The years that succeeded the first publication of the _Renaissance_ were not years of very strenuous literary work. Pater was at this time holding the Tutorship of the College, as well as lecturing, and the official business connected with the post was considerable. A tutor is supposed to exert a general supervision over the work of his pupils, to criticise their compositions and essays, and to keep himself informed of their progress. It cannot be said that Pater’s practical effectiveness was strong enough to equip him adequately for the task. He received and criticised the essays; he responded with cordial sympathy to any direct appeals for assistance; but a tutor, to be effective, must have a power of shining, like the sun, upon the eager and the reluctant, the grateful and the unthankful alike; some pupils must be impulsively inspired; some delicately encouraged; some ironically chastised; some few must, like the image of Democracy in Tennyson’s poem, “toil onward, prick’d with goads and stings.” Pater had little capacity for this kind of work—indeed, he did not even conceive it to be his duty; but in any case the mere routine-work was heavy. Moreover, he had to a certain extent come out of his shell, enjoyed a good deal of quiet sociability, and gained a reputation as a brilliant and paradoxical talker. Meanwhile, as I have said, his literary output was small. His study of “Wordsworth” (1874) is a very subtle piece of criticism. It is often taken for granted that Wordsworth valued tranquillity above ardour, and thus the essay is peculiarly felicitous in pointing out that not mere contemplation, but _impassioned_ contemplation, was the underlying purpose of the poet’s life. Pater shows that Wordsworth’s choice of incidents and situations from common life was made “not for their tameness, but for (their) passionate sincerity.” He indicates that the reason why Wordsworth selected the homelier figures of the world for his protagonists was that he might display “all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence, their longing, their wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, like the pleasures of children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare existence; their yearning towards each other, in their darkened houses, or at their early toil.”