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thoroughly contented with his lot. They could not all be non-resident bishops, but they had no grievances to speak of. Wordsworth hereupon wrote a letter in which he is, at least, unmistakably on the side of Paine against Burke. He had at this time adopted the opinions of Beaupuy. He objects on principle to monarchy and to privileged orders of nobility. At most it may be said that his argument is not so much that of the theorist arguing from abstract rights, as of the independent Briton who will not humble himself to a lord, and whose republicanism resembles Milton's rather than Rousseau's. But now, when he was roused by later developments to look into his first principles, he found himself in a cruel difficulty. In the first place, Wordsworth, though he was a philosophical poet, was not at home in metaphysical or logical subtleties. He is the antithesis of Coleridge, who combined in so singular a degree the poetical and the reasoning faculties. Coleridge could keep the two faculties apart; and his poems—the really exquisite poems, at least—are as free from any admixture of philosophy as if he had never heard of 'object' and 'subject.' The cause of the difference is simple, namely, that Wordsworth's philosophy, such as it