As these; and goodness me!
My father's beams are made of wood,
But never, never half so good
As those that now I see!

Lines something like these might have occurred in _The Thorn_ or
_The Idiot Boy_. Nothing could be more different from the style of
the sonnets, or of the _Ode to Duty_, or of _Laodamia_. And yet both
the simplicity of the earlier and the pomp of the later poems were
almost always noble; nor is the transition from the one style to the
other a perplexing or abnormal thing. For all sincere styles are
congruous to one another, whether they be adorned or no, as all high
natures are congruous to one another, whether in the garb of peasant
or of prince. What is incongruous to both is affectation, vulgarity,
egoism; and while the noble style can be interchangeably childlike
or magnificent, as its theme requires, the ignoble can neither
simplify itself into purity nor deck itself into grandeur.

It need not, therefore, surprise us to find the classical models
becoming more and more dominant in Wordsworth's mind, till the poet
of _Poor Susan_ and _The Cuckoo_ spends months over the attempt to
translate the _AEneid_,--to win the secret of that style which he
placed at the head of all poetic styles, and of those verses which
"wind," as he says, "with the majesty of the Conscript Fathers
entering the Senate-house in solemn procession," and envelope in
their imperial melancholy all the sorrows and the fates of man.

And, indeed, so tranquil and uniform was the life which we are now
retracing, and at the same time so receptive of any noble influence
which opportunity might bring, that a real epoch is marked in