Morality would never have founded the British Empire in India; it was English piracy that wrested from Iberia the control of the Spanish Main and the kingdom of the sea. War is empowered immorality: poetry is a warfare. What I mean by Wordsworth's immorality begins to appear. This most naive and majestic person, leading the proudest, cleanest, sweetest of lives, was, during all his poetical time, immoralist _sans tache_. In his boyhood he can think of no other atonement for a slight indignity done him than suicide; he is perverse and obstinate, defies chastisement--is rather proud of it, and slashes his whip through the family portrait; he breathes "among wild appetites and blind desires": delights and exults in "motions of savage instinct": sullen, wayward, intractable, nothing fascinates him except "dangerous feats." Even when his poetical time is spent, he can still do the thing that Wordsworth should do. Milton's watch being handed round, he takes out his own, a procedure that makes the company uneasy; and it is remembered against him by vulgar people who were present and felt foolish; but Wordsworth would not have been Wordsworth had he left this undone. In Paris of the Revolution he "ranges the streets with an ardour previously unfelt," and remembers that the destiny of man has always hung upon a few individuals. Why should not he lead the Jacobins, carry freedom through Europe, and be the master of the world? He withdraws, however, and tells himself at the time it is lack of means; but "The Prelude," that miracle of self-knowledge and inferior blank verse, is more explicit:-- "An insignificant stranger and obscure, And one moreover little graced with power Of eloquence even in my native speech, And all unfit for turmoil or intrigue." Another "insignificant stranger and obscure," as "little graced with power of eloquence," ranged the streets of Paris devouring his heart about the same time as Wordsworth--devouring his heart and considering whether the Seine at once might not be his best goal. Had Wordsworth remained in Paris to contest the dictatorship with Napoleon? It is a dazzling might-have-been. Carlyle's remark on Wordsworth comes to mind at once:-- "He was essentially a cold, hard, silent, practical man, who, if he had not fallen into poetry, would have done effectual work of some sort in the world. This was the impression one got of him as he looked out of his stern blue eyes superior to men and circumstances ... a man of immense head and great jaws like a crocodile's, cast in a mould designed for prodigious work."