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Untitled Article
distinctly conceived ; some truth , or something which he deems such . He lets the thought dwell in his mind , till it excites , as is the nature of thought , other thoughts , arid also such feelings as the measure of his sensibility is adequate to supply . Among these thoughts and feelings , had he chosen a different walk of
authorship , ( and there are many in which he might equally have excelled , ) he would probably have made a different selection of media for enforcing the parent-thought : his habits , however , being those of poetic composition , he selects in preference the strongest feelings , and the thoughts with which most of feeling is naturally or habitually connected . His poetry therefore may be defined to be , his thoughts , coloured by , and impressing themselves by means of , emotions . Such poetry , Wordsworth has occupied a long life in producing . And well and wisely has he so done . Criticisms , no doubt , may be made occasionally both upon the thoughts themselves , and upon the skill he has demonstrated in the choice of his media : for , an affair of skill and study , in ( he most rigorous sense , it evidently was . But he has not laboured in vain : he has
exercised , and continues to exercise , a powerful , and mostly a highly beneficial influence over the formation and growth of not a few of the most cultivated and vigorous of the youthful minds of our time , over whose heads poetry of the opposite description would have flown , for want of an original organization , physical and mental , in sympathy with it .
On the other hand , Wordsworth s poetry is never bounding , never ebullient ; has little even of the appearance of spontaneousness : the well is never so full that it overflows . There is an air of calm deliberateness about all he writes , which is not characteristic of the poetic temperament ; his poetry seems one thing , himself another ; he seems to be poetical because he wills to be so , not because he cannot help it : did he will to dismiss poetry , he need never again , it might almost seem , have a poetical thought . He never seems possessed by a feeling ; no emotion seems ever so strong as to have entire sway , for the time beine . over the
current of his thoughts . He never , even for the space of a few stanzas , appears entirely given up to exultation , or grief , or pity , or love , or admiration , or devotion , or even animal spirits . He now and then , though seldom , attempts to write as if he were ; and never , we think , without leaving an impression of poverty : as the brook which on nearly level ground quite fills its banks , appears but a thread when running rapidly down a precipitous declivity . He has feeling enough to form a decent , graceful , even beautiful , decoration , to a thought which is in itself interesting and moving ; but not so much as suffices to stir up the soul by mere sympathy with itself in its simplest manifestation , nor enough to summon up that array of 'thoughts of power / which in a richly stored mind always attends the call of really intense feeling . It is for this reason , doubtless , that the genius of Wordsworth is
Untitled Article
718 The Ttvo Kinds of Poetry .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 718, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/58/
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