importance, nor expected, most assuredly, that it would at all show itself in the conduct of the assembly. I regarded politics and parties as things that had not the least connexion with the purposes of the meeting, and expected, indeed, that they would have been most studiously kept out of view, for the very purpose of rendering the meeting as universally and genially delightful as possible. I was, however, sadly disappointed. It is needless to multiply examples. It is sufficient to mention, that not one of these Edinburgh Reviewers had the common candour or manliness, in a meeting, the object of which was so purely to do honour to poctical genius, to propose the health either of Wordsworth, or of Southey, or of Coleridge. I could not have believed that the influence of paltry prejudices could ever be allowed to control in such a way the conduct of men so well entitled to be above their sphere. Even by the confession of the Edinburgh Review itself, these men are three of the greatest poetical geniuses our island ever has produced. Their choice of subjects, their style of versification, and various other particulars, are ridiculed; but it is no where denied, that even their errors are entitled to derive some little shelter from the originality, power, and beauty, of the productions in which they make their appearance. I am indeed very much at a loss to comprehend, how any man of intelligence could satisfy his conscience, that he did right in proposing, on such an occasion as this, the healths of Crabbe, Rogers, nay even of Montgomery, (for such was the case) and omitting to do the same honour to the great names I have mentioned. Surely here was a sad descent from that pure elevation on which the true critic, and the true philosopher, must ever stand. I had no conception previously of the real extent to which, in this country of political strife, the absurdities of party spleen are carried, even by men of eminence and virtue. I had no suspicion, that such a man as Mr. Jeffrey, or even as Mr. Murray, would have dared to show, almost to confess himself, incapable of overlooking the petty discrepancies of political opinion, in forming his estimate of a great English poet's character. It is not thus that a man can hope to anticipate the judgment of posterity, or to exert a permanent sway over that of his contemporaries. In regard to Jeffrey, above all, I confess I was grieved to detect so much littleness, where I had been willing to look for very different things. I was grieved, indeed, to discover that he also, even out of his Review, is in a great measure one that "narrows his mind, And to party gives up what was meant for mankind.". That Mr. Jeffrey had found reason to change some of the opinions he had once expressed concerning Robert Burns, was, in part at least, admitted by himself, in one of the speeches he delivered on this very occasion. Nay, had it not been so, I am inclined to think it might have been better for him to have kept altogether away from the assembly. Having laid aside the worst of his prejudices against poor Burns, why should he not have been proud and joyful in finding and employing such an opportunity for doing justice to a great poet, who himself the purest of men, and leading and having ever led the holiest and most dignified of lives-had not disdained to come forward at an earlier and a less triumphant period, as the defender and guardian of the reputation of his frailer brother? What had parties, and systems, and schools, and nicknames, to do with such a matter as this? Are there no healing moments in which men can afford to be free from the fetters of their petty self-love? Is the hour of genial and cordial tenderness, when man meets man to celebrate the memory of one who has conferred honour on their common nature--is even that sacred hour to be polluted and profaned by any poisonous sprinklings of the week-day paltriness of life?-My displeasure, in regard to this affair, has very little to do with my displeasure in regard to the general treatment of Mr. Wordsworth, in the Edinburgh Review. That the poems of this man should be little read and little admired by the majority of those who claim for themselves the character of taste and intelligence-that they should furnish little, except subjects of mirth and scorn, to those who, by their own writings, would direct the judgment of others-these are things which affect some of his admirers with astonishment-they affect me with no sentiments but those of humility and grief. The delight which is conferred by vivid descriptions of stranger events and stronger impulses than we ourselves experience, is adapted for all men, and is an universal delight. That part of our nature to which they address themselves, not only exists in every man originally, but has its existence fostered and cherished by the incidents of every life. To find a man who has no relish for the poetry of Love or of War, is almost as impossible as to find one that does not enjoy the brightness of the sun, or the softness of moon-light. The poetry of ambition, hatred, revenge, pleases masculine minds in the same manner as the flashing of lightnings and the roaring of cataracts. But there are other things in man and in nature, besides tumultuous passions and tempestuous scenes and be that is a very great poet, may be by no means a very popular one. The critics who ridicule Mr. Wordsworth, for choosing the themes of his poetry among a set of objects new and uninteresting to their minds, would have seen, had they been sufficiently acute, or would have confessed, had they been sufficiently candid, that, had he so willed it, he might have been among the best and most powerful masters in other branches of his art, more adapted to the generality of mankind and for themselves. The martial music in the hall of Clifford was