ABSTRACT
The reference to Wordsworth is pertinent. It was not for nothing that Murry had turned to him, on at least three occasions, for inspiration and guidance. The growth of his mind was essentially the growth of a poet’s mind – a major Romantic poet’s. Hence, of course, that intimate understanding of the Romantics which is the unique distinction of his criticism. Poetic truths, as much as scientific, are working hypotheses at best, to be confirmed or refuted by experiment – in this case, the experiment of living. Christianity has always been a system of ontological as well as experiential affirmations; and a conviction of their ontological validity alters the nature of the experience. Murry recognized this clearly enough when he insisted that belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus would diminish. The journal of a husbandman would be a more humdrum affair: neither would it be so blithely innocent of a balance-sheet.
