Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation,
From this dark world, whose damps the soul do blind,
On that bright Sun of glory fix thine eyes,
Cleared from gross mists of frail infirmities."

Shelley sums up a great deal of Plotinus in the following stanza of
"Adonais":--

"The One remains; the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity."

Compare, too, the opening lines of "Alastor."]

[Footnote 371: Compare the following sentences in Bradley's
_Appearance and Reality_: "Nature viewed materialistically is only an
abstraction for certain purposes, and has not a high degree of truth
or reality. The poet's nature has much more.... Our principle, that
the abstract is the unreal, moves us steadily upward.... It compels us
in the end to credit nature with our higher emotions. That process can
only cease when nature is quite absorbed into spirit, and at every
stage of the process we find increase in reality."]

[Footnote 372: "Prelude," viii. 340 sq.]

[Footnote 373: "Prelude," viii. 668.]

[Footnote 374: La Rochefoucauld.]

[Footnote 375: These words, from Milton's "Comus," are applied to
Wordsworth by Hazlitt.]

[Footnote 376: "Prelude," iv. 1207-1229. The ascetic element in
Wordsworth's ethics should by no means be forgotten by those who envy
his brave and unruffled outlook upon life. As Hutton says excellently
(_Essays_, p. 81), "there is volition and self-government in every
line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from the steady
resistance he opposes to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and
regrets. He contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and
indolent humours, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and
wasteful joy--turning defeat into victory, and victory into defeat."
See the whole passage.]

[Footnote 377: "Prelude," vi. 604-608.]

[Footnote 378: "Miscell. Sonnets," xii.]

[Footnote 379: See the Essay in which he deals with Macpherson: "In
nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute
independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly the
reverse--everything is defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened--yet
nothing distinct."]

[Footnote 380: "Excursion," v. 500-514.]

[Footnote 381: This seemed flat blasphemy to Shelley, whose idealism
was mixed with Byronic misanthropy. "Nor was there aught the worl