palpable to sense-where the skies are He is not, like Keats, a sweet and meopening to show riches-where the isle lancholy voice, a tune bodiless, bloodless is full of noises-where beings proper-dying away upon the waste air, but for to this sphere of dream are met so often ever to be remembered as men remember that you cease to fear them, however a melody they have heard in youth. He odd or monstrous-where magic has power is not, like Coleridge, all these almost by to shut now the eyes of kings, and now turns, and, besides, a sacred poet, singing the great bright eye of ocean-where, at at times strains so sublime and holy, that the bidding of the poet, new, complete, they might seem snatches of the song of beautiful mythologies, at one time sweep Eden's cherubim, or caught in trance from across the sea, and anon dance down from the song of Moses and the Lamb. To this the purple and mystic sky-where all mystic brotherhood Crabbe must not be things have a charmed life, the listening added. He ranks with a lower but still ground, the populous air, the still or the lofty band-with Scott (as a poet), and vexed sea, the human or the imaginary Moore, and Hunt, and Campbell, and Robeings and where, as in deep dreams, gers, and Bowles, and James Montgomery, the most marvellous incidents are most and Southey; and surely they nor he need easily credited, slide on most softly, and be ashamed of each other, as they shine in seem most native to the place, the cir- one soft and peaceful cluster. cumstances, and the time. "This is We are often tempted, with Lord Jefcreation," we exclaim; nor did Ferdinand frey, to pity poor posterity on this score. seem to Miranda a fresher and braver crea- How is it to manage with the immense ture than does to us each strange settler number of excellent works which this whom genius has planted upon its own age has bequeathed, and is bequeathing favourite isle. Critics may, indeed, take it? How is it to economise its time so these imaginary beings-such as Caliban as to read a tithe of them? And should and Ariel-and analyse them into their it in mere self-defence proceed to deciconstituent parts; but there will be some one element which escapes them-laughing, as it leaps away, at their baffled sagacity, and proclaiming the original power of its Creator. The other kind of originality is, we think, that of Crabbe. He takes, not makes, his materials. He finds a good foundation-wood and stone in plenty and he begins laboriously, successfully, and after a plan of his own, to build. If in any of his works he approaches to the higher property, it is in "Eustace Grey," who moves here and there, on his wild wanderings, as if to the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp. This prepares us for coming to the third question, What is Crabbe's relative position to his great contemporary poets? He belongs to the second class. He is not a philosophic poet, like Wordsworth. He is not, like Shelley, a Vates, moving upon the uncertain but perpetual and furious wind of his inspiration. He is not, like Byron, a demoniac exceeding fierce, and dwelling among the tombs. If mate, with what principle shall the pro- sent laurels, for verily there are none else | and long-lost father. We see the venefor them. rable old man, newly returned from a botanical excursion, laden with flowers and weeds (for no one knew better than he that every weed is a flower-it is the secret of his poetry), with his high, narrow forehead, his grey locks, his glancing shoe-buckles, his clean dress somewhat ruffled in the woods, his mild countenance, his simple abstracted air. We, too, become abstracted as we gaze, following in thought the outline of his history—his early struggles-his love-his adventures in London-his journal, where, on the brink of starvation, he wrote the affect Seriously, we hope that much of Crabbe's writing will every year become less and less readable, and less and less easily understood; till, in the milder day, men shall have difficulty in believing that such physical, mental, and moral degradation, as he describes, ever existed in Britain; and till, in future Encyclopædias, his name be found recorded as a powerful but barbarous writer, writing in a barbarous age. The like may be the case with many, who have busied themselves more in recalling the past or picturing the present, than in anticipating the ing words, "O Sally for you❞—his rescue future. But there are, or have been, among us a few who have plunged beyond their own period, nay, beyond "all ages"-who have seen and shown us the coming eras: "As in a cradled Hercules you trace by Burke-his taking orders-his return to his native place-his mounting the pulpit-stairs, not caring what his old enemies thought of him or his