trivial themes, and the use of language
which is bald, childish, or even ludicrous. His simplicity is too often
the simplicity of Mother Goose rather than of Chaucer. Instances of this
occur in such poems as _Peter Bell_, the _Idiot Boy_, _Goody Blake and
Harry Gill_, _Simon Lee_, and the _Wagoner_. But there are multitudes of
Wordsworth's ballads and lyrics which are simple without being silly,
and which, in their homeliness and clear profundity, in their production
of the strongest effects by the fewest strokes, are among the choicest
modern examples of _pure_, as distinguished from decorated, art. Such
are (out of many) _Ruth_, _Lucy_, _She was a Phantom of Delight_, _To a
Highland Girl_, _The Reverie of Poor Susan_, _To the Cuckoo_, _The
Solitary Reaper_, _We Are Seven_, _The Pet Lamb_, _The Fountain_, _The
Two April Mornings_, _Resolution and Independence_, _The Thorn_, and
_Yarrow Unvisited_.

Wordsworth was something of a Quaker in poetry, and loved the sober
drabs and grays of life. Quietism was his literary religion, and the
sensational was to him not merely vulgar, but almost wicked. "The human
mind," he wrote, "is capable of being excited without the application of
gross and violent stimulants." He disliked the far-fetched themes and
high-colored style of Scott and Byron. He once told Landor that all of
Scott's poetry together was not worth sixpence. From action and passion
he turned away to sing the inward life of the soul and the outward life
of nature. He said:

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

And again:

Long have I loved what I behold.
The night that charms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother earth
Suffices me--her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.

Wordsworth's life was outwardly uneventful. The companionship of the
mountains and of his own thoughts, the sympathy of his household, the
lives of the dalesmen and cottagers about him furnished him with all the
stimulus that he required.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His only teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

He read little, but reflected much, and made poetry daily, composing, by
preference, out of doors, and dictating his verses to some member of his
family. His favorite amanuensis was his sister Dorothy, a woman of fine
gifts, to wh