with a struggle, and but faintly, shall disappear | His eye had been anointed with eye-salve, and -nay, the worlds which bore, and sheltered them in their rugged dens and caves, shall flee from the face of the regenerator. "A milder day" is to dawn on the universe-the refinement of matter is to keep pace with the elevation of mind. Evil and sin are to be eternally banished to some Siberia of space. The word of the poet is to be fulfilled, "And one eternal spring encircles all!" The mediatorial purpose of creation, fully subserved, is to be abandoned, that we may see eye to eye," and that God may be "all in all." That such views of matter-its present ministry-the source of its beauty and glory—and its future destiny, transferred from the pages of both Testaments to those of our great moral and religious poets, have deepened some of their profoundest, and swelled some of their highest strains, is unquestionable. Such prospects as were in Milton's eye, when he sung, "Thy Saviour and thy Lord Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealed, In glory of the Father to dissolve Satan with his perverted world; then raise From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined, New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date," may be found in Thomson, in his closing Hymn to the Seasons, in Coleridge's “Religious Musings," (in Shelley's "Prometheus" even, but perverted and disguised), in Bailey's "Festus" (cumbered and entangled with his religious theory); and more rootedly, although less theologically, than in all the rest, in the poetry of Wordsworth. The secret of Wordsworth's profound and peculiar love for Nature, even in her meaner and minuter forms, may lie, perhaps, here. De Quincey seeks for it in a peculiar conformation of the eye, as if he actually did see more in the object than other men-in the rose a richer red, in the sky a deeper azure, in the broom a yellower gold, in the sun a more dazzling ray, in the sea a finer foam, and in the star a more sparkling splendor, than even Nature's own "sweet and cunning" hand put on; but the critic has not sought to explain the rationale of this peculiarity. Mere acuteness of vision it can not have been, else the eagle might have felt, though not written, "The Excursion"— else the fact is not accountable why many of weak sight, such as Burke, have been rapturous admirers of Nature; and so, till we learn that Mr. De Quincey has looked through Wordsworth's eyes, we must call this a mere fancy. Hazlitt again, and others since, have accounted for the phenomenon by association-but this fails, we suspect, fully to explain the deep, native, and brooding passion in question-a passion which, instead of being swelled by the associations of after life, rose to full stature in youth, as "Tintern Abbey" testifies. One word of his own, perhaps, better solves the mystery-it is the one word "consecration". "The consecration and the poet's dream." he saw, as his poet-predecessors had done, the temple in which he was standing, heard in every breeze and ocean billow the sound of a templeservice, and felt that the grandeur of the ritual. and of its recipient, threw the shadow of their greatness upon every stone in the corners of the edifice, and upon every eft crawling along its floors. Reversing the miracle, he saw "trees as men walking"-heard the speechless sing. and, in the beautiful thought of "the Roman," caught on his ear the fragments of a "divine soliloquy," filling up the pauses in a universal anthem. Hence the tumultuous, yet awful joy of his youthful feelings to Nature. Hence his estimation of its lowliest features; for does not every bush and tree appear to him a 66 pillar in the temple of his God?" The leaping fish pleases him, because its "cheer" in the lonely tarn is of praise. The dropping of the earth on the coffin lid, is a slow and solemn psalm, mingling in austere sympathy with the raven's croak, and in his "Power of sound" he proceeds elaborately to condense all those varied voices. high or low, soft or harsh, united or discordant, into one crushing chorus, like the choruses of Haydn, or of heaven. Nature undergoes no outward change to his eye, but undergoes a far deeper transfiguration to his spirit as she stands up in the white robes, and with the sounding psalmodies of her mediatorial office, between him and the Infinite I AM. Never must this feeling be confounded with Pantheism. All does not seem to him to be God, nor even (strictly speaking) divine; but all seems to be immediately from God-rushing out from him in being, to rush instantly back to him in service and praise. Again the natal dew of the first morning is seen lying on bud and blade, and the low voice of the first evening's song becomes audible again. Although Coleridge in his youth was a Spinozist, Wordsworth seems at once, and forever, to have recoiled from even his friend's eloquent version