concealed the true character of his method in the guise of poetry. Even
if we decline to accept his strange judgment that all poetry "is at
bottom a criticism of life," still we must perceive that, as a matter of
fact, many of his own poems are as essentially critical as his Essays or
his Lectures.

We all remember that he poked fun at those misguided Wordsworthians who
seek to glorify their master by claiming for him an "ethical system as
distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler's," and "a
scientific system of thought." But surely we find in his own poetry a
sustained doctrine of self-mastery, duty, and pursuit of truth, which is
essentially ethical, and, in its form, as nearly "scientific" and
systematic as the nature of poetry permits. And this doctrine is
conveyed, not by positive, hortatory, or didactic methods, but by
Criticism--the calm praise of what commends itself to his judgment, the
gentle but decisive rebuke of whatever offends or darkens or misleads.
Of him it may be truly said, as he said of Goethe, that

He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: _Thou ailest here, and here._

His deepest conviction about "the suffering human race" would seem to
have been that its worst miseries arise from a too exalted estimate of
its capacities. Men are perpetually disappointed and disillusioned
because they expect too much from human life and human nature, and
persuade themselves that their experience, here and hereafter, will be,
not what they have any reasonable grounds for expecting, but what they
imagine or desire. The true philosophy is that which