In Demosthenes the thoughts and principles are
often as lofty as any patriot can express; but their loftiness, in
his speech, as in the very truth of things, seemed but to add to
their immediate reality. They were beaten and inwoven into the facts
of the hour; action seemed to turn, on them as on its only possible
pivot; it was as though Virtue and Freedom hung armed in heaven
above the assembly, and in the visible likeness of immortal
ancestors beckoned upon an urgent way. Wordsworth's mood of mind, on
the other hand, as he has depicted it in two sonnets written at the
same time as his tract, explains why it was that that appeal was
rather a solemn protest than an effective exhortation. In the first
sonnet he describes the surroundings of his task,--the dark wood and
rocky cave, "the hollow vale which foaming torrents fill with
omnipresent murmur:"--
Here mighty Nature! In this school sublime
I weigh the hopes and fears of suffering Spain;
For her consult the auguries of time,
And through the human heart explore my way,
And look and listen, gathering whence I may
Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain.
And then he proceeds to conjecture what effect his tract will produce:--
I dropped my pen, and listened to the wind,
That sang of trees uptorn and vessels tost;
A midnight harmony, and wholly lost
To the general sense of men, by chains confined
Of business, care, or pleasure,--or resigned
To timely sleep.
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