Finally, we might look at the reverse side of the picture, and endeavour to show how the narrow limits of Wordsworth's power are connected with certain moral defects; with the want of quick sympathy which shows itself in his dramatic feebleness, and the austerity of character which caused him to lose his special gifts too early and become a rather commonplace defender of conservatism; and that curious diffidence (he assures us that it was 'diffidence') which induced him to write many thousand lines of blank verse entirely about himself. But the task would be superfluous as well as ungrateful. It was his aim, he tells us, 'to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous;' and, high as was the aim he did much towards its accomplishment. FOOTNOTES: [24] J. S. Mill and Whewell were, for their generation, the ablest exponents of two opposite systems of thought upon such matters. Mill has expressed his obligations to Wordsworth in his 'Autobiography,' and Whewell dedicated to Wordsworth his 'Elements of Morality' in acknowledgment of his influence as a moralist. [25] The poem of Henry Vaughan, to which reference is often made in this connection, scarcely contains more than a pregnant hint. [26] As, for example, in the _Lines on Tintern Abbey_: 'If this be but a vain belief.' [27] See Wordsworth's reference to the _Wealth of Nations_, in the _Prelude_, book xiii. [28] So, too, in the _Prelude_:-- Then was the truth received into my heart, That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring, If from the affliction somewhere do not grow Honour which could not else have been, a faith, An elevation, and a sanctity; If new strength be not given, nor old restored, The fault is ours, not Nature's. _LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS_