Forgive me if say

That an appearance which hath raised your minds
To an exalted pitch (the self-same cause
Different effect producing), is for me

Fraught rather with depression than delight;
Though shame it were could I not look around
By the reflection of your pleasure, pleased.1

It is plain that these thoughts would be much more fittingly expressed in prose than they are in verse. Nor is this simply because the substance of them is philosophical and didactic, for so is the substance of the Essay on Man,' and yet the thought in the Essay on Man' is (for the reason given by Pope, and quoted in my last paper) expressed better in metre than it could be in prose. The reason is, as everyone can see, that the writer of the above passage is not in a mood for the expression of thoughts for which metre is adapted. Even in pathetic narrative poems like 'Michael,' the prosy effect is often reproduced.

A good report did from their kinsman come
Of Luke and his well-doing; and the boy
Wrote loving letters, full of wondrous news,
Which, as the housewife phrased it, were throughout,

1 Excursion, Book iii.

'The prettiest letters that were ever seen.'
Both parents read them with rejoicing hearts.
So many months passed on: and once again
The shepherd went about his daily work
With confident and cheerful thoughts; and now
Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour,
He to that valley took his way, and there
Wrought at the sheep-fold. Meanwhile Luke began
To slacken in his duty; and at length
He in the dissolute city gave himself
To evil courses; ignominy and shame
Fell on him, so that he was driven at last
To seek a hiding-place beyond the seas.

Is any charm superadded to this narrative by the employment of metre? I imagine that the story told as Mrs. Gaskell, for instance, might have told it in prose, would have been more pathetic, simply from the fact that the artifice would have been less felt. But now

compare with this the noble opening stanza in 'Laodamia':

With sacrifice before the rising morn

Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from the infernal gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore,

Restore him to my sight-great Jove, restore!

How could this passionate invocation have been given in prose? And why could it not? Because the imagination is moving in a world of its own it is exhilarated by the atmosphere ; and it seeks for unusual forms in which to express-its enthusiasm. Or take, again, the magnificent lines on Yew Trees':

6

There is a Yew-Tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:
Not lot' to furnish weapons for the bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at early Crecy or Poictiers.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary tree! a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks, and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine,

Up-coiling and inveterately convolved;
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane; a pillared shade
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially-beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries-ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose

To lie and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.

These lines, read in the light of 1's theory, seem to me to suggest vividly the source of Wordsworth's greatness and weakness as a poet. His formulated creed was that the imaginative mind, by an act of meditation, can make any subject, however trivial, poetical. But his practice proves that a poet only writes poetically when he is under an overmastering external influence, directing his mind to a subject congenial to his powers. The yew-trees

that inspired the above noble verses

6

were

certainly not such an object as will be found. in every village,' nor could any 'meditative and feeling mind' have given such splendid utter

ance to the emotions they excite. No: the forces that made Wordsworth a poet were far different from those conscious reasonings on Man and Society of which he gives an account in the Prelude': his inspiration sprang from mysterious sources which, as he shows us in the first book of his curious metrical autobiography, had been unconsciously pouring images into his mind from his earliest childhood. The religious ideas excited by the unseen life of Nature, the sublime outlines of mountain and valley, the blending of wood and water, the changes of light and shadow, the spirit-like movements of birds, the simple manners and passions of the peasantry, mingled so suggestively with the historic monuments of the past, these were the romantic fountains at which other poets had drunk in passing, but to which Wordsworth was constantly returning for deep draughts of inspiration.

When he is completely under the direction of his Muse he illustrates as happily as any man the truth of Horace's observation,

Cui lecta potenter erit res,

Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.