Of the blunter joys and passions of human life, they seem to
have known nothing. Instead of plunging into the business
of the world, and draining to the lees its pleasures and its
sorrows, they held themselves aloof, cultivating the domestic
virtues in seclusion, without any knowledge of social phenomena
except through the casual reports of visitors, or the pale reflex
of newspapers. Hence, as poets, they laboured under a
double disadvantage. Excluded from the sphere of passion,
they could only feel at home in reflective themes, in illustrating
the domestic virtues, or in moralizing upon the vicissitudes of
life, or in deriving from the appearances of nature lessons of
wisdom, and materials for the display of their imaginative
powers. Their knowledge of human affairs became propor-
tionally contracted, as they were shut out from the world of
practical experience. When, therefore, in their verse they ven-
tured upon philosophical speculation, they were at the mercy
of abstract theories, arising out of a very imperfect acquaint-
ance with the facts to which those theories applied. They
Were, in reality, incompetent to deal with the world of passion ;
and, in the sphere of reflection, narrow prejudices interfered
to deprive their loftiest thoughts of the value they would
otherwise have possessed. The sincerity of the Lake poets,
in abandoning opinions much in advance of their age, for
others of an equally retrogressive tendency, has been often
called in question. But the French Revolution, beginning



THE LAKE SCHOOL. 85

with bright omens for the happiness of the human family,
only to have its fair dawn overshadowed by storms of
violence and bloodshed, may palliate, if it does not entirely
account for, the revulsion of political feeling which marked
the outset of their career. It is, however, to be regretted
that the change from the extreme of Republicanism to the
extreme of Toryism, was made at the time when their
private fortunes were undergoing considerable renovation.
