that finds much of the profoundest and most indestructible writing in Wordsworth himself dull.

Wordsworth's fame in the past forty years has grown apace. In his own lifetime he was rightly measured by a few, and generally honoured, but he was far from attracting public attention in the way that Byron and Scott, and, later, Tennyson, did. Thirty years after his death, Matthew Arnold in the 'Preface' to his famous Selection from Wordsworth's poems, made for the Golden Treasury Series, could say, no doubt with justice, that even such popularity as Wordsworth had enjoyed in his own time had steadily diminished. Arnold pointed out, in 1879, that considered criticism of Wordsworth had in later years nearly always been sound, and had awarded the great poet his due, but he also pointed out that the public had, in his own words, 'remained cold, or, at least, undetermined.' Arnold then proceeded very persuasively to support his claim, which has been echoed in this present essay, that Wordsworth's poetical performance was 'after 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.' Arnold further argued that the principal cause of public neglect was to be found in the mass of inferior work in which the achievement of Wordsworth's genius had allowed itself to become ob

scured, and in order that there should be no excuse for neglect on these grounds thereafter, Arnold made his own selection, and with flawless judg

ment.

Flawless judgment, that is to say, in the matter of inclusion; there is nothing in Arnold's selection which does not obviously and immediately do honour to Wordsworth. There is, however, the question of exclusion, which is not quite so easily answered. Arnold performed the greatest possible service to Wordsworth's reputation, and his own 'Preface' has become a classic of English criticism. This being so, any complaint must seem graceless. At the same time, the scheme of Arnold's Selection necessarily excluded a great deal of work which the most ardent Wordsworthians would be loth to surrender. For the general reading public who ask, as they are quite entitled to do, for the quintessence of a poet's work, Arnold's choice is impeccable. But in the case of a poet of the first rank there will always be a certain number of readers who are willing, and even anxious, to devote considerable time and care to an exhaustive study of his whole nature and character. And for such a reader who wishes so to understand Wordsworth, Arnold's Selection, or any, must be incomplete. To know "The Solitary Reaper' and 'Michael' and "The Leech-Gatherer' and the 'Ode on the Intimations of Immortality' and 'I wandered lonely as a

cloud,' and the many pieces of that quality that Arnold included, is to possess the fine flower of one of the supreme English poetic gifts. But the reader who recognizes in Wordsworth not only a great lyric and elegiac poet, but one of the most significant spiritual and philosophic forces in the history of English character, and thinks it worth while to become familiar with that force in all its aspects, must turn also to the long and often neglected reaches of "The Prelude' and 'The Excursion.' There are many poets whose successes have been, as it were, the happy accidents of minds not fundamentally preoccupied with poetry, and of these it is well enough that the best should be chosen once and for all, and the rest left alone. But Wordsworth, in his successes and failures alike, was a poet first and last and through and through. His whole nature was dedicated to all that poetry means, and remembering the wide implications of that claim, it may be said that it had no other concern whatever. So that when the last word is said, Wordsworth is one of those poets who, while they may rightly be presented to most people by their chosen best, have, and always will have, the very rare privilege of compelling from a few a careful consideration of their work as a whole. And that consideration, in Wordsworth's case, is apt, I think, to discover that there is less really waste tissue in his work than is commonly supposed. It is only the

very great poets who have a right to demand of us that we shall consider their achievement always in relation to their aim. From the work of lesser talents we are entitled to pick and choose, to judge each poem separately on its intrinsic merit by some external standard, but when we come to a poet of Wordsworth's stature it is at least worth while sometimes to ask ourselves, when we are inclined to question his practice, whether his judgment was not after all sounder than our own. Few, perhaps, of Wordsworth's most devoted admirers could claim to have read everything that he wrote. And yet, for some of us, to turn even to his most discredited pages is always to be prepared to find something that even this crowded world can very well afford to preserve.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was drowned off the harbour of Leghorn on July 8, 1822, within a month of completing his thirtieth year. There has been more stupid and self-righteous chatter about his life, perhaps, than about that of any other great poet, with the exception of his friend Byron. He has vindicators in plenty, but he should need none. The conduct of his private affairs was not always blameless, if there should be anybody sufficiently free of fault himself to award the blame. That with all his shortcomings in these private affairs he was also generous, greatly beloved by his friends and at least one woman, of splendid character, and inspired always by an intense devotion to the abstract idea of liberty, there is ample evidence from a dozen sources. But in this, again, he was not really abnormal. At all times there are hundreds of young men about, sensitive, of swift impulses directed sometimes by good judgment, sometimes by bad, fine but not flawless in texture. Shelley, like any one of these, must have been an affectionate and attractive person to know, and no doubt sometimes a little disquieting if you happened to have your social standards too firmly fixed. And