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One thing then learnt remains to me—
The woodspurge has a cup of three."

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Here we see the difference between true poetic recreation-through which the object described becomes a living reality, in living connection with our existence -and that projection of temporary "untranquilized' meaningless passion into the object, electrifying it, as it were, into a momentary appearance of life-indeath, and leaving behind, as soon as the gust of passion is past, neither wisdom nor memory nor anything but the husk of the thing-the woodspurge with its "cup of three," which having no root fades and withers as we look at it, and is soon cast aside to rot on the rubbish heap of forgotten things.

In Wordsworth's poetry, on the contrary, we find no mere temporary pathos, no "tears, idle tears, we know not what they mean ;" but in the new-created world that he has produced for us "the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

And Wordsworth's descriptions are not only true in a poetic sense, but are true also to nature-as is necessary in such recreations of natural things. As we saw some time ago, the creations of a poet are not necessarily subject to natural laws. He may form a poetic entirety even in contravention of such laws. But in Wordsworth's poems we do not find such creations. His are rather recreations of ordinary natural objects. He has power to speak to us of the

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sea that bares her bosom to the moon," or of the winds "upgathered like sleeping flowers," rather than to make us "have sight of Proteus rising from the sea," or "hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." And in such recreations it is all important that the object be described faithfully. Of all poets Wordsworth is perhaps the most invariably faithful to nature, and most observant of natural facts, so that his broadest effects as well as his minutest details are faultless in their truth. "No one that I know," says Professor Shairp, "has yet laid his finger on a single mistake made by Wordsworth with regard to any appearance of nature or fact in natural history, though keen observers have done this in the case of both Walter Scott and Burns."

He himself, after mentioning the fact that when only fourteen years of age he observed that the leaves and boughs of an oak look black against a sunset, adds, "I recollect the very spot where this first struck I date from it the consciousness of the infinite variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by poets of any age or country, as far as I was acquainted with them; and I resolved in some degree to supply the deficiency."

me.

What I have said about Wordsworth merely affords a further proof of the impossibility of expressing what can alone be realized by each one for himself through a sympathetic study of the poems themselves; and perhaps more in the case of Words

worth than in that of any other poet I would wish what I have said to serve merely as an "introduction" to such study. On an earlier occasion I spoke of the ode on "Intimations of Immortality." It is the one work of Wordsworth on which all comments and epithets are more than ever unavailing. If it awakens a sympathy in the reader, then it probably becomes and remains for him absolutely priceless as a revelation (no mere statement) of his own deepest beliefs.

In conclusion, I must mention the sonnets—some of them perhaps the finest sonnets in the English language. Of these one might select as superlatively beautiful-as bright particular stars amid the constellation-the sonnet composed upon Westminster Bridge; that addressed to Sleep, beginning with the line, "A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by;" one "On a picture ;" and lastly, the indescribably lovely lines descriptive of evening, the music of which shall not be marred by any further words of mine :

:

"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."

R

CHAPTER VIII.

KEATS.

IT will probably be remembered how Rousseau adopted as his guide in life what he called "Sensibility," and how in his case, and on a more terrible scale in the French Revolution, passion — what Carlyle calls the "daemonic" part of man-became supreme, and the results were most lamentable.

It may also be remembered how, when we considered the nature of poetry, there seemed to be reasons for affirming, in opposition to some great authorities, that Taste is not the sole arbiter of art, and that the object of art is not merely the production of the beautiful. Indeed it appeared that if we accepted these definitions, we should be forced also to accept Plato's verdict, and banish poetry as a thing not only useless but injurious.

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Poetry if we have appealed to any purpose against this verdict and not only poetry but all art, is capable of something far other than the mere production of beauty for the object of satisfying our taste. It is creative, and the reality that it creates exists as a reality by virtue of the meaning, or idea,

that it brings. Of this meaning—that is, of the reality and value of the creation-the supreme arbiter is our higher Reason, by which we recognize the idea as true, and neither our Understanding nor our Taste can reverse its judgment, unless they are grossly outraged.

The mere production of beautiful scenes and the excitement of our feelings is in itself nothing unless these scenes and these feelings be used by the poet for the one end of poetry that is of any value. It is merely an accumulation of what may prove poetic material.

Now to one gifted with poetic faculty this collected material may be, what nature itself is, a very different thing from what it is to most of us poor prosaic souls. Such an one needs no help from a fellow poet; he interprets these things for himself. And so diverse are human minds that it is utterly absurd and presumptuous for any one of us to lay down the law for any other on these points. What may be of true worth as poetry to you may not be so to me. In each of us lies the supreme arbitrament; and we must judge of a poet by the total effect that he has produced on us-by the living and life-giving ideas that he has given us, thus adding vigour to our true existence.

I will not apologize for once more reasserting this, for I feel that by thus recalling to memory the principles that I have so often-perhaps rather too often-insisted upon, I may help to make more

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