pose was to do his part in supplying the public with a more wholesome literature,—with that which was more natural, more beautiful, more true.

In January, 1801, soon after the publication of the second edition of the "Lyrical Ballads," Wordsworth sent a copy to Charles Fox, the leader of the popular party at that time, with a long letter in which he claimed the statesman's sympathy, and particularly explained the purpose he had in view in publishing the poems entitled "The Brothers" and "Michael."* In these poems he said he had attempted to draw a picture of the domestic affections as he knew they existed among a class of men who were then almost confined to the North of England. He lamented that there was a rapid decay of the domestic affections of the lower orders of society, of which the rulers of the country were not conscious, or were regardless of it. He entered into a description of the small proprietors in the North called "statesmen," and complimented his distinguished correspondent as one whose public conduct had been directed to the preservation of such classes of men.† The two poems of "The Brothers" and "Michael" were written,

*See pages 66 and 121 of this volume.

"The clue to his poetical theory in some of its questionable details may be found in his political principles; these had been democratical, and still, though in some degree modified, they were of a republican character. At this period he entertained little reverence for ancient institutions as such; and he felt little sympathy with the higher classes of society. He was deeply impressed with a sense of the true dignity of the lower orders and their sufferings, and his design was to endeavour to recover for them the rights of the human family, and the franchises of universal brotherhood, of which he appears to have thought they had been robbed by the wealthy, the noble, and the few. He desired to impart moral grandeur to poverty, and to invest the objects of irrational and inanimate nature with a beauty and grace of which it seemed to him they had been stripped by a heartless aud false taste, pretending to the title of delicacy and refinement."-Biography, by Dr. C. Wordsworth, vol. i. ch. xiii.

he said, "with a view to show that men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply. 'Pectus enim est quod disertos facit, et vis mentis. Ideoque imperitis quoque,

si modo sint aliquo affectu concitati, verba non desunt.' The poems are faithful copies from nature; and I hope whatever effect they may have upon you, you will at least be able to perceive that they may excite profitable sympathies in many kind and good hearts, and may in some small degree enlarge our feelings of reverence for our species, and our knowledge of human nature, by showing that our best qualities are possessed by men whom we are too apt to consider, not with reference to the points in which they resemble us, but to those in which they manifestly differ from us." This extract serves to show the serious purpose with which poems were written, that the popular criticism of the day treated as something little better than simplicity run mad. The great merits of the two poems to which the attention of Mr. Fox was called, are now all but universally acknowledged. Upon him, however, they appear to have made but little impression. Some months after Wordsworth's letter was sent he received from Mr. Fox a short but civil reply, in which, after complimenting the poems generally, and a few of the shorter ones in particular, he proceeds to state that “he had read with particular attention the two which the author had pointed out; but whether, from early prepossessions or whatever other cause, he was no great friend to blank verse for subjects which were to be treated of with simplicity." This must have been felt by Mr. Wordsworth to be very unsatisfactory criticism,

b

and probably led him to the conclusion that a man might be a very ardent popular advocate, and a lover of literary recreation, without possessing much soul for poetry, or much capability of being excited by vivi'l pictures of the domestic affections of the poor.*

The question, however, may now suggest itself to some readers how it came to pass that if these early poems were really good poems, instinct with genius, and of a nature to call into activity the best feelings of the human breast, they should nevertheless have been so long unpopular, and should have failed to produce any very strong impression even upon such a mind as that of Mr. Fox? We must look for the answer to this question in a consideration of the little relish which the ordinary mind has for severe and simple truth, and in certain characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry. "This same truth," says Lord Bacon, "is a naked and open daylight that doth not show the masques and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?" It is because ordinary human nature answers so well to this description of it, that far the greater number, even of those who read, and who pretend to some taste, seek

* See, however, the poet's verses written when he heard the dissolution of Mr. Fox was hourly expected (page 421), in which he dwells upon the grief and fear of the thousands who regarded Mr. Fox as their stay and their glory.

that which Wordsworth called "outrageous stimulation." Nothing less than this will set their thoughts or their feelings in action. The contemplation of the simple truth of nature, with whatever beautiful conceptions it may be associated, is not sufficient to excite them. They desire something tricked out with artificial pomps. To them all writing that is not exaggerated, is tame, and all that is profound is troublesome. Not only did Mr. Wordsworth not show them the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world as they would have wished to see them, but he did not show them at all.*

It is a characteristic of the poetry of Wordsworth, that it is chiefly addressed to sympathies and feelings which though simple are not very common, and to the growth of which the habits and pursuits of the busy world are not favourable. It is intended to affect persons of deep but tranquil feeling-persons of thoughtful and meditative, rather than of active and demonstrative, intellectual habits. In the preface to his first two volumes, he says he had flattered himself that they who should be pleased with his poems, would read them

* "Even he [Wordsworth] has exhibited, only one limited, however lofty, region of life, and has made it far less his aim to represent what lies around him by means of self-transference into all its feelings, than to choose therefrom what suits his spirit of ethical meditation, and to compel mankind, out alike of their toilsome daily paths, and pleasant nightly dreams, into his own severe and stately school of thought. The present movement of human life, nay, its various and spontaneous joys, to him are little save so far as they afford a text for a mind in which fixed will, and stern speculation, and a heart austere and measured even in its piety, are far more obvious powers than fancy, emotion, or keen and versatile sympathy. He discourses indeed with divine wisdom of life and nature, and all their sweet and various impulses, but the impression of his own great calm judicial soul is always far too mighty for any all-powerful feeling of the objects he presents to us."-Quarterly Review, No. 140.

with more than common pleasure; and, on the other hand, he was well aware that by those who should dislike them, they would be read with more than common dislike. He adds; that the result had differed from his expectation in this only, that he had pleased a greater number than he had ventured to hope he should please. A few years afterwards, in a letter to Lady Beaumont, he takes a bolder tone in speaking of himself, and a more severe one in referring to those who disrelished his productions. Of them, he says, they are incompetent judges, those people who in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read books, but merely snatch a glance at them that they may talk about them. "Even if this were not so," he adds, "never forget what I believe was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen."

It is in the same letter that he says, it is "an awful truth that 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. This is a truth, and an awful one, because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature, and reverence for God." To many this will seem an overstrained expression of the importance of a feeling for poetry, but we must take into account the character of