invented by the rhymesters of the Eighteenth Century. Of mere flatness, as might be expected, there are many examples in the Prelude, and more in the Excursion. Lines like these are all too common Nor less do I remember to have felt, In some of the shorter poems, where there is a piece of commonplace information to be conveyed -say a postal address, "The Pantheon, Oxford Street"-it is often conveyed after this fashion : Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same, The false poetic diction that he condemned is easy to example from his own work. Here is the beginning of his poem on Water-fowl :— Mark how the feathered tenants of the flood, With grace of motion that might scarcely seem Their curious pastime ! And here, from the Prelude, is a record of the fact that he first entered London on a stage coach: On the roof Of an itinerant vehicle I sate, With vulgar men about me. Or a better instance, too long to quote, may be found in the First Book of the Prelude, where every device of fanciful elaboration is bestowed on the description of the soiled and imperfect packs of cards which helped to pass away the long winter evenings of his boyhood in the Lakes. Wherever deep emotion fails him, these ornamental excrescences are liable to occur. And therefore they occur least frequently in the poems written during the years immediately following his return to poetry. During those years his most casual feelings, aroused by trivial events, had a strength and vivacity that made all adornment a profanation, and his resolve to be quit of all deceits and sentimentalities was then an instrumental part of his religion. Wordsworth's style at its best has many virtues; but one virtue, all his own, is greater than the rest. He can, and often does, write like other poets, in a manner that, without a trace of imitation, gives a familiar pleasure to a trained literary sense. The best passages so written have been perhaps more praised than any other parts of his work; but they are not Wordsworth's best. His description of skating in the Prelude is a wonderful piece of verbal melody: So through the darkness and the cold we flew, Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars And his own genius, his own love for the far spaces, makes itself felt in that "alien sound of melancholy." He can write magnificently, again, in a style which, from the time of Shakespeare onward, has been one of the great faculties of English literature, the style of the metaphysical imagination. So, in the Excursion, the Solitary describes his agony of thought: : Then my soul Turned inward,—to examine of what stuff Time's fetters are composed; and life was put To inquisition long and profitless! By pain of heart-now checked-and now impelled- And here, to quote one more passage that reconciles all tastes, are the sombre imaginings suggested to him by the four yew-trees of Borrowdale : Beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, And Time the Shadow ;-there to celebrate, To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Had Wordsworth always written thus, he would have escaped all blame. Here is "a certain colouring of the imagination" thrown over ordinary things, whereby they are presented to the mind in an unusual aspect," and no question of poetic diction is raised. Yet he was bound to raise the question and to make attempts in a style unlike this oecumenical style of poetry; for his views concerning poetic diction followed inevitably from his beliefs concerning the highest functions of poetry. He is a man, The poet is, first of all, a seer. speaking to men; but he sees more truly, and consequently feels more deeply, than they; and his business is to teach them to see and feel. He can easily engage their attention by presenting them with abnormal, rare, or strange objects. So poetry becomes a pastime, a delight apart from the interests of common life. Or, by the power of language, he can call forth in full flood those feelings that blur vision, those merciful and tender suffusions that soften the hard outlines of fact and bring relief to the weaker sense. But neither is this, according to Wordsworth, the right work of poetry. To feel deeply and sanely and wisely in the presence of things seen is what he teaches; but first, to see them. He had found deliverance for himself by opening his eyes on the world after a nightmare of dark, confused mental agitation, and he believed in truth as few men believe in it. His determination to look steadily on life made him intolerant of the myriad delusions, "as thick as motes that people the sunbeam," which intercept the eye and focus it on some nearer object than the face of truth. He does injustice to himself by describing the poet as one who throws "a certain colouring of the imagination" over common incidents and situations. The working of his own imagination, so long as it remained pure and strong, is ill compared to painting or to any light but the whitest. In his Elegiac Stanzas on the death of his brother, who was drowned at sea, he expounds his creed more justly. He is looking at a picture of Peele Castle in a storm, and remembering how, many years before, he had lived in its neighbourhood for a whole summer month and had never seen the glassy calm of the sea broken : Ah! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand, |