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itself by its successful discharge of its great and perplexing duties, establishing a stronger and stronger claim on public confidence. And then a time may come when the relations between poor law and charity will be more clearly understood, and it will be possible to formulate them. But it would be premature to take any such step at present. We have seen a steady improvement during the last fifty years in the action. of poor law guardians: the exercise of power has had its proper educational effect. If only they are not hampered by legislative folly, we may look for a yet greater and more extended growth. The same is true of charity. But this progress may be fatally crushed on the one side by an attempt to reopen old questions in a reactionary spirit, and on the other by a preinature recognition of a system which owes much of its value to the fact that it is spontaneous and tentative.

ART. VI.—1. The Recluse. By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. London: First published in 1888.

2. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. With an Introduction by JOHN MORLEY. London: 1888. 3. Wordsworthiana. A selection from papers read to the Wordsworth Society. Edited by WILLIAM KNIGHT.

London: 1889.

THE

HE latest edition of Wordsworth's poetry is in four respects distinguished from most of its predecessors. In the first place it contains an introduction by Mr. John Morley, which, in spite of its coldness, inspires us with genuine regret that the author should have so long strayed from the fields of literature. Secondly, the chronological arrangement is adopted which is followed by Professor Knight in his splendid library edition of Wordsworth. The poet himself distributed his works according to the far-fetched categories of a misty psychology. Matthew Arnold classified them on principles of art. But no poet ever wrote verse which gathers more closely round his personal life, and chronology is the only grouping which really assists the student by the light that it casts upon the mind of the author at the dates of the different compositions. The arrangement adopted in this edition becomes a poetical biography of Wordsworth, revealing his mental growth and picturing the few vicissitudes of his uneventful life. But while the grouping in order of time is, in our opinion, the only natural and useful

arrangement, it is much to be regretted, and it is almost the only serious drawback to the present edition, that Wordsworth's own classification has not been preserved in one of the appendices. As we have mentioned this defect, another omission may be here noted. In all the poems, but especially in The Excursion' or 'The Prelude,' each consisting of many thousand lines, the lines should be numbered for convenience of reference. If this were done throughout, the utility of the edition would be greatly increased.

The third distinguishing feature is that, as in Professor Knight's edition, the poet's notes are added of the scenes or events which suggested the different poems. The addition of these notes brings out the creative power of the true seer, who gives us the harvest of the quiet eye not as a mental idealisation but as a reality of vision. Through these notes we realise how firmly the poet linked himself to hills and brooks and valleys with those associations that unite ordinary men only to the personal friends whom they love; through them we appreciate the strength of the impressions produced not merely by the habitual expression of Nature, but by her most transient glances-as well by the abiding parapet of Loughrigg Fell as by a particular branch of fern carried off in the wind; through them we are able to test the veracity of observation which, when not combined with the imagination, becomes prosaic, but which in co-operation with feeling stamps his most ideal visions with the impress of reality.

Lastly, and chiefly, the present edition is the first and the only complete edition in existence. Thirty-eight years after Wordsworth's death The Recluse,' a poem of upwards of eight hundred lines, forming with The Prelude' and 'The Excursion' a portion of an unfinished whole, and written, as internal evidence seems to show, in the very springtime of the poet's genius, is here for the first time printed in its entirety. This latest legacy of Wordsworth's mind suggests, like some fossil relic, an extinct era. It is a voice from the grave speaking to us across the chasm of nearly ninety wonder-working years, renewing the infancy of the century, carrying us back to the poetic maturity of Coleridge and Scott and to the youth of Byron and Shelley, recalling the death-throes of the revolutionary wars and the eager excitement when the news of battles by sea and land, on which were staked the fates of empires, was slowly filtered through country districts by passing mail coaches.

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Suppose that another three hundred lines of The Rape ' of the Lock' had been discovered, or a new canto of

'Childe Harold,' or a conclusion to The Triumph of Life,' or the completion of Hyperion,' should we have been more or less grateful than we are for this book of The Recluse '? A fairer way to put this question is this. Wordsworth quotes to Lady Beaumont a remark made by Coleridge that every great or original author, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is relished.' No poet has done work of so special a character; none has struck upon a more virgin vein of thought and feeling; none has been more independent in the creation of his own materials. Has Wordsworth, then, succeeded in creating the taste by which he is enjoyed?

