1839. In these seventeen intervening years many political and literary changes had occurred. Less dictation and more inquiry became apparent. The truly pious-at all times the truly mercifulnever thought it necessary to laud themselves by sweeping condemnation of others. They always saw that persecution had caused and confirmed all they mourned over as Shelley's speculative errors. His sorrows and wrongs were bitter enough to propitiate even those who were

"Severe by rule, and not by nature kind."

The fact, too, that he was but twenty-nine when his troubled career closed, will ever plead with the thoughtful and the good in extenuation of his opinions. Nobly has Mrs. Hemans sung,

"Oh! judge with thoughtful tenderness of those
Who richly dower'd for earth are call'd to die
Ere the soul's flame through storms hath won repose
In truth's divinest ether pure and high.

Let their mind's riches claim a trustful sigh;
Deem them but sad, sweet fragments of a strain,
First notes of some yet struggling harmony,
By the strong rush, the mingled joy and pain
Of many inspirations, met and held

From its true sphere. Oh, soon it would have swell'd

Majestically forth. Nor doubt that He,

Whose touch mysterious may on earth dissolve,

Such links of music elsewhere will evolve,

The grand consummate hymn from passion's gusts made

free."

CHAP. XIX.

POETICAL CONTROVERSIES OF THE PRESENT AGE.-CONFLICTING THEORIES. LAKE SCHOOL. WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, LORD BYRON, SIR WALTER SCOTT, CAMPBELL, AND MOORE.

THE return to truth and nature (at the end of the last century, after a long period of coldness and sterility), which had been brought about principally by Crabbe, Cowper, and Burns, was neither so unnoticed or unfelt by the public mind as to pass quietly without comment. The age had grown critical. Not merely the usages of poets, but poetry in the abstract, began to be the subject of many theories and speculations among readers, who, in former times, would have contented themselves with quietly and gratefully taking

"The good the gods provide."

rather than investigating and analysing it. It was one result, equally excellent and natural, of our ample periodical literature, that analysis and speculation should increase; and when it was found that the first poets and critics of the age differed essentially as to their theory and estimate of poetry, and the poetic, it is no wonder that controversy should arise, that disputants should be warm, and that parties should be formed.

There is nothing that the world more constantly demands, and more frequently rejects, than originality. The world sets up standards, prescribes limits, lays down plans for genius:-genius! that neither can be formed, or bounded, or moulded by any mental laws but those of its own being. If any thing in this world has distinctness of individuality it is genius; and yet it is contrasted, compared, derided, and rejected, by rules equally false and presumptuous. No wonder that the unthinking err in this matter, for the wise themselves have here often gone astray. Not a single great poet of the present age has escaped the infliction of carping criticism. Many now venerated names were greeted by a perfect storm of ridicule on their first appearance, and that, not by the merely incompetent, who can only praise or blame at the suggestion of others, but by the educated, the studious, and the gifted.

William Wordsworth is, perhaps, the poet who, beyond all others, was the subject of this controversy. He looked on the circumstances of ordinary life with an eye as microscopic as that of Crabbe, and a soul far more capacious and reflective. His aim was not merely to describe, but to analyse the effects of outward objects on his own mind, what they suggested for meditation, when

He had lofty and noble views of the mission of the poet, as a teacher and reformer among men,

a revealer of something higher and better than society had attained to. This object Wordsworth sought to promote, not by hymns of orphic melody, or wild imaginative flights in superhuman regions, but by calm pictures of innocent, tranquil beauty, pure affections, holy domestic duties and sympathies. Communion with God and his own soul was to him evidently as much a delight as a duty,—a law of his being that he could not contravene. Happily, circumstances in his case favoured the full development and indulgence of all his tastes and theories. Rarely has any life had such harmonious completeness: happy in childhood and youth; fortunate in congenial friends and family connections; enabled to travel in early manhood, and confirm or correct his opinions of society, government, and literature; happy in his marriage and domestic circle; able to settle down amid the scenery and quietude he loved, and to give himself up unrestrainedly to his favourite contemplations. His life was as full of the quiet glow of healthy happiness as his writings: indeed, it was his idea that a poet's life was written in his poems; and that was evidently his own case. Happy, therefore, for the world was the happiness of Wordsworth. His relative and biographer says,

"The influence exercised by Wordsworth's poetry is due

in great measure to his home, as well as to his heart. He was blessed, in a remarkable degree, in all those domestic relations which exercise and hallow the affections. His cottage, its beautiful neighbourhood, the happiness he enjoyed in its garden, and within its doors, all these breathed a moral music into his heart, and enabled him to pour forth strains which, without such influences upon him, would have been unheard, and which have made him what he is in an eminent degree, the poet of domestic life, and the teacher of domestic virtue."*

The only untoward circumstance of Wordsworth's life was the determined and long-continued hostility of criticism. The leaders of the public taste censured both the subjects he selected and his treatment of them; the first they thought grovelling, the latter puerile. plicity was the chief charge. the public mind might be for self was wholly unmoved. His opinions of his harsh critics were pretty definitely expressed in a noble letter to his friend Lady Beaumont :

Affectation of simHowever impressed a time, the poet him

"Be assured that the decision of these persons (the reviewers), has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read books; they merely snatch a glance at them that they may talk about them. And even if this were not so, never forget what, I believe, was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must