, had a marked influence upon J. S. Mill.
Wordsworth has written in the _Prelude_ one of the most remarkable of
intellectual autobiographies. He was to be, though he never quite
succeeded in being, a great philosophical poet. He never succeeded,
because, in truth, he was not a great philosopher. But no one has
more clearly indicated the history of his mental evolution. His
sympathy with the revolution was perfectly genuine, but involved a
vast misconception. A sturdy, independent youth, thoroughly imbued
with the instincts of his northern dalesmen, he had early leaned to a
republican sentiment. His dislike of the effete conventionalism of the
literary creed blended with his aversion to the political rule of the
time. He caught the contagion of revolutionary enthusiasm in France,
and was converted by the sight of the 'hunger-bitten' peasant
girl--the victim of aristocratic oppression. 'It is against that,'
said his friend, 'that we are fighting,' and so far Wordsworth was a
convert. The revolution, therefore, meant to him the restoration of an
idyllic state, in which the homely virtues of the independent peasant
should no longer be crushed and deprived of reward by the instruments
of selfish despotism. The outbreak of war put his principles at issue
with his patriotism. He suffered keenly when called upon to triumph
over the calamities of his countrymen. But gradually he came to think
that his sympathies were misplaced. The revolution had not altered
human nature. The atrocities disturbed him, but for a time he could
regard them as a mere accident. As the war went on, he began to
perceive that the new power could be as tyrannical and selfish as the
old. Instead of reconstructing a simple social ideal, it was forming a
military despotism. When the French armies put down the simple Swiss
peasantry, to whom he had been drawn by his home-bred sympathies, he
finally gave up the revolutionary cause. He had gone through a mental
agony, and his distracted sympathies ultimately determined a change
which corresponded to the adoption of a new philosophy. Wordsworth,
indeed, had little taste for abstract logic. He had imbibed Godwin's
doctrine, but when acceptance of Godwin's conclusions involved a
conflict with his strongest affections--the sacrifice not only of his
patriotism but of the sympathies which bound him to his fellows--he
revolted. Godwin represents the extreme of 'individualism,' the
absolute dissolution of all social an