That this conjecture is not wide from the mark, I am induced to believe from the noticeable fact, which I can state on my own knowledge, that the same general censure should have been grounded almost by each different person on some different poem. Among those, whose candour and judgment I estimate highly, I distinctly remember six who expressed their objections to the "Lyrical Ballads," almost in the same words, and altogether to the same purport, at the same time admitting, that several of the poems had given them great pleasure; and, strange as it might seem, the composition which one had cited as execrable, another had quoted as his favorite. I am indeed convinced, in my own mind, that could the same experiment have been tried with these volumes as was made in the well-known story of the picture, the result would have been the same; the parts which had been covered by the number of the black spots on the one day, would be found equally albo lapide notatæ on the succeeding. tered through the class last mentioned; yet, even from the small number of the latter, they would have deemed them but an inconsiderable subtraction from the merit of the whole work; or, what is sometimes not unpleasing in the publication of a new writer, as serving to ascertain the natural tendency, and consequently, the proper direction of the author's genius. In the critical remarks, therefore, prefixed and annexed to the "Lyrical Ballads," I believe, that we may safely rest, as the true origin of the unexampled opposition which Mr. Wordsworth's writings have been since doomed to encounter. The humbler passages in the poems themselves, were dwelt on and cited to justify the rejection of the theory. What in and for themselves would have been either forgotten or forgiven as imperfections, or at least comparative failures, provoked direct hostility when announced as intentional, as the result of choice after full deliberation. Thus the poems, admitted by all as excellent, joined with those which had pleased the far greater number, though they formed two-thirds of the whole work, instead of being deemed (as in all right they should have been,) even if we take for granted that the reader judged aright) an atonement for the few exceptions, gave wind and fuel to the animosity against both the poems and the poet. In all perplexity there is a portion of fear, which predisposespecially, as no one pretends to have found immorality the mind to anger. Not able to deny that the author possessed both genius and a powerful intellect, they felt very positive, but were not quite certain, that he might not be in the right, and they themselves in the wrong; an unquiet state of mind, which seeks alleviation by quarrelling with the occasion of it, and by wondering at the perverseness of the man who had written a long and argumentative essay to persuade them that "Fair is foul, and foul is fair;" However this may be, it is assuredly hard and unjust to fix the attention on a few separate and insulated poems, with as much aversion as if they had been so many plague-spots on the whole work, instead of passing them over in silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of bookseller's catalogue; es or indelicacy; and the poems, therefore, at the worst, could only be regarded as so many light or inferior coins in a roleau of gold, not as so much alloy in a weight of bullion. A friend whose talents I hold in the highest respect, but whose judgment and strong sound sense I have had almost continued occasion to revere, making the usual complaints to me concerning both the style and subjects of Mr. Wordsworth's minor poems: I admitted that there were some few tales and incidents, in which I could not myself find a in other words, that they had been all their lives ad-sufficient cause for their having been recorded in miring without judgment, and were now about to censure without reason.* * In opinions of long continuance, and in which we had never before been molested by a single doubt, to be suddenly convinced of an error, is almost like being convicted of a fault. There is a state of mind, which is the direct antithesis of that which takes place when we make a bull. The bull, namely, consists in the bringing together two incompatible thoughts, with the sensation, but without the sense of their connexion. The psychological condition, or that which constitutes the possibility of this state, being such disproportionate vividness of two distinct thoughts, as extinguishes or obscures the consciousness of the intermediate images or conceptions, or wholly abstracts the attention from them. Thus in the well-known bull, " I was a fine child, but they changed me;" the first conception expressed in the word "I," is that of personal identity-Ego contemplans; the second expressed in the word "me," is the visual image or object by which the mind represents to itself its past condition, or rather, its personal identity under the form in which it imagined itself previously to have existed--Ego contemplatus. Now, the change of one visual image for another involves in itself no absurdity, and becomes absurd only by its immediate juxtaposition with the first thought, which is rendered possible by the whole attention being successively absorbed in each singly, so as not to notice the interjacent notion, "changed," which, by its incongruity with the first thought, "1," constitutes the bull. Add only, that this process is facilitated by the circumstance of the words "I" and "me" being some metre. I mentioned Alice Fell" as an instance; "nay," replied my friend, with more than usual quickness of manner, "I cannot agree with you there! that I own does seem to me a remarkably pleasing poem." In the "Lyrical