true estimate of poetry, between the Fancy, and another
more powerful faculty--the Imagination. This metaphysical distinction,
borrowed originally from the writings of German philosophers, and
perhaps not always clearly apprehended by those who talked of it,
involved a far deeper and more vital distinction, with which indeed all
true criticism more or less directly has to do, the distinction,
namely, between higher and lower degrees of intensity in the poet's
perception of his subject, and in his concentration of himself upon his
work. Of those who dwelt upon the metaphysical distinction between the
Fancy and the Imagination, it was Wordsworth who made the most of it,
assuming it as the basis for the final classification of his poetical
writings; and it is in these writings that the deeper and more vital
distinction, which, as I have said, underlies the metaphysical [40]
distinction, is most needed, and may best be illustrated.

For nowhere is there so perplexed a mixture as in Wordsworth's own
poetry, of work touched with intense and individual power, with work of
almost no character at all. He has much conventional sentiment, and
some of that insincere poetic diction, against which his most serious
critical efforts were directed: the reaction in his political ideas,
consequent on the excesses of 1795, makes him, at times, a mere
declaimer on moral and social topics; and he seems, sometimes, to force
an unwilling pen, and write by rule. By making the most of these
blemishes it is possible to obscure the true aesthetic value of his
work, just as his life also, a life of much quiet delicacy and
independence, might easily be placed in a false focus, and made to
appear a somewhat tame theme in illustration of the more obvious
parochial virtues. And those who wish to understand his influence, and
experience his peculiar savour, must bear with patience the presence of
an alien element in Wordsworth's work, which never coalesced with what
is really delightful in it, nor underwent his special power. Who that
values his writings most has not felt the intrusion there, from time to
time, of something tedious and prosaic? Of all poets equally great, he
would gain most by a skilfully made anthology. Such a selection would
show, in truth, not so much what he was, or to himself or others [41]
seemed to be, as what, by the more energetic and fertile quality in his
writings, he was ever tending to become. And the mixture in his