om, by the way, he is one of the few Spaniards to read
and appreciate.[1] Like him, Unamuno is an essentially purposeful and
utilitarian mind. Of the two qualities which the work of art requires
for its inception--earnestness and detachment--both Unamuno and
Wordsworth possess the first; both are deficient in the second. Their
interest in their respective leading thought--survival in the first,
virtue in the second--is too direct, too pressing, to allow them the
"distance" necessary for artistic work. Both are urged to work by a
lofty utilitarianism--the search for God through the individual soul in
Unamuno, the search for God through the social soul in Wordsworth--so
that their thoughts and sensations are polarized and their spirit loses
that impartial transparence for nature's lights without which no great
art is possible. Once suggested, this parallel is too rich in sidelights
to be lightly dropped. This single-mindedness which distinguishes them
explains that both should have consciously or unconsciously chosen a
life of semi-seclusion, for Unamuno lives in Salamanca very much as
Wordsworth lived in the Lake District--

in a still retreat
Sheltered, but not to social duties lost,

hence in both a certain proclivity towards ploughing a solitary furrow
and becoming self-centred. There are no doubt important differences. The
Englishman's sense of nature is both keener and more concrete; while the
Spaniard's knowledge of human nature is not barred by the subtle
inhibitions and innate limitations which tend to blind its more
unpleasant aspects to the eye of the Englishman. There is more courage
and passion in the Spaniard; more harmony and goodwill in the
Englishman; the one is more like fire, the other like light. For
Wordsworth, a poem is above all an essay, a means for conveying a lesson
in forcible and easily remembered terms to those who are in need of
improvement. For Unamuno, a poem or a novel (and he holds that a novel
is but a poem) is the outpouring of a man's passion, the overflow of the
heart which cannot help itself and lets go. And it may be that the
essential difference between the two is to be found in this difference
between their respective purposes: Unamuno's purpose is more intimately
personal and individual; Wordsworth's is more social and objective. Thus
both miss the temperate zone, where emotion takes shape into the moulds
of art; but while Wordsworth is driven by his i