Ballads," (for my experience does not enable me to extend the remark equally unqualified to the two subsequent volumes) I have heard, at different times, and from different individuals, every single poem extolled and reprobated, with the exception of those of loftier kind, which, as was before observed, seem to have won universal praise. This fact of itself would have made me diffident in my censures, had not a still stronger ground been fur times equivalent, and sometimes having a distinct meaning; sometimes, namely, signifying the act of self-consciousness, sometimes the external image in and by which the mind represents that act to itself, the result and symbol of its individuality. Now, suppose the direct contrary state, and you will have a distinct sense of the connection between two conceptions, without that sensation of such connexion which is supplied by habit. The man feels, as if he were standing on his head, though he cannot but see, that he is truly standing. on his feet. This, as a painful sensation, will of course have a tendency to associate itself with the person who occasions it; even as persons, who have been by painful means restored from derangement, are known to feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician. nished by the strange contrast of the heat and long continuance of the opposition, with the nature of the faults stated as justifying it. The seductive faults, the dulcia vitia of Cowley, Marini, or Darwin, might reasonably be thought capable of corrupting the public judgment for half a century, and require a twenty years' war, campaign after campaign, in order to de- I throne the usurper, and re-establish the legitimate taste. But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading, or, at best, trivial associations and characters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost religious admirers, and this among young men of ardent minds, liberal education, and not "With academic laurels unbestowed;" and that this bare and bold counterfeit of poetry. which is characterised as below criticism, should, for nearly twenty years, have well nigh engrossed criticism as the main, if not the only, butt of review, magazine, pamphlets, poem, and paragraph; - this is, indeed, matter of wonder! Of yet greater is it, that the contest should still continue as undecided as that between Bacchus and the frogs in Aristophanes; when the former descended to the realms of the departed to bring back the spirit of old and genuine poesy. Χορός Βατραχων ; Διονυσος. Χ. ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμες θά *Without, however, the apprehensions attributed to the Pagan reformer of the poetic republic. If we may judge from the preface to the recent collection of his poems, Mr. W. would have answered with Xanthias Συ δ' εκ εδειξας τον ψόφον των ρημάτων, Και τας απειλας ; ΞΑΝ. μα Δι', εδ' εφροντιςα. And here let me dare hint to the authors of the numerous parodies and pretended imitations of Mr. Wordsworth's style, that, at once to convey wit and wisdom in the semblance of folly and dulness, as is done in the clowns and fools, nay, even in the Dogberry of our Shakspeare, is, doubtless, a proof of genius; or, at all events, of satiric talent; but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem, by writing another still sillier and still more childish, can only prove, (if it prove any thing at all,) that the parodist is a still greater blockhead than the original writer, and, what is far worse, a malignant coxcomb to boot. The talent for mimicry seems strongest where the human race are most degraded, The poor, naked, half human savages of New Holland, were found excellent mimics; and in civilized society, minds of the very lowest stamp alone satirize by copying. At least the difference, which must blend with, and balance the likeness, in order to constitute a just imitation, existing here merely in caricature, detracts from the libeller's heart, without adding an iota to the credit of his understanding. οὐδέποτε. κεκδάξομαι γὰρ κἄν με δέη, δὲ ἡμέρας, ἕως ἂν ὑμῶν ἐπικρατήςω τοῦ· κοαξ, Χ. βρεκεκεκεξ, ΚΟΑΞ, ΚΟΑΞ! During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publications, entitled "Descriptive Sketches ;" and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the form, style, and manner of the whole poem, and in the structure of the particular lines and periods, there is a harshness and an acerbity connected and combined with words and images all a-glow, which might recall those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of the hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The language was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demanded always a greater closeness of attention than poetry, (at all events, than descriptive poetry,) has a right to claim. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity. In the following extract I have sometimes fancied that I saw an emblem of the poet itself, and of the author's genius as it was then displayed. ""T is storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour, The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline⚫ The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire." The poetic PSYCHE, in its process to full development, undergoes as many changes as its Greek namesake, the butterfly. And it is remarkable how soon genius clears and purifies itself from the faults and errors of its earliest products; faults which, in its earliest compositions, are the more obtrusive and confluent; because, as heterogeneous elements whica had only a temporary use, they constitute the vers ferment by which themselves are carried off. Or work on the humours, and be thrown out on the surwe may