tenderness as are called out by the stress and pressure of penury or
woe. They form for the folk of northern England (as the works of
Burns and Scott for the Scottish folk) a gallery of figures that are
modelled, as it were, both from without and from within; by one with
experience so personal as to keep every sentence vividly accurate,
and yet with an insight which could draw from that simple life
lessons to itself unknown. We may almost venture to generalize our
statement further, and to assert that no writer since Shakespeare
has left us so true a picture of the British nation. In Milton,
indeed, we have the characteristic English spirit at a whiter glow;
but it is the spirit of the scholar only, or of the ruler, not of the
peasant, the woman, or the child, Wordsworth gives us that spirit as
it is diffused among shepherds and husbandmen,--as it exists in
obscurity and at peace. And they who know what makes the strength of
nations need wish nothing better than that the temper which he saw
and honoured among the Cumbrian dales should be the temper of all
England, now and for ever.

Our discussion of Wordsworth's form of Natural Religion has led us
back by no forced transition to the simple life which he described
and shared. I return to the story of his later years,--if that be
called a story which derives no interest from incident or passion,
and dwells only on the slow broodings of a meditative soul.




CHAPTER XI