itation and a name. Sometimes the dominant tendency in the rendering is theological, sometimes naturalistic, or moralistic, or pantheistic, or transcendental, or mystical, but always more or less transcendental and mystical. For the heart of both mysticism and transcendentalism lies in the intensity and power with which we will to face the mysterious and the indefinable within us and around us and in the intensity and power with which in the end we surrender ourselves to the mysterious and the indefinable.

There is a sort of criticism which identifies the transcendental and the mystical with the vague, and thinks it has condemned a poet when it shows that his poetry runs into transcendentalism and mysticism. This is rather loose and dubious criticism, to say the least. Of course, poetry must be passionate and concrete, but it ought also to be suggestive; and it is possible for it to be the most suggestive when it is the most concrete, the most inexhaustible and indefinable when it has the clearest definition. Even Shakespeare's great characters, naturalistic and overwhelmingly real as they are, possess inexhaustible and indefinable spiritual powers. Though they are overcome by fate, they impress us as havng free souls that are at one with the spiritual freedom of the universe. From such well-springs of spiritual freedom flow the powers of transcendentalism and mysticism, and in such a foutain-head great poetry has its source. Granting that a poetry remain sufficiently passionate and concrete, a true measure of its greatness is the measure of the depth with which it reveals the transcendental, the mystical, the indefinable and spiritual elements of being.

The purpose of this book is to study the poetry of Wordsworth, of Tennyson, and of Browning, respectively, from the points of view indicated in the preceding

pages. We shall see, first, how the power of will and the spirit and theory of freedom have entered into the making of their poetry; and secondly, how the surrender of their wills to a higher will led them into the region of the transcendental and the mystical, and how each characteristically bodied forth his vision of spiritual freedom and personality; and thirdly, what ethical and artistic estimates may be made of their respective performances from the point of view of our inquiry. The study is to be made in the light of a few fundamental characteristics of the times in which each lived-in the light of the action and reaction of the times upon the character and of the character upon the times.

CHAPTER I

WORDSWORTH AND HIS TIMES.

What then are the chief characteristics of the times and the vital qualities of character with which we must begin our study of Wordsworth? The times were chiefly revolutionary: men were making radical attempts to readjust society on a higher level, which produced widespread social unrest; and men were seeking greater personal liberty, which tended to emphasize the differences of personal opinion. This is not intended to be in any sense a complete statement of the characteristics of the times. One needs but to glance at the literature dealing with this period to see the futile attempts of writers to express in single phrases the forces then at work. Some of the phrases include so much that they are vague; others are so specific that they do not include enough. "A time of growing intolerance of antiquated and artificial forms," a time of "reaction against eighteenth century civilization," of a "return to nature," of "simplification," a time of the "recreation of mediaevalism," of the "rediscovery and vindication of the concrete," a time of "a sudden increase of the vital energy of the species," a time of "growth in the notion of the brotherhood of man," a time of "the strengthening of the national consciousness of the different nations of Europe,"

-all these are partial failures and partial successes; they fail to give an adequate conception of the times, they succeed in expressing some important aspect of them. The complexity of the forces then at work makes it well nigh impossible to express those forces in a single phrase. And our own statement claims only to point out such aspects of the times as have the most important bearing on the development of Wordsworth's experiences regarding the power of will and the principle of mysticism.

Yet the forces included in our statement are among the most permanent of the times. While many of the others, such as a "return to nature" and the "rediscovery and vindication of the concrete," have done their work, those included in our statement have still not spent their energy, even though a hundred years span the time between then and now. Our times are still revolutionary, only in a milder sense. Though our methods of work are different from those of a hundred years ago, we have not abated our zeal to readjust social conditions. Though we may not proclaim personal liberty as vehemently as men did of old, yet the divergence of the expression of personal opinion is greater than ever, and is ever widening. The times of Wordsworth initiated and gave a tremendous impetus to two forces that characterize the whole of the nineteenth century, the forces, namely, of increased efficiency and adjustment of organized society, and the widened powers and range of personal liberty.

The revolutionary forces of those days were by no means confined to the settlement and readjustment of political problems. They invaded all the departments of human affairs, even the affairs of practical religion. In a preface to a sonnet written in 1827, Wordsworth makes

this suggestive statement,-"Attendance at church on prayer-days, Wednesdays and Fridays and holidays, received a shock at the Revolution. It is now, however, happily reviving." The spirit of revolution was in the atmosphere, and it found its way into every nook and corner of town and hamlet:

'Twas in truth an hour

Of universal ferment; mildest men
Were agitated; and commotions, strife
Of passion and opinion, filled the walls
Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds.1

Dominant in all the activities of the times was the note of an equilibrium less secure than in the period of time preceding, of an old anchorage breaking up, of maladjustments and instabilities, and at the same time, of promises and potencies of a slow but ever higher developement. By the shock of the Revolution, men were compelled to revert to first principles, to explore all natures in order to find the law that governs each. And when, in the presence of danger, a man sinks deeply into himself to discover the grounds upon which to think and act, he not only finds his own opinions to diverge from those of others, but he also gathers courage for his own convictions. Such was the experience of Wordsworth in the time of the Revolution. But while the insecure equilibrium and the maladjustments of the times encouraged and reinforced the expression of personal experience, they also tended to produce the excesses of individualism, false perspectives of life, wild theories, and unattainable ideals. They account in part, it has been alleged and rightly, for the incoherencies of Shelley and the terrific convulsions of Byron. But do they not also

"Prelude," Bk. IX.