If the
prophet cease from dictating, the amanuensis, rather than be idle,
employs his pen in jotting down some anecdotes of his master, how he one
day went out and saw an old woman, and the next day did _not_, and so
came home and dictated some verses on this ominous phenomenon, and how
another day he saw a cow. These marginal annotations have been carelessly
taken up into the text, have been religiously held by the pious to be
orthodox scripture, and by dexterous exegesis have been made to yield
deeply oracular meanings. Presently the real prophet takes up the word
again and speaks as one divinely inspired, the Voice of a higher and
invisible power. Wordsworth's better utterances have the bare sincerity,
the absolute abstraction from time and place, the immunity from decay,
that belong to the grand simplicities of the Bible. They seem not more
his own than ours and every man's, the word of the inalterable Mind. This
gift of his was naturally very much a matter of temperament, and
accordingly by far the greater part of his finer product belongs to the
period of his prime, ere Time had set his lumpish foot on the pedal that
deadens the nerves of animal sensibility.[355] He did not grow as those
poets do in whom the artistic sense is predominant. One of the most
delightful fancies of the Genevese humorist, Toepffer, is the poet
Albert, who, having had his portrait drawn by a highly idealizing hand,
does his best afterwards to look like it.
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