Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/249

Rh critic, for he was a Wordsworthian, and all his discourse leads up to Wordsworth as the greatest, because the most contemplative, of nineteenth-century poets. Otherwise he was an extreme type of the class which Arnold had in mind when he said, "We must be on our guard against the Wordsworthians, if we want to secure for Wordsworth his due rank as a poet." His utter failure to see the force of a blind revolt like Shelley's, in the evolution of an ultimately high morality, was inexcusable. A more striking example of faulty criticism could hardly be given. Shelley is not to be measured by his conduct of life nor by his experimental theories, but rather, as Browning estimates him, with every allowance for his conditions and by his highest faculty and attainment.

But the most thoughtful and extended of rhythmical productions in the purely didactic Poetic truth, above all, is hostile to the commonplace and unimaginative, method is of less worth, taken as poetry, than any lyrical trifle—an English song or Irish lilt, it may be—that is spontaneous and has quality. The disguises of the commonplace are endless; we are always meeting the old foe with a new face. A fashionable diction, tact, taste, the thought and manner of the season, set them off bravely; but they soon will be flown with the birds of last year's nests. Of such are not the works whose wisdom is imaginative, whether the result of intuition or reflection, or of both combined. These