Fair trees and lovely flowers; The breezes their own languor lent, The stars had feelings, which they sent Into those magic bowers. Yet in his worst pursuits. I ween, That sometimes there did intervene Pure hopes of high intent. For passions, linked to forms so fair And stately, needs must have their share But from Mr. Wordsworth's more elevated compositions, which already form three-fourths of his works; and will, I trust, constitute hereafter a still larger proportion;-from these, whether in rhyme or blank verse, it would be difficult, and almost superfluous, to select instances of a diction peculiarly his own; of a style which cannot be imitated without its being at once recognized, as originating in Mr. Wordsworth. It would not be easy to open on any one of his loftier strains, that does not contain examples of this; and more in proportion as the lines are more excellent, and most like the author. For those who may happen to have been less familiar with his writings, I will give three specimens taken with little choice. The first from the lines on the "BOY OF WINANDER-MERE,"-who "Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him. And they would shout, Of mirth, and jocund din. And when it chanc'd, With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Mr. Wordworth's having judiciously adopted "concourse wild" in this passage for "a wild scene" as it stood in the former edition, encourages me to hazard a remark, which I certainly should not have made in the works of a poet less austerely accurate in the use of words, than he is, to his own great honor. It respects the propriety of the word "scene" even in the sentence in which it is retained. Dryden, and he only in his more careless verses, was the first, as far as my researches have discovered, who for the convenience of rhyme used this word in the vague sense, which has been since too current, even in our best writers, and which (unfortunately. 1 think) is given as its first explanation in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and therefore would be taken by an incautious reader as its proper sense. In Shakspeare and Milton, the word is never used without some clear reference, proper or metaphorical, to the theatre. Thus Milton; "Cedar and pine, and fir, and branching palm, I object to any extension of its meaning, because the word is already more equivocal than.might be wished; inasmuch as in the limited use which I recommend, it may still signify two different things; namely, the scenery, and the characters and actions presented on the stage during the presence of particular scenes. It can therefore be preserved from obscurity only by keeping the original signification full in the mind. Thus Milton again; "Prepare thou for another scene." The second shall be that noble imitation of Draytont (if it was not rather a coincidence) in the "JoANNA." "When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space, Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld That ravishment of mine, and laugh'd aloud. The rock, like something starting from a sleep, Took up the lady's voice, and laugh'd again! That ancient woman seated on Helm-crag Was ready with her cavern! Hammar-scar, And the tall steep of Silver-How, sent forth A noise of laughter: southern Loughrigg heard, And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone. Helvillon far into the clear blue sky Carried the lady's voice!-old Skiddaw blew His speaking trumpet!-back out of the clouds From Glaramara southward came the voice: And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head!" The third, which is in rhyme, I take from the Song at the feast of Brougham Castle upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the shepherd to the estates of his ancestors." "Now another day is come Fitter hopes, and nobler doom: Happy day, and mighty hour, When our shepherd, in his power, Mailed and horsed with lance and sword, Like a re-appearing star, First shall head the flock of war!" Alas! the fervent harper did not know, The sleep that is among the lonely hills." The words themselves in the foregoing extracts are, no doubt, sufficiently common, for the greater part. (But in what poem are they not so? if we except a few misadventurous attempts to translate the arts and sciences into verse?) In the "Excursion," the number of polysyllabic (or what the common people call, dictionary) words is more than usually great. (And so must it needs be, in proportion to the number and variety of an author's conception, and his solicitude to express them with precision.) But † Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill Did mightily commend old Copland for her song! are those words in those places, commonly employed characteristic excellences, deficiencies, and defects. I should call that investigation fair and philosophical, CHAPTER XXI. Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals. LONG have I wished to see a fair and philosophical inquisition into the character of Wordsworth, as a poet, on the evidence of his published works; and a positive, not a comparative, appreciation of their I most willingly admit, and estimate at a high value, the services which the EDINBURGH REVIEW, and others formed afterwards on the same plan, have rendered to society in the diffusion of knowledge. I think the commencement of the Edinburgh Review, an important epoch in periodical criticism; and that it has a claim upon the gratitude of the literary republic, and, indeed, of the reading public at large, for having originated the scheme of reviewing those books only which are susceptible and deserving of argumentative criticism. Not less meritorious, and far more faithfully, and, in general, far more ably executed, is their plan of supplying the vacant place of the trash of mediocrity, wisely left to sink into oblivion by their own weight, with original essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keenness