ant
of zeal and not amenable to the ordinary tests of cold-blooded
criticism. Like the hymns of the Huguenots and Covenanters, they were
songs of battle no less than of worship, and the combined ardours of
conviction and conflict lent them a fire that was not naturally their
own. As we read them now, that virtue of the moment is gone out of
them, and whatever of Dr. Wattsiness there is gives us a slight shock
of disenchantment. It is something like the difference between the
_Marseillaise_ sung by armed propagandists on the edge of battle, or
by Brissotins in the tumbrel, and the words of it read coolly in the
closet, or recited with the factitious frenzy of Therese. It was
natural in the early days of Wordsworth's career to dwell most fondly
on those profounder qualities to appreciate which settled in some sort
the measure of a man's right to judge of poetry at all. But now we
must admit the shortcomings, the failures, the defects, as no less
essential elements in forming a sound judgement as to whether the seer
and artist were so united in him as to justify the claim first put in
by himself and afterwards maintained by his sect to a place beside the
few great poets who exalt men's minds, and give a right direction and
safe outlet to their passions through the imagination, while
insensibly helping them toward balance of character and serenity of
judgement by stimulating their sense of proportion, form, and the nice
adjustment of means to ends. In none of our poets has the constant
propulsion of an unbending will, and the concentration of exclusive,
if I must not say somewhat narrow, sympathies done so much to make the
original endowment of nature effective, and in none accordingly does
the biography throw so much light on the works, or enter so largely
into their composition as an element whether of power or of weakness.
Wordsworth never saw, and I think never wished to see, beyond the
limits of his own consciousness and experience. He early conceived
himself to be, and through life was confirmed by circumstances in the
faith that he was, a 'dedicated spirit',[41] a state of mind likely
to further an intense but at the same time one-sided development of
the intellectual powers. The solitude in which the greater part of his
mature life was passed, while it doubtless ministered to the
passionate intensity of his musings upon man and nature, was, it may
be suspected, harmful to him as an artist, by depriving him of any
st