agony and cleaving oppression of grief; the ghost-like hauntings
of shame; the incubus of revenge; the life-distemper of ambition ...
these demonstrate incontestably that the passions of
men, (I mean the soul of sensibility in the heart of man), in all
quarrels, in all contests, in all quests, in all delights, in all
employments which are either sought by men or thrust upon
them, do immeasurably transcend their objects. The true
sorrow of humanity consists in this--not that the mind of
man fails, but that the cause and demands of action and of
life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of
human desires; and hence, that which is slow to languish is too
easily turned aside and abused. But, with the remembrance of
what has been done, and in the face of the interminable evils
which are threatened, a Spaniard can never have cause to complain
of this while a follower of the tyrant remains in arms
upon the Peninsula."

It was passages such as this, perhaps, which led Canning to declare
that Wordsworth's pamphlet was the finest piece of political
eloquence which had appeared since Burke. And yet if we compare it
with Burke, or with the great Greek exemplar of all those who would
give speech the cogency of act,--we see at once the causes of its
practical failure. In Demosthenes the thoughts and principles are
often as lofty as any patriot can express; but their loftiness, in
his speech, as in the very truth of things, seemed but to add to
their immediate reality. They were beaten and inwoven into the facts
of the hour; action seemed to turn, on them as on its only possible
pivot; it was as though Virtue and Freedom hung armed in heaven
above the assembly, and in the visible likeness of immortal
ancestors beckoned upon an urgent way. Wordsworth's mood of mind, on