"What you have been saying," resumed Turner, after another pause, "reminds me much of one of Wordsworth's poems. I do not mean the famous ode."
"You mean the 'Ninth Evening Voluntary,' I know—one of his finest and truest and deepest poems. It begins, 'Had this effulgence disappeared.'"
"Yes, that is the one I mean. I shall read it again when I go home. But you don't agree with Wordsworth, do you, about our having had an existence previous to this?"
He gave a little laugh as he asked the question.
"Not in the least. But an opinion held by such men as Plato, Origen, and Wordsworth, is not to be laughed at, Mr. Turner. It cannot be in its nature absurd. I might have mentioned Shelley as holding it, too, had his opinion been worth anything."
"Then you don't think much of Shelley?"
"I think his feeling most valuable; his opinion nearly worthless."
"Well, perhaps I had no business to laugh, at it; but—"
"Do not suppose for a moment that I even lean to it. I dislike it. It would make me unhappy to think there was the least of sound argument for it. But I respect the men who have held it, and know there must be something good in it, else they could not have held it."
"Are you able then to sympathise with that ode of Wordsworth's? Does it not depend for all its worth on the admission of this theory?"