to

Or is there in the abyss,
Is there, among the adamantine spheres
Wheeling unshaken through the boundless void,
Aught that with half such majesty can fill
The human bosom, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent, from the stroke of Cæsar's fate
Amid the crowd of patriots; and his arm
Aloft extending like eternal Jove

When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook the crimson sword
Of justice in his rapt astonish'd eye,
And bade the father of his country hail,
For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
And Rome again is free!

This is the opinion of the philosophical Akenside. Would that his partial imitators would adopt and profit by itwould that they were content to Adapt the finer organs of the mind To certain attributes which matter claims:

and not set up an exclusive supremacy of matter over mind. But the Lakers seem to have vitiated the purity, simplicity, and philosophy of their admired models-Cowper and Akenside, by German exaggeration. For the same morbid sensibility manifested in the creation of character and sentiment and action in the one class of writers, is transferred to the feelings derived from the visible creation, by the other. So that the Lake poetry is a sort of mongrel minstrelsy, made up of English truth and simplicity, and German exaggeration and eccentricity; of English meaning and German mystery, so blended, that it takes an air of something novel, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ridiculous, and always so in exact proportion to the predominant likeness it bears to one or the other of the ill-mated partners of its parentage.

The subject of the present article, the "Magnus Apollo" of this new and

No

incongruous realm of the Muses, is Mr. Wordsworth. In him all its beauties exist in the highest degree, as also its faults in the greatest number, though we think they could be shewn more flagrantly from some others of the tribe, which proves that faults are generally the landmarks of imitation. It is curious to observe the modifications of the system, as it has acted on differently constituted minds. Mr. Wordsworth seems to be the only man amongst them that can master it felicitously. Mr. Coleridge is more gloomy, more metaphysical, more mysterious. prophet ever sat on the tripod with a higher air of mystery, or delivered his dark oracles with deeper tones of raving sublimity. It is a shadowy and dark thunder-storm in his hand, that obscures all nature, where nothing is seen except from a few bright intermittent flashes of lightning. Mr. Wilson seems to be too fanciful and not imagi native enough to be too fond of turns, delicacies, and quaintnesses, for the simplicity of its nature. It seems to be a black cloud over him, that he is striving to colour into a rainbow, bnt he cannot make the lights and shades mingle delicately enough to make it span the heaven as a natural arch.

spent thunderbolt, all its fire quenched, It is in Mr. Montgomery's hand a all its power lost. When it is in the hands of the cockney bards and others, it is such a hybrid and incongruous species, that like that nondescript age of Juvenal's mythology it can be illustrated from nothing in nature. The laureate belongs to the school, but we would wish to raise him above it, from his creation of character, and description of actions, and because though often extravagant he is never ridiculous till he comes under the influence of its silly affectation or incurable egotism-which is a loathsome cancer inherent in its very nature; and I, self, mine, must be the tiresome and eternal burthen of the song, while there exists an imitator of the system. It must run in its essence, in its very blood, from father to son, till its final extinction. In Mr. Wordsworth alone it is in its native and natural soil. He has a mind, meditative, mild, and philosophical, and a heart delicately sensitive to all the impulses from visible nature, with a reflection and abstraction capable of embodying and making mindcreated and local existences in the human heart, of those spiritual feelings, excited, from the impulse of natural

objects, by a communion of sense and soul. In the happier effects of this mental process, his poetry is like a mild autumn day, with quick and fleeting successive alternations of sun and shadow-or rather like a soft moonlight night, where objects are not less lovely for being less defined, where those that can be seen, are seen more accurately than in the glare of day, and where the distant scenes, though obscured by an impervious shadow, undefined and undefinable to the most piercing ken, yet the mysterious veil that envelopes them is so glowing, so mild, and so mellow, that though we cannot admire themselves, we admire the painted mist that wraps them from our grosser sense with its rich and delicate texture. But this spirit of abstraction when it soars into the region, or rather sinks into the abyss of the "dark profound" of mysticism, and bounds beyond the pale of human reason, and even human imagination-at least of common reasons, and common imaginations-is nothing but (to use words of his own)

"An instinct-a blind sense
Coming one knows not how nor whence
Nor whither going."

And of what use is this blind sense? Of none. It is more fantastic, more visionary, more superstitious, more mischievous than the second-sight in the Isle of Sky. The cause of this obscurity is plain. In the descriptions of the visible world, these poets strive to describe the simple feelings excited by accidents, which, like the simple ideas of Locke, can only be felt, but never defined-to body forth in the tangible and corporcal shape of language, these spiritual sensations, begotten by an intellectual communion with nature, modified by the most refined sensibility, the most subtle abstraction, and the most abstruse metaphysical imagination, vainly striving to make words a "mock-apparel" to "unutterable thought." Hence they are obscure; hence they are mysterious.

But it is not against this I chiefly protest; though its excess is a most inexcusable blemish, it is a fault that leans to virtue's side. These grand and sublimated conceptions of nature, like many other of its properties, must be obscure, but we can never read many pages before we are disgusted, with silliness, rudeness, meanness, affectation, eccentric thinking and false simplicity, which when it is not mere babyism, degene rates into perfect folly; and in wise men wittingly writing in this manner is even

worse, for they seem to suppose, through a vain egotistical importance (of which agreeable quality the most modest of them has as much as would stock any ten poets, and those not of the most unassuming demeanour), because they can write well when it pleases them, they can cram folly and poetical impertinence, like a nauseous drug, which they even disdain to sweeten, down the throat of a nation's healthful taste, and change the masculine strength and spirits, and the true simplicity of the English poetry into the weak and watery style of their affected childishness and fainting affectation. I wonder from which of the imaginative bards of their adoration, could they get the smallest foundation for such a flimsy superstructure. Will they find any such cobwebs woven in the brains of Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Thomson, Akenside, Cowper, their great idols? They will plead the authority of the old ballads; but even there the plea made by them would be demurred to in any legitimate or learned court of criticism. There is an honest rudeness, a true simplicity, an unaffected description, a plain style of sentiment running through those old legends, that but ill harmonize with the disingenuous affectation of style, sense, and feeling, that characterizes some of these insipid lucubrations.

