Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

440 PROSE POETS. [XV.
with Wordsworth. ' No ! I was never soaked in Words-
worth, as some of my contemporaries were.'
Strange, is it not ? that three such teachers, who
have each at different times influenced so powerfully men
younger than themselves, should have lived so apart, as
little appreciating each other, as if they had been inhabit-
ants of different countries, or even of different planets.
Of these three teachers, the two elder are no longer
here. The third still remains among us, in beautiful and
revered old age. It is of him that I have now to speak.
We saw how that which lay at the centre of Carlyle's
great literary power, was the force of a vigorous per-
sonality, a unique character, an indomitable will. Not
less marked and strong is the personality of Cardinal
Newman, but the two personalities passed through
very different experiences. In the one the rough ore
was presented to the world, just as it had come direct
from mother earth, with all the clay and mud about it.
The other underwent in youth the most searching pro-
cesses, intellectual and social ; met, in rivalry or in friend-
ship, many men of the highest order, his own equals, and
came forth from the ordeal seven times refined. But this
training no way impaired his native strength or damped
his ardour. Only it taught him to know what is due
to the feelings and convictions of others, as well as
what became his own self-respect. He did not con-
sider it any part of veracity to speak out, at all hazards,
every impulse and prejudice, every like and dislike