He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure,
Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.
C. S. Calverley.
Imitating the now-forgotten Martin Tupper.
Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony.... Even that vulgar and Tavern Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer.... There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear as the whole World, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God.
Sir Thomas Browne (Religio Medici).
(Speaking of an Essay on Wordsworth he is about to write for some Melbourne society) I purpose describing briefly the poetic tendencies, or rather the unpoetic tendencies, of the 18th Century, and the new school beginning to manifest itself in Cowper. I shall then refer to W.’s principles—shall banish to a future time the working out of the psychological connection between forms of nature and the human soul—shall banish also the feelings, the elementary feelings, of humanity, which W. drew powerful attention to, and confine myself to pointing out those characteristics in external nature which he took note of. These produce corresponding feelings in the “human,” and some of them are beauty, silence and calm, joyousness, generosity, freedom, grandeur, and Spirituality. These are found in Nature, and W. saw them, and in the growing familiarity with them a man’s soul becomes beautiful, calm, joyous, generous, free, grand, and spiritual. The first ones, of course, all depend on and grow from the last, and the Spirituality is God immanent. This last, as the root of all the others, will merit special attention—it exhibits W.’s poetico-philosophy so far as it regards the work of Nature upon man; and includes too the Platonic Reminiscence business. (Here follows personal chit-chat.) I think we might add the “supreme loftiness of labour” to the foregoing elements in Nature. In the Gipsies (I give both readings)