This is a high claim to make for Wordsworth.  But if it is a just claim, if Wordsworth’s place among the poets who have appeared in the last two or three centuries is after Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton, Goethe, indeed, but before all the rest, then in time Wordsworth will have his due.  We shall recognize him in his place, as we recognize Shakespeare and Milton; and not only we ourselves shall recognize him, but he will be recognized by Europe also.  Meanwhile, those who recognize him already may do well, perhaps, to ask themselves whether there are not in the case of Wordsworth certain special obstacles which hinder or delay his due recognition by others, and whether these obstacles are not in some measure removable.

The Excursion and the Prelude, his poems of greatest bulk, are by no means Wordsworth’s best work.  His best work is in his shorter pieces, and many indeed are there of these which are of first-rate excellence.  But in his seven volumes the pieces of high merit are mingled with a mass of pieces very inferior to them; so inferior to them that it seems wonderful how the same poet should have produced both.  Shakespeare frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite false, and which are entirely unworthy of him.  But one can imagine him smiling if one could meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; smiling and replying that he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter?  But with Wordsworth the case is different.  Work altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by him with evident unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us with the same faith and seriousness as his best work.  Now a drama or an epic fill the mind, and one does not look beyond them; but in a collection of short pieces the impression made by one piece requires to be continued and sustained by the piece following.  In reading Wordsworth the impression made by one of his fine pieces is too often dulled and spoiled by a very inferior piece coming after it.

Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some sixty years; and it is no exaggeration to say that within one single decade of those years, between 1798 and 1808, almost all his really first-rate work was produced.  A mass of inferior work remains, work done before and after this golden prime, imbedding the first-rate work and clogging it, obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not unfrequently, the high-wrought mood with which we leave it.  To be recognized far and wide as a great poet, to be possible and receivable as a classic, Wordsworth needs to be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage which now encumbers him.  To administer this relief is indispensable, unless he is to continue to be a poet for the few only,—­a poet valued far below his real worth by the world.