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ary is like the "man whose eyes are open," and vice versâ; that bashfulness may be like guilt, and callous insensibility like innocence; that silence may betoken alike the fulness of content or an absolute despair; that, to the superficial, communism may seem the political realisation of the early Christian ethics of alms; that indifference to truth may claim to be the perfection of charity. The most fatal errors have ever been those which include in them high truths, though misapplied. Without that element they would not have proved attractive to elevated minds; and for an analogous reason the most exalted truths may long wear a form the most repulsive even to the good.

The dreadful power of illusion is a thought naturally brought home the most to minds at once reflective and imaginative. It was familiar to Shelley as well as to Spenser, unlike as were those two poets, and it is remarkably illustrated by him in the "Revolt of Islam," canto i. stanzas 25-27. In the beginning of things, as we are there told, "a blood-red comet and the morning star" hung in fight on the verge of Chaos. These two militant shapes are the rival powers of Evil and Good. Evil triumphs, and changes the morning star into a snake, which is sentenced to creep over the earth in that false semblance, abhorred by all, so long as the conqueror's reign endures. Transformations not less startling take place every day in the moral world. What is despicable when contrasted with that which is above it, may yet well appear admirable to one who can measure it only with what is below it.

Shelley, who had in him much of Lucretius's poetic audacity, was himself, for a short time, the prisoner of a materialistic philosophy as wild. When he became a translator of Plato, that grim skeleton, if it ever revisited his dreams, may perhaps have reminded him of Spenser's Duessa, stripped of her glittering apparel.

III

THE GENIUS AND PASSION OF

WORDSWORTH1

THIS Volume of selections is a pious labour, as it must have been a pleasant one, and it will prove a source of elevating delight to numberless readers. The late Dr. Arnold, to whom English education owes so much, was a near neighbour of Wordsworth during his summer vacations, as well as an intimate friend; and, in discharging a debt due to old friendship, his son has discharged another due to the youth of England. was among them especially that the patriot poet, for such he justly claimed to be,2 trusted that his poetry would serve that spiritual end for which he honoured and practised his art. Nor could that poet, whom Mr. Arnold recognises as the greatest belonging to modern England, receive this tribute more fittingly than from one who is himself a true poet. No ordinary

It

1 Poems by William Wordsworth. Chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. Macmillan and Co.

2 See Wordsworth's Sonnet on being shown Dante's seat at Florence. 1837.

gifts are required in order to choose wisely among productions like Wordsworth's. In the case of a second class poet it is not difficult to make a selection at once just and popular, for to find his best poems it suffices to choose his most striking. It is otherwise when dealing with a poet of the first order. In him what we chiefly need is the characteristic. The poets of the highest order are, each of them, the regent of a distinct "Orb of Song," and in their respective kingdoms the poetic growths differ from each other as much as the Fauna and the Flora of remote climates. Their thoughts are crystallised on a different type, no matter what exterior force may be used to press them to the same shape; their feelings move according to a different law; their association of ideas is alien. What would be a fault in one may be a merit in another; what is essential in one is accidental in another; what in one is native, and full of significance, in another may be borrowed, and ornamental merely.

Landor affirms that "centuries are the telescopes which must be drawn out" before we can determine the magnitude or relative position of those great luminaries which shine upon us from the intellectual heaven. Half a century, however, may suffice to dispel many illusions. When Wordsworth's poetry first appeared, some careless readers fancied or pretended that genuine exponents of it were to be found in half a dozen short pieces, obviously little more than paradoxical protests, flung out, with some youthful exaggeration, against the literary convention

alities of the time. Later a little patronising praise was vouchsafed, many of the poems being admitted to have a genial simplicity and a graceful pastoral vein, while occasionally it was conceded that their descriptions of scenery were good, and their moral tone unexceptionable. Still, however, the most original of our modern poets was looked on as one of a certain imaginary body called the "Lake School," as though he had no individuality of his own. The wonderful change of opinion which took place about fifteen or twenty years before his death was not caused by that later poetry which he published from time to time up to 1842. The great bulk of his writings, including all the most characteristic, had appeared by 1814. They were forced upon public attention, partly by the enthusiasm which they had created in a small but zealous band, among whom Coleridge was their earliest philosophic critic, and "Christopher North," their most unwearied champion, and in part, doubtless, by the vivacity with which they had been assailed; and, once attended to, time and their merits did the rest. During the interval, a philosophy of a more elevated order had superseded that of the last century; and, as a mountain is best descried from the slopes of an opposite mountain, so poetry of a high order is best discerned in its true proportions when contemplated from the heights of a spiritual philosophy. This change doubtless facilitated the acceptance of Wordsworth's poetry; but those who agreed in applauding it differed widely as to its character. By some Words

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