We all remember that he poked fun at those misguided Wordsworthians who
seek to glorify their master by claiming for him an "ethical system as
distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler's," and "a
scientific system of thought." But surely we find in his own poetry a
sustained doctrine of self-mastery, duty, and pursuit of truth, which is
essentially ethical, and, in its form, as nearly "scientific" and
systematic as the nature of poetry permits. And this doctrine is
conveyed, not by positive, hortatory, or didactic methods, but by
Criticism--the calm praise of what commends itself to his judgment, the
gentle but decisive rebuke of whatever offends or darkens or misleads.
Of him it may be truly said, as he said of Goethe, that
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: _Thou ailest here, and here._
His deepest conviction about "the suffering human race" would seem to
have been that its worst miseries arise from a too exalted estimate of
its capacities.
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