compare them to some diseases, which must The fact that in Greek, Psyche is the common name for the soul, and the butterfly, is thus alluded to in the following stanza from an unpublished poem of the author: "The butterfly the ancient Grecians made And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed." face, in order to secure the patient from their future recurrence. I was in my twenty-fourth year when I had the happiness of knowing Mr. Wordsworth personally, and while memory lasts, I shall hardly forget the sudden effect produced on my mind, by his recitation of a manuscript poem, which still remains unpublished, but of which the stanza, and tone of style, were the same as those of the "Female Vagrant," as originally printed in the first volume of the "Lyrical Ballads." There was here no mark of strained thought or forced diction, no crowd or turbulence of imagery; and as the poet hath himself well described in his lines "on revisiting the Wye," | manly reflection, and human associations, had given both variety and an additional interest to natural objects, which in the passion and appetite of the first love, they had seemed to him neither to need or permit. The occasional obscurities which had risen from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language, had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once hackneyed and fantastic, which holds so distinguished a place in the technique of ordinary poetry, and will, more or less, alloy the earlier poems of the truest genius, unless the attention has been specifically directed to their worthlessness and incongruity.* I did not perceive any thing particular in the mere style of the poem alluded to during its recitation, except, indeed, such difference as was not separable from the thought and manner; and the Spenserian stanza, which always, more or less, recalls to the reader's mind Spenser's own style, would doubtless have authorized, in my then opinion, a more frequent descent to the phrases of ordinary life, than could, without an ill effect, have been hazarded in the heroic couplet. It was not, however, the freedom from false taste, whether as to common defects, or to those more properly his own, which made so unusual an impression on my feelings immediately, and subsequently on my judgment. It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought; the fine balance of truth in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects observed; and, above all, the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and, with it, the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents, *Mr. Wordsworth, even in his two earliest, "the Evening Walk," and "the Descriptive Sketches," is more free from this latter defect than most of the young poets, his contemporaries. It may, however, be exemplified-together with the harsh and obscure construction, in which he more often offended-in the following lines: "Mid stormy vapors ever driving by, I hope I need not say, that I have quoted these lines for no other purpose than to make my meaning fully understood. It is to be regretted that Mr. Wordsworth has not re-published these two poems entire. and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew drops. "To find no contradiction in the union of old and new; to contemplate the ANCIENT of days and all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat; characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the pow-. ers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day, for, perhaps, forty years, had rendered familiar; "With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talents. And therefore, it is the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily convales cence. Who has not a thousand times seen snow fall on water? Who has not watched it with a new feeling from the time that he has read Burns' comparison of sensual pleasure, "To snow that falls upon a river, A moment white--then gone forever!"' "In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence, caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission. Truths, of all others the most awful and mysterious, yet being, at the same time, of universal interest are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the life and efficiency of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.' THE FRIEND,† page 76. No. 5. This excellence, which, in all Mr. Wordsworth's writings, is more or less predominant, and which constitutes the character of his mind, I no sooner felt than I sought to understand. Repeated meditations led me first to suspect, (and a more intimate analysis of the human faculties, their appropriate marks, functions and effects, matured my conjecture into full conviction,) that fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning, or, at furthest, the lower and higher degree of one and the same power. It is not, I own, easy to conceive a more opposite translation of the Greek phantasia than the Latin imaginatio: but it is equally true, that in all societies there exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious † As "The Friend" was printed on stampt sheets, and sent only by the post, to a very limited number of subscribers, the author has felt less objection to quote from it, though a work of his own. To the public at large, indeed, it is the same as a volume in manuscript. good sense, working progressively to desynonymise* 'What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?" or from the preceding apostrophe to the elements; the theory of the fine arts, and of poetry in particular, could not, I thought, but derive some additional and important light. It would, in its immediate effects, furnish a torch of guidance to the