of that creedless creed, that baseless foundation, that system, through the phenomenon of which look not the bright eyes of Supreme Intelligence, but the blind face of irresponsible and infinite necessity. Shelley himself—with all the power his critics attribute to him of painting night. animating Atheism, and giving strange loveliness to annihilation-has failed in redeeming Spinoza's theory from the reproach of being as hateful as it is false; and there is no axiom we hold more strongly than this-that the theory which can not be rendered poetical, can not be true. "Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty," said poor Keats, to whom time, however, was not granted to come down from the first glowing generalization of his heart, to the particular creeds which his ripened intellect would have. according to it, rejected or received. Nor, although Wordsworth is a devoted lover of Nature, down to what many consider the very blots-or, at least, dashes and commas in her page, is he blind to the fact of her transient the song forever sounding within their souls. And why? The whole ever tends to beget a whole-the large substance to cast its deep, yet delicate shadow-the divine to be like itself in the human, on which its seal is set. So it is with Wordsworth. That profound simplicitythat clear obscurity—that night-like noon-that noon-like night-that one atmosphere of overhanging Deity, seen weighing upon ocean and pool, mountain and mole-hill, forest and flower character. The power he worships has his "dwelling in the light of setting suns," but that dwelling is not his everlasting abode. For earth, and the universe, a "milder day" (words certifying their truth by their simple beauty) is in store when "the monuments" of human weakness, folly, and evil, shall "all be overgrown." He sees afar off the great spectacle of Nature retiring before God; the embassador giving place to the King; the bright toys of this nursery-sun, moon, earth, and stars-put-that pellucid depth-that entireness of puraway, like childish things; the symbols of the Infinite lost in the Infinite itself; and though he could, on the Saturday evening, bow before the midnight mountains, and midnight heavens, he could also, on the Sabbath morn, in Rydal church, bow as profoundly before the apostolic word, "All these things shall be dissolved." pose and fullness of power, connected with fragmentary, willful, or even weak execution—that humble, yet proud, precipitation of himself, Antæus-like, upon the bosom of simple scenes and simple sentiments, to regain primeval vigor that obscure, yet lofty isolation, like a tarn, little in size, but elevated in site, with few visitors, but with many stars-that Tory-Radicalism, Popish-Protestantism, philosophical Christianity, which have rendered him a glorious riddle, and made Shelley, in despair of finding it out, exclaim, "No Deist, and no Christian he, No Whig, no Tory. He got so subtle, that to be With Wordsworth, as with all great poets, his poetical creed passes into his religious. It is the same tune with variations. But we confess that, in his case, we do not think the variations equal. The mediation of Nature he understands, and has beautifully represented in his poetry; but that higher mediation of the Divine Man between man and the Father, does not lie fully or conspicuously on his page. A believer in the mystery of godliness he unquestionably all such apparent contradictions, but real unities, was; but he seldom preached it. Christopher in his poetical and moral creed and character, North, many years ago, in "Blackwood," are fully expressed in his lowly but aspiring doubted if there were so much as a Bible in language, and the simple, elaborate architecture poor Margaret's cottage (Excursion). We of his verse-every stone of which is lifted up doubt so, too, and have not found much of the by the strain of strong logic, and yet laid to 27 true cross among all his trees. The theolo- music; and, above all, in the choice of his subgians divide prayer into four parts-adoration, jects, which range, with a free and easy motion, thanksgiving, confession, and petition. Words- up from a garden spade and a village drum, to worth stops at the second. No where do the "celestial visages" which darkened at the we find more solemn, sustained, habitual, and tidings of man's fall, and to the "organ of eterworthy adoration, than in his writings. The nity," which sung paans over his recovery. tone, too, of all his poems, is a calm thanksgiving, like that of a long blue, cloudless sky, coloring, at evening, into the hues of more fiery praise. But he does not weep like a penitent, nor supplicate like a child. Such feelings seem suppressed and folded up as far-off storms, and the traces of past tempests are succinctly inclosed in the algebra of the silent evening air. And hence, like Milton's, his poetry has rather tended to foster the glow of devotion in the loftier spirits of the race-previously taught to adore -than like that of Cowper and Montgomery, to send prodigals back to their forsaken homes; Davids, to cry, Against thee only have I sinned;" and Peters, to shriek in agony, "Lord, save us, we perish." 