there are great
tracts in Wordsworth which, by no definition and on no terms, can be
called poetry. If we say with Shelley, that poetry is what redeems
from decay the visitations of the divinity in man, and is the record
of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds, then
are we bound to agree that Wordsworth records too many moments that
are not specially good or happy, that he redeems from decay frequent
visitations that are not from any particular divinity in man, and
treats them all as very much on a level. Mr. Arnold is undoubtedly
right in his view that, to be receivable as a classic, Wordsworth must
be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage that now encumbers
him.

The faults and hindrances in Wordsworth's poetry are obvious to every
reader. For one thing, the intention to instruct, to improve the
occasion, is too deliberate and too hardly pressed. "We hate poetry,"
said Keats, "that has a palpable design upon us. Poetry should be
great and unobtrusive." Charles Lamb's friendly remonstrance on one of
Wordsworth's poems is applicable to more of them: "The instructions
conveyed in it are too direct; they don't slide into the mind of the
reader while he is imagining no such matter."

Then, except the sonnets and half a score of the pieces where he
reaches his topmost height, there are few of his poems that are not
too long, and it often happens even that no degree of reverence for
the teacher prevents one from finding passages of almost unbearable
prolixity. A defence was once made by a great artist for what, to the
unregenerate mind, seemed the merciless tardiness of movement in one
of Goethe's romances, that it was meant to impress on his readers the
slow march and the tedium of events in human life. The lenient reader
may give Wordsworth the advantage of the same ingenious explanation.
We may venture on a counsel which is more to the point, in warning the
student that not seldom in these blocks of afflicting prose, suddenly
we come upon some of the profoundest and most beautiful passages that
the poet ever wrote. In deserts of preaching we find, almost within
sight of one another, delightful oases of purest poetry. Besides being
prolix, Wordsworth is often cumbrous; has often no flight; is not
liquid, is not musical. He is heavy and self-conscious with the burden
of his message. How much at his best he is, when, as in the admirable
and truly Wordsworthian poem of _Michael_, he spares