That the end of life is not action but contemplation—­being as distinct from doing—­a certain disposition of the mind:  is, in some shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality.  In poetry, in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this principle in a measure; these, by their sterility, are a type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding.  To treat life in the spirit of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified:  to encourage such treatment, the true moral significance of art and poetry.  Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned contemplation.  Their work is not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw the thoughts for a while from the mere machinery of life, to fix them, with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man’s existence which no machinery affects, ’on the great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature’—­on ’the operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and hope, on fear and sorrow.’  To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like Wordsworth’s is a great nourisher and stimulant.  He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world:—­images, in his own words, ‘of men suffering, amid awful forms and powers.’

Certainly the real secret of Wordsworth has never been better expressed.  After having read and reread Mr. Pater’s essay—­for it requires re-reading—­one returns to the poet’s work with a new sense of joy and wonder, and with something of eager and impassioned expectation.  And perhaps this might be roughly taken as the test or touchstone of the finest criticism.

Finally, one cannot help noticing the delicate instinct that has gone to fashion the brief epilogue that ends this delightful volume.  The difference between the classical and romantic spirits in art has often, and with much over-emphasis, been discussed.  But with what a light sure touch does Mr. Pater write of it!  How subtle and certain are his distinctions!  If imaginative prose be really the special art of this century, Mr. Pater must rank amongst our century’s most characteristic artists.  In certain things he stands almost alone.  The age has produced wonderful prose styles, turbid with individualism, and violent with excess of rhetoric.  But in Mr. Pater, as in Cardinal Newman, we find the union of personality with perfection.  He has no rival in his own sphere, and he has escaped disciples.  And this, not because he has not been imitated, but because in art so fine as his there is something that, in its essence, is inimitable.