66 To pass from the essential poetic element in a writer of genius, to his artistic skill, is a felt, yet necessary descent-like the painter compelled, after sketching the man's countenance, to draw his dress. And yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity, elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the body-seems the soul made visible-so is it with the style and manner of many great poets. Their speech and music without are as inevitable as their genius, or as We sum up what we have further to say of Wordsworth, under the items of his works, his life and character, his death; and shall close by inquiring, Who is worthy to be his successor? His works, covering a large space, and abounding in every variety of excellence and style, assume, after all, a fragmentary aspect. They are true, simple, scattered, and strong, as blocks torn from the crags of Helvellyn, and lying there "low, but mighty still." Few even of his ballads are wholes. They leave too much untold. They are far too suggestive to satisfy. From each poem, however rounded, there streams off a long train of thought: like the tail of a comet, which, while testifying its power, mars its aspect of oneness. The Excursion," avowedly a fragment, seems the splinter of a larger splinter; like a piece of Pallas, itself a piece of some split planet. Of all his poems, perhaps, his sonnets, his "Laodamia," his "Intimations of Immortality," and his verses on the "Eclipse in Italy," are the mos' complete in execution, as certainly they are the most classical in design. Dramatic power he has none, nor does he regret the want. hate," he was wont to say to Hazlitt, "those interlocutions between Caius and Lucius." He "I sees, as "from a tower, the end of all." The dancing of an elephant, or of the "hills leaping waving lights and shadows, the varied loopholes like lambs." Many of the little poems which of view, the shiftings and fluctuations of feeling, he wrote upon a system, are exceedingly tame the growing, broadening interest of the drama, and feeble. Yet often, even in his narrow bleak have no charm for him. His mind, from its vales, we find one "meek streamlet-only one " gigantic size, contracts a gigantic stiffness. It-beautifying the desolation; and feel how "moveth altogether, if it move at all." Hence, painful it is for him to become poor, and that, come of his smaller poems remind you of the when he sinks, it is with "compulsion and la borious flight." But, having subtracted such | altogether from their intellectual pretensions, faults, how much remains-of truth-of tender- Wordsworth's poems possess a moral clearness, ness of sober, eve-like grandeur-of purged beauty, transparency, and harmony, which conbeauties, white and clean as the lilies of Eden nect them immediately with those of Milton; -of calm, deep reflection, contained in lines and beside the more popular poetry of the past and sentences which have become proverbs-age-such as Byron's, and Moore's-they reof mild enthusiasm of minute knowledge of mind us of that unplanted garden, where the nature-of strong, yet unostentatious sympathy shadow of God united all trees of fruitfulness. with man-and of devout and breathless com- and all flowers of beauty, into one; where the munion with the Great Author of all! Apart" large river," which watered the whole, "ran south," toward the sun of heaven-when compared with the gardens of the Hesperides, where a dragon was the presiding deity, or with those of Vauxhall or White Conduit-house, where Comus and his rabble rout celebrate their undisguised orgies of miscalled and miserable pleasure. To write a great poem demands years-to write a great undying example, demands a lifetime. Such a life, too, becomes a poemhigher far than pen can inscribe, or metre make musical. Such a life it was granted to Wordsworth to live in severe harmony with his verse -as it lowly, and as it aspiring, to live, too, amid opposition, obloquy, and abuse-to live, too, amid the glare of that watchful observation, which has become to public men far more keen and far more capacious in its powers and opportunities, than in Milton's days. It was not, unquestionably, a perfect life, even as a man's, far less as a poet's. He did feel and resent, more than beseemed a great man, the pursuit and persecution of the hounds, whether gray" and swift-footed, or whether curs of low degree, who dogged his steps. His voice from his woods sounded at times rather like the moan of wounded weakness, than the bellow of masculine wrath. He should, simply, in reply to his opponents, have written on at his poems, and let his prefaces