sermon-his marriage the entry, more melancholy by far than the other, made years after in reThe lines of empire in his infant face "— ference to it, "yet happiness was denied" -the publication of his different works and whose voice must go down, in tones-the various charges he occupied-his becoming more authoritative as they last, childlike surprise at getting so much and in volume becoming vaster as they money for the "Tales of the Hall"—his roll, like mighty thunderings and many visit to Scotland-his mistaking the Highwaters, through the minster of all future land chiefs for foreigners, and bespeaking time: concerting in lower key with those them in bad French-his figure as he more awful voices from within the veil went, dogged by the caddie through the which have already shaken earth, and lanes of the auld town of Edinburgh, which, uttered" once more," shall shake which he preferred infinitely to the new not earth only, but also heaven. High-the "aul' fule" he made of himself in destiny! but not his whose portrait we have now drawn. We have tried to draw his mental, but not his physical likeness. And yet it has all along been blended with our thoughts, like the figure of one known from childhood-like the figure of our own beloved pursuit of a second wife, &c. &c.; so absent do we become in thinking over all this, that it disturbs his abstraction; he starts, stares, asks us in to his parsonage, and we are about to accept the offer, when we awake, and, lo! it is a dream. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. FIRST SITTING. "He was," it is said of Rousseau, "a | lord of Rydal Mount, the sultan of Skidlonely man-his life a long soliloquy." daw, the warlock of Windermere-WilAnd the same words may be applied to liam Wordsworth. He, indeed, mingled the "sole king of rocky Cumberland," the much with men, but reluctantly; and, even while amidst them, his spirit pre- of the meanest creature that could handle served its severe seclusion. He strode a quill, to spurt venom against the crest frequently into society, but with an im- of the noble Childe. But we do find it patient and hasty step. It was this lofty in Wordsworth, and still more in Scott, insulation which marked out Wordsworth the one sustaining a load of detraction, from the eminent of his era. While they and the other a burden of popularity, were tremulously alive to every breath of with a calm, imperturbable dignity. public praise or blame, and never so much The author of "The Excursion" has inso as when pretending to despise the one deed been called an egotist; but, while and defy the other, he maintained the there is one species of egotism which tenor of his way, indifferent to both. stamps the weak victim of a despicable While his name was the signal for every vanity, there is another which adheres to species of insult-while one review was a very exalted order of minds, and is the an incessant battery against his poetical needful defence of those who have stout character, and another, powerful on all burdens to bear, and severe sufferings other topics, returned it only a feeble to undergo. The Apostle Paul, in this reply on this-while the children of the grand sense, was an egotist, when he nursery were taught to consider his rhymes said, "I have fought a good fight, I have as too puerile even for them, he remained kept the faith." Dante was an egotist. unmoved; and, leaving poor Coleridge to Luther was an egotist. Milton was an burst into tears, the majestic brow of egotist; and in this sense Wordsworth Wordsworth only acknowledged by a tran- was an egotist too. sient frown the existence of his assailants. But what, it may be asked, was his And now that his name is a household burden and his mission? It is seen now word, and that his works have found not to have been the composition of pedtheir way to the heart of the nation, we lar poems-the sacrifice of great powers believe that he was never once betrayed to petty purposes-the indulgence of a into an expression of undue complacency weak, though amiable eccentricity; or the -that he felt himself precisely the man mere love of being singular at the expense he was before-that he moved in his ele- of good taste and common sense. But vated sphere as "native and endued" many still, we fear, are not aware of its unto its element—and that the acclama- real nature and importance. Wordstions, as well as the abuse, of the public, worth's mission was a lofty one, and failed to draw him forth from the su- loftily fulfilled-to raise the mean, to blime solitudes of his own spirit. dignify the obscure, to reveal that natu And we do think that this manly self-ral nobility which lurks under the russet appreciation is one of the principal marks gown and the clouted shoe; to