As a lover of nature, delighting in travel amid lovely scenery, he found his answer to the problem of life in the tranquillity and ever present spirit of law and duty which he perceived in all nature's forms. For him the presence of God was manifest in fields and mountains, in flowers and brooks, as much as in the lives of men and women.
Poetry, in his conception, was the preservation of impressions in such form that when read it would again create those impressions. Its language should be extremely simple, hardly departing from that of everyday life and conversation. The petty incidents of daily experience for him often contained such deep suggestions of beauty and good that he recorded them at length.
It was this utter simplicity of attitude and tone that made him the object of slashing criticism for some time. An absolute innovator, his work was as absurd in the eyes of the critics as the wildest freaks of the cubists are to us. At last he became a subject of discussion instead of ridicule, then of praise, and finally of lasting fame. Yet much of his work is far better unread to-day; only in his earlier verse, when the inspiration of youth and the freshness of his message still urged him, is there any true greatness evident. His later work, like his later years, is cold and conservative. He made no further progress, once he had given expression to his first radical ideas. This tendency was rebuked by Browning in "The Lost Leader."
THE MAN
1. Did Wordsworth take an active part in the life of his time? I, 180.
2. How did Browning look on this side of his character? II, 265.
3. What two poets were intimately associated with Wordsworth? III, 310; XI, 221.
4. The following illustrations are closely associated with his life and work: III, Frontispiece, 322; IV, 178; XI, 228; XII, Frontispiece, 324.
5. What influences molded his ideas of poetry and life?
6. How does his length of life compare with that of his contemporaries, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Southey, Lamb, and De Quincey?