alone. "If they receive your first book ill," wrote Thomas Carlyle to a new author, "write the second better -so much better as to shame them." When will authors learn that to answer an unjust attack, is, merely to give it a keener edge, and that all injustice carries the seed of oblivion and exposure in itself? To use the language of the masculine spirit just quoted, "it is really a truth, one never knows whether praise be really good for one-or whether it be not, in very fact, the worst poison that could be administered. Blame, or even vituperation, I have always found a safer article. In the long run, a man has, and is, just what he is and has the world's notion of him has not altered him at all, except, indeed, if it have poisoned him with selfconceit, and made a caput mortuum of him." The sensitiveness of authors-were it not such a sore subject-might admit of some curious reflections. One would sometimes fancy that Apollo, in an angry hour, had done to his sons, what fable records him to have done to Marsyas flayed them alive. Nothing has brought more contempt upon authors than this -implying, as it does, a lack of common courage and manhood. The true son of genius ought to rush before the public as the warrior into battle, resolved to hack and hew his way to eminence and power, not to whimper like a schoolboy at every scratch-to acknowledge only home thrusts-large, life-letting-out blows -determined either to conquer or to die, and, feeling that battles should be lost in the same spirit in which they are won. If Wordsworth did not fully answer this ideal, others have sunk far more disgracefully and habitually below it. In private, Wordsworth, we understand, was pure, mild, simple, and majestic-perhaps somewhat austere in his judgments of the erring, and, perhaps, somewhat narrow in his own economics. In accordance, we suppose, with that part of his poetic system, which magnified mole-heaps to mountains, pennies assumed the importance of pounds. It is ludicrous, yet characteristic, to think of the great author of the 'Recluse," squabbling with a porter about the price of a parcel, or bidding down an old book at a stall. He was one of the few poets who were ever guilty of the crime of worldly prudence-that ever could have fulfilled the old parodox, "A poet has built a house." In his young days, according to Hazlitt, he said little in society-sat generally lost in thought— threw out a bold or an indifferent remark occasionally-and relapsed into reverie again. In latter years, he became more talkative and oracular. His health and habits were always regular, his temperament happy, and his heart sound and pure. We have said that his life, as a poet, was far from perfect. Our meaning is, that he did not sufficiently, owing to temperament, or position, or habits, sympathize with the on-goings of society, the fullness of modern life, and the varied passions, unbeliefs, sins, and miseries of modern human nature. His soul dwelt apart. He came, like the Baptist, "neither eating nor drinking," and men said, "he hath a demon." He saw at morning, from London bridge, "*all its mighty heart" lying still; but he did not at noon plunge artistically into the thick of its throbbing life; far less sound the depths of its wild midnight heavings of revel and wretchedness, of hopes and fears, of stifled fury and eloquent despair. Nor, although he sung the "mighty stream of tendency" of this wondrous age, did he ever launch his poetic craft upon it, nor seem to see the witherward of its swift and awful stress. He has, on the whole, stood aside from his time-not on a peak of the past not on an anticipated Alp of the future, but on his own Cumberland highlands-hearing the tumult and remaining still, lifting up his life as a far-seen beacon-fire, studying the manners of the humble dwellers in the vales below-" piping a simple song to thinking hearts," and. striving to waft to brother spirits, the fine infec tion of his own enthusiasm, faith, hope, and devotion. Perhaps, had he been less strict and consistent in creed and in character, he might have attained greater breadth, blood-warmth, and wide-spread power, have presented on his page a fuller reflection of our present state, and drawn from his poetry a yet stronger moral, and become the Shakspeare, instead of the Milton. of the age. For himself, he did undoubtedly choose the "better part;" nor do we mean to insinuate that any man ought to contaminate himself for the sake of his art, but that the poet of a period will necessarily come so near to its peculiar sins, sufferings, follies, and mistakes, as to understand them, and even to feel the force of their temptations, and though he should never yield to, yet must have a "fellow-feeling" of its prevailing infirmities. the golden age, supposed by many to have existed in the past, and of the millennium, expected by more in the future-a compromise of