But here is the point to get clear: practically all this poetry was written in eight years; you might count on your ten fingers and ten toes all the lines that Wordsworth wrote after the age of thirty-five which are worth anyone’s while to read. In my youth, when I was studying poetry, it was my habit to go through a poet, beginning with the first page of volume one and ending with the last page of volume five, or ten, or whatever it might be. In the case of Wordsworth, it was volume twelve, and he was the one poet with whom I fell down. The “Ecclesiastical Sonnets” finished me; I testify that of all the dreary drivel in the world’s literature, this carries the prize. There were two men in Wordsworth: the instinctive man, who experienced overwhelming feelings, and the conscious man, who was terrified by those feelings. This is no guess of mine, but something which Wordsworth himself explained over and over again: “My apprehensions come in crowds.... My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills.... Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires.” So the Wordsworth who believed in the Tory party and the Thirty-nine Articles put the screws on the poet, and not merely the emotions, but the brains of a great genius withered before the age of forty. The cases of Coleridge, Southey and Wordsworth suggest the inquiry: is it possible for a great poet to be a conservative? In old times, yes; for the conservatives then had something to say for themselves. But in the last hundred years the meaning of the class struggle has become so apparent, the consequences of class exploitation have become so obvious, that a man who fails to see them must be deficient in intelligence, a man who fails to care about them must be deficient in heart and conscience; and these are things without which great poetry cannot be made. CHAPTER LVII THE FIRST LORD OF LETTERS Fortunately not all the poets of England let themselves be frightened into reaction by the French revolution. George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in 1788. His father was a rake and blackguard. “Your mother is a fool,” said a schoolmate; and Byron answered, “I know it.” This, you must admit, was a poor start in life for a boy. He had a club foot, concerning which he was frightfully sensitive; but in other ways he was divinely handsome, and much sought after by the ladies; so he alternated between fits of solitude and melancholy, and other fits of amorous excess. Being a lord, he was a great person all his life. Being a man of genius, he enormously increased his greatness. He lived always before the world, in one sublime pose or another, and composed whole epics about himself and his moods.