assails the power of the people, is no longer a tribune at all. . . . For the tribunes, as well as the consuls, hold office by the people's votes. . . . We esteem him to be legally chosen tribune who is elected only by the majority of votes; and is not therefore the same person much more lawfully degraded, when by a general consent of them all, they agree to depose him?'" These are the arguments which we hear to-day in support of the same procedure. Cicero and other ancient authors tell us that Tiberius came under the influence of Greek teachers, and some modern writers have supposed that he imbibed this doctrine of popular sovereignty from them, but our analysis of the earlier period seems to show that the full recognition of this theory was the natural outcome of the precedents which had been set during the preceding century. It is an interesting coincidence that these two doctrines of the referendum and the recall reached their fully developed form at the same moment, in the time of Tiberius, and that from his tribunate we date the beginning of the Revolution. The coincidence is one of historical interest, but of course does not justify us in assuming that the introduction of these two political devices in the present day will lead to equally radical results. FRANK FROST ABBOTT. Princeton University. THE GROWTH OF THE CLASSICAL IN WORDSWORTH'S POETRY The essentially romantic character of Wordsworth's early poetry no one is likely to dispute. In his preface to the edition of 1800 he declared himself a rebel to the school of Pope by announcing his principles, which are romantic to the core. Every article in his pronouncement is straight defiance to the authority and creed of the dying clssicism. His "principal object," he says, "was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men and, at the same time, to throw over them a colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement." This marks a great advance upon the sacred doctrine of Pope that True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. In his early poems, that is, in all those of the volume of 1800 Wordsworth is more concerned about the appeal to the imagination than about perfection of form, more about emotion and sensation than about thought, more about suggestion than about full and clear expression, more about the individual than about the typical and the universal, and more about the concrete than about the general,-in other words, more about the romantic than about the classical. Illustrations abound in which the poet seeks to do no more than to lift the veil for the instant to show to the vision of imagination what lies beyond. In the words of Professor Page, whose distinction between the classical and the romantic I have made free use of in this connection, we get glimpses of "beauty relative and transient, with the charm, suggestiveness, and poignancy of its very incompleteness.' And these glimpses are set in contrast to the labored operations of the intellect and the results of reason. The poet makes a sharp contrast between reason and emotion; the former he reduces to the cold, unimaginative product of the mind entirely divorced from the fellowship of the affections. The philosopher in A Poet's Epitaph is one who "would peep and botanize upon his mother's grave"; the moralist is "a reasoning, self-sufficing thing, an inellectual All-in-all." But the poet of the poem is a mere child of nature, who Murmurs near the running brooks Similarly, in his lines To My Sister, he declares that a moment spent in communion with Nature may "give us more than years of toiling reason." Law springs from the heart, and love becomes the guiding principle of conduct. And in The Tables Turned One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Than all the sages can. Science, art, intellect, those watchwords of the literary age just passed, are barren in comparison with the sweet lore which Nature brings, in other words, with emotion and imagination, the watchwords of the new age. The Lucy poems are but momentary revelations of the poet's soul, mere fragments from his dream of human life; Lucy Gray is but a suggestion of tragedy that has become etherealized into folklore; Ruth is an instance. of the mysterious workings of Nature, both dangerous and beneficent, upon the human soul, as they are conceived by the poetic imagination. In none of these is there any thought of the reasoned completeness that marks the classical spirit. Nor is Tintern Abbey any less romantic, though it treats of philosophical truth in its relation to the poet's spiritual development. It penetrates into the supersensuous world that there it might catch a fleeting glimpse of the divine forces in Nature working upon the human soul. The poem has the superb lift of the imagination, not the calm assurance of tried and indisputable truth. Its truth is of the emotions, not of reason. The province of the romantic Wordsworth finds not in the supernatural, as Coleridge did, but in the human mind, not chaos, not The darkest pits of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams-can breed such fear and awe As falls upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man My haunt, and the main region of my song. To him Paradise and groves Elysian, Fortunate Fields become a "simple produce of the common day"; not that they become common but that the common things are transfigured in the glamor of romance, for over them is thrown the coloring of imagination. Michael is accordingly almost as romantic a figure as the Ancient Mariner. He lives in the world of imagination as well as in that of common fact; he hears the wind make subterraneous music; he receives from his boy feelings and emanations; he has for the hills a pleasurable feeling of blind love. He does not dwell on the heights controlling his emotions as would a classical hero. He betrays to his wife and his son the disturbance of his soul when there is the greatest need of concealment. When the crash comes and he has nothing to live for, he finds comfort in the strength of love, not in any reasoned system of philosophy or in the calm assurance of moral or intellectual selfsufficiency. He does not despair, or curse God and die, like the Byronic hero, but none the less is he the romantic hero, for many and many a day he went to the sheep-fold, And never lifted up a single stone. Two years later we begin to notice a new element creeping into Wordsworth's poetry, at first almost negligible but destined later to be dominant both in his thought and in his style. It appears first as something to be striven after, and it is impersonate not in the poet or his representative in the special poem but in someone who has attained peace and whom the poet would fain imitate. It is the classical ideal, of a loftier type than that followed by the school of Pope; it is marked by sincerity in thought and dignity in style. It develops regularly with Wordsworth's years till it reaches its finest expression in the poems which he wrote directly under the influence of the classics, especially of Vergil, in what has been called the Indian Summer of his poetic productivity. And its development is so gradual that the romantic character of the poems which first show its presence is hardly affected. Un The first poem in which this new element may be detected is Resolution and Independence (1802). The Leech-gatherer is a man from an even humbler rank of life than Michael, and is in some respects similar to him. They are men of no mean intellectual powers, and in the face of what the world would call misfortune they neither rebel nor complain. Like Michael the Leech-gatherer has been presented with such art that he is one of the great figures in Wordsworth's gallery of immortals. like Michael's his character is hit off by a most effective contrast; the poet of the story is the direct opposite, and it is he and not the Leech-gatherer that is the purely romantic figure. One cannot but notice also the romantic character of the setting of the poem, the freshness and, as it were, the buoyancy of nature, and of the mood of the poet,-his emotional excitement, his uncontrolled passions, his fears and fancies, his dim sadness and blind thoughts. To the poet the old man whom he meets upon the lonely moor is the embodiment of perpetual calm. He is like a huge stone sometimes seen to lie couched on the bald top of an eminence, or like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf of rock or sand reposeth there to sun itself. He stood motionless like a cloud - That heareth not the loud winds when they call When, too, the old man begins to speak, he fulfils the promise of his appearance; his utterance is lofty, in choice words and measured phrase, and it reveals so firm a mind that the poet declares, "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure ; I'll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." He moves familiarly and serenely in a world hitherto wholly unknown to the poet who engages him in conversation. It is not the calm of dulness or indifference or despair; nor is it the apparent tranquillity of Michael, whose sole support under the |