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cise her scope and power. "To give an instance of this," he continued, "I remember opening, for the first time, Lord Byron's third canto of Childe Harold, at the notes, and reading this line placed at the end of one of them,

'The sky is changed; and such a change!-oh night!'

This simple ejaculation Oh night!' touched upon a thousand vague and delightful associations, and involuntarily I anticipated to myself, in a dim kind of way, the grandeur that was to follow. But, when I turned to the page whence the line was taken, and read,

'Oh night,

And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman,'

the whole tone of my feelings seemed lowered, and the same sort of jarring sensation was produced in my spiritual man, as that which our bodily organs experience, when, walking in the dark, we put out one foot with the notion that a deep step is below it, and find ourselves still on plain ground. This power of association-this imperfection of language as a vehicle of thought—this omnipotence of mind over matter, should make us less surprised that ideas, which appear original and splendid to one person, should to another seem trite and poor. That which Shakspeare affirms of a jest, is equally true with regard to serious

matters.

"Their propriety lies in the ear of him that hears them. Wordsworth, if I mistake not, himself acknowledges, that, in some instances, feelings even of the ludicrous may be given to his readers by expressions which appeared to him tender and pathetic;' but he does not, as in fairness he should have done, observe, on the other hand, that ideas and expressions which he scarcely meant to be other than laughable, or at least subordinate, may excite in his admirers very tender or noble feelings. He tells us, (for I have accurately read his own defence of his system,) the reader ought never to forget that he is himself exposed to the same errors as the poet, and perhaps in a much greater

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'What though the radiance, which was once so bright, Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy,

Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,

In the faith, that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.""

"Well," exclaimed the Wordsworthian "who would have thought that you, of all persons in the world, knew Wordsworth by heart?"- "I have derived as great pleasure," replied the sceptic, "from the best part of his works, as I have received pain from the worst." The ode was then finished without farther interruption, and the party dispersed; but not before the good dull neutral had petitioned for the loan of the book, that he might study at leisure that sublime passage about "the mighty waters rolling evermore.'

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It may be expected that I should not pass by in silence the poem which some persons consider Wordsworth's best -the Excursion. It is certainly the most ambitious of his productions, and by its length seems to claim an importance, not possessed by his shorter pieces. But while I acknowledge that there are exquisitely beautiful passages in the Excursion (and perhaps none more so than that which the Edinburgh Review extracted for reprobation, beginning

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"Oh then what soul was his, when, on the tops
Of the high mountains, he beheld the sun
Rise up and bathe the world in light!")
P. 13, 8vo. ed.

-while I reverence the purity of intention, and devotional love of nature, which it displays, I cannot but consider that the ground-work is a mistake, and the execution, on the whole, a failure. As this poem is the most bulky which Wordsworth has published, so it displays on a

do not mean in respect to quantity, (for I have heard a longer sermon of fifteen minutes than one of fifty,) but long in respect to the quantity of idea spread over a surface of words. Every thing is long in it, the similes, the stories, the speeches, the words, the sentences (which are indeed of a breathless length),—and yet, awful to relate, it is only the third part " of a long and laborious work!"

But it may still be urged, by those who consider Wordsworth a poet of first-rate merit and originality, that the force of his genius has been demonstrated by its effects upon the taste and literature of the age. They may boast that he brought back the public mind from a love of false glare and glitter, to the simplicity and truth of nature.

He himself says, after a retrospective view of different eras of literature, "It may be asked, where lies the particular relation of what has been said to these volumes? The question will be easily answered by the discerning reader, who is old enough to remember the taste that prevailed when some of these poems were first published, seventeen years ago, who has also observed to what degree the poetry of this island has since that period been coloured by them."

That the taste of the age, about the period when Wordsworth published his first poems, was far gone from nature, I allow. I grant that (to use Wordsworth's own words) "the invaluable works of our elder writers were driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse," and I honour the attempt to restore a healthier tone of feeling. Still, I cannot attribute the inevitable reaction, which took place at one period, to aught but the natural tendency of all extremes to produce reaction, and unfortunately again to verge into extremes. Wordsworth himself I consider less a moulding spirit of the age, than a perverted production of it. He began to write at the era. when men were wearied with perpetual stimulants, and disgusted with copies of copies ad infinitum. Thomson, in his Seasons, had already dared to use nothing but a pencil and a pallet, and his own eyes, in delineating nature; Burns had presented her to the world in her sweetest, her freshest, her simplest attire: and Wordsworth went a step

farther, he stripped her naked. Yet his followers have been few. The master-spirits of an age have always had their imitators, and have given somewhat of an abiding character to the literature of a whole century. But who has imitated Wordsworth? Where is the stamp and impress of his mind to be found in this generation? Simplicity has again lost her charms for the public taste. Nature, indeed, is still worshipped, but it is nature in frenzy and distortion. Alas! that evil should be so much more enduring and energetic than good! If Wordsworth cannot justly be ranked (as his worshippers rank him) the first genius of the age, still, his lower station on the fair hill of virtue is more enviable than that of others on the lightning-shattered pinnacle of vice. And, if Wordsworth would be contented to occupy that more lovely station gracefully and meekly, there would be no dissentient voice to dispute his honours. But he has yet to learn the important lesson of remaining silent under evil report and good report. Why, if Wordsworth so implicitly believes in the justice of "Time the corrector, where our judgments err;" why, if he is so steadfastly assured that the "great spirit of human knowledge," moving on the wings of the past and the future, will assign him his proper station in the ranks of literature; why, if he is persuaded that his volumes, "both in words and things, will operate in their degree to extend the domain of sensibility, for the delight, the honour, and the benefit, of human nature,”—why does he write so many pages to prove the truth of his convictions? Can he talk himself into immortality? Self-praise is, of all modes of self-aggrandisement, the least graceful, and the most impolitic. Why should we give a man that which he has already bestowed on himself? And, if we think that the self-eulogist claims too great a share of merit, human nature is up in arms to dispute with him every inch of his overgrown territory. What shall we say to a poet who thus writes of his own works? He first notices, that "after the transgression of Adam, Milton, with other appearances of sympathising nature, thus marks the immediate consequence:

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Sky lower'd, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completion of the mortal sin.'"

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