The range of poetry is indeed inexhaustible, and even the greatest poets must suffer some subtraction from universal pre-eminence. Therefore we may frankly admit the deficiencies of Wordsworth,—that he was lacking in dramatic force and in the power of characterization; that he was singularly deficient in humor, and therefore in the saving grace of self-criticism in the capacity to see himself occasionally in a ridiculous light; that he has little of the romantic glamor and none of the narrative energy of Scott; that Shelley's lyrical flights leave him plodding along the dusty highway; and that Byron's preternatural force makes his passion seen by contrast pale and ineffectual. All this and more may freely be granted, and yet for his influence upon English thought, and especially upon the poetic thought of his country, he must be named after Shakespeare and Milton. The intellectual value of his work will endure; for leaving aside much valuable doctrine, which from didactic excess fails as poetry, he has brought into the world a new philosophy of Nature and has emphasised in a manner distinctively his own the dignity of simple manhood.—Pelham Edgar.
REFERENCES ON WORDSWORTH'S LIFE AND WORKS
Wordsworth by F. W. H. Myers, in English Men of Letters series. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Wordsworth by Walter Raleigh, London: Edward Arnold.
Wordsworth by Rosaline Masson, in The People's Books series. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack,
Wordsworthiana edited by William Knight. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Essays Chiefly on Poetry by Aubrey de Vere, 2 volumes. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Literary Essays by Richard Holt Hutton. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited.
Studies in Literature by Edward Dowden. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.
Aspects of Poetry by J. S. C. Shairp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company.