7 5 > priately, and with far greater verisimilitude, told of a poet in the character of a poet; and without incurring another defect which I shall now mention, and a sufficient illustration of which will have been here anticipated. Third; an undue predilection for the dramatic form in certain poems, from which one or other of two evils result. Either the thoughts and diction are different from that of the poet, and then there arises an incongruity of style; or they are the same and indistinguishable, and then it presents Io a species of ventriloquism, where two are represented as talking, while in truth one man only speaks. The fourth class of defects is closely connected with the former; but yet are such as arise likewise from an intensity of feeling disproportionate to such knowledge and value of 15 the objects described, as can be fairly anticipated of men in general, even of the most cultivated classes; and with which therefore few only, and those few particularly circumstanced, can be supposed to sympathize. In this class, I comprise occasional prolixity, repetition, and an eddying, instead of 20 progression, of thought. As instances, see pages 27, 28, and 62 of the Poems, Vol. I. and the first eighty lines of the Sixth Book of the Excursion. Fifth and last; thoughts and images too great for the subject. This is an approximation to what might be called 25 mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal: for, as in the latter there is a disproportion of the expressions to the thoughts, so in this there is a disproportion of thought to the circumstance and occasion. This, by the bye, is a fault of which none but a man of genius is capable. It is 30 the awkwardness and strength of Hercules with the distaff of Omphale. It is a well-known fact, that bright colors in motion both make and leave the strongest impressions on the eye. Nothing is more likely too, than that a vivid image or visual spectrum, thus originated, may become the link of associa tion in recalling the feelings and images that had accompanied the original impression. But if we describe this in such lines, as They flash upon that inward eye, " 5 in what words shall we describe the joy of retrospection, when the images and virtuous actions of a whole well-spent life, pass before that conscience which is indeed the inward eye which is indeed "the bliss of solitude?" Assuredly we seem to sink most abruptly, not to say burlesquely, and 10 almost as in a medly, from this couplet to "And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils." Vol. I. p. 320. The second instance is from Vol. II. page 12, where the poet, having gone out for a day's tour of pleasure, meets 15 early in the morning with a knot of gypsies, who had pitched their blanket-tents and straw-beds, together with their children and asses, in some field by the road-side. At the close of the day on his return our tourist found them in the same place. "Twelve hours," says he, Twelve hours, twelve bounteous hours are gone, while I 20 Whereat the poet, without seeming to reflect that the poor 25 tawny wanderers might probably have been tramping for weeks together through road and lane, over moor and mountain, and consequently must have been right glad to rest themselves, their children and cattle, for one whole day; and overlooking the obvious truth, that such repose might 30 be quite as necessary for them, as a walk of the same continuance was pleasing or healthful for the more fortunate poet; expresses his indignation in a series of lines, the diction and imagery of which would have been rather above, 5 IO 15 20 25 than below the mark, had they been applied to the immense empire of China improgressive for thirty centuries : The weary SUN betook himself to rest :- The glorious path in which he trod! And now, ascending, after one dark hour, Regard not her :-oh, better wrong and strife, The STARS have tasks!-but these have none ! The last instance of this defect (for I know no other than these already cited) is from the Ode, page 351, Vol. II., where, speaking of a child, "a six years' darling of a pigmy size," he thus addresses him : "Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find! Broods like the day, a master o'er the slave, A presence that is not to be put by!" Now here, not to stop at the daring spirit of metaphor 30 which connects the epithets "deaf and silent," with the apostrophized eye: or (if we are to refer it to the preceding word, philosopher) the faulty and equivocal syntax of the passage; and without examining the propriety of making a "master brood o'er a slave," or the day brood at all; we 35 will merely ask, what does all this mean? In what sense is a child of that age a philosopher? In what sense does he read " the eternal deep"? In what sense is he declared to be "for ever haunted" by the Supreme Being? or so inspired as to deserve the splendid titles of a mighty prophet, a blessed seer? By reflection? by knowledge? by conscious intuition? or by any form or modification of consciousness? These would be tidings indeed; but such as would pre- 5 suppose an immediate revelation to the inspired communicator, and require miracles to authenticate his inspiration. Children at this age give us no such information of themselves; and at what time were we dipped in the Lethe, which has produced such utter oblivion of a state so godlike? 10 There are many of us that still possess some remembrances, more or less distinct, respecting themselves at six years old; pity that the worthless straws only should float, while treasures, compared with which all the mines of Golconda and Mexico were but straws, should be absorbed by some 15 unknown gulf into some unknown abyss. But if this be too wild and exorbitant to be suspected as having been the poet's meaning; if these mysterious gifts, faculties, and operations, are not accompanied with consciousness; who else is conscious of them? or how can it 20 be called the child, if it be no part of the child's conscious being? For aught I know, the thinking Spirit within me may be substantially one with the principle of life, and of vital operation. For aught I know, it might be employed as a secondary agent in the marvellous organization and 25 organic movements of my body. But, surely, it would be strange language to say, that I construct my heart! or that I propel the finer influences through my nerves! or that I compress my brain, and draw the curtains of sleep round my own eyes! SPINOZA and BEHMEN were, on different 30 systems, both Pantheists; and among the ancients there were philosophers, teachers of the EN KAI IIAN, who not only taught that God was All, but that this All constituted God. Yet not even these would confound the part, as a part, with the Whole, as the whole. Nay, in no system is 35 the distinction between the individual and God, between the Modification, and the one only Substance, more sharply drawn, than in that of SPINOZA. JACOBI indeed relates of LESSING, that, after a conversation with him at the house of 5 the poet, GLEIM (the Tyrtæus and Anacreon of the German Parnassus) in which conversation L. had avowed privately to Jacobi his reluctance to admit any personal existence of the Supreme Being, or the possibility of personality except in a finite Intellect, and while they were sitting at Io table, a shower of rain came on unexpectedly. Gleim expressed his regret at the circumstance, because they had meant to drink their wine in the garden: upon which Lessing in one of his half-earnest half-joking moods, nodded to Jacobi, and said, "It is I, perhaps, that am doing that," 15 i. e. raining! and J. answered, "or perhaps I"; Gleim contented himself with staring at them both, without asking for any explanation. So with regard to this passage. In what sense can the magnificent attributes, above quoted, be appropriated to ao a child, which would not make them equally suitable to a bee, or a dog, or a field of corn: or even to a ship, or to the wind and waves that propel it? The omnipresent Spirit works equally in them, as in the child; and the child is equally unconscious of it as they. It cannot surely be, that the four 25 lines, immediately following, are to contain the explanation ? "To whom the grave 30 Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight Of day or the warm light, A place of thought where we in waiting lie.” Surely, it cannot be that this wonder-rousing apostrophe is but a comment on the little poem, "We are seven ?" that the whole meaning of the passage is reducible to the assertion, that a child, who by the bye at six years old would have been better instructed in most Christian families, has no 35 other notion of death than that of lying in a dark, cold |