produce of the common day"--that was his high argument.

Simplification was, as I have said elsewhere, the keynote of the
revolutionary time. Wordsworth was its purest exponent, but he had one
remarkable peculiarity, which made him, in England at least, not only
its purest but its greatest. While leading men to pierce below the
artificial and conventional to the natural man and natural life, as
Rousseau did, Wordsworth still cherished the symbols, the traditions,
and the great institutes of social order. Simplification of life and
thought and feeling was to be accomplished without summoning up the
dangerous spirit of destruction and revolt. Wordsworth lived with
nature, yet waged no angry railing war against society. The chief
opposing force to Wordsworth in literature was Byron. Whatever he was
in his heart, Byron in his work was drawn by all the forces of his
character, genius, and circumstances to the side of violent social
change, and hence the extraordinary popularity of Byron in the
continental camp of emancipation. Communion with nature is in
Wordsworth's doctrine the school of duty. With Byron nature is the
mighty consoler and the vindicator of the rebel.

A curious thing, which we may note in passing, is that Wordsworth, who
clung fervently to the historic foundations of society as it stands,
was wholly indifferent to history; while Byron, on the contrary, as
the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ is enough to show, had at least
the sentiment of history in as great a degree as any poet that ever
lived, and has given to it by far the most magnificent expression. No
doubt, it was history on its romantic, rather than its philosophic or
its political side.

On Wordsworth's exact position in the hierarchy of sovereign poets,