philosophical critic; and, ultimately, to the poet himself. In energetic minds, truth soon changes, by domestication, into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product, becomes influencive in the production. To admire on principle, is the only way to imitate without loss of originality. It has been already hinted, that metaphysics and psychology have long been my hobby-horse. But to have a hobby-horse, and be vain of it, are so commonly found together, that they pass almost for the same. I trust, therefore, that there will be more good humor than contempt, in the smile with which the reader chastises my self-complacency, if I confess myself uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the perception of a truth new to myself, may not have been rendered more poignant, by the conceit that it would be equally so to the public. There was a time, certainly, in which I took some little credit to myself, in the belief that I had been the first of my countrymen who had pointed out the diverse meaning of which the two terms were capable, and analyzed the faculties to which they should be appropriated. Mr. W. Taylor's recent volumes of synonymes, I have not yet seen;† but his specification of the terms in question, has been clearly shown to be both insufficient and erroneous by Mr. Wordsworth, in the preface added to the late collection of his "Lyrical Ballads and other poems." The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has himself given, will be found to differ from mine, chiefly, perhaps, as our objects are † I ought to have added, with the exception of a single sheet which I accidentally met with at the printer's. Even from this scanty specimen, I found it impossible to doubt the talent, or not to admire the ingenuity of the author. That his distinctions were, for the greater part, unsatisfactory to my mind, proves nothing against their accuracy; but it may possibly be serviceable to him in case of a second edition, if I take this opportunity of suggesting the query, whether he may not have been occasionally misled, by having assumed, as to me he appeared to have done, the non-existence of any absolute synonymes in our language? Now, I cannot but think, that there are many which remain for our posterity to distinguish and appropriate, and which I regard as so much *This is effected either by giving to the one word a gen- reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. When two diseral, and to the other an exclusive use; as, "to put on the tinct meanings are confounded under one or more words, back," and "to endorse;" or, by an actual distinction of (and such must be the case, as sure as our knowledge is promeanings, as "naturalist," and "physician;" or, by differ-gressive, and, of course, imperfect) erroneous consequences ence of relation, as "1," and "me;" (each of which the will be drawn, and what is true in one sense of the word, rustics of our different provinces still use in all the cases sin-will be affirmed as true in toto. Men of research, startled by gular of the first personal pronoun.) Even the mere difference, or corruption, in the pronunciation of the same word, if it have become general, will produce a new word with a distinct signification; thus, "property," and "propriety." the latter of which, even to the time of Charles II. was the written word for all the senses of both. Thus, too, "mister," and "master," both hasty pronunciations of the same word; "magister," mistress," and miss," "if," and "give," &c. &c. There is a sort of minim immortal among the animalcula infusoria, which has not, naturally, either birth or death, absolute beginning or absolute end; for, at a certain period, a small point appears on its back, which deepens and lengthens till the creature divides into two, and the same process recommences in each of the halves now become integral. This may be a fanciful, but it is by no means a bad emblem of the formation of words, and may facilitate the conception, how immense a nomenclature may be organized from a few simple sounds by rational beings in a social state. For each new application or excitement of the same sound will call forth a different sensation, which cannot but affect the pronunciation. The after recollection of the sound, without the same vivid sensation, will modify it still further; till, at length, all trace of the original likeness is worn away. " the consequences, seek in the things themselves (whether in or out of the mind) for a knowledge of the fact, and having discovered the difference, remove the equivocation either by the substitution of a new word, or by the appropriation of one of the two or more words, that had before been used promiscuously. When this distinction has been so naturalized and of such general currency that the language itself does, as it were, think for us, (like the sliding rule which is the mechanic's safe substitute for arithmetical knowledge,) we then say, that it is evident to common sense. Common sense, therefore, differs in different ages. What was born and christened in the schools, passes by degrees into the world at large, and becomes the property of the market and the teatable. At least, I can discover no other meaning of the term common sense, if it is to convey any specific difference from sense and judgment in genere, and where it is not used scholastically for the universal reason. Thus, in the reign of Charles II., the philosophic world was called to arms by the moral sophisms of Hobbs, and the ablest writers exerted themselves in the detection of an error which a school-boy would now be able to confute by the mere recollection, that compulsion and obligation conveyed two ideas perfectly dis parate, and that what