IX. To the consideration of Mr. WORDSWORTH'S sublimities we come with trembling steps, and feel, as we approach, that we are entering upon holy ground. At first, indeed, he seems only to win and to allure us, to resign the most astonishing trophies of the poet, and humbly to indulge, among the beauties of creation, the sweetest and the lowliest of human affections. We soon, however, feel how faint an idea of his capacities we have entertained by classing him with the loveliest of descriptive poets, and how subservient the sweetest of his domestic pictures are to the grandeur of his lofty conceptions. That his writings abound with sketches of rural scenery, arises merely from his peculiar love of nature, and from his constant residence among the magnificent regions where his genius has been gradually unfolding.

Secluded from the anxieties and dissipations of the world, he has experienced all his seasons of elevated abstraction among the solitudes of the country;—there he has often soared into the heaven of heavens and the very humblest of its charms-its lowliest and most retiring graces-have been linked in his associations to the loftiest sublimities of our nature. Whilst he seems to be walking, in vacancy of thought, through the favorite nooks of his little grove, or dreaming over some narrow rivulet, he is rapt in celestial thoughts, and drinking of that deep bliss which assures and anticipates the joys of a brighter existence. He loves the bushes, and blades of grass, the humble daisies, and small celandines, because they have all given the first spring to a train of holy contemplation reaching far-far beyond " the visible diurnal sphere." The kindly influence he ascribes to beautiful scenery, is first imparted to it by the wonder-working magic of his fancy, and then reflected in his poems. Thus all the prospects which he delineates are enchanted with a spell more potent than faery lore, or the marvels of old romance,—they are filled with innumerable loves and graces, which we recognize as contributing to form all that is noble or divine in man-abound with gleams of half-extinguished thought, and recollections of almost-forgotten bliss-and open between some aged thorns or forky eminences of the landscape, glimpses which fill us, even to overflowing, with serenity and rapture and peace. The sweet mellowness of his portraits and the exquisite delicacy of his coloring form only the fore-ground of his pictures-the vestibule of his solemn temples-the flowers that cling round the portals of an unbounded Eden. We linger among them with fond delight, till amidst the stirring leaves or gentle blossoms a vista opens to our view, which displays the finest qualities and the richest destiny of our species, and fills us with a confusion of mysterious joy which it were vain to analyse or describe. He rises from the lowliest vale into the purest and most exalted regions of poetical

spirits, with a majesty so easy that he is nearly beyond our gaze, before we perceive whither our aching eyes are pursuing him. He has enlarged the resources of the mind, and discovered new dignities in our species. At a single touch of his genius, a glorious light is thrown on the inmost recesses of the soul-the veil of our nature is withdrawn-and all the sweetest and most amiable of its sympathies-the deep and secret springs of its purest virtues-its fine bloom, uninjured by the corruptions which are floating around itappear encircled with a bright and celestial medium. The most searching eyes observe in his productions a depth of thought which they are unable to fathom-eminences rising far into an imaginative glory which they cannot penetrate. Above all others, he has discerned and traced out the line by which the high qualities of intellectual greatness are intimately united with the most generous exertions, and the holiest principles of moral goodness. His perceptions of truth, derived as they are from the intuitive feelings of his heart, are clear and unclouded, except by the shadows which are thrown from the vast creations of his fancy. Where no ungifted philosopher in verse would write an Essay on Man to elaborat his principles of virtue, Mr. Wordsworth breathes a few simple images which touch the inmost chords of the bosom, and the sentiments he desires to inculcate are engraven there for ever. Set before him the meanest and most disgusting of all earthly objects, and he immediately traces the great chain by which it is linked to the great harmonies of nature-sweeps through the most beautiful and touching of all human feelings, in order to show the mysterious connection, and at last enables us to perceive the union of all orders of animated being, and the universal workings of the great Spirit that lives and breathes in them all. Deducing from all objects the most amiable charities, as well as the loftiest hopes, he feels a charm in all things among which he moves-finds the gentleness of heaven in the landscape-delight in every humble flower-joy in the brooks-life in the fountains-voices in the silence" Sermons in stones and good in every thing."

