Throughout "The Prelude"
and "The Excursion" he seems striving to bind the wizard Imagination with
the sand-ropes of dry disquisition, and to have forgotten the potent
spell-word which would make the particles cohere. There is an arenaceous
quality in the style which makes progress wearisome. Yet with what
splendors as of mountain-sunsets are we rewarded! what golden rounds of
verse do we not see stretching heavenward with angels ascending and
descending! what haunting harmonies hover around us deep and eternal like
the undying barytone of the sea! and if we are compelled to fare through
sands and desert wildernesses, how often do we not hear airy shapes that
syllable our names with a startling personal appeal to our highest
consciousness and our noblest aspiration, such as we wait for in vain in
any other poet!
Take from Wordsworth all which an honest criticism cannot but allow, and
what is left will show how truly great he was. He had no humor, no
dramatic power, and his temperament was of that dry and juiceless
quality, that in all his published correspondence you shall not find a
letter, but only essays. If we consider carefully where he was most
successful, we shall find that it was not so much in description of
natural scenery, or delineation of character, as in vivid expression of
the effect produced by external objects and events upon his own mind, and
of the shape and hue (perhaps momentary) which they in turn took from his
mood or temperament.
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