appertained to the one had been faiscly transferred to the other, by a more confusion of terms. different. It could scarcely, indeed, happen otherwise, from the advantage I have enjoyed of frequent conversation with him on a subject to which a poem of his own first directed my attention, and my conclusions concerning which, he had made more lucid to myself by many happy instances drawn from the operation of natural objects on the mind. But it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and, from the different effects, to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then, from the kind, to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches, with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots, as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness. Yet, even in this attempt, I am aware that I shall be obliged to draw more largely on the reader's attention, than so immethodical a miscellany can authorize; when in such a work (the Ecclesiastical Policy) of such a mind as Hooker's, the judicious author, though no less admirable for the perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language; and though he wrote for men of learning in a learned age, saw, nevertheless, occasion to anticipate and guard against "complaints of obscurity," as often as he was to trace his subject "to the highest well-middle place between both. But it is not in human spring and fountain." Which, (continues he,) "because men are not accustomed to, the pains we take are more needful, a great deal, than acceptable; and the matters we handle seem, by reason of newness, (till the mind grow better acquainted with them,) dark and intricate." I would gladly, therefore, spare both myself and others this labour, if I knew how without it to present an intelligible statement of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established premises, conveyed in such a form as is calculated either to effect a fundamental conviction, or to receive a fundamental confutation. If I may dare once more adopt the words of Hooker, "they, unto whom we shall seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour, which they are not willing to endure." Those at least, let me be permitted to add, who have taken so much pains to render me ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves, as well as to me, not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory, which I do acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in its justifi its solution. The first step was to construct a table of distinctions, which they seem to have formed on the principle of the absence or presence of the WILL. Our various sensations, perceptions, and movements, were classed as active or passive, or as media partaking of both. A still finer distinction was soon established between the voluntary and the spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it. For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of idealism, may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or materialism; and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or Hobbs. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference in things and thoughts. In the former, the cause appeared wholly external; while in the latter, sometimes our will interfered as the producing or determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a mechanism of its own, without any conscious effort of the will, or even against it. Our inward experiences were thus arranged in three sepa rate classes, the passive sense, or what the schoolmen call the merely receptive quality of the mind; the voluntary; and the spontaneous, which holds the cation. CHAPTER V. nature to meditate on any mode of action, without inquiring after the law that governs it; and in the explanation of the spontaneous movements of our being, the metaphysician took the lead of the anatomist and natural philosopher. In Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and India, the analysis of the mind had reached its noon and manhood, while experimental research was still in its dawn and infancy. For many, very many centuries, it has been difficult to advance a new truth, or even a new error, in the philosophy of the intellect or morals. With regard, however, to the laws that direct the spontaneous movements of thought, and the principle of their intellectual mechanism, there exists, it has been asserted, an important exception, most honorable to the moderns, and in the merit of which our own country claims the largest share. Sir James Mackintosh (who, amid the variety of his talents and attainments, is not of less repute for the depth and accuracy of his philosophical inquiries, than for the eloquence with which he is said to ren der their most difficult results perspicuous, and the driest attractive,) affirmed, in the lectures delivered by him at Lincoln's Inn Hall, that the law of association, as established in the contemporaneity of the original impressions, formed the basis of all true psycho. logy; and any ontological or metaphysical science, not contained in such (i. e. empirical) psychology, was but a web of abstractions and generalizations. Of this prolific truth, of this great fundamental law, he declared HOBBS to have been the original discoverer, On the law of association-Its history traced from Aristotle while its full application to the whole intellectual to Hartley. THERE have been men in all ages, who have been impelled, as by an instinct, to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their attempts to❘ system we owe to David Hartley; who stood in the same relation to Hobbs, as Newton to Kepler; the law of association being that to the mind, which gravitation is to matter. |