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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,
Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld

That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud.
The Rock, like something starting from a sleep,
Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed 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.
Helvellyn 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 and Honors of his Ancestors.‡

—“Now another day is come,

Fitter hope, and nobler doom;
He hath thrown aside his crook,
And hath buried deep his book
Armor rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls;
"Quell the Scot,' exclaims the Lance!

Bear me to the heart of France,

Is the longing of the Shield

Tell thy name, thou trembling Field !—
Field of death, where'er thou be,

Groan thou with our victory!

*Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,
Upon her verge that stands, the neighboring valleys fill;
Helvillon from his height, it through the mountains threw,
From whom as soon again, the sound Dunbalrase drew,
From whose stone-trophied head, it on the Wendross went,
Which, tow'rds the sea again, resounded it to Dent.
That Brodwater, therewith within her banks astound,

In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound,

Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long,
Did mightily commend old Copland for her song.

[P. W. ii. p. 289.-S. C.]

Drayton's POLYOLBION: Song XXX. [P. W. ii. p. 154.—S. C.]

Happy day, and mighty hour,
When our Shepherd, in his power,

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,

That for a tranquil Soul the Lay was framed,
Who, long compelled in humble walks to go,
Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,

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 dovvágin
(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 ap-
position ("to him, a youth"). In short, were there excluded
from Mr. Wordsworth's poetic compositions all that a literary ad-
herence 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 Words-
worth's poems being less derived either from excitement of curi-
osity 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 contempo-
rary 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
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 characteristic excellencies, deficiencies, and defects. I know no claim, that the mere opinion of any individual can

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have to weigh down the opinion of the author himself; against the probability of whose parental partiality we ought to set that of his having thought longer and more deeply on the subject. But I should call that investigation fair and philosophical in which the critic announces and endeavors to establish the principles, which he holds for the foundation of poetry in general, with the specification of these in their application to the different classes of poetry. Having thus prepared his canons of criticism for praise and condemnation, he would proceed to particularize the most striking passages to which he deems them applicable, faithfully noticing the frequent or infrequent recurrence of similar merits or defects, and as faithfully distinguishing what is characteristic from what is accidental, or a mere flagging of the wing. Then if his premises be rational, his deductions legitimate, and his conclusions justly applied, the reader, and possibly the poet himself, may adopt his judgment in the light of judgment and in the independence of free-agency. If he has erred, he presents his ! errors in a definite place and tangible form, and holds the torch and guides the way to their detection)

I most willingly admit, and estimate at a high value, the services which the EDINBURGH REVIEW, and others formed after'wards 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 or mediocrity, wisely left to sink into oblivion by its 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, as long as no personal allusions are admitted, and no re-commitment (for new trial) of juvenile performances, that were published, perhaps forgotten, many

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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:

The viva sectio is its own delight!

All enmity, all envy, they disclaim,
Disinterested thieves of our good name:

Cool, sober murderers of their neighbor's fame !"-S. T. C.

Every censure, every sarcasm respecting a publication which the critic, with the criticized work before 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 on 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 and 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,

* [See a few remarks on this subject in Lessing's Preface to his Essay on the manner in which the Ancients represented Death (Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet). Works, Leipzig, 1841, vol. v. pp. 273-4. Lessing also remonstrates against a certain sort of personality in criticism in the Advertisement prefixed to his Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Ib. vol. vii. pp. 3-6.—S. C.]

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