importance after one hundred years. The order in which the
centenary studies are here presented is an attempt to set in
balance, and in one kind of continuity, their substantial con-
tributions to a total estimate of Wordsworth's lasting signifi-
cance.

Professor Bush's "Minority Report" has been given the lead
position because it raises the central question, "Is Wordsworth
still, for us, a great poet?" Lest there be any doubt as to what
is meant by "great" and who is included among "us," some
necessary distinctions are made between historical and actual
greatness, and a jury is named: the modern critic, the poet,
and the general reader "who takes poetry seriously." Mr. Bush
advances evidence that all three have found Wordsworth ir-
relevant and insignificant. The reason is more than an incom-
patibility growing out of historical developments; Mr. Bush
points to a deficiency in Wordsworth: a failure to suspect
human nature of evil and a disregard of the misery in life
which, even as Matthew Arnold recognized, are unrealistic
and unhealthy. Wordsworth's fear of the increasing mechani-
zation of society is not forgotten as a necessary warning to his
age and ours; his distrust of an exclusively scientific point of
view is also still of value. Nonetheless, the remedy that he
offered was inadequate and unsound. It would be possible to
argue against Mr. Bush that Wordsworth's antidote was not
simply the gospel of man and nature which the "Minority
Report" suspects, but that Wordsworth was pleading for an
awakening, a new awareness (whether by eye or ear or heart)
of the things that matter and endure, among them the better
nature of man and the joy offered by nature. Mr. Bush speaks
of this very awareness in Wordsworth's poetry; he recognizes
its value as a poetic theme, but he wonders if it is as communi-
cable as the kinds of experience found in certain other poets.
it is not easy to combat the arguments of a minority report
which is so persuasive that it may have spoken for the majority.
But after reconsidering Wordsworth's achievement histori-

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