rsonality

at "his person is not in his favour," and that he was "certainly rather plain." He is the most difficult of all the great poets whom one reverences to portray as an attractive person. "'Horse-face,' I have heard s

who was something of a Sir Willoughby Patterne in his pompous self-satisfaction. "He says," records Lamb in one of his letters, "he does not

n wherever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity, and bigotry." There was something frigidly unsympathetic in his judgment of others, which was as unattractive as his complacency in regard to his own work. When Trelawny, seeing him at Lausanne and, learning who he was, went up to him as he was about to step into his carriage and asked him what he

e collaborated in bringing out Lyrical Ballads. There is something sublimely egotistical in the way in which he shook his

that the old words and the strangeness of it have deterred readers from going on. If the volume should come to a

onslaught of a Scottish reviewer who, indignant that Wordsworth should dare to pretend to be able t

who lives in a small circle of old maids and sonneteer

superiority unfavourable to love and obedience?" He shuddered again at the likelihood that Mechanics' Institutes would "make discontented spirits and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen." He opposed the admission of Dissenters to Cambridge University, and he "desired that a medical education should be kept beyond the reach of a poor student," on the ground that "the better able the parents are to incur expense, the stronger pledge have we of thei

I would recommend to every naval officer and clergyman who is without prospect of professional advancement. Ladies of some fo

so many other poets, died young, and that a

published-or I wandered lonely as a cloud, or the sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge. Nor does the portrait of a stern, unbending egotist satisfy us when we remember the life-long devotion that existed between him and Dorothy, and the fact

y Wordsworth who rejoiced in the French Revolution, and, apparently as a consequence, initiated a revolution in English poetry. The later period of the life is not glossed over; it is given, indeed, in cruel detail, and Professor Harper's account of it is the

in and Paine. Professor Harper attempts to strengthen his case by giving brief sketches of famous "Jacobins," whom Wordsworth may or may not have met, but his case is strong enough without their help. Wordsworth's reply-not published at the time, or, indeed, till after his death-to the Bishop of Llandaff's anti-French-Revolution sermon on The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor, was signed without qualification, "By a Republican." He refused

n of the poem as it was finished in 1805!-of the extreme lengths to which his Republican idealism c

the triumph

by thousands w

lory on the fi

s! to shame

nst the King, the Prince of Wales, and various public men, one

ees majesty in

rfolk, and can

declared, were giv

an to proclaim, as the prospectus said, "the state of the political atmosphere, and preserve Freedom and her Friends from the attacks of Robbers and Assassins." Wordsworth at a later peri

f the official Life, the materials for which Wordsworth entrusted to his nephew, the Bishop, who naturally regarded Wordsworth, the pillar of Church and State, as a more eminent and laudable figure than Wordsworth, the young Revolutionary. Whether the Bishop deliberately hushed up the fact that, during his early travels in France, Wordsworth fell in love with an aristocratic French lady who bore him an illegitimate child, I do not know. Professor Harper, taking a more ru

rroundings as faithfully as though they had been kings. It would be absurd to suggest that there are no anticipations of this democratic spirit in English literature from Chaucer down to Burns, but Wordsworth, more than any other English writer, deserves the credit of having emancipated the poor man into being a fit subject for noble p

love, or grief, or anger, of a clown, a tradesman, or a market-wench. The things themselves are radically and obviously distinct.... The poor and vulgar may interest u

human beings have a way of becoming either lifeless or absurd when they talk. The Leech-Gatherer and The Idiot Boy are not the only poems of Wordsworth that are injured by the insertion of banal dialogue. It is as though there were, despite his passion for liberty, equality, and f

who much or

fireside with

ho live withi

daily, weekly

nce-acquaintanc

maidens witheri

ut of me, like f

men's floors, fo

h discourse dot

ilence, square

ut emotion,

presence of m

the flapping

spering its f

ancing by the lake, the green linnet dancing among the hazel leaves, and the young lambs bounding, as he says in an unexpected line, "as to the tabor's sound," and his heart danced to the same music, like the heart of a mystic caught up in holy rapture. Here rather than in men did he discover the divine speech. His vision of men was always troubled by his consciousness of d

