On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not only is Wordsworth
eminent by reason of the goodness of his best work, but he is eminent
also by reason of the great body of good work which he has left to us.
With the ancients I will not compare him. In many respects the ancients
are far above us, and yet there is something that we demand which they
can never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the poets and
poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Milton, Goethe, are
altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven
than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the moderns, we are to
find his superiors.
To disengage the poems which show his power, and to present them to the
English-speaking public and to the world, is the object of this volume.
I by no means say that it contains all which in Wordsworth's poems is
interesting. Except in the case of _Margaret_, a story composed
separately from the rest of the _Excursion_, and which belongs to a
different part of England, I have not ventured on detaching portions of
poems, or on giving any piece otherwise than as Wordsworth himself gave
it.
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