when most excited, would have contented themselves with deciding, that the author had been successful in proportion to the elevation of his style and subject. Not a few, perhaps, might, by their admiration of "the lines written near Tintern Abbey," those "left upon a seat under a Yew Tree," the "old Cumberland beggar," and "Ruth," have been gradually led to peruse with kindred feeling the "Brothers," the " Hart leap well," and whatever other poems in that collection may be described as holding a middle place between those written in the highest and those in the humblest style; as, for instance, between the "Tintern Abbey," and "the Thorn,” or the "Simon Lee." Should their taste submit to no further change, and still remain unreconciled to the colloquial phrases, or the imitations of them, that are, more or less, scattered through the class last mentioned; yet, even from the small number of the latter, they would have deemed them but an inconsiderable subtraction from the merit of the whole work; or, what is sometimes not unpleasing in the publication of a new writer, as serving to ascertain the natural tendency, and, consequently, the proper direction of the author's genius. In the critical remarks, therefore, prefixed and annexed to the "Lyrical Ballads," I believe, that we may safely rest, as the true origin of the unexampled opposition which Mr. Wordsworth's writings have been since doomed to encounter. The humbler passages in the poems themselves, were dwelt on and cited to justify the rejection of the theory. What in and for themselves would have been either forgotten or forgiven as imperfections, or at least comparative failures, provoked direct hostility when announced as intentional, as the result of choice after full deliberation. Thus the poems, admitted by all as excellent, joined with those which had pleased the far greater number, though they formed two-thirds of the whole work, instead of being deemed (as in all right they should have been, even if we take for granted that the reader judged aright) an atonement for the few exceptions, gave wind and fuel to the animosity against both the poems and the poet. In all perplexity there is a portion of fear, which predisposes the mind to anger. Not able to deny that the author possessed both genius and a powerful intellect, they felt very positive, but were not quite certain, that he might not be in the right, and they themselves in the wrong ; an unquiet state of mind, which seeks alleviation by quarrelling with the occasion of it, and by wondering at the perverseness of the man who had written a long and argumentative essay to persuade them, that "Fair is foul, and foul is fair;" in other words, that they had been all their lives admiring without judgment, and were now about to censure without reason.* That this conjecture is not wide from the mark, I am induced to believe from the noticeable fact, which I can state on my own knowledge, that the same general censure should have been grounded almost by each different person on some different poem. Among those, whose candour and judgment I estimate highly, I distinctly remember six who expressed their objections to the "Lyrical Ballads," almost in the same words, and altogether to the same purport, at the same time admitting, that several of the poems had given them great pleasure; and, strange as it might seem, the composition which one had cited as execrable, another had quoted as his favourite. I am indeed convinced, in my own mind, that could the same experiment have been tried with these volumes as was made in the well-known story of the picture, the result would have been the same; the parts which had been covered by the number of the *In opinions of long continuance, and in which we had never before been molested by a single doubt, to be suddenly convinced of an error, is almost like being convicted of a fault. There is a state of mind, which is the direct antithesis of that which takes place when we make a bull. The bull, namely, consists in the bringing together two incompatible thoughts, with the sensation, but without the sense of their connexion. The psychological condition, or that which constitutes the possibility of this state, being such disproportionate vividness of two distant thoughts, as extinguishes or obscures the consciousness of the intermediate images or conceptions, or wholly abstracts the attention from them. Thus in the well known bull, "I was a fine child, but they changed me;" the first conception expressed in the word "I," is that of personal identity-Ego contemplans; the second expressed in the word "me," is the visual image or object by which the mind represents to itself its past condition, or rather, its personal identity under the form in which it imagined itself previously to have existed-Ego contemplatus. Now, the change of one visual image for another involves in itself no absurdity, and becomes absurd only by its immediate juxta-position with the first thought, which is rendered possible by the whole attention being successively absorbed in each singly, so as not to notice the interjacent notion, "changed," which, by its incongruity with the first thought, "1," constitutes the bull. Add only, that this process is facilitated by the circumstance of the words "I" and "me" being sometimes equivalent, and sometimes having a distinct meaning; sometimes, namely, signifying the act of self-consciousness, sometimes the external image in and by which the mind represents that act to itself, the result and symbol of its individuality. Now, suppose the direct contrary state, and you will have a distinct sense of the connection between two conceptions, without that sensation of such connexion which is supplied by habit. The man feels, as if he were standing on his head, though he cannot but see, that he is truly standing on his feet. This, as a painful sensation, will of course have a