be "well adapted to interest mankind permanently," which the poetry of the older school had manifestly ceased to do. It was to these observers, these serious disciples, that the important manifesto of 1800 was addressed. This was no case of genius working without consciousness of its own aim; there was neither self-delusion nor mock-modesty about Wordsworth. He considered his mission to be one of extreme solemnity. He had determined. that no "indolence" should "prevent him from endeavouring to ascertain what was his duty," and he was convinced that that duty was called to redeem poetry in England from a state of "depravity," and to start the composition of "poems materially different from those upon which general

approbation is [in 1800] at present bestowed." He was determined to build up a new art on precept and example, and this is what he did achieve with astonishing completeness.

In the neighbourhood of the Quantocks, where he arrived at the very moment that his powers were at their ripest and his genius eager to expand, Wordsworth found. himself surrounded by rustic types of a pathetic order, the conditions of whose life were singularly picturesque. He was in the state of transition between the ignorance of youth and that hardness and density of apprehension which invaded. his early middle life. His observation was keen and yet still tender and ductile. He was accompanied and stimulated in his investigations by his incomparable sister. To them came Coleridge, swimming in a lunar radiance of sympathy and sentimental passion, casting over the more elementary instincts of the Wordsworths the distinction of his elaborate intellectual experience. Together on the ferny hills, in the deep coombes, by "Kilve's sounding shore," the wonderful trio discussed, conjectured, planned, and from the spindles of their talk there was swiftly spun the magic web of modern romantic poetry. They determined, as Wordsworth says, that "the passions of men should be incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." All elements were there-the pathetic peasants, the pure solitudes of hill and wood and sky, the enthusiastic perception of each of these, the moment in the history of the country, the companionship and confraternity which circulate the tongues of fire-and accordingly the process of combination and creation was rapid and conclusive.

There are, perhaps, no two other English poets of anything like the