…
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
The extent of Wordsworth’s debt to Vaughan has been discussed a good deal. There was no copy of the Silex Scintillans in the Rydal Mount sale-catalogue. I believe that he had read The Retreate, and forgotten it more completely perhaps than Coleridge forgot Sir John Davies’ Orchestra, a Poem on Dancing, when he wrote The Ancient Mariner.
The following may be added from The Friend (the edition of 1818), vol. i. p. 183:—“To find no contradiction in the union of old and new to contemplate the Ancient of Days with feelings as fresh as if they then sprang forth at his own fiat, this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it! To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child’s sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day, for perhaps 40 years, had rendered familiar,
With sun and moon and stars throughout the year
And man and woman——
This is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent.”—Ed.
[310] Compare the Atman of the Vedanta Philosophy.—Ed.
[311] See vol. ii. p. 292.—Ed.