or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account, so long as no personal allusions are admitted, and no recommitment (for new trial) of juvenile performances, that were published, perhaps forgotten, many years before the commencement of the review: since for the forcing back of such works to public notice no motives are easily assignable, but such as are furnished to the critic by his own personal malignity; or what is still worse, by a habit of malignity in the form of mere wantonness. "No private grudge they need, no personal spite Every censure, every sarcasm respecting a publication which the critic, with the criticised work Defore him, can make good, is the critic's right. The writer is authorized to reply, but not to complain. Neither can any one prescribe to the critic, how soft or how hard; how friendly or how bitter, shall be the phrases which he is to select for the expression of such reprehension or ridicule. The critic must know what effect it is his object to produce; and with a view to this effect must he weigh his words. But as soon as the critic betrays that he knows more of his author than the author's publications could have told him; as soon as from this more intimate knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he avails himself of the slightest trait against the author, his censure instantly becomes personal injury, his sarcasms personal insults. He ceases to be a CRITIC, and takes upon him the most contemptible character to which a rational creature can be degraded, that of a gossip, backbiter, and pasquillant: but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals the unquiet, the deforming passions of the World into the Museum; into the very place, which, next to the chapel or oratory, should be our sanctuary, and secure place of refuge; offers abominations on the altar of the muses; and makes its sacred paling the very circle in which he conjures up the lying and profane spirit. This determination of unlicensed personality, and of permitted and legitimate censure (which I owe in part to the illustrious LESSING, himself a model of acute, spirited, sometimes stinging, but always argumentative and honorable criticism) is beyond controversy, the true one: and though I would not myself exercise all the rights of the latter, yet, let but the former be excluded, I submit myself to its exercise in the hands of others, without complaint and with out resentment. Let a communication be formed between any number of learned men in the various branches of science and literature; and whether the President and central committee be in London or Edinburgh, if only they previously lay aside their individuality, and pledge themselves inwardly, as well as ostensibly, to administer judgment according to a constitution and code of laws; and if by grounding this code on the two-fold basis of universal morals and philosophic reason, independent of all foreseen application to particular works and authors, they obtain the right to speak each as the representative of their body corporate; they shall have honor and good wishes from me, and I shall accord to them their fair dignities, though self assumed, not less cheerfully, than if I could inquire concerning them in the herald's office, or turn to them in the book of peerage. However loud may be the outcries for prevented or subverted reputation, however numerous and impatient the complaints of merciless severity and insupportable despotism, I shall neither feel nor utter aught but to the defence and justification of the critical machine. Should any literary Quixote find himself provoked by its sounds and regular movements, I should admonish him with Sancho Panza, that it is no giant, but a windmill; there it stands on its own place, and its own hillock, never goes out of its way to attack any one, and to none and from none either gives or asks assistance. When the public press has poured in any part of its produce between its millstones, it grinds it off, one man's sack the same as another, and with whatever wind may happen to be then blowing. All the two and thirty winds are alike its friends. Of the whole wide atmosphere it does not desire a single finger breadth more than what is necessary for its sails to turn round in. But this space must be left free and unimpeded. Gnats, beetles, wasps, butterflies, and the whole tribe of ephemerals and insignificants, may flit in and out and between; may hum, and buzz, and jarr; may shrill their tiny pipes. and wind their puny horns unchastised and unnoticed. But idlers and bravadoes of a larger size and prouder show must beware how they place themselves within its sweep. Much less may they presume to lay hands on the sails, the strength of which is neither greater or less than as the wind is, which drives them round. Whomsoever the remorseless arm slings aloft, or whirls along with it in the air, he has himself alone to blame; though when the same arm throws him from it, it will more often double than break the force of his fall. Putting aside the too manifest and too frequent interference of NATIONAL PARTY, and even PERSONAL predilection or aversion; and reserving for deeper feelings those worse and more criminal intrusions into the sacredness of private life, which not seldom merit legal rather than literary chastisement, the two principal objects and occasions which I find for blame and regret in the conduct of the review in question are: first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither indecent or immoral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of size and according to the critic's own verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspicion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at work, or that there was a cold prudential pre-determination to increase the sale of the review, by flattering the malignant passions of human nature. That I may not myself become subject to the charge which I am bringing against others by an accusation