character. The power he worships has his "dwelling in the light of setting suns," but that dwelling is not his everlasting abode. For earth, and the universe, a milder day" (words certifying their truth by their simple beauty) is in store when "the monuments" of human weakness, folly, and evil, shall "all be overgrown." He sees afar off the great spectacle of Nature retiring before God; the embassador giving place to the King; the bright toys of this nursery-sun, moon, earth, and stars—put away, like childish things; the symbols of the Infinite lost in the Infinite itself; and though he could, on the Saturday evening, bow before the midnight mountains, and midnight heavens, he could also, on the Sabbath morn, in Rydal church, bow as profoundly before the apostolic word, "All these things shall be dissolved."

the song forever sounding within their souls. And why? The whole ever tends to beget a whole-the large substance to cast its deep, yet delicate shadow-the divine to be like itself is the human, on which its seal is set. So it is with Wordsworth. That profound simplicity— that clear obscurity—that night-like noon-that noon-like night-that one atmosphere of overhanging Deity, seen weighing upon ocean and pool, mountain and mole-hill, forest and flower -that pellucid depth-that entireness of purpose and fullness of power, connected with fragmentary, willful, or even weak execution—that humble, yet proud, precipitation of himself. Antæus-like, upon the bosom of simple scenes and simple sentiments, to regain primeval vigor

that obscure, yet lofty isolation, like a tarn, little in size, but elevated in site, with few visitors, but with many stars-that Tory-Radicalism, Popish-Protestantism, philosophical Christianity, which have rendered him a glorious riddle, and made Shelley, in despair of finding it out, exclaim,

"No Deist, and no Christian he;

No Whig, no Tory.

He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing was all his glory,"—

With Wordsworth, as with all great poets, his poetical creed passes into his religious. It is the same tune with variations. But we confess that, in his case, we do not think the variations equal. The mediation of Nature he understands, and has beautifully represented in his poetry; but that higher mediation of the Divine Man between man and the Father, does not lie fully or conspicuously on his page. A believer in the mystery of godliness he unquestionably all such apparent contradictions, but real unities, was; but he seldom preached it. Christopher in his poetical and moral creed and character, North, many years ago, in "Blackwood," are fully expressed in his lowly but aspiring doubted if there were so much as a Bible in language, and the simple, elaborate architecture poor Margaret's cottage (Excursion). We of his verse-every stone of which is lifted up doubt so, too, and have not found much of the by the strain of strong logic, and yet laid to "true cross among all his trees. The theolo- music; and, above all, in the choice of his subgians divide prayer into four parts-adoration, jects, which range, with a free and easy motion, thanksgiving, confession, and petition. Words- up from a garden spade and a village drum, to worth stops at the second. No where do the "celestial visages" which darkened at the we find more solemn, sustained, habitual, and tidings of man's fall, and to the “organ of eterworthy adoration, than in his writings. nity," which sung paans over his recovery. tone, too, of all his poems, is a calm thanksgiving, like that of a long blue, cloudless sky, coloring, at evening, into the hues of more fiery praise.

The

We sum up what we have further to say of Wordsworth, under the items of his works, his life and character, his death; and shall close by inquiring, Who is worthy to be his successor?

But he does not weep like a penitent, nor supplicate like a child. Such feelings seem His works, covering a large space, and suppressed and folded up as far-off storms, and abounding in every variety of excellence and the traces of past tempests are succinctly inclosed style, assume, after all, a fragmentary aspect. in the algebra of the silent evening air. And They are true, simple, scattered, and strong, as hence, like Milton's, his poetry has rather tended blocks torn from the crags of Helvellyn, and to foster the glow of devotion in the loftier lying there "low, but mighty still." Few even spirits of the race-previously taught to adore of his ballads are wholes. They leave too -than like that of Cowper and Montgomery, to much untold. They are far too suggestive to send prodigals back to their forsaken homes; satisfy. From each poem, however rounded, Davids, to ery, "Against thee only have I there streams off a long train of thought: like sinned;" and Peters, to shriek in agony, "Lord, the tail of a comet, which, while testifying its save us, we perish." power, mars its aspect of oneness. The Excursion," avowedly a fragment, seems the splinter of a larger splinter; like a piece of Pallas, itself a piece of some split planet. Of all his poems, perhaps, his sonnets, his "Laodamia,” his "Intimations of Immortality," and his verses on the "Eclipse in Italy," are the mos' complete in execution, as certainly they are the most classical in design. Dramatic power he has none, nor does he regret the want. "I hate," he was wont to say to Hazlitt, "those interlocutions between Caius and Lucius." He

