its melodious rhythm-constituted poetry. How different this was from Coleridge's idea may be seen from the fact that he has given us specimens of poems written in prose, and a good many poems which (as "Christabel ") are unfinished; that is to say, not cast into "requisite metre," as he calls it.

What would Pope have said to the following? It occurs in the preface to the "Solitary Date-tree," a short poem of which the first two stanzas are given in prose, the manuscript containing the original verses having been lost. "It is not impossible that some congenial spirit may find a pleasure in restoring 'The Lament' to its original integrity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite metre."

"Reliquum carmen in futurum tempus relegatum (the rest of the poem is deferred for some future day): "to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow!" -such is the exclamation that ends one of these unfinished poems. It was that "to-morrow" that in some ways made his life so unhappy, so unfruitful. And yet I end as I began. We must not judge entirely by the substantial results. As a poet he stands very high-and would stand perhaps equally as high had he written nothing but the "Ancient Mariner" and that wonderful fragment, "Christabel." As a philosopher, though he has given us no perfectly rounded system (and indeed spoke with disregard of such systems) yet his influence has been very great. As a man, Coleridge was indeed to be

pitied for his "homeless aimless" life, and for the tormenting fiend that at one time nearly dragged him to the grave; but, taken all in all, he was a man who for poetic vision, for loftiness, at least, if not for steadfastness of aim, and for spirituality of character deserves our deepest admiration. The upward-soaring tendency of his mind is recognizable in his philosophical writings, but it finds its native element in poetry; and it is as a poet that he is truly great. Mrs. Browning in her "Vision of Poets" has expressed this characteristic by means of a fine simile, which will probably do more for us than volumes of disquisition

"And visionary Coleridge, who

Did sweep his thoughts, as angels do
Their wings, with cadence up the Blue."

CHAPTER VII.

WORDSWORTH.

THERE are various reasons which make me approach the subject of Wordsworth with very great diffidence.. In the first place, he is a poet who, if he is read at all, is probably read much-and consequently many whom I address may have given as much study to his poems as I have myself,-I say study, for to have merely read all his poems is nothing more than most have done. Secondly, there are such numbers of essays and reviews on the subject, that there would seem to be very little left to be said. Thirdly, and especially, I feel that of all poets Wordsworth is one of whom one can write least satisfactorily. All reviews and essays are eminently unsatisfying and useless, unless the poems themselves have been beforehand studied and appreciated by the reader. And when one has read and does appreciate Wordsworth, all essays are still unsatisfactory; for these poems have this characteristic above all others, that they appeal-if they appeal at all—

to feelings that each one possesses exclusively for himself, feelings that one cannot, if one would, communicate to others. There are, as all lovers of Wordsworth's poetry well know, many passages in his writings that seem, ever since we first read them, to be our own special property. Probably each one of us could name a certain year of his life, when his feelings were becoming peculiarly sensitive to the beauty of the external world, and struggling into a higher vitality, when faint gleams of some great glory filled him from time to time with mysterious longings and joys. At such a time it was, probably, that Wordsworth's poems came like the warm breath of spring to burst the bud, and unfold it to the sunto reveal the full glory to his inmost heart. Wordsworth has been to many of us the one writer who, not by the powers of imagination has created for us new worlds and peopled our memory with new forms of grandeur or ethereal loveliness, but who has, as it were, recreated for us this world around us— this world which we are at times, after the thoughtless joys of childhood have passed, apt to look upon as a dreary prison-house; especially when, to use Tennyson's words, "the light is low, the heart is sick, and all the wheels of Being slow," when, to use once more Professor Dowden's words, "the persons we know seem to shrivel up and become wizened and grotesque-the places we have loved transform themselves into ugly little prisons-the ideals for which

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we lived appear absurd patterns, insignificant arabesques, devoid of idea and beauty-our own heart a most impertinent and unprofitable handful of dust." To have shed over our world that new light, of which he loves to speak,

"The gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration, and the poet's dream "

for this, I think Wordsworth chiefly claims our gratitude and admiration. And this he does when he interprets nature to us, not by what are generally called imaginative creations, but rather by so placing common objects before us that they shall henceforth not merely be, as so many things and persons are, mere lifeless meaningless stumps and blocks

"Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees,"—

nor that we should merely revel with an animal delight in these things of the senses, as children or as Circe's swine. In this Wordsworth fulfils our definition of a poet. He reveals to us the real inner meaning of things; and to grasp and set before one this meaning is a creative act of the imagination, for though the object may be a natural common thing, it has been recreated for us.

"It is," says Coleridge, and Horace tells us almost the same, "the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to repre