irtue in classic form to which his own method had
hitherto made him a little blind. Towards the date of Waterloo, he
read over again some of the Latin writers, in attempting to prepare
his son for college. He even at a later date set about a translation
of the _Aeneid_ of Virgil, but the one permanent result of the classic
movement in his mind is _Laodamia_. Earlier in life he had translated
some books of Ariosto at the rate of a hundred lines a day, and he
even attempted fifteen of the sonnets of Michael Angelo, but so much
meaning is compressed into so little room in those pieces that he
found the difficulty insurmountable. He had a high opinion of the
resources of the Italian language. The poetry of Dante and of Michael
Angelo, he said, proves that if there be little majesty and strength
in Italian verse, the fault is in the authors and not in the tongue.

Our last glimpse of Wordsworth in the full and peculiar power of his
genius is the Ode _Composed on an evening of extraordinary splendour
and beauty_. It is the one exception to the critical dictum that all
his good work was done in the decade between 1798 and 1808. He lived
for more than thirty years after this fine composition. But he added
nothing more of value to the work that he had already done. The public
appreciation of it was very slow. The most influential among the
critics were for long hostile and contemptuous. Never at any time did
Wordsworth come near to such popularity as that of Scott or of Byron.
Nor was this all. For many years most readers of poetry thought more
even of _Lalla Rookh_ than of the _Excursion_. While Scott, Byron, and
Moore were receiving thousands of pounds, Wordsworth received nothing.
Between 1830 and 1840 the current turned in Wordsworth's direction,
and when he received the honour of a doctor's degree at the Oxford
Commemoration in 1839, the Sheldonian theatre made him the hero of the
day. In the spring of 1843 Southey died, and Sir Robert Peel pressed
Wordsworth to succeed him in the office of Poet-Laureate. "It is a
tribute of respect," said the Minister, "justly due to the first
of living poets." But almost immediately the light of his common
popularity was eclipsed by Tennyson, as it had earlier been eclipsed
by Scott, by Byron, and in some degree by Shelley. Yet his fame among
those who know, among competent critics with a right to judge, to-day
stands higher than it ever stood. Only two writers have contributed so
many li