[323] Perhaps it is hardly yet time
to take a perfectly impartial measure of his value as a poet. To do this
is especially hard for those who are old enough to remember the last shot
which the foe was sullenly firing in that long war of critics which began
when he published his manifesto as Pretender, and which came to a pause
rather than end when they flung up their caps with the rest at his final
coronation. Something of the intensity of the _odium theologicum_ (if
indeed the _aestheticum_ be not in these days the more bitter of the two)
entered into the conflict. The Wordsworthians were a sect, who, if they
had the enthusiasm, had also not a little of the exclusiveness and
partiality to which sects are liable. The verses of the master had for
them the virtue of religious canticles stimulant of zeal and not amenable
to the ordinary tests of cold-blooded criticism. Like the hymns of the
Huguenots and Covenanters, they were songs of battle no less than of
worship, and the combined ardors of conviction and conflict lent them a
fire that was not naturally their own. As we read them now, that virtue
of the moment is gone out of them, and whatever of Dr. Wattsiness there
is gives us a slight shock of disenchantment. It is something like the
difference between the _Marseillaise_ sung by armed propagandists on the
edge of battle, or by Brissotins in the tumbrel, and the words of it read
coolly in the closet, or recited with the factitious frenzy of Therese.
Pages:
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292