writing of rhyme, we would counsel him not to think so highly of himself as he shows he does in what he has written to us. As Douglas Jerrold used to say, "Flattering one's self is the worst of hypocrisy." "Oh, be wiser thou; Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, In lowliness of heart." We cannot at present overtake the critical perusal of all the MSS. put into our hands. We intend soon to recur to this topic. We are, of course, glad to give good honest advice as far as we can. When we speak in deprecation of rushing into print and anxiously asking the world to ratify the thought of a young man's heart,-"I also am a poet," we do not intend to speak in depreciation of the verses of our friends. We wish to save them from pain, from loss, and disappointment. The MSS. of G. G. C. have no finish. What can be made of a line that limps like this, or this, "Like suns unharnessed through the air did flush"? "Beaded and chapleted with dew"? This is not bad, however, The hot, swift pulses of a fever seemed To rage and riot in my reckless frame; The kindest way in which we can treat K. L., M. T., and E. D. F., is to say nothing but that we have received and read their verses, -and do not think that many could have accomplished the latter feat, and survived. They have caused us to ENGLISH LITERATURE.-There are eight epochs in English literature:-First, from the Roman to the Norman conquest. Second, from the battle of Hastings to the accession of James IV. Third, from the death of Chaucer to the Reformation. Fourth, from the establishment of the Reformation to the death of Bacon. Fifth, from the death of Bacon to the close of the reign of James II. Sixth, from the accession of William III. to the death of Pope. Seventh, from the death of Pope to the French Revolution. Eighth, from the French Revolution to the present day.-PROF. J. NICHOL. The Essayist. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. WE have selected as the subject of the present essay the great "English philosophical poet"-William Wordsworth: a poet who, like Milton, has indeed many admirers, but few readers; thus realizing the fate which the Roman satirist proverbially assigns to virtue "Virtus laudatur et alget"* (virtue is praised and coldly neglected). It shall be our humble endeavour to increase, if possible, the interest of our readers in the writings of this notable poet, an object in which, if we succeed to any extent, we shall deem ourselves amply rewarded. The life of Wordsworth presents few matters of absorbing interest, no "moving accidents by flood and field," the greater part of it -varied only by occasional tours at home and abroad-having been passed in the calm retreat of his native Cumberland mountains and beside its lakes; whence the designation of the "Lake school of poets," derisively applied to him and his contemporary poets, Coleridge and Southey. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in 1770, the year of the death of Chatterton, "The marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride." He was educated first at Hawkshead, in Lancashire, and thereafter at St. John's College, in Cambridge University, where, however, his academic career was not brilliant; and about this period he spent a few years in rambling up and down the Continent, then widely agitated by the great French Revolution, whose theoretical principles he embraced with all the fervour and enthusiasm of a youthful and ardent spirit,—to such a degree, indeed, that he seems to have wellnigh forgotten that he was an Englishman; for, when Britain joined in the league formed by the confederate powers against France, he (Wordsworth) says of himself,— Such were the feelings, as told us by himself, of this young repub *Juvenal. † Shakspere: "Othello." Wordsworth: "Resolution and Independence." § "Prelude," Book X. lican on occasion of his country's defeats! Again, on her victories, present or prospective, he exclaims, 66 The subsequent crimes and atrocities, however, of the Revolution, rudely dispelled his fond illusions regarding liberty, &c., and he retired from the cause in deep and bitter disappointment and mortification, not that he seems ever to have taken an active part in it by writing or otherwise. The thoughts, sentiments, and experiences of his early years, this period included, have been left on record in a long autobiographical poem (in fourteen books) entitled, "The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind," from which the above quotations have been taken,-a poem addressed to his friend Coleridge, and intended to have been introductory to his great work, "The Recluse," a work which was to have consisted of three parts, of which the second part only, the well-known Excursion," has been completed and published. This poem ("The Prelude") we are free to confess we look upon as interesting rather in the light of a personal memoir than as marked by any striking poetic excellence, except, perhaps, in occasional passages. Others, however, may be of a different opinion. "The Prelude" ranks amongst Wordsworth's earliest poems, having been commenced in 1799 and completed in 1805. From about this period the remainder of Wordsworth's long life was spent, as has been said, for the most part, in peaceful seclusion beside his native Cumberland lakes and mountains, where he continued to write and publish till his death in 1850, at the ripe age of eighty-one years. Of Wordsworth's private life and habits in his rural retirement, the following description by Professor Masson may not be deemed irrelevant :- Here, in the enjoyment of worldly competence, he walked, boated, wrote, and attended church. Hence, from time to