Yet Mr. Wordsworth is regarded, by the great majority of readers, as an affected and childish rhymer, who vents a mawkish sensibility in miserable verses. The same causes which have rendered Mr. Scott the Apollo of milliners and magazines, have excluded the greatest genius of the age from the honors of their applause. He is indeed far beyond the visual powers of ordinary minds; and our self-love naturally inclines us to despise that which we are un- : able to enjoy. Unquestionably there are beautiful pictures of rustic life, gentle sketches of retiring character, and passages of a majestic elevation and swelling harmony, scattered among his works, which the humblest capacity need only read to admire. But the

sneers of crítics, whom the multitude have been accustomed to follow, prevents them from obtaining a pleasure which all who can feel would certainly feel. They have learned to despise beauties, because they are intermingled with pauses of interest, or rather to overlook what is manifestly excellent, because it is surrounded with brightness which they are unable to perceive. The Review, whence a thousand petty wits have drawn their ridicule against Mr. Wordsworth, professes to decide his fate by quoting a few of his verses, which appear mere madrigal to the common eye, and on the score of these insulated passages, represents him as unworthy of perusal. It is obvious that by this method of criticism, Milton and Shakspeare might have been long ago stamped as proverbially absurd, or consigned to speedy oblivion. If the essence of poetry be to produce delight, the injustice of such a standard may easily be rendered obvious. In order to set off the faults against the excellence of a poet, we must show that the former torture us with as acute a misery as the latter transport us into elevated rapture. But it is impossible that such a proportion in any degree whatever should exist: for it is one of the many striking reasons which demonstrate how far the blessings outweigh the calamities of life, that the loftier pleasures, which throw a glory round our being, are not balanced by any painful sensations arising from their contraries. We are filled, for instance, with a thousand delightful associations crowding in confusion upon us when we wander amidst the listening stillness of a lovely seclusion, or gaze on wild and mountainous regions; but we experience no corresponding disgust when we travel through dusty roads and unvaried fields, we carry the beauty of the former into the barrenness of the latter, and even array it in new grace by the mingling of imagination with memory. So, while we are awakened into strange bliss, by the magic touches of a superior genius, we feel no agony when the power which has enraptured us is slumbering. A critic, indeed, will find his chief gratification in unveiling the weaknesses of the loftiest minds, but the true lover of the Muses will only pass them over, and regard them as mere negations in his estimate of the author. He would not obliterate all the puns and obscenity with which the scenes of Shakspeare are intermingled, at the expence of one of his more felicitous images. And yet Wordsworth is neglected, because a reviewer, in a fit of spleen, has selected two or three passages from his works, which he has contrived to render ludicrous. But he alone is not the cause which deters the world from admiring. There are deeper causes of the unpopularity of Wordsworth, which we shall endeavour concisely to explain.

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In the first place he appears, in a great degree, indifferent to

