is; but
Wordsworth has the merit of feeling the truth in all its force, and
expressing it by the most forcible images. In one shape or another the
sentiment is embodied in most of his really powerful poetry. It is
intended, for example, to be the moral of the 'White Doe of Rylstone.'
There, as Wordsworth says, everything fails so far as its object is
external and unsubstantial; everything succeeds so far as it is moral
and spiritual. Success grows out of failure; and the mode in which it
grows is indicated by the lines which give the keynote of the poem.
Emily, the heroine, is to become a soul

By force of sorrows high
Uplifted to the purest sky
Of undisturbed serenity.

The 'White Doe' is one of those poems which make many readers inclined
to feel a certain tenderness for Jeffrey's dogged insensibility; and I
confess that I am not one of its warm admirers. The sentiment seems to
be unduly relaxed throughout; there is a want of sympathy with heroism
of the rough and active type, which is, after all, at least as worthy of
admiration as the more passive variety of the virtue; and the defect is
made more palpable by the position of the chief actors. These rough
borderers, who recall William of Deloraine and Dandie Dinmont, are
somehow out of their element when preaching the doctrines of quietism
and submission to circumstances. But, whatever our judgment of this
particular embodiment of Wordsworth's moral philosophy, the inculcation
of the same lesson gives force to many of his finest poems. It is
enough to mention the 'Leech-gatherer,' the 'Stanzas on Peele Castle,'
'Michael,' and, as expressing the inverse view of the futility of idle
grief, 'Laodamia,' where he has succeeded in combining his morality with
more than his ordinary beauty of poetical form. The teaching of all
these poems falls in with the doctrine already set forth. All moral
teaching, I have sometimes fancied, might be summed up in the one
formula, 'Waste not.' Every element of which our nature is composed may
be said to be good in its proper place; and therefore every vicious
habit springs out of the misapplication of forces which might be turned
to account by judicious training. The waste of sorrow is one of the most
lamentable forms of waste. Sorrow too often tends to produce bitterness
or effeminacy of character. But it may, if rightly used, serve only to
detach us from the lower motives, and give sanctity to the higher. That
is what Wor