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 can not 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 chanced, * [There was a Boy. P. W. ii. p. 79.—S. C.] Mr. Wordsworth'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, I 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 A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view."1 I object to any extension of its meaning, because the word is already 1 [Par. Lost, iv. 1. 189.-S. C.] Would enter unawares into his mind Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received 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 thee for another scene.”1 * [Part of this poetical description has been altered or expanded, thus: And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call,-with quivering peals, Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause Then, sometimes, in that silence I fear it is presumptuous even to express a feeling, which hardly dares to be an opinion, about these fine verses (one of the most exquisite specimens of blank verse that I know, and fit to be placed beside the most exquisite specimens from Milton, though different from them in the kind of excellence) and yet I can not forbear to express the feeling, that the latter part of this quotation stood better at first; or that any improvement,-if any there be -in the first of the two altered lines, is dearly purchased by the comparative languor which has thus been occasioned in the second: Of silence such as baffled his best skill seems to me almost prose in comparison with That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,— which presents the image (if so it may be called), at once without dividing it, while the spondaic movement of the verse corresponds to the sense. Neither can I think that "mirth" is here a superfluity even in addition to "jocund din ;" the logic of poetic passion may admit or even require what the mere logic of thought does not exact: and what is the objection to "chanc'd," which Milton uses just in the same way in Paradise Lost ?2 The utter silence of the owls, after such free and full communications, is as good an instance of chance, or an event of which we can not see the cause, as the affairs of this world commonly present; and the word seems to me particularly expressive.-S. C.]. 1 [Par. Lost, xi. 1. 637.—S. C.] 2 Book lx. 1. 575. The second shall be that noble imitation of Drayton* (if it was not rather a coincidence) in the lines To JOANNA.† -"When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space, That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. 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 and Honors of his Ancestors.‡ * Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill, In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound, Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long, [P. W. ii. p. 289.—S. C.] Drayton's POLYOLBION: Song XXX. [P. W. ii. p. 154.-S. C.] Happy day, and mighty hour, Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword, To his ancestors restored, Like a re-appearing Star, Like a glory from afar, First shall head the flock of war !" "Alas! the fervent harper did not know, Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; 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 conceptions, and his solicitude to express them with precision.—But are those words in those places commonly employed in real life to express the same thought or outward thing? Are they the style used in the ordinary intercourse of spoken words? No! nor are the modes of connections; and still less the breaks and transitions. Would any but a poet—at least could any one without being conscious that he had expressed himself with noticeable vivacity—have described a bird singing loud by, "The thrush is busy in the wood?"-or have spoken of boys with a string of club-moss round their rusty hats, as the boys "with their green coronal?". —or have translated a beautiful May-day into " Both earth and sky keep jubilee ?"—or have brought all the different marks and circumstances of a sea-loch before the mind, as the actions of a living and acting power? Or have represented the reflection of the sky in the water as "That uncertain heaven received into the bosom of the steady lake?" Even the grammatical construction is not unfrequently peculiar; as, "The wind, the tempest roaring high, the tumult of a tropic sky, might well be dangerous food to him, a youth to whom was given," &c. There is a peculiarity in the frequent use of the dσvvágintov (that is, the omission of the connective particle before the last of several words, or several sentences used grammatically as single words, all being in the same case and governing or governed by the same verb), and not less in the construction of words by apposition ("to him, a youth"). In short, were there excluded! from Mr. Wordsworth's poetic compositions all that a literary adherence to the theory of his preface would exclude, two thirds at least of the marked beauties of his poetry must be erased. For a far greater number of lines would be sacrificed than in any other recent poet; because the pleasure received from Wordsworth's poems being less derived either from excitement of curiosity or the rapid flow of narration the striking passages form a larger proportion of their value. I do not adduce it as a fair criterion of comparative excellence, nor do I even think it such : but merely as matter of fact. I affirm, that from no contemporary writer could so many lines be quoted, without reference to the poem in which they are found, for their own independent weight or beauty. From the sphere of my own experience I can bring to my recollection three persons of no every-day powers and acquirements, who had read the poems of others with more and more unallayed pleasure, and had thought more highly of their authors, as poets; who yet have confessed to me, that from no modern work had so many passages started up anew in their minds at different times, and as different occasions had awakened a meditative mood. CHAPTER XXI. REMARKS ON THE PRESENT MODE OF CONDUCTING CRITICAL 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 characteristic excellencies, deficiencies, and defects. I know no claim, that the mere opinion of any individual can |