sympathies of the heart, but to enlarge the understanding, and exalt
and widen the spiritual vision, all with the aim of leading us towards
firmer and austerer self-control.

Certain favourers of Wordsworth answer our question with a triumphant
affirmative, on the strength of some ethical, or metaphysical, or
theological system which they believe themselves to find in him. But
is it credible that poets can permanently live by systems? Or is not
system, whether ethical, theological, or philosophical, the heavy lead
of poetry? Lucretius is indisputably one of the mighty poets of the
world, but Epicureanism is not the soul of that majestic muse. So with
Wordsworth. Thought is, on the whole, predominant over feeling in his
verse, but a prevailing atmosphere of deep and solemn reflection does
not make a system. His theology and his ethics, and his so-called
Platonical metaphysics, have as little to do with the power of his
poetry over us, as the imputed Arianism or any other aspect of the
theology of _Paradise Lost_ has to do with the strength and the
sublimity of Milton, and his claim to a high perpetual place in the
hearts of men. It is best to be entirely sceptical as to the existence
of system and ordered philosophy in Wordsworth. When he tells us that
"one impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral
evil and of good, than all the sages can," such a proposition cannot
be seriously taken as more than a half-playful sally for the benefit
of some too bookish friend. No impulse from a vernal wood can teach us
anything at all of moral evil and of good. When he says that it is his
faith, "that every flower enjoys the air it breathes," and that
when the budding twigs spread out their fan to catch the air, he is
compelled to think "that there was pleasure there," he expresses a
charming poetic fancy and no more, and it is idle to pretend to see
in it the fountain of a system of philosophy. In the famous _Ode on