without proof, I refer to the article on Dr. Rennell's sermon, in the very first number of the Edinburgh Review, as an illustration of my meaning. If in looking through all the succeeding volumes the reader should find this a solitary instance, I must submit to that painful forfeiture of esteem, which awaits a groundless or exaggerated charge. The second point of objection belongs to this review only in common with all other works of periodical criticism; at least, it applies in common to the general system of all, whatever exception there may be in favor of particular articles. Or if it attaches to the Edinburgh Review, and to its only co-rival, (the QUARTERLY) with any peculiar force; this results from the superiority of talent, acquirement and information, which both have so undeniably displayed; and which doubtless deepens the regret, though not the blame. I am referring to the substitution of 1 diction of which had collected round those convictions my noblest, as well as my most delightful feelings; that I should admit such lines to be mere nonsense or lunacy, is too much for the most ingenious arguments to effect. But that such a revolution of taste should be brought about by a few broad assertions, seems little less than impossible. On the contrary, it would require an effort of charity not to dismiss the criticism with the aphorism of the wise man, in animam malevolam sapientia haud intrare potest. assertion for argument; to the frequency of arbi- | victions of my understanding; and the imagery and tration and somenmes petulant verdicts, not seldom unsupported even by a single quotation from the work condemned, which might at least have explained the critic's meaning, if it did not prove the justice of his sentence. Even where this is not the case, the extracts are too often made, without reference to any general grounds or rules, from which the faultiness or inadmissibility of the qualities attributed, may be deduced; and without any attempt to show, that the qualities are attributable to the passage extracted. I have met with such extracts from Mr. Wordsworth's poems, annexed to such assertions, as led me to imagine that the reviewer, having written his critique before he had read the work, had then pricked with a pin for passages, wherewith to illustrate the various branches of his preconceived opin-owned, that beauties as great are scattered in abunions. By what principle of rational choice can we suppose a critic to have been directed (at least in a Christian country, and himself, we hope, a Christian) who gives the following lines, portraying the fervor of solitary devotion excited by the magnificent display of the Almighty's works, as a proof and example of an author's tendency to downright ravings and absolute unintelligibility. "O then what soul was his, when on the tops In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, (Excursion.) Can it be expected, that either the author or his admirers, should be induced to pay any serious attention to decisions which prove nothing but the pitiable state of the critic's own taste and sensibility? On opening the Review they see a favorite passage, of the force and truth of which they had an intuitive certainty in their own inward experience, confirmed, if confirmation it could receive, by the sympathy of their most enlightened friends; some of whom, perhaps, even in the world's opinion, hold a higher intellectual rank than the critic himself would presume to claim. And this very passage they find selected as the characteristic effusion of a mind deserted by reason: as furnishing evidence that the writer was raving, or he could not have thus strung words together without sense or purpose! No diversity of taste seems capable of explaining such a contrast in judgment. That I had over-rated the merit of a passage or poem; that I had erred concerning the degree of its excellence, I might be easily induced to believe or apprehend. But that lines, the sense of which I had analysed and found consonant with all the best con What, then, if this very critic should have cited a large number of single lines, and even of long paragraphs, which he himself acknowledges to possess eminent and original beauty? What if he himself has dance throughout the whole book? And yet, though under this impression, should have commenced his critique in vulgar exultation, with a prophecy meant to secure its own fulfilment? With a "THIS WON'T DO!" What? if after such acknowledgments, extorted from his own judgment, he should proceed from charge to charge of tameness, and raving; flights and flatness; and at length, consigning the author to the house of incurables, should conclude with a strain of rudest contempt, evidently grounded in the distempered state of his own moral associations? Suppose, too, all this done without a single leading principle established or even announced, and without any one attempt at argumentative deduction, though the poet had presented a more than usual opportunity for it, by having previously made public his own principles of judgment in poetry, and supported them by a connected train of reasoning! The office and duty of the poet is to select the most dignified as well as "The happiest, gayest attitude of things." The reverse, for in all cases a reverse is possible, is the appropriate business of burlesque and travesty, a predominant taste for which, has been always deemed a mark of a low and degraded mind. When I was at Rome, among many other visits to the tomb of Julius II., I went thither once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and great vivacity of feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo's MOSES, our conversation turned on the horns and beard of that stupendous statue; of the necessity of each to support the other; of the super-human effect of the former, and the necessity of the existence of both to give a harmony and integrity both to the image and the feeling excited by