human applause. His hopes, and views, and aspirations, are directed to more substantial objects than the changeable breath of Man, which so fill and expand his mind as to enable him to look, with an undazzled eye, on the darling rewards of genius. Nor does this proceed from any antisocial spirit, any want of love for Man, or of sympathy with the general feeling. It is perhaps the truest and most signal stamp of the loftiest powers, and contributes in the end to soften and mature them. The love of fame, which burns so fiercely in most poetical spirits, while it tends to display their capacities to the world, despoils them of their loveliest bloom. They learn to mark and analyse their deepest and most sacred feelings-not to nourish them for a richer soil hereafter-but to exhibit them to an admiring world. There is a kind of violation in thus laying open the sanctuary, and its sparkling treasures, to the vulgar gaze; in putting it in the power of every pretender to sensibility to imitate the language of the holiest emotions, and of every unfeeling critic to deride them. A poet of delicate and exalted perceptions should no more rejoice in the promiscuous admiration of his muse than of his mistress. He should feel his world, his glory and his fame, in the kindling divinity within him, and yield to all the impulses of heaven in the solitude which has witnessed his earliest rapture. There is nothing so hostile to that sweet abstraction, and to those delicious dreamings, which are broken if we touch them, as the attempt to transfuse them into the rules of metrical compositions, and to fit them for the amusement of the public. Perhaps, therefore, the brightest poetical spirits have florished and disappeared in the retirements amidst which they arose; men who felt their peculiar joys too sensibly to impart them, who were caught up into the "third heaven" of inspiration, and heard voices which it was not possible for them to convey in mortal language. Such might have been the case with Shakspeare, who appears to have been nearly destitute of the love of fame, had he not been compelled to write for the stage; and thus, in the haste of his unstudied compositions, unavoidably to let fall those brilliant sparks. of his heavenly flame, which have lighted us into the darkest caverns of the heart, and diffused a celestial glow on the loveliest regions of the fancy. Mr. Wordsworth's soul is composed of the same divine materials, and he finds in them the fulness of his joy. The whispering groves-the golden clouds-and the old long-remembered seats among the woods, all bear the record of his fame, and awaken in his mind gentle gleams of half-forgotten pleasure. The summer evening's faintest sigh has more charms for him, than the acclamations of towered cities; for its breathing sweets revive in his memory images of devotion and love. And thus he has written, absorbed in sublime contemplations, without adapting his language or his subjects to the tastes of the world, and has failed

of acquiring laurels which his better sense would lead him to dis dain.

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. Another cause, derived from the former, of the comparative obscurity of his writings, is the apparently trifling effusions with which they are chequered. Many, even of his admirers, are unable to conceive how a man of his intellectual power could have produced them. The truth is, they have sprung from the depth and richness of his thoughts, and have been given to the world with that carelessness to its applause, which indicates the purity of his genius. They are the feeble expressions of a heart too big for utterance, and filled, even to the overflow, with strong conceptions, They are little portions of a deep train of thought, which would sometimes burst forth by reason of its rich copiousness, into a slight and transient display; and the poet, not considering that the reader's mind could not perceive all the previous emotions of his own, has left little sketches of feeling in carelessness to our wonder. He is carried away too much with his own conceptions to reflect how imperfectly he has expressed them. Less gifted writers are able to elaborate their imaginations with skill, but his are too mighty to be easily wielded. Their powers of language are greater than their depth of feeling, and their anxiety to be applauded is more potent than their wish for internal pleasure, while his thoughts overmaster his words, and he cares not enough for fame to stoop to polish them. We are unfortunately without a clue to the sen→ sations by which they were excited, and therefore we see nothing in them but the most ordinary objects celebrated in feeble and unme+ lodious verse. But let some happy coincidence let us into the sensations of the poet, and all the mystery will vanish, and we shall feel with surprise and delight that those small and retired springs, over which we were musing in the midst of breathing solitudes, and, which the careless traveller passes unheeded, are of a depth, which we cannot fathom, and exhibit the breakings-forth of a mighty river, which is winding on in silence to the ocean in its dark and subterraneous channel, hewn out by unearthly bands.

We must remember too that all the favorite themes of Mr. Wordsworth are personal; that with all his intensity of intellect, he has little expansion beyond himself. Thus his system of metaphysics is drawn rather from the history of his own mind, than from an extended acquaintance with his species. He throws the glory of his own imagination over the whole of nature, and imputes the instincts, the feelings, and the loves to all mankind, which he discovers in his own bosom. He represents the earliest days of childhood, not merely as attractive from the winning gentleness of infantine smiles, and from the loveliness of unspotted innocence, but he surrounds them with a celestial brightness, he discerns amidst their