the The death of this eminent man took few by two poetical styles besides the one, which surprise. Many anxious eyes have for a while clung to the hoary tradition of the elders, and been turned toward Rydal mount, where this the other, which accepted innovation because it hermit stream was nearly sinking into the ocean was new, and boldness because it was daring, of the Infinite. And now, to use his own grand and mysticism because it was dark—not truth, word, used at the death of Scott, a "trouble' though new; beauty, though bold; and insight, hangs upon Helvellyn's brow, and over the though shadowy and shy. Nay, we heartily waters of Windermere. The last of the Lakers wish, had it been for nothing else than this, that has departed. That glorious country has be- his reign had lasted for many years longer, till, come a tomb for its more glorious children. perchance, the discordant elements in our creeds No more is Southey's tall form seen at his library and literature, had been somewhat harmonized. window, confronting Skiddaw-with a port as As it is, there must now be great difficulty stately as its own. No more does Coleridge's in choosing his successor to the laureateship; dim eye look down into the dim tarn, heavy laden, nor is there, we think, a single name in our too, under the advancing thunder-storm. And poetry whose elevation to the office would give no more is Wordsworth's pale and lofty front universal, or even general, satisfaction. shaded into divine twilight, as he plunges at noon-day amidst the quiet woods. A stiller, sterner power than poetry has folded into its strict, yet tender and yearning embrace, those "Serene creators of immortal things." Alas! for the pride and the glory even of the purest products of this strange world! Sin and science, pleasure and poetry, the lowest vices, and the highest aspirations, are equally unable to rescue their votaries from the swift ruin which is in chase of us all. "Golden lads and girls all must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust." But Wordsworth has left for himself an epitaph almost superfluously rich-in the memory of his private virtues of the impulse he gave to our declining poetry-of the sympathies he discovered in all his strains with the poor, the neglected, and the despised-of the version he furnished of Nature, true and beautiful as if it were Nature describing herself—of his lofty and enacted ideal of his art and the artist-of the "thoughts, too deep for tears," he has given to meditative and lonely hearts-and, above all, of the support he has lent to the cause of the "primal duties" and eldest instincts of manto his hope of immortality, and his fear of God. And now we bid him farewell, in his own words "Blessings be with him, and eternal praise, The poet, who on earth has made us heirs Although, as already remarked, not the poet of Our gifted Milman is a fine poet, but not a great one. Croly is, or ought to have been, a great poet; but is not sufficiently known, nor en rapport with the spirit of the time. Bowles is deadMoore dying. Lockhart and Macaulay have written clever ballads; but no shapely, continuous, and masterly poem. John Wilson, alias Christopher North, has more poetry in his eye, brow, head, hair, figure, voice, talk, and the prose of his "Noctes," than any man living; but his verse, on the whole, is mawkish-and his being a Scotchman will be a stumblingblock to many, though not to us; for, had Campbell been alive, we should have said at once, let him be laureate-if manly grace, classic power, and genuine popularity, form qualifications for the office. Tennyson, considering all he has done, has received his full meed already. Let him and Leigh Hunt repose under the shadow of their pensions. friends, Bailey, of "Festus," and Yendys, of the "Roman," are yet in blossom-though it is a glorious blossom. Henry Taylor is rather in the sere and yellow leaf-nor was his leaf ever, in our judgment, very fresh or ample: a masterly builder he is, certainly, but the materials he brings are not highly poetical. When Dickens is promoted to Scott's wizard throne, let Browning succeed Wordsworth on the forked Helvellyn! Landor is a vast monumental name; but, while he has overawed the higher intellects of the time, he has never touched the general heart, nor told the world much, except his great opinion of himself, the low opinion he has of almost every body else, and the very learned reasons and sufficient grounds he has for supporting those twin opinions. Never was such power so wasted and thrown away. The proposition of a lady laureate is simply absurd, without being witty. Why not as soon have proposed the Infant Sappho? In short, if we ask again, "Where is the poet worthy to wear the crown which has dropped from the solemn brow of "old Pan," "sole king of rocky Cumberland ?"-Echo, from Glaramara, or the Langdale Pikes, might well answer, "Where? |