To pass from the essential poetic element in a writer of genius, to his artistic skill, is a felt, yet necessary descent-like the painter compelled, after sketching the man's countenance, to draw his dress. And yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity, elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the body-seems the soul made visible-so is it with the style and manner of many great poets. Their speech and music without are as inevitable as their genius, or as

borious flight." But, having subtracted such altogether from their intellectual pretensions, faults, how much remains-of truth-of tender- Wordsworth's poems possess a moral clearness. ness of sober, eve-like grandeur-of purged beauty, transparency, and harmony, which conbeauties, white and clean as the lilies of Eden nect them immediately with those of Milton; -of calm, deep reflection, contained in lines and beside the more popular poetry of the past and sentences which have become proverbs-age-such as Byron's, and Moore's-they reof mild enthusiasm-of minute knowledge of mind us of that unplanted garden, where the nature of strong, yet unostentatious sympathy shadow of God united all trees of fruitfulness. with man-and of devout and breathless com- and all flowers of beauty, into one; where the munion with the Great Author of all! Apart" large river," which watered the whole, "ran

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south," toward the sun of heaven-when compared with the gardens of the Hesperides, where a dragon was the presiding deity, or with those of Vauxhall or White Conduit-house, where Comus and his rabble rout celebrate their undisguised orgies of miscalled and miserable pleasure.

In private, Wordsworth, we understand, was pure, mild, simple, and majestic-perhaps somehis own what austere in his judgments of the erring. and, perhaps, somewhat narrow in economics. In accordance, we suppose, with that part of his poetic system, which magnified mole-heaps to mountains, pennies assumed the It is ludicrous, yet importance of pounds.

In

To write a great poem demands years-to write a great undying example, demands a life-characteristic, to think of the great author of the "Recluse," squabbling with a porter about the time. Such a life, too, becomes a poemhigher far than pen can inscribe, or metre make price of a parcel, or bidding down an old book musical. Such a life it was granted to Words- at a stall. He was one of the few poets who were ever guilty of the crime of worldly pruworth to live in severe harmony with his verse -as it lowly, and as it aspiring, to live, too, dence-that ever could have fulfilled the old "A poet has built a house." In his amid opposition, obloquy, and abuse-to live, parodox, too, amid the glare of that watchful observa- young days, according to Hazlitt, he said little tion, which has become to public men far more in society-sat generally lost in thought— keen and far more capacious in its powers and threw out a bold or an indifferent remark occaopportunities, than in Milton's days. It was sionally-and relapsed into reverie again. not, unquestionably, a perfect life, even as a latter years, he became more talkative and His health and habits were always man's, far less as a poet's. He did feel and oracular. resent, more than beseemed a great man, the regular, his temperament happy, and his heart pursuit and persecution of the hounds, whether sound and pure. gray" and swift-footed, or whether curs of His voice low degree, who dogged his steps. from his woods sounded at times rather like the moan of wounded weakness, than the bellow of masculine wrath. He should, simply, in reply to his opponents, have written on at his poems, and let his prefaces alone. "If they receive your first book ill," wrote Thomas Carlyle to a new author, "write the second better When -so much better as to shame them." will authors learn that to answer an unjust attack, is, merely to give it a keener edge, and that all injustice carries the seed of oblivion and exposure in itself? To use the language of the masculine spirit just quoted, "it is really a truth, one never knows whether praise be really good for one-or whether it be not, in very fact, the worst poison that could be administered. Blame, or even vituperation, I have always found a safer article. In the long run, a man has, and is, just what he is and has-the world's notion of him has not altered him at all. except, indeed, if it have poisoned him with selfconceit, and made a caput mortuum of him."

The sensitiveness of authors-were it not such a sore subject-might admit of some curious reflections. One would sometimes fancy that Apollo, in an angry hour, had done to his sons, what fable records him to have done to Marsyas-flayed them alive. Nothing has brought more contempt upon authors than this -implying, as it does, a lack of common courThe true son of genius age and manhood. ought to rush before the public as the warrior into battle, resolved to hack and hew his way to eminence and power, not to whimper like a schoolboy at every scratch-to acknowledge only home thrusts-large, life-letting-out blows -determined either to conquer or to die, and, feeling that battles should be lost in the same If Wordsworth spirit in which they are won. did not fully answer this ideal, others have sunk far more disgracefully and habitually below it.

