Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/262

is, represents intuitions or convictions; it embodies his faith as to the world and human nature, without reference to the logical justifications. Coleridge held, as a metaphysician naturally does, that his philosophic creed required to be justified by a whole apparatus of dialectics which would be out of place in verse. Whether this apparatus was really the base 'of his convictions, or represents the after-thought by which he justified them, does not matter. Wordsworth, in any case, is content to expound his philosophy as self-evident. He speaks as from inspiration, not as the builder of a logical system. One result was that when he tried to argue, he got, as he admits with his usual naïveté, 'endlessly perplexed' (p. 307). He wanted 'formal proof,' and could not find it. He did not, of course, join the 'scoffers'; a sufficient reason was, as the scoffers would say, that he was incompetent to appreciate them. When, in the Excursion, he audaciously calls Voltaire 'dull,' he is tacitly admitting that he could never see a joke. Anyhow, after bothering himself with metaphysics till his head turned, he fortunately resolved to be a poet; and here had a short cut to his conclusions. I do not mean to scoff at Wordsworth.