No Wordsworthian will doubt this.  Nay, the fervent Wordsworthian will add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen[376] does, that Wordsworth’s poetry is precious because his philosophy is sound; that his “ethical system is as distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler’s”; that his poetry is informed by ideas which “fall spontaneously into a scientific system of thought.”  But we must be on our guard against the Wordsworthians, if we want to secure for Wordsworth his due rank as a poet.  The Wordsworthians are apt to praise him for the wrong things, and to lay far too much stress upon what they call his philosophy.  His poetry is the reality, his philosophy—­so far, at least, as it may put on the form and habit of “a scientific system of thought,” and the more that it puts them on—­is the illusion.  Perhaps we shall one day learn to make this proposition general, and to say:  Poetry is the reality, philosophy the illusion.  But in Wordsworth’s case, at any rate, we cannot do him justice until we dismiss his formal philosophy.

The Excursion abounds with philosophy and therefore the Excursion is to the Wordsworthian what it never can be to the disinterested lover of poetry,—­a satisfactory work.  “Duty exists,” says Wordsworth, in the Excursion; and then he proceeds thus—­

      " ...  Immutably survive,
  For our support, the measures and the forms,
  Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
  Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not."[377]

And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet union of philosophy and poetry.  But the disinterested lover of poetry will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.

Or let us come direct to the centre of Wordsworth’s philosophy, as “an ethical system, as distinctive and capable of systematical exposition as Bishop Butler’s”—­

“...  One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists, one only;—­an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe’er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power; Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good."[378]

That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, religious and philosophic doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet’s excellence.  But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, none of the characters of poetic truth, the kind of truth which we require from a poet, and in which Wordsworth is really strong.

Even the “intimations” of the famous Ode,[379] those corner-stones of the supposed philosophic system of Wordsworth,—­the idea of the high instincts and affections coming out in childhood, testifying of a divine home recently left, and fading away as our life proceeds,—­this idea, of undeniable beauty as a play of fancy, has itself not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no real solidity.  The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child.