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LITERARY CRITICISM

EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

NOWELL C. SMITH

LATE FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD

LONDON

HENRY FROWDE

1905

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INTRODUCTION ·

WORDSWORTH did not write much prose, but he wrote enough to make one inquire why he did not write more. He lived to be eighty, in full possession at least of those faculties which are requisite for producing ephemeral literature. Wholly uninterested in the gossip, the personal and party trivialities, which almost exhaust the definition of politics for the majority of those who read or write the newspapers, he nevertheless took a keen interest in the larger aspects of public affairs, in the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Abolition of Slavery, Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, the Poor Law, Factories, Education. He held his views strongly, and had the didactic spirit, He was no student of philosophical writers, nor trained in philosophical method; but the bent of his mind was philosophical. Facts, whether in history or within the scope of his personal experience, were of interest to him solely so far as they suggested or illustrated principles: but he had the poet's distinctive habit of embodying principles in concrete facts. He was, as his poems show, and as he stated in no ambiguous terms, before all things desirous of teaching those principles which he held himself.

Here, then, is one answer to our inquiry, which

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