ife's fitful fever, he sleeps well"--[384]

of Shakespeare; in the

"... though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues"--[385]

of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's power of poetic
style which gives such worth to _Paradise Regained_, and makes a great
poem of a work in which Milton's imagination does not soar high.
Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at command, no style of this
kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too
well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of it
occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in
such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton's--

"the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of cities;"[386]

although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is undeniable, is
more properly that of eloquent prose than the subtle heightening and
change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the
elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of
_Laodameia_. Still, the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth,
if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression,
is a line like this from _Michael_--

"And never lifted up a single stone."

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style,
strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most
truly expressive kind.

Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying
for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire
fidelity it utters, Burns could show him.

"The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stain'd his name."[387]

Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to Wordsworth; and if
Wordsworth did great things with this nobly plain manner, we must
remember, what indeed he himself would always have been forward to
acknowledge, that Burns used it before him.

Still Wordsworth's use of it has something unique and unmatchable.
Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to
write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises
from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth
feels his subject, and also from the profoundly si