fraud could we picture him in his later years, as he protests against
Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the franchise, the freedom of
the Press, and popular education? "Can it, in a _general_ view," he
asks, "be good that an infant should learn much which its _parents do
not know?_ Will not a child arrogate a superiority unfavourable to love
and obedience?" He shuddered again at the likelihood that Mechanics'
Institutes would "make discontented spirits and insubordinate and
presumptuous workmen." He opposed the admission of Dissenters to
Cambridge University, and he "desired that a medical education should be
kept beyond the reach of a poor student," on the ground that "the better
able the parents are to incur expense, the stronger pledge have we of
their children being above meanness and unfeeling and sordid habits."
One might go on quoting instance after instance of this piety of
success, as it might be called. Time and again the words seem to come
from the mouth, not of one of the inspired men of the modern world, but
of some puffed-up elderly gentleman in a novel by Jane Austen. His
letter to a young relation who wished to marry his daughter Dora is a
letter that Jane Austen might have invented:--

If you have thoughts of marrying, do look out for some lady with a
sufficient fortune for both of you. What I say to you now I would
recommend to every naval officer and clergyman who is without
prospect of professional advancement. Ladies of some fortune are as
easily won as those without, and for the most part as deserving.
Check the first liking to those who have nothing.

One is tempted to say that Wordsworth, like so many other poets, died
young, and that a pensioner who inherited his name survived him.

When one has told the worst about Wordsworth, however, one is as far as