extract of true greatness. We find it in Dante, poetry from the cottage, and from the daring, in his gloomy banishment, to turf-fire upon its hearth, and from the make himself immortal by writing the solitary shieling, and from the mountain "Inferno." We find it in Milton, "in tarn, and from the grey ancestral stone darkness, and with dangers compassed | at the door of the deserted mansion, and round," rolling out, nevertheless, the deep from the lichens of the rock, and from bass notes of his great poem as from some the furze of the melancholy moor. It mighty organ, seated in his own breast. was to "hang a weight of interest"-of We find it in Burns, confessing that, at brooding, passionate, and poetical feeling, the plough, he had formed the very idea upon the hardest, the remotest, and the of his poems to which the public after- simplest objects of nature-it was to wards set its seal. We find it not in unite gorgeousness of imagination with Byron, who, while professing scorn for prosaic literality of fact-it was to interthe finest contemporary specimens of his weave the deductions of a subtle philospecies, nay, for his species in the ab-sophy with the "short and simple annals stract, was yet notoriously at the mercy of the poor." And how to the waste and meaningless parts of creation has he, beautiful, and sublime, from his own above all men, given a voice, an intelli- heart, reflecting its feelings upon the gence, and a beauty? The sweet and simplest objects of nature, and the most solitary laugh of a joyous female, echoing primary emotions of the human soul. among the hills, was to his ear more de- And here lies his strength. It is comlightful than the music of many forests. paratively easy for any gifted spirit to A wooden bowl is dipped into the well, gather off the poetry creaming upon and comes out heavy, not merely with lofty subjects-to extract the imaginawater, but with the weight of his thoughts. tion, which such topics as heaven, hell, A spade striking into the spring ground, dream-land, fairy-land, Grecian or Swiss moves in the might of his spirit. A vil-scenery, almost involve in their very lage drum, touched by the strong finger sounds; but to educe interest out of the of his genius, produces a voice which is every-day incidents of simple life-to poetry. The tattered cloak of a poor make every mood of one's mind a poem girl is an Elijah's mantle to him. A to find an epic in a nest, and a thorn on the summit of a hill, "known tragedy in a tattered cloak-thus to to every star, and every wind that blows," "hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear"bending and whispering over a maniac, to find "sermons in stones," and poetry becomes a banner-staff to his imagina- in everything-to have thoughts too tion. A silent tarn collects within and deep for tears" blown into the soul by around it the sad or terrible histories of the wayside flower-this is one of the a sea; and a fern stalk floating on its rarest and most enviable of powers. And surface has the interest of a forest of hence Wordsworth's song is not a commasts. A leech-gatherer is surrounded plicated harmony, but a "quiet tune"with the sublimity of "cloud, gorse, and his instrument not a lyre, but a rustic whirlwind, on the gorgeous moor.' A reed-his poetic potation not Hipporam stooping to see his "wreathed horns crene, but simple water from the stream superb" in a lake among the moun--his demon no Alecto or Tisiphone, but tains, is to his sight as sublime as were a sting-armed insect of the air an angel glancing at his features in the sea of glass which is mingled with fire. A fish leaps up in one of his tarns like an immortal thing. If he skates, it his emblem in the sky, not the glaring is "across the image of a star." Icicles sun, nor the gay star of morning, nor the to him are things of imagination. A "sun of the sleepless, melancholy star," snowball is a Mont Blanc; a little cot- nor the "star of Jove, so beautiful and tage girl a Venus de Medicis, and more; large"-it is the mild and lonely moon a water-mill, turned by a heart-broken shining down through groves of yew upon child, a very Niagara of wo; the poor pastoral graves. beetle that we tread upon is "a mailed The mind of Wordsworth was a comangel on a battle-day;" and a day-dream bination of the intellectual, the imaginaamong the hills, of more importance than tive, and the personal. His intellect, the dates and epochs of an empire. though large and powerful, does not preWordsworth's pen is a stubble stalk side over the other faculties with such from the harvest field. His language marked superiority as in the case of Milhas not the swell of the thunder, nor the ton, the most intellectual of all poets; dash of the cataract-it is the