It is only the episodes that are universally read, and the
effect of these is diluted by the connecting and accompanying lectures on
metaphysics. Wordsworth had his epic mould to fill, and, like Benvenuto
Cellini in casting his Perseus, was forced to throw in everything,
debasing the metal, lest it should run short. Separated from the rest,
the episodes are perfect poems in their kind, and without example in the
language.
Wordsworth, like most solitary men of strong minds, was a good critic of
the substance of poetry, but somewhat niggardly in the allowance he made
for those subsidiary qualities which make it the charmer of leisure and
the employment of minds without definite object. It may be doubted,
indeed, whether he set much store by any contemporary writing but his
own, and whether he did not look upon poetry too exclusively as an
exercise rather of the intellect than as a nepenthe of the
imagination.[349] He says of himself, speaking of his youth:--
"In fine,
I was a better judge of thoughts than words,
Misled in estimating words, not only
By common inexperience of youth,
But by the trade in classic niceties,
The dangerous craft of culling term and phrase
From languages that want the living voice
To carry meaning to the natural heart;
To tell us what is passion, what is truth,
What reason, what simplicity and sense.
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