With many tasks that were resigned to thee:.
Up to the heights and in among the storms
Will I without thee go again, and do
All works which I was wont to do alone,
Before I knew thy face."

Accordingly, when his son was gone, the old shepherd resumed his duties manfully, and from time to time worked at the building of the sheepfold; and he was cheered for some time by loving letters from the boy and by satisfactory tidings of his conduct. But at length came accounts of an opposite tenor-that he had given himself up to dissolute courses, that ignominy and shame had fallen upon him, and, finally, that he had been driven to seek a hiding-place beyond the seas:

"There is a comfort in the strength of love;
'Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain or break the heart.
I have conversed with more than one who well
Remember the old man, and what he was
Years after he had heard this heavy news.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks
He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,
And listened to the wind; and, as before,
Performed all kinds of labour for his sheep,
And for the land his small inheritance.
And to that hollow dell from time to time
Did he repair, to build the fold of which
His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet
The pity which was then in every heart
For the old man; and 'tis believed by all
That many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone."

It is in old age and in childhood that our rustic fellowcreatures are brought before us in the forms in which they are most likely to meet with sympathy. At other ages their coarseness of aspect, except in occasional instances where an inherent refinement or an inborn beauty has triumphed over circumstances, has an effect which is far more unfavourable than it ought to be to the interest we take in them. But in old age what may have been repulsive has been worn away; and as to childhood, it has its attractions in every sphere. It may not have been therefore without due consideration that Michael is presented to us as an aged man; and in the other poem of rustic life which has met with most admiration,—' The Female Vagrant,' we first became acquainted with the subject of it as a child. This poem, being in rhymed stanzas," did not admit of as much narrative detail as 'Michael,' but the art with which it is constructed is equally consummate; and whilst we are borne along by the "liquid lapse" of the verse, sliding on with a smooth and solid melody like a swollen river, care is taken that there shall be no points, no prominences, nothing which shall arrest attention and exact admiration for parts to the injury of the rest, of the whole; no fractional effects.

It is time to conclude, and 'The Excursion' has not been approached. This poem does indeed, though first in importance, come last in order in the study of Mr. Wordsworth's works; for it will not be fully appreciated unless the reader be first imbued with the spirit in which

Those who are accustomed

all that he writes is written. to look for a mantling and sparkling of poetic effervescence in every page and line of every poem they read, will find that in 'The Excursion' they have many disappointments to get over. Such persons would point, perhaps, to particular passages and ask-Where is the poetry in this or that? The answer should be, that this or that neither is, is meant to be, nor in any reasonable apprehension ought to be, poetical. In a poem upon so large a scale every genuine poet is aware that some parts should be bordering upon prose, if not prosaic. Were it to be all the essence of poetry, let it be in other respects what it might, who could read ten pages of it together? Rise and fall, ebb and flow, light and shade, -moor-land and meadow and garden ground,—will be measured out in due proportions by any one who shall attain the breadth of conception necessary to the composition of a great poem ;—the green leaf, the red berry, and the bare bough, each in its season.

Such an artist will also know that it behoves him to apply himself from time to time to manage his transitions, and transact the business of his poem; whereas, one who should aim at being always poetical would fall into the same error which beset the clowns rebuked by Hamlet, who insisted upon being always witty; "though in the meantime some necessary question of the play were then to be considered." Mr. Wordsworth, in his great work, copiously poetical as he is, uses his stores with a

measured plenty, after the manner of a sea-captain bound upon a long voyage, who, if he has no fears for the exhaustion of his resources, must yet look to the proper feeding of his crew, well knowing that their health and alacrity depends upon it, and that it were better their diet should be occasionally as dry as "the remainder biscuit," than that they should be heated and gorged.

In the versification, too, there is nothing to satiate : there is a free and copious variety, but only occasionally a marked melody. For an ear which knows of no other rhythmical music than the unqualified up and down movement of trochees and iambs, or the canter of anapæsts, the "numerous verse" of the Excursion' will have been modulated in vain. The uncultivated ear is always best pleased with that which to the ear of the adept is too palpable to be pleasing except when sparingly mixed with other effects and much modified by them. It once happened that a Sandwich Island prince who was in this country, was present at a Royal entertainment at which the band from one of the regiments of Guards performed some very scientific and composite pieces of music; the Sandwich Islander was observed to listen intently, and being asked by one of the company whether he was pleased with the music, he answered that he had been greatly delighted with the drum. In like manner, to the ear of youth or of age uninstructed, a pleasure will be conveyed by "the very

false gallop of verses," merely because it is the only effect of versification which they can understand; whilst such a variegated intermixture as 'The Excursion' presents would be wholly lost upon them.

Lost, indeed, to a degree which will be long remarkable in the history of English literature, was that whole poem-both matter and music-for scarcely less than a quarter of a century! and lost upon critical ears (so called for courtesy) as well as upon those of "the reading public,”—which, indeed, did no other upon the occasion than, more suo, believe as it was taught. The Touchstones of the day were of opinion that "though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable;" and such, therefore, was the opinion of the tractable multitude. The manner in which such judgments have gradually given way and finally disappeared, it is anything but uninstructive to observe. It is, indeed, not only instructive, but edifying, to observe the manner in which the great poet has risen into fame, whilst the small critics have dwindled into insignificance; the manner in which the witty worldlings of twenty or thirty years ago, those who made mouths at him in the days. of his unpopularity, dealing about their petty acutenesses and exulting in the power to sting,-would now be glad to have it supposed that they knew all the while that they were assailing a great man, but that ridicule, forsooth, being their high vocation, they made it a point to laugh at everything, where they could get the world to laugh