an atmosphere of plain living and high thinking.  His poetry brought him almost nothing in the way of money rewards, and it was only by a series of happy accidents that he was enabled to continue his work.  One of these accidents was that he became a Tory, and soon accepted the office of a distributor of stamps, and was later appointed poet laureate by the government,—­which occasioned Browning’s famous but ill-considered poem of “The Lost Leader”: 

    Just for a handful of silver he left us,
    Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

The last half century of Wordsworth’s life, in which he retired to his beloved lake district and lived successively at Grasmere and Rydal Mount, remind one strongly of Browning’s long struggle for literary recognition.  It was marked by the same steadfast purpose, the same trusted ideal, the same continuous work, and the same tardy recognition by the public.  His poetry was mercilessly ridiculed by nearly all the magazine critics, who seized upon the worst of his work as a standard of judgment; and book after book of poems appeared without meeting any success save the approval of a few loyal friends.  Without doubt or impatience he continued his work, trusting to the future to recognize and approve it.  His attitude here reminds one strongly of the poor old soldier whom he met in the hills,[222] who refused to beg or to mention his long service or the neglect of his country, saying with noble simplicity,

      My trust is in the God of Heaven
    And in the eye of him who passes me.

Such work and patience are certain of their reward, and long before Wordsworth’s death he felt the warm sunshine of general approval.  The wave of popular enthusiasm for Scott and Byron passed by, as their limitations were recognized; and Wordsworth was hailed by critics as the first living poet, and one of the greatest that England had ever produced.  On the death of Southey (1843) he was made poet laureate, against his own inclination.  The late excessive praise left him quite as unmoved as the first excessive neglect.  The steady decline in the quality of his work is due not, as might be expected, to self-satisfaction at success, but rather to his intense conservatism, to his living too much alone and failing to test his work by the standards and judgment of other literary men.  He died tranquilly in 1850, at the age of eighty years, and was buried in the churchyard at Grasmere.

Such is the brief outward record of the world’s greatest interpreter of nature’s message; and only one who is acquainted with both nature and the poet can realize how inadequate is any biography; for the best thing about Wordsworth must always remain unsaid.  It is a comfort to know that his life, noble, sincere, “heroically happy,” never contradicted his message.  Poetry was his life; his soul was in all his work; and only by reading what he has written can we understand the man.

THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH.  There is often a sense of disappointment when one reads Wordsworth for the first time; and this leads us to speak first of two difficulties which may easily prevent a just appreciation of the poet’s worth.  The first difficulty is in the reader, who is often puzzled by Wordsworth’s absolute simplicity.  We are so used to stage effects in poetry, that beauty unadorned is apt to escape our notice,—­like Wordsworth’s “Lucy”: