to the understanding of the whole, cannot
be omitted or dispensed with at the beck of the fancy or the necessities
of the metre and rhyme.

There is also an objection to Man (or any other theme of that grandeur)
as the subject of a didactic poem, which is more subtle, and which for
that reason we have reserved to the last. In the ordinary specimens of
didactic poetry, the theme and its sub-divisions wear (as we have
already observed) a double-faced or Janus aspect; one derived from the
direct experience of life, the other from the reflex experience of it.
And the very reason why one face _does_ affect you is because the other
does _not_. Thus a Morland farmyard, a Flemish tavern, or a clean
kitchen in an unpretending house seen by ruddy firelight reflected from
pewter ware, scarcely interests the eye at all in the reality; but for
that very reason it _does_ interest us all in the mimicry. The very fact
of seeing an object framed as it were, insulated, suddenly _relieved_ to
the steady consciousness, which all one's life has been seen _un_framed,
_not_ called into relief, but depressed into the universal level of
subconsciousness, awakens a pleasurable sense of surprise. But now Man
is too great a subject to allow of any unrelieved aspects. What the
reader sees he must see directly and without insulation, else falseness
and partiality are immediately apparent.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] We speak here of Horace in his lyrical character, and of Pope as he
revealed himself in his tender and pathetic sincerities, not in his
false, counterfeit scorn. Horace, a good-natured creature, that laughed
eternally in his satire, was probably sincere. Pope, a benign one, could
not have been sincere in the bitter and stinging personalities of his
satires. Horace seems to be personal, but is not. Neither is Juvenal;
the names he employs are mere allegoric names. _Draco_ is any bloody
fellow; _Favonius_ is any sycophant: but Pope is very different.

[49] 'His own chin,' chin-chopping, as practised in our days, was not an
original invention; it was simply a restoration from the days of Queen
Anne.

_XI. SHAKSPEARE AND WORDSWORTH_.

I take the opportunity of referring to the work of a very eloquent
Frenchman, who has brought the names of Wordsworth and Shakspeare into
connection, partly for the sake of pointing out an important error in
the particular criticism on Wordsworth, but still more as an occasion
for expressing the gratitude