his studies, converses with general nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and length of time, the man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those particular parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the man of science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and inalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it as his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science." It is evident from all this that Wordsworth is not hostile to scientific investigation when it is carried on in the right spirit.

And now, passing from Wordsworth's treatment of Nature in "The Excursion," to summarize his views on Man as contained therein, we find that he takes the same attitude toward Man, and expresses the same sentiments concerning him, to be found in the rest of his verse. Here he is the lover of Man just as truly as in the "Lyrical Ballads," and in other poems. Men as they commend themselves for consideration are men in their elemental passions and feelings

chiefly those

Essential and eternal in the heart,

That, 'mid the simpler forms of rural life,
Exist more simple in their elements,

And speak a plainer language."

All through "The Excursion" he deals with simple characters persons who move in the humbler walks of life. He takes as his subjects chiefly the dalesmen of Grasmere Vale. In the very

1 Prose Works, edited by William Knight, I, 61–62.

2 The Excursion, I, 343–347.

beginning of this elaborate poem we see him influenced by the same conviction respecting men as he expresses in Book XIII of "The Prelude," and in the Preface to the "Lyrical Ballads," and as he illustrates in the ballads themselves. In the story of the ruined cottage he tells a pathetic tale of domestic sorrow. The narratives told by the Pastor in the churchyard, as we have seen, are those of village characters a story of simple lives. And when he takes up the cause of Man, in Books VIII and IX, it is the cause of the plain rural folk whose bodily, intellectual, and moral welfare is threatened by modern industrial life. His heart is with these lowly people, and he regards them as the corner-stone of the Nation. Briefly, "The Excursion" reveals the poet of Man, with a heart full of love for him, and a mind solicitous for his welfare. It reveals, also, that this poet sees Man at his best among the unconventionalized rural folk who occupy the modest and obscure stations of human life.

In regard to Man's essential being, Wordsworth, in "The Excursion," represents him as endowed with a rational, moral, and religious nature with capacities for self-determination and selfguidance in the light of lofty ideals. His nature is godlike, and he can commune with God. He is a creature of faith, hope, and love, and holds membership in a kingdom of eternal worths. His inner frame" is good, and in it are the promise and potency of immortal life. And, concerning Human Life, the Poet's interpretation is essentially Christian, especially his interpretation of mental, moral, and physical suffering-"the good and evil of our mortal state." The faith that subdues "melancholy fear"— which brings "blessed consolations in distress," and the moral strength needed for the soul's support is, in the final analysis, really the faith of the Gospels.

It must not be inferred, however, that Wordsworth was merely giving utterance to an inherited traditional faith. We have seen how he was lost in the mazes of skepticism, and in the darkness of despair, and how gradually he had worked his way out into the

light. Undoubtedly much of the teaching of "The Excursion" represents his own independent thinking as he sought light on these profound problems which his bitter experience had brought most conspicuously before him. As he meditated on them, he gradually came to the conclusion that the faiths which condition the real worth of life are those which are fundamentally Christian; and he accepted them, not because they are Christian, but because they, above all else, impart a rational meaning to human experience. It is not, therefore, a blind faith which the Poet sings, but one that is the result of mature meditation as he labored under what often seemed to him "the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PERIOD OF WORDSWORTH'S BEST WORK. SUMMARY. WORDSWORTH'S CONTRIBUTION TO POETRY

It is a difficult and highly uncertain task to determine when in a poet's development he reaches the height of his power. It is probably a still more uncertain task to indicate the limits beyond which his poetic activity becomes worth while. This is due to the fact that genius itself is uncertain. In spite of its peculiarity, however, it is, in a measure, subject to the laws of development which obtain in the biological and psychological realms. It grows, develops, matures, and decays. But it seems more fitful and freakish than ordinary mentality. With poets like Tennyson, it holds out well to the end. In other instances it is subject to a comparatively early decay. In the case of Wordsworth it is not such a difficult undertaking to determine, approximately at least, the period in which he did his best work, and when he reached the climax of his power as a poet. Matthew Arnold, in his Preface to "The Poems of Wordsworth,' says, "Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some sixty years; and it is no exaggeration to say that within one single decade of these years, between 1799 and 1808, almost all his really firstrate work was produced."1 This statement is not justified by the facts. A considerable body of excellent verse was written by him later. Principal Shairp's chart, which is accepted also by Professor Dowden, as mapping out "in a broad and general way" the chronology of Wordsworth, is more nearly correct. He says: "There were three epochs in Wordsworth's poetry, though these shade so insensibly the one into the other, that any attempt exactly to define them must be somewhat arbitrary. . . . The spring-time of his

1 Arnold, Essays in Criticism, Second Series, 136, London, 1898.

genius would reach from his first settling at Racedown, or at any rate his going to Alfoxden in 1797, till his leaving Grasmere TownEnd in 1808. The second epoch, or full midsummer of his poetry, would include his time at Allan Bank and his first years at Rydal Mount, as far as 1818 or 1820. This was the time when The Excursion,' 'Laodamia,' 'Dion,' and the 'Duddon Sonnets' were composed. The third epoch, or the sober autumn, reaching from about 1820 till he ceased from the work of composition, is the time of the ecclesiastical and other sonnets, of Yarrow Revisited,' and the Scottish poems of 1833; and lastly, of the memorials of his Italian tour in 1837."1 Although statements of this kind are more or less arbitrary, the body of his poetry written before the end of the year 1813-the year that witnessed the completion of "The Excursion "-constitutes the limit of our study. This seems to be a safe limit, so far as our special purpose is concerned, for it can hardly be questioned that, were the study of Wordsworth as a poet of Nature and a poet of Man to be pursued beyond this boundary, it would yield comparatively meager results. It was during these years that his genius as a Nature-poet seemed to glow with an almost heavenly radiance—when he was literally possessed of "the vision and the faculty divine." It was during these years that, in his relations to the natural world, he was enabled "to see into the life of things" that he was Nature's high priest, and was attended by “the vision splendid." But it is a singular and pathetic fact that this mystical insight, which was such a notable feature of his poetic genius, seemed to vanish at about the close of this period. It appeared to die away, "and fade into the light of common day," and with its fading, Wordsworth was shorn of much of his remarkable power as a poet of Nature. He himself was conscious of this fact, and he turned to other sources for inspiration, as is manifest, for example, in his excellent poems "Laodamia" and "Dion," and in the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets." True, he wrote Nature-poems

1 The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, edited by Edward Dowden, I, p. lxxii, London and New York, 1892.