Jeffrey decried two other pieces that rank among the most perfect of Wordsworth's minor poems, as "stuff about dancing daffodils and sister Emmelines," and spoke of another, which we count for pure poetry to-day, as "a rapturous, mystical ode to the cuckoo, in which the author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but absurdity." And he attacked these lines in the "Ode to Duty": Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong: And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong. This, Jeffrey said, is "utterly without meaning: at least we have no sort of conception in what sense Duty can be said to keep the old skies _fresh_, and the stars from wrong." We need not be surprised at Jeffrey's failing to admire these lines: they are transcendentalism, and it would have troubled Wordsworth himself to render them into the plain speech which he recommended as the proper diction of poetry. For they have not a definite translatable content of thought; and we cannot read them as philosophy or ethics; but as poetry we may feel their power; we are willing to enjoy them for their own sake, because beauty is enough. But this Jeffrey did not admit; Jeffrey was not vulnerable by magnificent phrases, and of course he could not foresee what a power Wordsworth's transcendentalism was to exert. When the ode "Intimations of Immortality" first appeared (with the edition of 1807), Jeffrey called it "the most illegible and unintelligible part of the publication."[F] The remark need not surprise us. Jeffrey looked for logical thought in the poem, and logical thought it had not; whatever else it may contain, it will hardly be said to propound any new arguments for immortality. But Jeffrey wrote in all sincerity, and later in his life he read Wordsworth's poetry a second time, with a view to discover, if he could, the merits which he had failed to see when he criticised it--the merits which the English public had then found out. His effort was a failure: for him the primrose remained a primrose to the last, and nothing more. The acute lawyer was not a poet, nor a judge of poets; he had an erroneous notion of what the office of poetry is; of what it has been and will be--to please, to elevate, to suggest, but not to argue or convince; and to the last he did not get beyond his early decision, which, in the article just quoted from, runs as follows: We think there is every reason to hope that the lamentable consequences which have resulted from Mr. Wordsworth's open violation of the established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means of restoring to that ancient and venerable code its honor and authority. [Footnote F: "Edinburgh Review," October, 1807.]