the same excellence, as Mr. Moore, Lord Byron, Mr. Bowles, and, in all his later and more important works, our laurel-honoring Laureate. But there are none, in whose works I do not appear to myself to find more exceptions, than in those of Wordsworth. Quotations or specimens would here be wholly out of place, and must be left for the critic who doubts and would invalidate the justice of this eulogy so applied. The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's works is a correspondent weight and sanity of the Thoughts and Sentiments,—won, not from books; but-from the poet's own meditative observation. They are fresh and have the dew upon them. His muse, at least when in her strength of wing, and when she hovers aloft in her proper element, Makes audible a linked lay of truth, Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay, Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes !31 Even throughout his smaller poems there is scarcely one, which is not rendered valuable by some just and original reflection. See page 25, vol. ii., or the two following passages in one of his humblest compositions. and 32 "O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything." "I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Has oftener left me mourning."33 or in a still higher strain the six beautiful quatrains, page 134. "Thus fares it still in our decay: And yet the wiser mind Mourns less for what age takes away Than what it leaves behind. 31 [Coleridge's Poet. Works, vol. i., p. 208. S. C.] The Blackbird in the summer trees, Let loose their carols when they please, Are quiet when they will. With Nature never do they wage A foolish strife; they see A happy youth, and their old age Is beautiful and free! But we are pressed by heavy laws; We wear a face of joy, because If there is one who need bemoan His kindred laid in earth, The household hearts that were his own, It is the man of mirth. My days, my Friend, are almost gone, My life has been approved, And many love me; but by none Am I enough beloved."34 35 or the sonnet on Bonaparte, page 202, vol. ii. ;* or finally (for 34 [The Fountain. P. W., v., p. 34-5. S. C.] 35 [Sonnets dedicated to Liberty. Part i., Sonnet iv. P. W., iii., p. 178. I grieved for Bonaparte, with a vain The third and fourth lines and part of the second are now a little altered. a volume would scarce suffice to exhaust the instances), the last stanza of the poem on the withered Celandine, vol. ii., p. 312.36 "To be a Prodigal's Favorite-then, worse truth, A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot! O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth Both in respect of this and of the former excellence, Mr. Wordsworth strikingly resembles Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our golden Elizabethan age, now most causelessly neglected: Samuel Daniel, whose diction bears no mark of time, no distinction of age, which has been, and as long as our language shall last, will be so far the language of the to-day and for ever, as that it is more intelligible to us, than the transitory fashions of our own particular age. A similar praise is due to his sentiments. No frequency of perusal can deprive them of their freshness. For though they are brought into the full day-light of every reader's comprehension; yet are they drawn up from depths which few in any age are privileged to visit, into which few in any age have courage or inclination to descend. If Mr. Wordsworth is not equally with Daniel alike intelligible to all readers of average understanding in all passages of his works, the comparative difficulty does not arise from the greater impurity of the ore, but from the nature and uses of the metal. A poem is not necessarily obscure, because it does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a work be perspicuous to those for whom it is written, and "Fit audience find, though few." To the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood" the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante addresses to one of his own Canzoni "Canzone, i' credo, che saranno radi Color, che tua ragione intendan bene, 36 [The Small Celandine. P. W., v., p. 294. S. C.] 37 [Canzoni Morali, lib. iv., Canz. i. Tanto lor parli faticoso e forte is the original third line. S. C.] 26 3, "O lyric song, there will be few, think I, Thou art for them so arduous and so high !" But the ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet can not be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to charge Mr. Words worth with believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary interpretation of the words, as I am to believe, that Plato himself ever meant or taught it. Πολλά δι ἐπ ̓ ἀγκῶ νος ὠκέα βέλη ἔνδον ἐντὶ φαρέτρας φωνᾶντα σινετᾶισιν· ἐς χατίζει. σοφὸς ὁ πολ λα εἰδὼς φυλ μαθόντες δὲ λάβροι παγγλωσσία, κόρακες ὥς, ἄκραντα γαρύετον Διὸς πρὸς ὄρνιχα θεῖον.38 Third (and wherein he soars far above Daniel) the sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs; the fre 38 [Olymp. ii., v. 150. Beneath mine elbow a full quiver lies Of fleetest arrows, sounding to the wise; His skill is most who learns in Nature's school; All else, expert by rule, Are none of her's; Mere tongues in vehement gabble idly heard, This is one of the good passages of Mr. Cary's translations of Pindar. quent curiosa felicitas of his diction, of which I need not here give specimens, having anticipated them in a preceding page. This beauty, and as eminently characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry, his rudest assailants have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge and admire. Fourth; the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colors its objects; but on the contrary brings out many a vein and many a tint, which escape the eye of common observation, thus raising to the rank of gems what had been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the traveller on the dusty high road of custom. Let me refer to the whole description of skating, vol. i., page 42 to 47, especially to the lines 39 "So through the darkness and the cold we flew, Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud; Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars, Or to the poem on THE GREEN LINNET, vol. i., p. 244.40 What can be more accurate yet more lovely than the two concluding stanzas ? 39 [Influence of Natural Objects. P. W., i., p. 38. S. C.] 40 [P. W., ii., p. 27. The last stanza is now a little altered. S. C.] |