Wordsworth. Mendelssohn, being asked the meaning of one of his Lieder ohne Worte, played it, and said, "That is what I mean." Whether conscious interpretations of art are more often useful than pernicious, it is important that we bear in mind their limitations. The duty of the expositor is to introduce us to the poet and then withdraw. Poetry is emotion inspired: philosophy is a system. The poet has no more need of reasoning to plead for his verse than a friend of arguments to establish his character. In either case the truth is living. It cannot be explained. Its power is its proof. The interpreter can bring us to a point of view from which to look at it: the susceptibility must be our own. Wordsworth has suffered more than most poets from a translation of his poetry into philosophy; but the fault is largely Wordsworth's. His poetry all clusters round a few leading thoughts. The philosophic reader therefore sees in it the careful elaboration of a system, rather than the emotional expression of a great character. Again, owing perhaps to this preponderance of thought, perhaps more to his solitariness and independence of criticism, Wordsworth was a conspicuously fallible judge of his own work. He continually wrote in verse what would have been better expressed in prose. There is much in his poems, especially in his longer poems, that is simply philosophy in more or less effective rhythmthought which has not been fused in the alembic. This defect has the same root as the excellence which gives Words |