neglected by the Shepherd Lord, for the same reasons which have rendered the poet that celebrates him such a poet as he is. "Love had he seen in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills; The sleep that is among the lonely hills." Before a man can understand and relish his poems, his mind must, in some measure, pass through the same sober discipline-a discipline that calms, but does not weaken the spirit that blends together the understanding and the affections, and improves both by the mixture. The busy life of cities, the ordinary collisions of sarcasm and indifference, steel the mind against the emotions that are bred and nourished among those quiet valleys, so dear to the Shepherd Lord and his poet. What we cannot understand, it is a very common, and, indeed, a very natural thing, for us to undervalue; and it may be suspected, that some of the merriest witticisms which have been uttered against Mr. Wordsworth, have had their origin in the pettishness and dissatisfaction of minds unaccustomed and unwilling to make, either to others or to themselves, any confessions of incapacity. But I am wandering sadly from him, who, as Wordsworth has beautifully expressed it, "walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough along the mountain side." -However, I shall come back to him in my next. P. M. LETTER XII. TO THE SAME. DEAR DAVID, In order to catch the post a few days ago, I sent off my letter before my subject was half concluded; which, doubtless, you will attribute chiefly, or entirely, to my old passion for parentheses and episodes. To return to my epos -the Burn's dinner. One of the best speeches, perhaps the very best, delivered during the whole of the evening, was that of Mr. J Wilson, in proposing the health of the Ettrick Shepherd. I had heard a great deal of Wilson from W—, but he had been out of Edinburgh ever since my arrival, and indeed had walked only fifty miles that very morning, in order to be present on this occasion. He showed no symptoms, however, of being fatigued with his journey, and his style of eloquence, above all, whatever faults it might have, displayed certainly no deficiency of freshness and vigour. As I know you admire some of his verses very much, you will be pleased with a sketch of his appearance. He is, I imagine, (but I guess principally from the date of his Oxford prize poem) some ten years your junior and mine-a very robust athletic man, broad across the back-firm set upon his limbs -and having altogether very much of that sort of air which is inseparable from the consciousness of great bodily energies. I suppose in leaping, wrestling, or boxing, he might easily beat any of the poets, his contemporaries—and I rather suspect, that in speaking, he would have as easy a triumph over the whole of them, except Coleridge. In complexion, he is the best specimen I have ever seen of the genuine or ideal Goth. His hair is of the true Sicambrian yellow; his eyes are of the lightest, and at the same time of the clearest blue; and the blood glows in his cheek with as firm a fervour as it did, according to the description of Jornandes, in those of the "Bello gaudentes prælio ridentes Teutones" of Attila. I had never suspected before I saw him, that such extreme fairness and freshness of complexion could be compatible with so much variety and tenderness, but above all, with so much depth of expression. His forehead is finely, but strangely shaped; the regions of pure fancy, and of pure wit being both developed in a very striking manner-which is but seldom the case in any one individual-and the organ of observation having projected the sinus frontalis to a degree that is altogether uncommon. I have never seen a physiognomy which could pass with so much rapidity from the serious to the most ludicrous of effects. It is more eloquent, both in its gravity and in its levity, than almost any countenance I am acquainted with is in any one cast of expression; and yet I am not without my suspicions, that the versatility of its language may, in the end, take away from its power. In a convivial meeting-more particularly after the first two hours are over-the beauty to which men are most alive in any piece of eloquence is that which depends on its being impregnated and instinct with feeling. Of this beauty, no eloquence can be more full than that of Mr. J Wilson. His declamation is often loose and irregular to an extent that is not quite worthy of a man of his fine education and masculine powers; but all is redeemed, and more than redeemed, by his rich abundance of quick, generous, and expansive feeling. The flashing brightness, and now and then the still more expressive dimness of his eye--and the tremulous music of a voice that is equally at home in the highest and the lowest of notes-and the attitude bent forward with an earnestness to which the graces could make no valuable addition-all together compose an index which they that rum may reada rod of communication to whose electricity no heart is barred. Inaccuracies of language are small matters when the ear is fed with the wild and mysterious cadences of the most natural of all melodies, and the mind filled to overflowing with the bright suggestions of an imagination, whose only fault lies in the uncontrollable profusion with which it scatters forth its fruits. With such gifts as these, and with the noblest of themes to excite and adorn them, I have no doubt, that Mr. Wilson, had he been in the church, would have left all the impassioned preachers I have ever heard, many thousand leagues behind him. Nor do I at all question, that even in some departments of his own profession of the law, had he in good earnest devoted his energies to its service, his success might have been equally brilliant. But his ambition had probably taken too decidedly another turn; nor, perhaps, |