"The Baby's Début." This is the opening stanza of the parody:

"My brother Jack was nine in May,
And I was eight on New Year's Day;
So in Kate Wilson's shop

Papa (he's my papa and Jack's)
Bought me, last week, a doll of wax,
And brother Jack a top."

Fortunately, it is out of the power of the most perverse theory to spoil the true poet; and in defiance of his crotchets, Wordsworth must ever charm and elevate mankind. The spirit of truth and poetry has redeemed from oblivion and hallowed and ennobled such homely themes as Harry Gill and the Wagoner, and even Peter Bell and his ass will go jogging down the centuries with the Tam O'Shanters, the John Gilpins, and other famous equestrian heroes. Of the poems expressing Wordsworth's most peculiar manner

that which used to be especially understood as the style of the Lake School - the "Fountain " is perhaps the best example.

In many of Wordsworth's homeliest and most hackneyed ballads we find the sweetest and tenderest humanity, as in "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," or the most profound philosophical touches, as in "We are Seven." But much, perhaps we might say the greater part, of his poetry, is in a style and manner quite different from these. His theory is as much confuted by his own poetry as it is by the universal past experience of mankind. Take, for example, his "Lonely Leech Gatherer," his "Ruth," with the exception of a few lines, his "Tintern Abbey," his "Feast of Brougham," the "Water Lily," the greater part of the "Excursion," most of the sonnets, his great "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Early Childhood," many of

his shorter lyrical pieces, and his "Laodamia" (the last without the exception of a single line); these are as unexceptionable in diction as they are deep and true in feeling, judged according to existing rules or principles of art. An artist should be judged by his best; for then, if ever, he touches with finger-tips the endless endeavor of his soul. Many of Wordsworth's best verses, embodying the philosophy and sentiment of our common humanity, have a completeness and impressiveness, as of texts, mottoes, and proverbs; and we may safely affirm that no cotemporary poet has so well attained that undying beauty of expression, that harmony between thought and word, which is the condition of immortal verse. "Poetry," says a reviewer, "like science, has its final precision; there are pieces of poetic language which, try as men will, they will simply have to recur to, and confess that it has been done before." As an example of that which, in Wordsworth's way of putting it, has attained the one form which of all others truly belongs to it, many of his shorter pieces might be quoted. Of this kind of writing this little poem is a marked example:

"My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man ;

So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety."

These stanzas are equally characteristic:

"A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

"No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees,
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course

With rocks, and stones, and trees."

In the poem beginning "Three years she grew in sun and shower," the peculiar philosophy of Wordsworth is exquisitely embodied. In execution and sentiment it is one of his most perfect productions. These two stanzas are almost perfect:

"The floating clouds their state shall lend

To her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Even in the motions of the storm

Grace that shall mould the maiden's form

By silent sympathy.

"The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty, born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."

Wordsworth, we cannot deny, wrote over-much, and sometimes measured the result of his labor by quantity rather than quality. The art of condensation he rarely practised; consequently, in reading many of his poems one has daintily to pick out the good bits. Sometimes we find a complete poem good throughout, and good as a whole. Such a poem is "Laodamia," in which Wordsworth divests himself of all local and personal associations and throws himself back upon antiquity in intensest sympathy with the persons of the historic and heroic ages of Greece. He says of this poem: "I wrote it with the hope of giving it a loftier tone than, so far as I know, has been given to it by any of the ancients who have treated

of it." A more delicate and graceful homily on the wisdom of subduing the sensual to the spiritual than Wordsworth's version of this example derived from the anteHomeric age, cannot be found in our language; and the versification is in absolute harmony with the subject. Thus runs the story: The Delphic oracle has foretold that the first Greek who touches the Trojan strand shall die. Protesilaus, with the fleet, sets sail from Aulis; upon the silent sea he revolves in his mind the oracle, and nobly determines

"If no worthier lead the way,

That of a thousand vessels, his shall be
The foremost prow in pressing to the strand,
His the first blood to tinge the Trojan sand."

On Laodimia, his queen, too, fondly does his memory hang. He recalls the joys they shared in mortal life, the paths which together they have trod, their fountains and their flowers; and bitter is the pang when he thinks of her loss. Yet thus bravely he resolves and acts,

"And shall suspense permit the foe to cry,

Behold, they tremble! Haughty their array,

Yet of their number no one dares to die'?

And forth he leaps upon the sandy plain,
A self-devoted chief by Hector slain."

Her hero dead, Laodamia will not be comforted. She sends her wail through the "veiled empires of eternity." In the lonely night, "'mid shades forlorn," she vainly implores him "from the infernal gods." Still, undaunted by failure, with sacrifice and vows she now further entreats from great Jove her lord's return.

"O terror! What hath she perceived? O joy!
What doth she look on? Whom doth she behold?
Her hero slain upon the beach of Troy?

It is if sense deceive her not 't is he!

And a god leads him, winged Mercury."

Touching her with his wand, mild Hermes calms all fear, and thus addresses her,

"... Such grace hath crowned thy prayer,

Laodimia that at Jove's command

Thy husband walks the paths of upper air:
He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space;
Accept the gift; behold him face to face!""

Protesilaus, cold and serene, eludes her impassioned clasp; only a phantom stands before her. In his high sphere is her love to him a thing of naught? Is there indeed a bridgeless gulf between them set? With sinking heart she thus entreats the shade of her beloved, —

Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice:
This is our palace; yonder is thy throne;
Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will rejoice.
Not to appal me have the gods bestowed
This precious boon, and blest a sad abode!'”

Protesilaus replies,

"Great Jove, Laodamia, doth not leave
His gifts imperfect. Spectre though I be,
I am not sent to scare thee, or deceive;
But in reward of thy fidelity.

And something also did my worth obtain;

For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain.''

Thus reassured, Laodamia again approaches this im

material being with mortal love and hope: