Wordsworth: Poet of the Unconquerable Mind

Extract

Wordsworth, said Arnold, “is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry.” From the beginning his has been a “divine vitality.” He himself was persuaded that he derived his light from heaven; and like Piccarda, who, though humbly placed, found her peace in God's will, Wordsworth, though not “pre-eminent in magnitude,” was assured that the light which came to him was, for that reason, of no less divine origin. With this persuasion some of his contemporaries and some of ours are not in accord. Their reasons, of course, are greatly various. Yet it is noteworthy that certain of those characteristics which in his own time made him slow to be accepted, in our time tend to make him poorly read or not read at all. Hence it would seem that one might say something about the characteristics in question.