On the contrary, in his constant desire frugally to extract, as it
were, its full teaching from the minutest event which has befallen
him, he supplements the self-complacency of the autobiographer with
the conscientious exactness of the moralist, and is apt to insist on
trifles such as lodge in the corners of every man's memory, as if
they were unique lessons vouchsafed to himself alone.
Yet it follows from this very temper of mind that there is scarcely
any autobiography which we can read with such implicit confidence as
the _Prelude_. In the case of this, as of so many of Wordsworth's
productions, our first dissatisfaction at the form which the poem
assumes yields to a recognition of its fitness to express precisely
what the poet intends. Nor are there many men who, in recounting the
story of their own lives, could combine a candour so absolute with
so much of dignity--who could treat their personal history so
impartially as a means of conveying lessons of general truth--or who,
while chronicling such small things, could remain so great. The
_Prelude_ is a book of good augury for human nature. We feel in
reading it as if the stock of mankind were sound. The soul seems
going on from strength to strength by the mere development of her
inborn power.
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