tendency to associate itself with the person who occasions it; even as persons, who have been by painful means restored from derangement, are known to feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician. black spots on the one day, would be found equally albo lapide notata on the succeeding. However this may be, it is assuredly hard and unjust to fix the attention on a few separate and insulated poems, with as much aversion as if they had been so many plague-spots on the whole work, instead of passing them over in silence, as so much blank paper, or leaves of bookseller's catalogue; especially, as no one pretends to have found immorality or indelicacy; and the poems, therefore, at the worst, could only be regarded as so many light or inferior coins in a roleau of gold, not as so much alloy in a weight of bullion. A friend whose talents I hold in the highest respect, but whose judgment and strong sound sense I have had almost continued occasion to revere, making the usual complaints to me concerning both the style and subjects of Mr. Wordsworth's minor poems; I admitted that there were some few tales and incidents, in which I could not myself find a sufficient cause for their having been recorded in metre. I mentioned "Alice Fell" as an instance; "nay," replied my friend, with more than usual quickness of manner, "I cannot agree with you there! that I own does seem to me a remarkably pleasing poem." In the "Lyrical Ballads," (for my experience does not enable me to extend the remark equally unqualified to the two subsequent volumes) I have heard, at different times, and from different individuals, every single poem extolled and reprobated, with the exception of those of loftier kind, which, as was before observed, seem to have won universal praise. This fact of itself would have made me diffident in my censures, had not a still stronger ground been furnished by the strange contrast of the heat and long continuance of the opposition, with the nature of the faults stated as justifying it. The seductive faults, the dulcia vitia of Cowley, Marini, or Darwin, might reasonably be thought capable of corrupting the public judgment for half a century, and require a twenty years' war, campaign after campaign, in order to dethrone the usurper, and re-establish the legitimate taste. But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading, or, at best, trivial associations and characters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost religious admirers, and this among young men of ardent minds, liberal education, and not "With academic laurels unbestowed;" and that this bare and bald counterfeit of poetry, which is characterised as below criticism, should, for nearly twenty years, have well nigh engrossed criticism as the main, if not the only, butt of review, magazine, pamphlets, poem, and paragraph ;—this is, indeed, matter of wonder ! Of yet greater is it, that the contest should still continue as * undecided as that between Bacchus and the frogs in Aristophanes; when the former descended to the realms of the departed to bring back the spirit of old and genuine poesy. * Without, however, the apprehensions attributed to the Pagan reformer of the poetic republic. If we may judge from the preface to the recent collection of his poems, Mr. W. would have answered with Xanthias Συ δ' εκ εδειςας τον ψοφον των ρημάτων, Και τας απειλας ; ΞΑΝ. μα Δι', κδ' εφρόντισα. And here let me dare hint to the authors of the numerous parodies and pretended imitations of Mr. Wordsworth's style, that, at once to convey wit and wisdom in the semblance of folly and dulness, as is done in the clowns and fools, nay, even in the Dogberry, of our Shakspeare, is, doubtless, a proof of genius ; or, at all events, of satiric talent; but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem, by writing another still sillier and still more childish, can only prove, (if it prove any thing at all,) that the parodist is a still greater blockhead than the original writer, and, what is far worse, a malignant coxcomb to boot. The talent for mimcry seems strongest where the human race are most degraded. The poor, naked, During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publications, entitled "Descriptive Sketches ;" and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the form, style, and manner of the whole poem, and in the structure of the particular lines and periods, there is an harshness and an acerbity connected and combined with words and images all a-glow, which might recall those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of the hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The language was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demanded always a greater closeness of attention than poetry, (at all events, than descriptive poetry,) has a right to claim. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity, In the following extract I have sometimes fancied that I saw an emblem of the poem itself, and of the author's genius as it was then displayed. ""Tis storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour, And yet what frequent bursts of overpowering light; The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire." The poetic PSYCHE, in its process to full development, undergoes as many changes as its Greek name-sake, the butterfly. And it half human savages of New Holland, were found excellent mimics; and in civilized society, minds of the very lowest stamp alone satirize by copying. At least the difference, which must blend with, and balance the likeness, in order to constitute a just imitation, existing here merely in caricature, detracts from the libeller's heart, without adding an iota to the credit of his understanding. *The fact that in Greek, Psyche is the common name for the soul, and the butterfly, is thus alluded to in the following stanza from an unpublished poem of the author: |