glory and the mystic splendours of the indifferent heavens, will feel
that here indeed is the true strength which out of the trivial raises
expression for the pathetic and the sublime.

Apart, however, from excess of prolixity and of solemnity, can it be
really contended that in purely poetic quality--in aerial freedom and
space, in radiant purity of light or depth and variety of colour, in
penetrating and subtle sweetness of music, in supple mastery of the
instrument, in vivid spontaneity of imagination, in clean-cut sureness
of touch--Wordsworth is not surpassed by men who were below him in
weight and greatness? Even in his own field of the simple and the
pastoral has he touched so sweet and spontaneous a note as Burns's
_Daisy_, or the _Mouse_? When men seek immersion or absorption in the
atmosphere of pure poesy, without lesson or moral, or anything but
delight of fancy and stir of imagination, they will find him less
congenial to their mood than poets not worthy to loose the latchet of
his shoe in the greater elements of his art. In all these comparisons,
it is not merely Wordsworth's theme and motive and dominant note that
are different; the skill of hand is different, and the musical ear and
the imaginative eye.

To maintain or to admit so much as this, however, is not to say the
last word. The question is whether Wordsworth, however unequal to
Shelley in lyric quality, to Coleridge or to Keats in imaginative
quality, to Burns in tenderness, warmth, and that humour which is so
nearly akin to pathos, to Byron in vividness and energy, yet possesses
excellences of his own which place him in other respects above
these master-spirits of his time. If the question is to be answered
affirmatively, it is clear that only in one direction must we look.
The trait that really places Wordsworth on an eminence above his