it., Conceive them removed, and the statue would become un-natural, without being supernatural. We called to mind the horns of the rising sun, and I repeated the noble passage from Taylor's Holy Dying. That horns were the emblem of power and sovereignty among the Eastern nations, and are still retained as such in Abyssinia; the Achelous of the ancient Greeks; and the probable ideas and feelings, that originally suggested the mixture of the human and the brute form in the figure, by which they BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. realized the idea of their mysterious Pan, as representing intelligence blended with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the conscious intellect of man; than intelligence;-all these thoughts and recollections passed in procession before our minds. My companion, who possessed more than his share of the hatred which his countrymen bore to the French, had just observed to me, “a Frenchman, Sir! is the only animal in the human shape, that by no possibility can lift itself up to religion or poetry:" when, lo! two French officers of distinction and rank entered the church! Mark you," whispered the Prussian, "the first thing which those scoundrels will notice, (for they will begin by instantly noticing the statue in parts, without one moment's pause of admiration impressed by the whole.) will be the horns and the beard. And the associations, which they will immediately connect with them, will be those of a HE-GOAT and a CUCKOLD." Never did man guess more luckily. Had he inherited a portion of the great legislator's prophetic powers, whose statu we had been contemplating, he could scarcely have uttered words more coincident with the result; for even as he had said so it came to pass. In the EXCURSION, the poet has introduced an old man, born in humble but not abject circumstances, who had enjoyed more than usual advantages of education, both from books and from the more awful discipline of nature. This person he represents, as having been driven by the restlessness of fervid feelings, and from a craving intellect to an itinerant life; and as having in consequence passed the larger portion of his time, from earliest manhood, in villages and hamlets from door to door, "A vagrant merchant bent beneath his load." Now whether this be a character appropriate to a lofty didactic poem, is, perhaps, questionable. It presents a fair subject for controversy; and the question is to be determined by the congruity or incongruity of such a character, with what shall be proved to be the essential constituents of poetry. But surely the critic, who, passing by all the opportunities which such a mode of life would present to such a man; all the advantages of the liberty of nature, of solitude and of solitary thought; all the varieties of places and seasons, through which his track had lain, with all the varying imagery they bring with them; and, lastly, all the observations of men, "Their manners, their enjoyments and pursuits, which the memory of these yearly journeys must have given and recalled to such a mind-the critic, I say, who, from the multitude of possible associations should pass by all these, in order to fix his attention exclusively on the pin papers, and stay tapes, which might have been among the wares of his pack; this critic, in my opinion, cannot be thought to possess a much higher or much healthier state of moral feeling, than the FRENCHMEN above recorded. CHAPTER XXII. The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the principles from which the judgment, that they are defects, is deduced-Their proportion to the beauties-For the greatest part characteristic of his theory only. If Mr. Wordsworth have set forth principles of poetry which his arguments are insufficient to support, let him and those who have adopted his sentiments be set right by the confutation of those arguments, and by the substitution of more philosophical principles. And still let the due credit be given to the portion and importance of the truths which are blended with his theory; truths, the too exclusive attention to which had occasioned its errors, by tempt. ing him to carry those truths beyond their proper limits. If his mistaken theory have at all influenced his poetic compositions, let the effects be pointed out, and the instances given. But let it likewise be shown, how far the influence has acted: whether dif fusively, or only by starts; whether the number and importance of the poems and passages thus infected be great or trifling compared with the sound portion; and, lastly, whether they are inwoven into the texture of his works, or are loose and separable. The result of such a trial would evince, beyond a doubt, what it is high time to announce decisively and aloud, that the supposed characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, whether admired or reprobated; whether they are simplicity or simpleness; faithful adherenco to essential nature, or wilful selections from human nature of its meanest forms and under the least attractive associations; are as little the real characteristics of his poetry at large, as of his genius and the constitution of his mind. In a comparatively small number of poems, he chose to try an experiment; and this experiment wo will suppose to have failed. Yet even in these poems it is impossible not to perceive, that the natural tendency of the poet's mind is to great objects and elevated conceptions. The poem entitled "Fidelity," is. for the greater part, written in language as unraised and naked as any perhaps in the two volumes. Yet take the following stanza, and compare it with the preceding stanzas of the same poem: "There sometimes does a leaping fish Thither the rainbow comes-the cloud, But that enormous barrier binds it fast." Or compare the four last lines of the concluding stanza with the former half: "Yet proof was plain, that since the day How nourish'd there for such long time 335 |