what he was: Scott honoured him, Coleridge loved him, and Southey praised him in the famous words. that there never was, and never will be, a greater poet. We cannot accept this brotherly exaggeration as wholly true, but clearly Southey is far nearer the truth than Swinburne or Macaulay. And the more Wordsworth's writings are read, the more distinctly is it felt that if he is not the greatest of poets, there is no poet who has given us a body of thought and emotion more humanising, more wholesome, more inspiring in its tendency. That, at least, is the aim that Wordsworth set before himself in his memorable criticism of his poems written to Lady Beaumont in 1807. "Trouble not yourself," he says, "about their present reception; of what moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny? To console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous,—this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves." Never have the essential moral characteristics of Wordsworth's poetry been set forth with truer insight and completeness than in this prophetic passage, written in the days when no indication of fame had reached. him, and when, with some few honourable exceptions, signal contempt was awarded him by the blind and undiscerning critics who attempted to direct the taste and culture of their age.

I

CHAPTER XIII.

WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN.

have spoken of Wordsworth as having a new and original philosophy to unfold, a new and individual view of Nature to expound: what then, was that view? The love of Nature is to be found in all the English poets, from Chaucer downward. In Wordsworth's own day both Byron and Shelley were writing poems thoroughly impregnated with the love of Nature. If we eliminated from English poetry all the passages which deal with the charm and glory of Nature, we should have destroyed all that is sweetest, freshest, and most characteristic in it. What is there, then, in Wordsworth's treatment of Nature which differs from the poetry of those who have gone before him? It is perilous to be too positive where many fine and delicate distinctions are involved; but, speaking generally, it may be said that Wordsworth differs from all other poets in the stress he puts upon the moral influences of Nature. To Byron, Nature was the great - consoler in the hour of his revolt against the folly of man, and he found in her, not merely hospitality, but a certain exhilaration which fed the fierce defiance of his heart, and armed him with new strength for the fight. To Shelley, Nature is more of a personality than to Byron, but it is an ethereal and lovely presence, a

veiled splendour, kindling sweet ardour in the heart, and exercising an intoxicating magic on the mind. But with Wordsworth the idea of the living personality of Nature is a definite reality. He loves her as he might love a mistress, and communes with her as mind may commune with mind. To him she is a vast embodied Thought, a Presence not merely capable of inspiring delightful ardour, but of elevating man by noble discipline. Take, for instance, his "Sonnet on Calais Beach: "

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven is on the sea:
Listen! the Mighty Being is awake,

And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

Or take his conception of human life in the presence of the everlastingness of Nature :

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal silence.

Or ponder the spirit of the well-known verses:

The outward shows of sky and earth,

Of hill and valley he has viewed;

And impulses of deeper birth

Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie

Some random truths he can impart

The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

Or mark how he replies to the restlessness of life which is divorced from habitual intercourse with Nature:

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

Nor less I deem that there are powers

Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours

Into a wise passiveness.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings;
He, too, is no mean preacher;
Come forth into the light of things,-
Let Nature be your teacher.

One impulse of a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

In these verses what most strikes us is the vividness of Wordsworth's conception of Nature as endowed with personality" the mighty Being," and the emphasis with which he declares that Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn if we will, and without which any human life is vain and incomplete.

An artist, who is also a teacher of art, has laid down. the rule that in painting landscape what we want is not the catalogue of the landscape, but the emotion of the artist in painting it. This is the artistic theory of the Impressionist school, and it may be said that in this sense Wordsworth was an impressionist. Such a poet as Thomson gives us in his "Seasons" the mere catalogue of Nature, and as a catalogue it is excellent. If the effects of Nature were to be put up to auction, no catalogue could serve us better than Thomson's "Seasons." But what Thomson cannot give us, and what Wordsworth does give us, is the impression which Nature produces on his own spirit. He teaches us that

between man and Nature there is mutual consciousness and mystic intercourse. It is not for nothing God has set man in this world of sound and vision: it is in the power of Nature to penetrate his spirit, to reveal him to himself, to communicate to him Divine instructions, to lift him into spiritual life and ecstasy. The poem of "The Daffodils" is simply a piece of lovely word-painting till we reach the lines

They flash upon the inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude;

and it is in those lines the real spirit of the poem speaks. There was something in that sight of the daffodils, dancing in jocund glee, that kindled a joy, an intuition, a hope in the poet's mind, and through the vision an undying impulse of delight and illumination reached him. Wordsworth does not indulge in the "poetic fallacy." He does not take his mood to Nature and persuade himself that she reflects it; but he goes to Nature with an open mind, and leaves her to create the mood in him. He does not ask her to echo him; but he stands docile in her presence, and asks to be taught of her. To persuade ourselves that Nature. mirrors our mood, giving grey skies to our grief, and the piping of glad birds in answer to the joy-bells of our hope, is not to take a genuine delight in Nature. It is to make her our accomplice rather than our instructress; our mimic, not our mistress. Many poets have done this, and nothing is commoner in current poetry. The originality of Wordsworth is that he never thinks of Nature in any other way than as a Mighty Presence, before whom he stands silent, like a faithful high-priest, who waits in solemn expectation for the whisper of enlightenment and wisdom.