nus excelsior; platane; and a few stately tulip trees." What Mr. Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me to prophecy but I could pronounce with the liveliest convictions what he is capable of producing. It is the FIRST 5 GENUINE PHILOSOPHIC POEM.

The preceding criticism will not, I am aware, avail to overcome the prejudices of those, who have made it a business to attack and ridicule Mr. Wordsworth's compositions.

Truth and prudence might be imaged as concentric circles. 10 The poet may perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him ;-" men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action 15 is languid;—who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the many are greedy after vicious provocatives."

25

Let not Mr. Wordsworth be charged with having expressed himself too indignantly, till the wantonness and the systematic and malignant perseverance of the aggressions 20 have been taken into fair consideration. I myself heard the commander in chief of this unmanly warfare make a boast of his private admiration of Wordsworth's genius. I have heard him declare, that whoever came into his room would probably find the Lyrical Ballads lying open on his table, and that (speaking exclusively of those written by Mr. Wordsworth himself) he could nearly repeat the whole of them by heart. But a Review, in order to be a saleable article, must be personal, sharp, and pointed: and, since then, the poet has made himself, and with himself all who 30 were, or were supposed to be, his friends and admirers, the object of the critic's revenge-how? by having spoken of a work so conducted in the terms which it deserved! I once heard a clergyman in boots and buckskin avow, that he would cheat his own father in a horse. A moral system of 35 a similar nature seems to have been adopted by too many

They exert

anonymous critics. As we used to say at school, in reviewing they make being rogues: and he, who complains, is to be laughed at for his ignorance of the game. With the pen out of their hand they are honorable men. indeed power (which is to that of the injured party who 5 should attempt to expose their glaring perversions and misstatements, as twenty to one) to write down, and (where the author's circumstances permit) to impoverish the man, whose learning and genius they themselves in private have repeatedly admitted. They knowingly strive to make it 10 impossible for the man even to publish * any future work without exposing himself to all the wretchedness of debt and embarrassment. But this is all in their vocation: and, bating what they do in their vocation, “who can say that black is the white of their eye?"

15

So much for the detractors from Wordsworth's merits. On the other hand, much as I might wish for their fuller sympathy, I dare not flatter myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my opinions concerning both his theory and his defects, most of which are more or less con- 20 nected with his theory, either as cause or effect, will be satisfactory or pleasing to all the poet's admirers and advocates. More indiscriminate than mine their admiration may be deeper and more sincere it can not be. But I have advanced no opinion either for praise or censure, other than 25 as texts introductory to the reasons which compel me to form it. Above all, I was fully convinced that such a criticism was not only wanted; but that, if executed with adequate ability, it must conduce, in no mean degree, to Mr. Wordsworth's reputation. His fame belongs to another age, 30

*Not many months ago an eminent bookseller was asked what he thought of? The answer was: "I have heard his powers very highly spoken of by some of our first-rate men; but I would not have a work of his if any one would give it me : for he is spoken but slightly of, or not at all, in the Quarterly Review: and the Edinburgh, you know, is decided to cut him up!"

and can neither be accelerated nor retarded.

How small

the proportion of the defects are to the beauties, I have repeatedly declared; and that no one of them originates in deficiency of poetic genius.) Had they been more and greater, 5 I should still, as a friend to his literary character in the present age, consider an analytic display of them as pure gain; if only it removed, as surely to all reflecting minds even the foregoing analysis must have removed, the strange mistake, so slightly grounded, yet so widely and industriTo ously propagated, of Mr. Wordsworth's turn for SIMPLICITY! I am not half so much irritated by hearing his enemies abuse him for vulgarity of style, subject, and conception; as I am disgusted with the gilded side of the same meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers, with whom he is, forsooth, 15 a sweet, simple poet and so natural, that little master

Charles and his younger sister are so charmed with them, that they play at "Goody Blake," or at " Johnny and Betty Foy!"

Were the collection of poems, published with these bioào graphical sketches, important enough, (which I am not vain enough to believe), to deserve such a distinction; EVEN AS I HAVE DONE, SO WOULD I BE DONE UNTO.

For more than eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled SIBYLLINE LEAVES, and the present volumes, up to 25 this page, been printed, and ready for publication. But, ere I speak of myself in the tones, which are alone natural to me under the circumstances of late years, I would fain present myself to the Reader as I was in the first dawn of my literary life :

30 "When Hope grew round me, like the climbing vine, And fruits and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine!" For this purpose I have selected from the letters, which I wrote home from Germany, those which appeared likely to be most interesting, and at the same time most pertinent to 35 the title of this work.

SATYRANE'S LETTERS

LETTER I

ON Sunday morning, September 16, 1798, the Hamburg Pacquet set sail from Yarmouth; and I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native land retiring from me. At the moment of its disappearance-in all the kirks, churches, chapels, and meeting-houses, in which the greater number, 5 I hope, of my countrymen were at that time assembled, I will dare question whether there was one more ardent prayer offered up to heaven, than that which I then preferred for my country. "Now, then," (said I to a gentleman who was standing near me), "we are out of our country." 10 "Not yet, not yet!" he replied, and pointed to the sea; "This, too, is a Briton's country." This bon mot gave a fillip to my spirits, I rose and looked round on my fellowpassengers, who were all on the deck. We were eighteen in number, videlicet, five Englishmen, an English lady, a 15 French gentleman and his servant, an Hanoverian and his servant, a Prussian, a Swede, two Danes, and a Mulatto boy, a German tailor and his wife, (the smallest couple I ever beheld), and a Jew. We were all on the deck; but in a short time I observed marks of dismay. The lady 20 retired to the cabin in some confusion, and many of the faces round me assumed a very doleful and frog-coloured appearance; and within an hour the number of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick, and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness 25 and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the sæva Mephitis of the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied passengers, one of whom observed not inaptly, that Momus might have dis- 30

covered an easier way to see a man's inside, than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only have taken a saltwater trip in a pacquet-boat.

I am inclined to believe, that a pacquet is far superior 5 to a stage-coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definiteness of the period, at which the company will separate, makes each individual think more of those to whom he is going, than of those with whom he 10 is going. But at sea, more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with them. Besides, if you are countrymen, that now begins to 15 form a distinction and a bond of brotherhood; and if of different countries, there are new incitements of conversation, more to ask and more to communicate. I found that I had interested the Danes in no common degree. I had crept into the boat on the deck and fallen asleep; but was 20 awaked by one of them, about three o'clock in the afternoon, who told me that they had been seeking me in every hole and corner, and insisted that I should join their party and drink with them. He talked English with such fluency, as left me wholly unable to account for the singular and 25 even ludicrous incorrectness with which he spoke it. I went, and found some excellent wines and a dessert of grapes with a pineapple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, and dressed as I was all in black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings, I might certainly have passed very well 30 for a Methodist missionary. However I disclaimed my title. What then may you be? A man of fortune? No!A merchant? No! A merchant's traveller? No!-A clerk ? No!-Un Philosophe, perhaps? It was at that time in my life, in which of all possible names and characters I had the 35 greatest disgust to that of "un Philosophe." But I was weary