Let us take any one of those ridiculous pieces of burlesque, for instance, "The Idiot Boy." In its story, its language, its conduct, its sentiment, it is mean, improbable, uninteresting, affected and ludicrous. The story is the adventures of a Fool's-errand; an idiot is sent for a doctor, who instead of bringing the doctor, to be sure, with Mr. W's accurate knowledge of the modes of thought and habits of action peculiar to idiotism, is putting stars in his pocket or playing with a waterfall, (by the way, a sport Mr. W. is very fond of as well as his fool). But now let us consider this piece of factitious impertinence, and see whether it possesses any thing of true or natural simplicity or real feeling. Listen to the caparisoning of Johnny's Pony and the mounting of Johnny. Spirit of Homer! hide your diminished head. The horses of Mars were never harnessed with such " pomp, pride, and circumstance," by Flight and Terror; they are mean grooms when compared to the fiddling-fadling of Betty Foy!! Hebe herself, preparing Juno's chariot-steeds, is a poor personage to her!!

Beneath the moon, that shines so bright,
Till she is tired, let Betty Foy
With girt and stirrup fiddle-faddle;
But wherefore set upon a saddle
Him whom she loves, her idiot boy?
Certainly a sensible question, "where-
fore set upon a saddle? How will Mr.
W. answer it? No doubt, he will say
there was no one else

To bring a doctor from the town,
Or she will die, old Susan Gale.

Even the harnessing of the celestial steeds for the chariot of the sun sinks into insignificance before the preparation of Betty's pony, which being brought home, after, we do not know whether feeding in the lane," or "drawing home faggots from the wood," either" in joy," or "in pain," (as if it concerned us to know whether he was not blind or spavined,)

Is all in travelling trim, And by the moonlight, Betty Foy Has up upon the saddle set, (The like was never heard of yet) (We doubt not that indeed)

Him whom she loves, her idiot boy.

66

Well, Johnny is up without "boot" or "spur," or whip" or "wand," but armed with "his holly bough," he makes "a hurly-burly now.' Betty now gives him her directions-her last admonition is really excellent-it is simple and loving and maternal! Phoebus's advice to Phaeton will not bear comparison with this address.

"Johnny! Johnny! mind that you Come home again, nor stop at all— Come home again, whate'er befal My Johnny, do, I pray you do." Johnny answered with "his head and with his hand,"

And proudly shook the bridle too.

The following description of Johnny's joy after being mounted, is superlative. What is the delight of Phaeton after receiving the reins from his father to it!

But when the pony moved his legs,
Oh! then for the poor idiot boy!
For joy he cannot hold the bridle,
For joy his head and heels are idle,
He's idle all for very joy.

And while the pony moves his legs,
In Johnny's left hand you may see
The green bough 's motionless and dead :
The moon that shines above his head
Is not more still or mute than he.
His heart it was so full of glee,
That till full fifty yards were gone,
He quite forgot his holly whip
And all his skill in horsemanship.
Oh! happy, happy, happy John.

Oh! "happy, happy, happy pair"!! Johnny and his pony!-happy Johnny Foy!! happier far than Johnny Gilpin, both in the bard who sings your travels, and in your good-humoured hack. Well, Betty standing at the door observes with joy

How quietly her Johnny goes.

She rejoices in his silence, sees him turn "the guide-post right," and watches him in maternal pride till he is out of sight.

Burr, burr-now Johnny's lips they burr
As loud as any mill, or near it,
And Johnny makes the noise he loves,
And Betty listens glad to hear it.

We are told a line or two above that

Betty rejoiced in the silence of her idiot boy-and really Johnny's burr must have been " as loud as any mill, or near it," if Betty heard it after he was out of sight.

Well Johnny goes on:

The owlets hoot, the owlets curr,

And Johnny's lips, they burr, burr, burr,
As on he goes beneath the moon.

We wonder much it was beneath the moon,-the moon, no doubt, drawn down from heaven by the attractive harmony of this divine duet between Johnny's burring and the owlets curring, should have been dancing under his pony's feet. We are now treated with a most novel and original description of the good-humour of the pony.

For of this pony there's a rumour,
That should he lose his eyes and ears,
And should he live a thousand years
He never will be out of humour.

This would be strange if we could believe the next line.

But then he is a horse that thinks.

Balaam's ass spoke, and Achilles' horse prophesied no doubt a greater gift; but Mr. Wordsworth makes us acquainted with the pony's habit of next line. thought in the very

And when he thinks his pace is slack.

We wonder he did not make him fold his fore-legs over his breast-sure it would be natural!! Yet we think the following lines rather tend to shake our implicit credency in the thinking faculty of this intellectual nag.

Now though he knows poor Johnny well,
Yet for his life he cannot tell
What he has got upon his back.

Well, Betty now not quite so flurried," nurse-tends Old Susan, hands her the "porringer and plate," talks diverting things of Johnny, till his delay becomes matter of fear and suspicion; but