An example of Wordsworth’s wisdom disclosing itself in his simplest pieces. For one sad conclusion to which the reason leads us, the uncontrolled, baseless procedure in the brain which we call thinking, but is really day-dreaming, leads us to a score. Reason on the whole is sanative. * * * * * ‘Blest Statesman He, whose Mind’s unselfish will Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye Sees that, apart from magnanimity, Wisdom exists not, nor the humbler skill Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill With patient care.’ Exist not. We are befooled by words. We conceive wisdom, prudence, and magnanimity as distinct entities, without intercommunication. If we could but see things as they are without the tyranny of definition! * * * * * Wordsworth has a singular power of expressing articulately that which would be mere mist without him, but is of vital importance. GODWIN AND WORDSWORTH (Reprinted from _The Pilot_, 20th April 1901. With added postscript.) DR. ÉMILE LEGOUIS, in his singularly interesting book, _La Jeunesse de William Wordsworth_, well translated into English by Mr. T. W. Matthews (Dent and Co., 1897), calls attention to the influence on Wordsworth in his early years of Godwin’s _Political Justice_. On reading _Political Justice_ now, it is difficult to understand why Wordsworth should have been so much affected by it. Its philosophy, if philosophy it can be called, is simply the denial of any rule of conduct or of any belief which the understanding cannot prove, and the inclusion of man in the necessity which controls inanimate nature. ‘All vice is nothing more than error and mistake’ (i. 31). {205} ‘We differ from the inferior animals in the greater facility with which we arrange our sensations, and compare, prefer, and judge’ (i. 57). ‘Justice . . . is coincident with utility’ (i. 121). ‘If my mother were in a house on fire, and I had a ladder outside with which I could save her, she would not, because she was my mother, have any greater claim than the other inmates on my exertions’ (i. 83). ‘But,’ says an objector, ‘your mother nourished you in the helplessness of infancy.’ ‘When she first subjected herself,’ replies Godwin, ‘to the necessity of these cares, she was probably influenced by no particular motives of benevolence to her future offspring. . . . It is the disposition of the mind . . . that entitles to respect,’ and consequently justice demands that I should rescue the most meritorious person first.’ All moral science may be reduced to this one head, calculation of the future’ (ii. 468), and consequently a promise is not an obligation. The statement that it is essential that we should be able to depend on engagements ‘would be somewhat more accurate if we said “that it was essential to various circumstances of human intercourse, that we should be known to bestow a steady attention upon