t of his work as a standard of judgment; and book after
book of poems appeared without meeting any success save the approval of a
few loyal friends. Without doubt or impatience he continued his work,
trusting to the future to recognize and approve it. His attitude here
reminds one strongly of the poor old soldier whom he met in the hills,[222]
who refused to beg or to mention his long service or the neglect of his
country, saying with noble simplicity,

My trust is in the God of Heaven
And in the eye of him who passes me.

Such work and patience are certain of their reward, and long before
Wordsworth's death he felt the warm sunshine of general approval. The wave
of popular enthusiasm for Scott and Byron passed by, as their limitations
were recognized; and Wordsworth was hailed by critics as the first living
poet, and one of the greatest that England had ever produced. On the death
of Southey (1843) he was made poet laureate, against his own inclination.
The late excessive praise left him quite as unmoved as the first excessive
neglect. The steady decline in the quality of his work is due not, as might
be expected, to self-satisfaction at success, but rather to his intense
conservatism, to his living too much alone and failing to test his work by
the standards and judgment of other literary men. He died tranquilly in
1850, at the age of eighty years, and was buried in the churchyard at
Grasmere.

Such is the brief outward record of the world's greatest interpreter of
nature's message; and only one who is acquainted with both nature and the
poet can realize how inadequate is any biography; for the best thing about
Wordsworth must always remain unsaid. It is a comfort to know that his
life, noble, sincere, "heroically happy," never contradicted his message.
Poetry was his life; his soul was in all his work; and only by reading what
he has written can we understand the man.

THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH. There is often a sense of disappointment when one
reads Wordsworth for the first time; and this leads us to speak first of
two difficulties which may easily prevent a just appreciation of the poet's
worth. The first difficulty is in the reader, who is often puzzled by
Wordsworth's absolute simplicity. We are so used to stage effects in
poetry, that beauty unadorned is apt to escape our notice,--like
Wordsworth's "Lucy":

A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when onl