It is true, no doubt, that when Wordsworth wrote these poems he had
lost something of the young inimitable charm which fills such pieces
as the _Fountain_ or the _Solitary Reaper_. His language is majestic,
but it is no longer magical. And yet we cannot but feel that he has
put into these poems something which he could not have put into the
poems which preceded them; that they bear the impress of a soul
which has added moral effort to poetic inspiration, and is mistress
now of the acquired as well as of the innate virtue. For it is words
like these that are the strength and stay of men; nor can their
accent of lofty earnestness be simulated by the writer's art.
Literary skill may deceive the reader who seeks a literary pleasure
alone; and he to whom these strong consolations are a mere
imaginative luxury may be uncertain or indifferent out of what heart
they come. But those who need them know; spirits that hunger after
righteousness discern their proper food; there is no fear lest they
confound the sentimental and superficial with those weighty
utterances of moral truth which are the most precious legacy that a
man can leave to mankind.
Thus far, then, I must hold that although much of grace had already
vanished there was on the whole a progress and elevation in the mind
of him of whom we treat.
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