And the reason
why he can say one thing well, is because his vision extends to the
sight of all things, and so he describes each as one who knows many
and all.
The fame of Wordsworth is a leading fact in modern literature,
when it is considered how hostile his genius at first seemed to the
reigning taste, and with what feeble poetic talents his great and
steadily growing dominion has been established. More than any other
poet his success has been not his own, but that of the idea which he
shared with his coevals, and which he has rarely succeeded in
adequately expressing. The Excursion awakened in every lover of
nature the right feeling. We saw stars shine, we felt the awe of
mountains, we heard the rustle of the wind in the grass, and knew
again the ineffable secret of solitude. It was a great joy. It was
nearer to nature than anything we had before. But the interest of
the poem ended almost with the narrative of the influences of nature
on the mind of the Boy, in the first book. Obviously for that
passage the poem was written, and with the exception of this and of a
few strains of the like character in the sequel, the whole poem was
dull.
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