“True, some are open, and to all men known;
Others so very close, they're hid from none;
But these plain characters we rarely find;
Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of
mind:

Or puzzling contraries confound the whole;
Or affectations quite reverse the soul.
The dull flat falsehood serves for policy;
And in the cunning, truth itself's a lie:
Unthought of frailties cheat us in the wise;
The fool lies hid in inconsistencies.
See the same man, in vigour, in the gout;
Alone, in company, in place, or out;
Early at business, and at hazard late;
Mad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate ;
Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball;
Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall."

Wordsworth, remote from average humanity in mind. and in place, hearing only from a distance its “still sad music," meeting it only occasionally in the persons of simple rustics about him (and of even these, he had no intimate personal knowledge), and transfiguring it by the light of imagination, gives us a different picture. In his highest poetic moods he sees only the wonder of human love, of human endurance, of the human mind, for in him, as in all true romantics, the unconquerable hope" could never die. But when for a time Wordsworth found himself in the environment of Pope, in London, he came near to despair.

"On the roof,

Of an itinerant vehicle I sate,

With vulgar men about me, trivial forms

Of houses, pavements, streets, of men and things, Mean shapes on every side."

It is true that even here his faith, supported by memories of fairer scenes and by imaginative insight, did not die. Soon he escaped from man to nature, back to the fields and woods, hills and lakes that were nearest to his heart. With escape came a revival of hope and of that romantic poetry which is the literature of escape-escape from a sordid reality into imagination-imagination which the romantic believed to be ultimate truth. Thus it is that looking back from the tranquillity of later years, upon his experiences in London, the poet sings:

"The effect was, still more elevated views
Of human nature. Neither vice nor guilt,
Debasement undergone by body or mind,
Nor all the misery forced upon my sight,
Misery not lightly passed by, sometimes scanned
Most feelingly, could overthrow my trust
In what we may become; induced belief
That I was ignorant, had been falsely taught,
A solitary, who with vain conceits

Had been inspired, and walked about in dreams."

There, between Pope and Wordsworth, lies the conflict of the "classical" poets of the eighteenth century with the romantics who followed. "Reason" the

reality on the one side, "imagination the reality on the other; common sense or dreams? Did " reason see the reality of man or only the superficial appearance of man? Did imagination discover the reality in man, piercing below false appearances, or did it create only dreams? Or did both reason and imagination discover conflicting, often indeed alternating, realities of human nature? Did the eighteenth-century poet study the

actual and superficial, and the romantic the ideal and elemental in the human soul?

I spoke of the paradox of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the cynic would dispute the fitness of the term, saying that to him there is no paradox. He might proceed to point out that to the shrewd Augustan "the proper study of mankind was Man," while to the visionary Romantic the proper study of mankind was Imagination; and so, arguing with a smile of superior wisdom, that the Augustan knew his subject while the Romantic did not, seek to prove that the Augustan conception of humanity was based upon detailed observation and intimate knowledge, while the Romantic's homage to humanity in the abstract was but an apology for shunning it in the concrete, or homage to a conception of mankind drawn chiefly from the poet's own self. But I shall not argue with the cynic.

No matter in which camp truth dwells, there are the two opposed conceptions of human nature which lie at the heart of the opposed types of poetry, the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth. And perhaps here we may find a link between the social pressure, the tribunal of the smoking-room, as Sir Leslie Stephen represented it, and this struggle between a "reasonable" and an imaginative conception of human nature and human life.

The poet generally, especially the poet of a predominantly social age, writes for others besides himself, seeks to be understood by others, and so shapes his work to their comprehension. Those who, studying mankind in Town, in social life, in the less sincere or less exalted moods of every day, came to agree with Pope's estimate of humanity, wrote naturally, for such

a humanity as Pope described. Whatever was different in themselves would, if expressed, only cause misunderstanding or laughter, and so poetry naturally found its lowest common spiritual level.

But beyond the sway of social fashions and fears was one supreme poet in the eighteenth century who grappled with this problem of happiness, passion and reason in human life, and fearing neither laughter nor misunderstanding, expressed his own conception of the truth, raising indeed the whole question into a higher region:

"Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go.'

The eighteenth century desired "safety." In these lines Blake, with unintentional irony yet simple truth, showed them how to attain it.

II

LOVE

"Fancy does so well maintain it,
Weaker Reason can't restrain it,
But is forced to fly before it,
Or else worship and adore it."

HENRY BAKER.

To say that human love has been the inspiration of the greater and the finer part of English Lyric, is merely to repeat a commonplace. Of love the Elizabethans had sung with "full-throated ease," while the Restoration gallants at their best, as in Rochester and Sedley, preserved much of that spontaneity, and felicity of expression, which had been apparently the birthright of the Elizabethans. They of the Restoration seldom sustain the high note of lyric throughout a poem, but they can at least for a moment strike a note that moves the reader. Rochester, well acquainted with whatever of madness or folly passion may inspire, can write in a momentary desire for constancy:

"When, wearied with a world of woe,
To thy safe bosom I retire,

Where love, and peace, and honour glow,
May I, contented, there expire.

Lest once more wandering from that heaven,
I fall on some base heart unblessed,

Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven,
And lose my everlasting rest.'