. Backgrounds of literature. AND WORDSWORTH always in danger of straining his art and dissi-pating its magic in the endeavor to produceethical results; and a touch of didacticism ban-ishes the bloom and dissolves the spell. Therewas in Wordsworth a natural stiffness of mindwhich showed itself more distinctly as time im-paired the vivacity of his moods and the fresh-ness of his imagination. He was, by instinctand the habit of a lifetime, a moralist; and therewere times when he came perilously near beinga preacher in verse. He was, as often happens,radically unlike the popular impression of him;

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. Backgrounds of literature. AND WORDSWORTH always in danger of straining his art and dissi-pating its magic in the endeavor to produceethical results; and a touch of didacticism ban-ishes the bloom and dissolves the spell. Therewas in Wordsworth a natural stiffness of mindwhich showed itself more distinctly as time im-paired the vivacity of his moods and the fresh-ness of his imagination. He was, by instinctand the habit of a lifetime, a moralist; and therewere times when he came perilously near beinga preacher in verse. He was, as often happens,radically unlike the popular impression of him;he and Keats have been widely and astonish-ingly misunderstood. One constantly comesupon expressions of the feeling that Words-worth had the calmness of the philosophic tem-per, and that he was by nature self-poised andcold; and this in the face of the fact that one ofthe great qualities of his verse is its passion!Wordsworth was, by nature, headstrong, ar-dent, passionate, with great capacity for emo-tion and suffering; the

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