d
contained of which he could approve."]

[Footnote 382: "Prelude," xiv. 192. Wordsworth's psychology is very
interesting. "Imagination" is for him ("Miscellaneous Sonnets," xxxv.)
a "glorious faculty," whose function it is to elevate the
more-than-reasoning mind; "'tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
of Faith," and "colour life's dark cloud with orient rays." This
faculty is at once "more than reason," and identical with "Reason in
her most exalted mood." I have said (p.21) that "Mysticism is reason
applied to a sphere above rationalism" and this appears to be exactly
Wordsworth's doctrine.]

[Footnote 383: "Sonnets on the River Duddon," xxxiv.]

[Footnote 384: "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," 95-102.]

[Footnote 385: "Miscell. Sonnets," xxxiii.]

[Footnote 386: "Prelude," xiv. 112-129.]

[Footnote 387: "Prelude," ii. 396-418.]

[Footnote 388: "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey," 35-48.]

[Footnote 389: Wordsworth's Mysticism contains a few subordinate
elements which are of more questionable value. The "echoes from beyond
the grave," which "the inward ear" sometimes catches, are dear to most
of us; but we must not be too confident that they always come from
God. Still less can we be sure that presentiments are "heaven-born
instincts." Again, when the lonely thinker feels himself surrounded by
"huge and mighty forms, that do not move like living men," it is a
sign that the "dim and undetermined sense of unknown modes of being"
has begun to work not quite healthily upon his imagination. And the
doctrine of pre-existence, which appears in the famous Ode, is one
which it has been hitherto impossible to admit into the scheme of
Christian beliefs, though many Christian thinkers have dallied with
it. Perhaps the true lesson of the Ode is that the childish love of
nature, beautiful and innocent as it is, has to die and be born again
in the consciousness of the grown man. That Wordsworth himself passed
through this experience, we know from other passages in his writings.
In his case, at any rate, the "light of common day" was, for a time at
least, more splendid than the roseate hues of his childish imagination
can possibly have been; and there seems to be no reason for holding
the gloomy view that spiritual insight necessarily becomes dimmer as
we travel farther from our cradles, and nearer to our graves. What
fails us as we get older is only that kind of vision which is
analogous to the "consolations" ofte