'
So Godwin: 'We shall, therefore, no more be disposed to repent of
our own faults than of the faults of others' (i. 315). The noxious
thing is now, however, with Wordsworth no longer subject but object,
and when a man can cast loose the enemy and survey him, victory is
three parts achieved.
There is no evidence that Wordsworth attempted any reasoned
confutation of Political Justice. It was falsified in him by
Racedown, by better health, by the society of his beloved sister,
and finally by the friendship with Coleridge, although there was but
little intimacy with him till the summer of 1797, and the Borderers
was finished in 1796. This, then, is the moral--to repeat what has
been said before--that certain beliefs, at any rate with men of
Wordsworth's stamp, are sickness, and that with the restoration of
vitality and the influx of joy they disappear.
One other observation. Wordsworth never afterwards vexed himself
with free will, necessity, and the like. He knew such matters were
not for him. Many problems may appear to be of great consequence,
but it is our duty to avoid them if our protecting genius warns us
away.
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