It was Wordsworth who made most of this
distinction, assuming it as the basis for the final classification
(abandoned, as we said, in the new edition) of his poetical writings.
And nowhere is the distinction more realizable than in Wordsworth's
own work. For though what may be called professed Wordsworthians,
including Matthew Arnold, found a value in all that remains of him--
could read anything he wrote, "even the 'Thanksgiving Ode,'--
everything, I think, except 'Vaudracour and Julia,'"--yet still the
decisiveness of such selections as those made by Arnold himself, and
now by Professor Knight, hint at a certain very obvious difference of
level in his poetic work.
This perpetual suggestion of an absolute duality between his lower
and higher moods, and the poetic work produced in them, stimulating
the reader to look below the immediate surface of his poetry, makes
the study of Wordsworth an excellent exercise for the training of
those mental powers in us, which partake both of thought and
imagination. It begets in those [95] who fall in with him at the
right moment of their spiritual development, a habit of reading
between the lines, a faith in the effect of concentration and
collectedness of mind on the right appreciation of poetry, the
expectation that what is really worth having in the poetic order will
involve, on their part, a certain discipline of the temper not less
than of the intellect.
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