involved, and as remote from the “real language” of Westmoreland shepherds as is the epic blank verse of Milton.  On the other hand, in those of his poems which were consciously written in illustration of his theory, the affectation of simplicity, coupled with a defective sense of humor, sometimes led him to the selection of vulgar and trivial themes, and the use of language which is bald, childish, or even ludicrous.  His simplicity is too often the simplicity of Mother Goose rather than of Chaucer.  Instances of this occur in such poems as Peter Bell, the Idiot Boy, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, Simon Lee, and the Wagoner.  But there are multitudes of Wordsworth’s ballads and lyrics which are simple without being silly, and which, in their homeliness and clear profundity, in their production of the strongest effects by the fewest strokes, are among the choicest modern examples of pure, as distinguished from decorated, art.  Such are (out of many) Ruth, Lucy, She was a Phantom of Delight, To a Highland Girl, The Reverie of Poor Susan, To the Cuckoo, The Solitary Reaper, We Are Seven, The Pet Lamb, The Fountain, The Two April Mornings, Resolution and Independence, The Thorn, and Yarrow Unvisited.

Wordsworth was something of a Quaker in poetry, and loved the sober drabs and grays of life.  Quietism was his literary religion, and the sensational was to him not merely vulgar, but almost wicked.  “The human mind,” he wrote, “is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants.”  He disliked the far-fetched themes and high-colored style of Scott and Byron.  He once told Landor that all of Scott’s poetry together was not worth sixpence.  From action and passion he turned away to sing the inward life of the soul and the outward life of nature.  He said: 

  To me the meanest flower that blows can give
  Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

And again: 

  Long have I loved what I behold. 
  The night that charms, the day that cheers;
  The common growth of mother earth
  Suffices me—­her tears, her mirth,
  Her humblest mirth and tears.

Wordsworth’s life was outwardly uneventful.  The companionship of the mountains and of his own thoughts, the sympathy of his household, the lives of the dalesmen and cottagers about him furnished him with all the stimulus that he required.

  Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
    His only teachers had been woods and rills,
  The silence that is in the starry sky,
    The sleep that is among the lonely hills.