om can there have been a poet with a more exquisite capacity for the enjoyment of joyous things. In his profounder moments he re

ell ourselves that it is almost irrelevant to mourn the fact that the man who wrote them gave up his faith in humanity for faith in Church and State. His genius survives in literature: it was only his courage as a politician that perished. At the same time, he wished to impress himself upon the world as a politician even more perhaps than as a poet. And, indeed, if he had died

s Pol

not nowadays believe that Wordsworth changed his political opinions in order to be made distributor of stamps for the county of Westmoreland, or even (as he afterwards became in addition) for the county of Cumberland. Nor di

he exaggerates, but it cannot be denied that Wordsworth said many wise things about nationality, and that he showed a true liberal instinct in the French wars, siding with the French in the early days while they were fighting for liberty, and afterwards siding against them when they were fighting for Napoleonic Imperialism. Wordsworth had not yet abandoned his

se against the later Wordsworth, but his very defence of the poet is in itself an accusation. He contends, for instance, that "it was natural that a man, who had in his youth seen face to face the violence of the revolutionary struggle in Fran

the Chartist, author of The Purgatory of Suicides, who visited him in 1846 after serving a term in prison on a charge of sedition. Wordsworth received him and said to him: "You

friend of the Girondins was still alive. He might not think much of the W

ce of God that any man escapes being a Tory long before that. What is of interest to us is his attitude in the days of his vitality, not of his senility. In regard

in that daw

young was

tooth and claw in the new era. Not that the massacres immediately alienated Wordsworth. In the year following them he wrote in defence of the French Revolution, and incidentally apologized for the execution of King Louis. "If you had attended," he wrote in his unpublished Apology for the French Revolution in 1793, "to the history of the French Revolution as minutely as its importance demands, so far from stopping to bewail his death, you wou

a t

by scoffers i

ld the harves

government

that neither t

f engrafted o

osophy had ca

fic reservo

filled up fr

onger hold its

read in deluge t

f his judgment." Wordsworth was hardly calm, but he remained on the side of France with sufficiently firm enthusiasm to pray for the

congregatio

Father, prayers

r our country

simple worship

ke an unin

ned, sate sile

y of vengeanc

ot survive Napoleon. Henceforth Wordsworth began to wri

nalism. He grasped the first principle of Nationalism firmly, which is, that nations should be self-governed, even if they are governed badly. He saw th

asmuch as the former does not exclude, from the minds of the people, the feeling of being self-governed; does not imp

e wen

hin itself. The poorest peasant, in an unsubdued land, feels this pride. I do not appeal to the example of Britain or of Switzerland, for the one is free, and the other lately was free (and, I trust, will ere long be so again): but talk with the Swede; and you will see the joy he finds

nalism as applicable to all nations alike, small and great. He believed in the "balance of power," in which "the smaller states must disappear, and merge in the large nations of widespread language." He desired national unity for Germany and for Italy (which was in accordance with the principl

rded the war between England and France, not as a war between angel and devil, but as a war between one sinner doing his best and anothe

e is come when t

om its emasc

ld now be bett

e been unsettl

better harvest

respasses; an

e, Egypt, In

estined, thou wou

ations in this

e ignorant in

e abject is

e pray for thee,

nces be a h

rth's best hopes

ably ceases before long to be an ethical conception: duty in the mouth of reactionaries usually means simply obedience to one's "betters." The melancholy sort of moralist frequently hardens into a reactionary of this sort. Burke and Carlyle and Ruskin-all of them blasphemed the spirit of liberty in the name of duty. Mr. Dicey contends that Burke's and Wordsworth's political principles remained essentially consistent throughout. They assuredly did nothing of the sort. Burke's principles during the American War and his principles at the time of the French Revolution were divided from each other like crabbed age and youth. Burke lost his beliefs as he did his youth. And so did Wordsworth. It seems to me rat

arded persons, they only combated the same enemy opposed to them under a differ

n accepting its defence of Wordsworth's maturity, we may come to disparage his splendid youth. Mr. Dicey's book, however, is exceedingly interesting in calling attention to the great part politics may play in the life of a poet. Wordsworth said, in 1833, that "although he was known to the world only as a poet, he had given twelve hours' thoug