ly everything, which may best
serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may
disserve him.

I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians; and if we are to get Wordsworth
recognized by the public and by the world, we must recommend him not in
the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of disinterested lovers of
poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I can read with pleasure and
edification _Peter Bell_, and the whole series of _Ecclesiastical
Sonnets_, and the address to Mr. Wilkinson's spade, and even the
_Thanksgiving Ode_;--everything of Wordsworth, I think, except
_Vaudracour and Julia_. It is not for nothing that one has been brought
up in the veneration of a man so truly worthy of homage; that one has
seen him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, and been familiar
with his country. No Wordsworthian has a tenderer affection for this
pure and sage master than I, or is less really offended by his defects.
But Wordsworth is something more than the pure and sage master of a
small band of devoted followers, and we ought not to rest satisfied
until he is seen to be what he is. He is one of the very chief glories
of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her
poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him
recognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely
as possible and as truly as possible, his own word concerning his poems:
"They will cooeoperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and
society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser,
better, and happier."

III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT[389]

The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity;
sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness
and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a
smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing
so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity
and ignorance or else as an engine of social and class distinction,
separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have
not got it. No serious man would call this _culture_, or attach any
value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very
differing estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must
find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real
ambiguity; and such a motive the word _curiosity_ gives