And well and wisely
has he so done. Criticisms, no doubt, may be made occasionally both
upon th