An affirmative answer would afford a most encouraging sign of human progress. Such a reply would mean the growth of a taste disciplined to prefer truth to colour, the diffusion of refinement and delicacy of feeling, the increase of the number of those whose minds are not merely the minds of their eyes, but who see also with their souls, and recognise the worth of ideals that transcend the seen and visible. Popular, in the ordinary sense of the word, Wordsworth can never be. Of his own work it is probably true that, as he said himself, there neither is, nor can be, any 'genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world, among those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of consideration in 'society.' Remember,' he writes to Sir George Beaumont, that no poem of mine will ever be popular.' But it is not without justification that he trusted his fame to posterity. Thousands of men and women have recognised the same sacred debt which Coleridge, Whewell, Mill, Sir Henry Taylor, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot acknowledge that they owe to Wordsworth, and, like them, count the perusal of his poems an era in their lives. His work has faithfully fulfilled the office which he hoped it would perform-to 'console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and gracious of every age to see, to think, and to feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous.' From 1820 onwards Wordsworth's influence grew rapidly. After Scott had turned novelist, and after Keats and Shelley and, above all, Byron were dead, he had no rival, for Tennyson was not yet recognised as a poet. His reputation culminated in 1839, when he received his unparalleled ovation from the University of Oxford, That date is the high-water mark

of his popularity. Yet his audience, though few, has been fit. The greatest minds of the century have acknowledged the healing power' of his verse. Their opinion is a higher test of merit than the votes of the mass. To quote Wordsworth once more: Nor can there be given to any thinking 'man any higher or wiser rule than this-to trust to the judgement of those who from all ages have been reckoned great; and if he finds that any disparity or difference exists between his judgement and theirs, let him, in all modesty, take it for granted that the fault lies in him and not in them.' The recently published volume of 'Words'worthiana' is a striking declaration of the judgement of some of the most prominent men among our living contemporaries, and it may well cause others to reflect on the value of the poet's teaching.

His poetry is what the highest poetry so often is-a protest against the tendencies of the day; a protest against material and utilitarian tyranny; a protest against the omnipotence of the motto 'work' on which Carlyle insisted with such grim earnestness; a protest in favour of being as superior to doing or thinking; a protest against that sacrifice of the individual to society which is the price the century pays for progress and civilisation; a protest against the theory that wealth outweighs the dignity of man's primitive nature, or that the living soul is absorbed in the factory hand;' a protest, finally, against that exclusive dominion of science which threatens to enslave the human spirit in the fetters of inexorable laws. For the fever of modern existence his poetry is the truest febrifuge. No poet and few philosophers have grappled more firmly with the problems of man, nature, and human life. No poet has exercised a more invigorating influence on all who are afflicted by a 'wilful disesteem' of life, or tortured by the riddle of the painful earth, or conscious that their birthright of freedom is subjugated by the tyranny of petty circumstances. No poet has braced more minds to live in the light of high endeavour, to mark out a loftier standard of conduct, to seek some more determined aim of thought or reading, to transmute into good the heaviest sorrows and disappointments. His healing power' ministers to minds diseased by disposing them to feel interest in the common emotions and common destiny of humanity. He does for others what ‹ Nature did for him. He eases the pressure and calms the pain of the mystery. He opens to men an inner world in which they cease to deplore the burden of existence; reveals

the wells of refreshment hidden in their own breasts; touches concealed chords of feeling which when struck vibrate in harmony and awaken kindred thoughts of purity, innocence, and moral strength.

Wordsworth's art is not the skill to fashion into delightful verse the passionate rapture of love. His trade is not the "moving accident;' his strain is not the idle breath of the pipe that is attuned to pastoral fancies; his gift is not the Tyrtæan song of battle; his charm is not the exquisite finish of cultured indifference; his enthusiasm finds no expression in the defiant reproaches of a rebellious spirit. Here are no mouthings of euphuistic dialects, no devices to arrest attention or extort admiration. Here is no 'pageant of the bleeding heart,' no fiery stimulant, no morbid melancholy, no superficial violence impressed to do duty for the language of genuine passion. Here is no dance of bright phantoms, which thread the maze of ætherial thought to the melody of entrancing music. For all these, each in their different ways so attractive, we must look elsewhere. Wordsworth has not the martial fire of Scott, the stormy discontent of Byron, the magnetic ardour of Shelley, the sensuous luxuriance of Keats. Prophet and moralist, as well as singer, deeply conscious of his mission as a vates sacer, a seer whose office was less to please than to teach, he consecrated his life to the task of showing that poetry was not merely exciting or stimulating, but serious, wise, and inspiring. The more exalted the view of the province of poetry, the higher the estimate of Wordsworth. He makes a demand no less on the moral than on the intellectual strength of his readers. But for those who can endure the bleakness of the northern air there is a rapture in the lonely altitudes to which he rises, that gives new life to high endeavour. There is the charm of poetic sensibility held in control, of systematised thought, of poised energy, of power displayed in reserve, of passion expressed in reticence. There is the simplicity which justifies, the sincerity which ennobles, the pleasure that is ministered. In place of the dazzling gifts exhibited by his great contemporaries there is a divination of the spirit of Nature, a deep-set sympathy for humanity, a large hopefulness, an imaginative piety, an intense tranquillity. His poetry is not merely a sanctuary in which fugitives may escape the pursuit of the world's anxieties. or distractions; it makes of the world within and without a temple in which mankind may worship and adore. It is a confessional in which penitents are stripped of all artificial and conventional disguises, and are taught to estimate every

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