THE life William Wordsworth touches only at rare intervals that higher inconsistency which is popularly conceded to poets. The conventionality of his prosaic life is as unconventional as "poetic rapture" would be in the pecadilloes of George Babbitt. In an attempt of fit Wordsworth into the poetic niche of the normally abnormal. Professor Read finds in the key to the true Wordsworth, the well of his poetic emotion. Professor Herford, on the other hand, looks upon the life of the poet with the cold, green eye of pedantic scholarship. He manages to maintain his equilibrium as far as Wordsworth's sex life is concerned, but his contributions as a critic are as negligible as they are traditional.

Fortunately, neither one of these books is a Ludwigogram, so it is quite possible to read either with some profit Professor Herford, true to the traditions of scholarship, bases his work chiefly on Professor de Selincourt's edition of "The Prelude". His criticism of Wordsworth as a poet rests on the changes that the poet made at various times on his text. He willingly admits that the efforts of Professors Harper and Legouis in exposing Wordsworth's relations with Annette make it necessary for a new "explanation." Keenly aware of the sensational tendencies of his own century, Professor Herford makes it quite clear, however, that this discovery does not make a Casanova-Byron of the respectable recluse of Rydal. He sums up the whole incident from the very solid point of view of common sense.

The poetry of Wordsworth nearly always reflects a man beyond the tumultous period of sexual activity, and the extreme British rationality which guided him in this single irregularity of his life indicate that love affairs were not a part of his nature.

The position of Professor Read that the association with Annette was the one incident in the life of Wordsworth in which he showed his real nature seems less than probable. "The Prelude", which Professor Herford takes as his source of information for the life of the poet is, according to Mr. Read, "a deliberate mask. It is an idealisation of the poet's life, not the reality. To show what the reality was--that is my fist purpose."

Behind this mask, Mr. Read finds to his almost gleeful surprise, a suppressed soul. So long as his love for Annette burned in his spirit, he could write such great poems as "Tintern Abbey". But the fog of British respectability soon clouded this source of poetic feeling, and after ten short years the fire went out for lack of fuel and encouragement. After that there is nothing. As long as Annette lived he was that poet of "reality" but one his love for her died he saw things only through the smoked glasses of conventionality. From that time on his poetry became a "sustained hypocrisy"

Beyond this point, Professor Read also falls into line with the conventional Wordsworthian criticism. The relations of man and nature are discussed much as critics have always done. The only difference here is that the source for it all has been changed.

Both of these books fall short of making any contribution to the appreciation of the poetry of Wordsworth. Professor Herford is frequently dull, and never says anything that has not been said many times before. The work of Professor Read studies the subject from a new angle, but in the final analysis, his study has magnified one small aspect of Wordswroth's life so far beyond its correct proportion that his conclusions are meaningless. It is not so important to dissect. Wordsworth under the eyes of modern psychology as it is to attempt a tolerant and cogent understanding of his poetry. As a great poet unfortunately out of vogue. Wordsworth does not need a historian or a psychiatrist, but a great critic, a literary game apparently also out of vogue.