echo of but it maintains its ground, and never the "shut of eve," "when sleep sits submits to a degrading vassalage. Desdewy on the labourer's eye." His versi-titute of Milton's scholastic training, it fication is a music sweet and simple as has evidently gone through the still sethe running brook, yet profound in its verer crucible of a self-taught and sublime simplicity as the unsearchable ocean. metaphysics. His imagination, again, is His purpose is to extract what is new, not rich and copious like Spenser's, nor his emblem on earth not the gaudy tulip nor the luscious rose, but the beanflower, with its modest, yet arrowy odour is it omnivorous and omnific like Shak-in their daring flights, treat a constelspere's, nor does it ever reach the su-lation with as much familiarity as if it blimity of Milton's, nor is it the mere were a bunch of violets: he leans over a handmaid of the passions like Byron's, violet with as much interest and revenor voluptuous and volatile like Moore's, rence as if it were a star. Talk of the nor fastidious like Campbell's, nor fantas- Pleiades! "Lo! five blue eggs are gleamtic like Southey's. It is calm, profound, ing there," to him a dearer sight. He still, obscure, like the black eye of one of turns to the works of nature the same his own tarns. The objects he sets be- minutely magnifying lens as Pope to the fore us are few; the colours he uses are works of art. The difference is, that uniform; the tone is somewhat sombre, while the bard of Twickenham uses his but the impression and intensity with microscope to a lady's lock, or to a gentlewhich they stamp themselves on the man's clouded cane, the poet of Winderview are immense. A sonnet with mere applies it to a mountain daisy or a Wordsworth often goes as far as an worn-out spade. ordinary epic; a single line does the In speaking of Wordsworth's writings, work of an ordinary canto. This power we must not omit a juvenile volume of of concentration, however, is only occa- poems, which we have never seen, but sional, and alternates with a fine diffu- which we believe is chiefly remarkable, sion, so that, while at one time he com- as showing how late his genius was of presses meaning into his words, as with flowering, and how far in youth he was the Bramah press of Young, at another, from having sounded the true depths of his poetry is as loosely and beautifully his understanding. We have somewhere dispread as the blank verse of Wilson or Graham. But that which undoubtedly gives to the poetry of Wordsworth its principal power is its personal interest. His works are all confessions, not of crimes (unless to love nature too well be a sin), but of all the peculiarities of a poetical temperament. He retains and reproduces the boyish feelings which others lose with their leading-strings;he "carries forward the first fresh emo- The "Lyrical Ballads" was the first tions of childhood into the powers and effusion of his mind which bore the broad passions of manhood" he links the arrow of a peculiar genius; the first to cradle to the crutch by the strong tie of cluster round him troops of devoted friends, his genius. Nothing which reminds him and the first to raise against him that of his own youth-which awakens some storm of ridicule, badinage, abuse, and old memory-which paints on an airy misrepresentation, which has so recently canvas some once familiar face-which been laid for ever. And, looking back vibrates on some half-forgotten string, upon this production through the vista comes amiss to Wordsworth. His anti- of years, we cannot wonder that it should quity may be said to begin with his own so have struck the minds of the public. birth; his futurity to extend to the day Poetry was reduced to its beggarly eleof his own funeral. His philosophy may ments. In the florid affectation of Darbe summed up in the one sentence, "the child is father of the man." read extracts from it, which convinced us, that, at an age when Campbell wrote his "Pleasures of Hope," Pope his sparkling "Essay on Criticism," Keats his "Hyperion," Wordsworth, so far from being a like miracle of precocity, could only produce certain puerile prettinesses, with all the merit which arises from absence of fault, but with all the fault which arises from absence of merit. win, and the tame, yet turgid verse of Hayley, it was breathing its last. CowIf we were to try to express our idea of per, meanwhile, had left the stage. It Wordsworth's poetry in a word, we might was not surprising, that, in the dreary call it microscopic. Many apply a telescope dearth which succeeded, a small bunch to nature, to enlarge the great: he employs of wild flowers, with the scent of the a microscope to magnify the small. Many, moors, the tints of the sun, and the |