ABSTRACT

William Wordsworth emphasized that the value of nature as a benevolent source of inspiration and moral guidance transcended the material world. Wordsworth’s nature enabled access to the divine, and reminded humanity of a spiritual preexistence with God. To be sure, Matthew Arnold pruned the religious branches of Wordsworth’s philosophy that he did not expect to survive an evolutionary age, and criticized Wordsworthians like Leslie Stephen for valuing Wordsworth’s philosophy at the expense of his poetry. Retaining a model of literature that provided philosophical truth and moral guidance, they did not join the period’s broader movement toward Modernism. Charles Kingsley similarly sought to retain a sense of Wordsworthian transcendence in nature that accommodated Darwinism. Kingsley was less critical of Wordsworth than was Pfeiffer and counted Darwin as a personal friend. Seeking to counter the dark side of nature with Wordsworthian morality, Kingsley opens the fifth chapter with a quotation from “Ode to Duty.”.