that of Shakespeare and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes
the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language from the
Elizabethan age to the present time." His essential greatness is to be
found in his shorter pieces, despite the frequent intrusion of much
that is very inferior. Still it is "by the great body of powerful and
significant work which remains to him after every reduction and
deduction has been made, that Wordsworth's superiority is proved."

Coleridge had not dwelt sufficiently, perhaps, upon the joyousness
which results from Wordsworth's philosophy of human life and external
nature. This Matthew Arnold considers to be the prime source of his
greatness. "Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary
power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in the simple
primary affections and duties; and because of the extraordinary power
with which, in case after case, he shows us this joy, and renders it so
as to make us share it." Goethe's poetry, as Wordsworth once said, is
not inevitable enough, is too consciously moulded by the supreme will
of the artist. "But Wordsworth's poetry," writes Arnold, "when he is
at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might
seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote
his poem for him." The set poetic style of _The Excursion_ is a
failure, but there is something unique and unmatchable in the simple
grace of his narrative poems and lyrics. "Nature herself seems, I say,
to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own
bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two causes: from the
profound sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also
from the profoundly sincere and natural character of his subject
itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most
plain, first hand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may
often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem of _Resolution and