poetry.
Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more
recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned
contemplation. Their work is, not to teach lessons, or enforce rules,
or even to stimulate us to noble ends; but to withdraw the thoughts for
a little while from the mere machinery of life, to fix [63] them, with
appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man's
existence which no machinery affects, "on the great and universal
passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations,
and the entire world of nature,"--on "the operations of the elements
and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on
the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends
and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and hope, on
fear and sorrow." To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions
is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like
Wordsworth's is a great nourisher and stimulant. He sees nature full
of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature,
passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connexion with the
grandeur and beauty of the natural world:--images, in his own words,
"of man suffering, amid awful forms and powers."

Such is the figure of the more powerful and original poet, hidden away,
in part, under those weaker elements in Wordsworth's poetry, which for
some minds determine their entire character; a poet somewhat bolder and
more passionate than might at first sight be supposed, but not too bold
for true poetical taste; an unimpassioned writer, you might sometimes
fancy, yet thinking the chief aim, in life and art alike, to be a
certain deep emotion; seeking most often the great [64] elementary
passions in lowly places; having at least this condition of all
impassioned work, that he aims always at an absolute sincerity of
feeling and diction, so that he is the true forerunner of the deepest
and most passionate poetry of our own day; yet going back also, with
something of a protest against the conventional fervour of much of the
poetry popular in his own time, to those older English poets, whose
unconscious likeness often comes out in him.

1874.

NOTES

43. *Since this essay was written, such selections have been made, with
excellent taste, by Matthew Arnold and Professor Knight.

46-47. *In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first editi