time, he issued his new poems, or collections of poems, accompanied by prefaces or dissertations, intended to illustrate their peculiar character; and here, in the bosom of his admiring family, he received the chance visits of such stray worshippers as came privileged with letters of introduction, talking with them in a cold, stately way, and not unfrequently (be the truth distinctly spoken) shocking them by the apparent egotism with which he referred to or quoted his own poetry, the inordinate indifference he displayed towards most things besides, the painful rigour with which he exacted from those around him every outward mark of respect and attention, and the seriousness with which he would repeat the most insignificant words that had been uttered in his praise. But whatever may have been his bearing in the presence of other men, Wordsworth must at least have been modest and cordial in his communion with nature. And it is thus that we should remember him,-not as the pleasant ornament of the social board, lavishing the kind word and the hearty repartee; not as the self-forgetting enthusiast of the hour, burning his way through crowds, and drawing admiration and love in his train; but as he was in his old days, the conscious patriarch of English poesy, the grey-haired and hard-featured recluse, shunning the haunts of men, yet with a benevolent hand for the familiar woes of the neighbourhood which knew and honoured him; accustomed to walk alone by day amid the woods, to pace muttering by the ripple of a lake in the moonlight, or, standing halfway up a mountain, to turn his pale, unearthly eye towards the heaven of stars. Such he was through all the tumult of a generation into which, almost alone of his coevals, he had lived to advance; and such he was till, in his eighty-first year, death took him."* An interesting description, illustrative of the above passage, of an interview with Wordsworth, may be found in Emerson's "English Traits," who thus sums up his estimate of that poet :-" Wordsworth honoured himself by his simple adherence to truth, and was very willing not to shine; but he surprised by the hard limits of his thought. To judge from a single conversation, he made the impression of a narrow and very English mind; of one who paid for his rare elevation by general tameness and conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions were of no value. It is not very rare to find persons loving sympathy and ease, who expiate their departure from the common in one direction, by their conformity in every other." Such is the American Emerson's estimate, whatever it may be worth, of— "A poet; one who loved the brooks Far better than the sages' books." With this passing notice of Wordsworth's biography, we shall now proceed to dwell more in detail upon his poetry. Wordsworth's poetry was a reaction against the cold, conventional, artificial style of the eighteenth century, as evidenced in the school of Dryden and Pope, of which last it was said that he"Made poetry a mere mechanic art; And every warbler has his tune by heart,"— in allusion to the servile attempts of his imitators, who had all the faults without any of the excellences of their master. This reaction, as not unfrequently happens, was carried somewhat to excess, and degenerated into occasional puerility and common # 66 Essays, Biographical and Critical, chiefly on English Poets," by D. Masson A.M.,-"Wordsworth," p. 359. place, a result which was still further promoted by Wordsworth's own peculiar theory of poetry, as first enunciated in the preface to his "Lyrical Ballads," amongst his earliest productions, the first volume being published in 1793, the second in 1800. His theory of poetry is, that it consists in nothing more than the fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation," a theory which would, in fact, imply that all men naturally speak poetically under any strong passion or excitement, at least after their language has undergone a little paring and polishing at the hands of the poet. This theory incurred the unmeasured ridicule of the adherents of the ordinary or orthodox creed of poetry, Lord Byron amongst the rest, who, in his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" (in which he makes a sweeping raid against almost all his contemporary poets), stigmatizes Wordsworth as "That mild apostate from poetic rule, Who, both by precept and example, shows And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme 66 Thus Lord Byron. He elsewhere characterizes him as vulgar Wordsworth," and his verse as "childish prattle." Such was Byron's verdict upon a poet who now takes rank as one of our British classics! The effect of Wordsworth's poetic creed upon his practice is most apparent in his "Lyrical Ballads," of which two have been selected as the special objects of Byron's ridicule, viz. "The Idiot Boy" and "The Tables Turned," the latter opening after this sort, "Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks! Up, up, my friend, and quit your books! Very sound practical advice, no doubt, which yet, so far as the poetry is concerned, might almost as well have dispensed with the formality of rhyme, which can scarcely elevate it to that dignity. It is, however, but fair to add that the succeeding stanzas atone in great measure for this rather unpromising commencement, and the true poet at every turn breaks forth. They are as follows: "The sun above the mountain's head, A freshening lustre mellow, Through all the long green fields has spread His first sweet evening yellow. Books! 'Tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet; How sweet his music!-on my life, There's more of wisdom in it! - |