led by sentiment. There are
poets who have chosen rural life for their subject for the sake of its
passionless repose; and there are times when Wordsworth himself extols
the mere calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest aim of
poetical culture. But it was not for such passionless calm that he
preferred the scenes of [103] pastoral life; and the meditative poet,
sheltering himself from the agitations of the outward world, is in
reality only clearing the scene for the exhibition of great emotions,
and what he values most is the almost elementary expression of
elementary feelings.

In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of The
Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended to
be introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if completed,
would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The Excursion.
The third part was only planned; but the first book of the first part
was left in manuscript by Wordsworth--though in manuscript, it is said,
in no great condition of forwardness for the printers. This book, now
for the first time printed in extenso (a very noble passage from it
found place in that prose advertisement to The Excursion), is the great
novelty of this latest edition of Wordsworth's poetic works. It was
well worth adding to the poet's great bequest to English literature.
The true student of his work, who has formulated for himself what he
supposes to be the leading characteristics [104] of Wordsworth's
genius, will feel, we think, a lively interest in putting them to test
by the many and various striking passages in what is there presented
for the first time.

17th February 1889

VII. MR. GOSSE'S POEMS

On Viol and Flute. By Edmund Gosse.

[107] PERHAPS no age of literature, certainly no age of literature in
England, has been so rich as ours in excellent secondary poetry; and it
is with our poetry (in a measure) as with our architecture, constrained
by the nature of the case to be imitative. Our generation, quite
reasonably, is not very proud of its architectural creations; confesses
that it knows too much--knows, but cannot do. And yet we could name
certain modern churches in London, for instance, to which posterity may
well look back puzzled.--Could these exquisitely pondered buildings
have been indeed works of the nineteenth century? Were they not the
subtlest creations of the age in which Gothic art was spontaneous? I