one in a
world of mountains, streams, and atmospheric phenomena, dealing with
moral abstractions, and rarely encountered by even shadowy specters
of beings outwardly resembling himself. There is measureless grandeur
and power in his moral speculations. There is intense reality in
his pictures of external nature. But though his human characters are
presented with great skill of metaphysical analysis, they have rarely
life or animation. He is always the prominent, often the exclusive,
object of his own song.

Upon a mind so constituted, with its psychological peculiarities
so cherished and confirmed, the fortunes and fates of others, and
the stirring events of his time, made vivid but very transient
impressions. The conversation and writing of contemporaries trained
among books, and with the faculty of speech more fully developed than
that of thought, seemed colorless and empty to one with--whom natural
objects and grandeurs were always present in such overpowering force.
Excluded by his social position from taking an active part in the
public events of the day, and repelled by the emptiness of the then
fashionable literature, he turned to private and humble life as
possessing at least a reality. But he thus withheld himself from
the contemplation of those great mental excitements which only great
public struggles can awaken. He contracted a habit of exaggerating the
importance of every-day incidents and emotions. He accustomed himself
to see in men and in social relations only what he was predetermined
to see there, and to impute to them a value and importance derived
mainly from his own self-will. Even his natural good taste contributed
to confirm him in his error. The two prevailing schools of literature
in England, at that time, were the trashy and mouthing writers who
adopted the sounding language of Johnson and Darwin, unenlivened
by the vigorous thought of either; and the "dead-sea apes" of
that inflated, sentimental, revolutionary style which Diderot had
unconsciously originated, and Kotzebue carried beyond the verge of
caricature. The right feeling and manly thought of Wordsworth were
disgusted by these shallow word-mongers, and he flew to the other
extreme. Under the influences--repulsive and attractive--we have thus
attempted to indicate, he adopted the theory that as much of grandeur
and profound emotion was to be found in mere domestic incidents and
feelings, as on the more conspicuous stage of public life;