CHAPTER X. THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM (1800-1850)message. Poetry was his life; his soul was in all his work; and
only by reading what he has written can we understand the
man.
THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH. There is often a sense
of disappointment when one reads Wordsworth for the first
time; and this leads us to speak first of two difficulties which
may easily prevent a just appreciation of the poet’s worth.
The first difficulty is in the reader, who is often puzzled by
Wordsworth’s absolute simplicity. We are so used to stage
effects in poetry, that beauty unadorned is apt to escape our
notice,–like Wordsworth’s "Lucy"
A violet by a mossy stone,
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.Wordsworth set himself to the task of freeing poetry from
all its "conceits," of speaking the language of simple truth,
and of portraying man and nature as they are; and in this
good work we are apt to miss the beauty, the passion, the
intensity, that hide themselves under his simplest lines. The
second difficulty is in the poet, not in the reader. It must be
confessed that Wordsworth is not always melodious; that he
is seldom graceful, and only occasionally inspired. When he
is inspired, few poets can be compared with him; at other
times the bulk of his verse is so wooden and prosy that we
wonder how a poet could have written it. Moreover he is ab-
solutely without humor, and so he often fails to see the small
step that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. In no
other way can we explain "The Idiot Boy," or pardon the seri-
ous absurdity of "Peter Bell" and his grieving jackass.
On account of these difficulties it is well to avoid at first the
longer works and begin with a good book of selections.^190
(^190) Dowden’sSelections from Wordsworthis the best of manysuch collections
See Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the endof this chapter.