open a higher way for
naturalism in art by its union with ideal truth."

Criticism has long since ceased to ridicule his _Betty Foy_, and his
_Harry Gill_, whose "teeth, they chatter, chatter still." Such
malicious sport proved only too easy for Wordsworth's contemporaries,
and still the essential value of his poetry was unimpaired.

The range of poetry is indeed inexhaustible, and even the greatest
poets must suffer some subtraction from universal pre-eminence.
Therefore we may frankly admit the deficiencies of Wordsworth,--that he
was lacking in dramatic force and in the power of characterization;
that he was singularly deficient in humor, and therefore in the saving
grace of self-criticism in the capacity to see himself occasionally in
a ridiculous light; that he has little of the romantic glamor and none
of the narrative energy of Scott; that Shelley's lyrical flights leave
him plodding along the dusty highway; and that Byron's preternatural
force makes his passion seen by contrast pale and ineffectual. All
this and more may freely be granted, and yet for his influence upon
English thought, and especially upon the poetic thought of his country,
he must be named after Shakespeare and Milton. The intellectual value
of his work will endure; for leaving aside much valuable doctrine,
which from didactic excess fails as poetry, he has brought into the
world a new philosophy of Nature and has emphasised in a manner
distinctively his own the dignity of simple manhood.--_Pelham Edgar_.

REFERENCES ON WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND WORKS

_Wordsworth_ by F. W. H. Myers, in _English Men of Letters_ series.
Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Wordsworth_ by Walter Raleigh, London: Edward Arnold.

_Wordsworth_ by Rosaline Masson, in _The People's Books_ series.
London: T. C. & E. C. Jack,

_Wordsworthiana_ edited by William Knight. Toronto: The Macmillan
Company of Canada, Limited.

_Essays Chiefly on Poetry_ by Aubrey de Vere, 2 volumes. Toronto: The
Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.

_Literary Essays_ by Richard Holt Hutton. Toronto: The Macmillan
Company of Canada, Limited.

_Studies in Literature_ by Edward Dowden. London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner & Co., Ltd.

_Aspects of Poetry_ by J. S. C. Shairp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and
Company.

_Lives of Great English Writers from Chaucer to Browning_ by Walter S.
Hinchman and Francis B. Gummere. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

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