The "Laodamia" (1814), the meeting of the heroine with the spirit of her lord, the first man slain at Troy, has been highly praised by an excellent judge (Mr. F. W. Myers). But when the Appearance says "thy transports moderate!" we are in touch with the poetic diction of the eighteenth century and far from the inspiration of the Greek "thrice I sprang toward the shadow of my mother dead; thrice she flitted from my hands as a shadow or even as a dream". It is, in fact, true that after 1808, with forty-two years of life and poetry before him, Wordsworth often failed.
Hail, Orient conqueror of gloomy night
is an address to the sun which any follower of Pope might have written ("Ode for the Morning of the General Thanksgiving 1816").
Many of Wordsworth's most inspired passages are to be found in the long, lofty, and rather bleak antechapel and nave of "The Prelude" and "The Excursion". But lovers of poetry are most apt to kneel in his chapels and oratories; and to read, with unceasing delight and gratitude "In the Sweet Shire of Cardigan," "I Heard a Thousand Blended Notes," "There was a Boy, Ye Knew Him Well, Ye Cliffs"; "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways," "Lucy Gray," "Beggars," "Sweet Highland Girl," "To the Cuckoo," "The Ode to Duty," "The Happy Warrior," and the multitude of sonnets of the highest and most varied excellence, in which his genius, like the follet of Molière, rides his pen and his power comes to its own.
Science or stupidity may some day try to compile the statistics of "inspiration" in poetry. Inspiration cannot easily be defined, but may be described as represented, in a poet's work, by the passages in which, according to the common consent of readers, he reaches a level immeasurably higher than that of versified matter in general, and of his own efforts in particular.
In any such calculation the proportion of Wordsworth's inspired verse—of verse of the very highest and most singular merit—is far above the proportion in Coleridge. Few readers who may amuse themselves by trying to "place" modern English poets after Milton will give Wordsworth anything lower than the second, while very many will give him the foremost rank. But the amount of his uninspired verse—of verse immeasurably below his best—is enormous, and this, with some other circumstances, accounts for the opposition, the refusal to accept him or take him seriously, which he had to encounter in his long life (7 April, 1770-23 April, 1850).
Another obstacle, to be plain, was the infinite number of occasions in which the little, pronoun "I" occurs in his poetry. Great, beneficent, and unique as was the genius of William Wordsworth when he conceived "The Prelude" as only the beginning of what he wanted to say about himself, and about the universe as mirrored in his own intelligence, it became only too manifest that he was, in an unexampled degree, destitute of humour. Amusing anecdotes are told, by Lockhart, of conversations between Wordsworth and Scott in which Wordsworth's poetry was the sole theme, by no means to Sir Walter's discontent. On no contemporary but Burns and Coleridge did he bestow his approval: it may be doubted if he had spent half an hour with Byron's, Shelley's, and Keats's verse. To be sure this self-absorption is a malady most incident to poets!
In later life (1820-1837) Wordsworth visited the Continent, even reaching Italy. In 1839 he received a noble welcome and an honorary degree from Oxford; in 1843, on Southey's death, he accepted the Laureateship, which, before Southey's appointment, Scott had refused; and on 23 April, 1850, he passed away, leaving to Tennyson the laurels. He wished to teach us wisdom; he did something better, he gave us happiness.
Robert Southey.
The name of Robert Southey (born at Bristol, 12 August, 1774) was always connected with the names of the Lake School of poets, Coleridge and Wordsworth, though his theory and practice in poetry were quite distinct from those of the authors of "Lyrical Ballads". Southey was educated at Westminster, where his troubles began in his editorship of a little paper, "The Flagellant," which was opposed to flogging. On entering Balliol College, Oxford (1792), he declared himself a rebel, wearing his hair long, as becomes men of genius, while women of genius commonly wear their hair short. He also despised his Dons, and, nearly twenty years later, on meeting Shelley, then aged 19, he found in Shelley the counterpart of his undergraduate self. Shelley, however, did not, when at Oxford, contemplate taking Holy Orders. Southey soon abandoned the idea, and, meeting Coleridge at Oxford in June, 1794, devised with him the scheme of a "pantisocratic" community in America.