We have said that his life, as a poet, was far from perfect. Our meaning is, that he did not sufficiently, owing to temperament, or position, or habits, sympathize with the on-goings of society, the fullness of modern life, and the His soul dwelt apart. varied passions, unbeliefs, sins, and miseries of modern human nature. He came, like the Baptist, "neither eating nor drinking," and men said, "he hath a demon." He saw at morning, from London bridge, “all its mighty heart" lying still; but he did not at noon plunge artistically into the thick of its throbbing life; far less sound the depths of its wild midnight heavings of revel and wretchedness, of hopes and fears, of stifled fury and eloquent despair. Nor, although he sung the

mighty stream of tendency" of this wondrous age, did he ever launch his poetic craft upon it, nor seem to see the witherward of its swift and He has, on the whole, stood awful stress. aside from his time-not on a peak of the past -not on an anticipated Alp of the future, but on his own Cumberland highlands-hearing the tumult and remaining still, lifting up his life as a far-seen beacon-fire, studying the manners of the humble dwellers in the vales below-" piping a simple song to thinking hearts," and striving to waft to brother spirits, the fine infec tion of his own enthusiasm, faith, hope, and devotion.

Perhaps, had he been less strict and consistent in creed and in character, he might have attained greater breadth, blood-warmth, and wide-spread power, have presented on his page a fuller reflection of our present state, and drawn from his poetry a yet stronger moral, and become the Shakspeare, instead of the Milton, For himself, he did undoubtedly of the age. choose the "better part;" nor do we mean to insinuate that any man ought to contaminate himself for the sake of his art, but that the poet of a period will necessarily come so near to its peculiar sins, sufferings, follies, and mistakes, as to understand them, and even to feel the

force of their temptations, and though he should never yield to, yet must have a "fellow-feeling" of its prevailing infirmities.

the golden age, supposed by many to have existed in the past, and of the millennium, expected by more in the future-a compromise of the The death of this eminent man took few by two poetical styles besides-the one, which surprise. Many anxious eyes have for a while clung to the hoary tradition of the elders, and been turned toward Rydal mount, where this the other, which accepted innovation because it hermit stream was nearly sinking into the ocean was new, and boldness because it was daring, of the Infinite. And now, to use his own grand and mysticism because it was dark-not truth, word, used at the death of Scott, a "trouble" though new; beauty, though bold; and insight, hangs upon Helvellyn's brow, and over the though shadowy and shy. Nay, we heartily waters of Windermere. The last of the Lakers wish, had it been for nothing else than this, that has departed. That glorious country has be- his reign had lasted for many years longer, till, come a tomb for its more glorious children. perchance, the discordant elements in our creeds No more is Southey's tall form seen at his library and literature, had been somewhat harmonized. window, confronting Skiddaw-with a port as As it is, there must now be great difficulty stately as its own. No more does Coleridge's in choosing his successor to the laureateship; dim eye look down into the dim tarn, heavy laden, nor is there, we think, a single name in our too, under the advancing thunder-storm. And poetry whose elevation to the office would give no more is Wordsworth's pale and lofty front universal, or even general, satisfaction. shaded into divine twilight, as he plunges at noon-day amidst the quiet woods. A stiller, sterner power than poetry has folded into its strict, yet tender and yearning embrace, those

"Serene creators of immortal things."

Alas! for the pride and the glory even of the purest products of this strange world! Sin and science, pleasure and poetry, the lowest vices, and the highest aspirations, are equally unable to rescue their votaries from the swift ruin which is in chase of us all.

"Golden lads and girls all must

Like chimney-sweepers come to dust."

But Wordsworth has left for himself an epitaph almost superfluously rich-in the memory of his private virtues of the impulse he gave to our declining poetry-of the sympathies he discovered in all his strains with the poor, the neglected, and the despised-of the version he furnished of Nature, true and beautiful as if it were Nature describing herself—of his lofty and enacted ideal of his art and the artist-of the "thoughts, too deep for tears," he has given to meditative and lonely hearts—and, above all, of the support he has lent to the cause of the "primal duties" and eldest instincts of manto his hope of immortality, and his fear of God. And now we bid him farewell, in his own words

"Blessings be with him, and eternal praise,

The poet, who on earth has made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays."

Although, as already remarked, not the poet of
the age-it has, in our view, been, on the
whole, fortunate for poetry and society, that for
seven years William Wordsworth has been
poet-laureate. We live in a transition state in
respect to both. The march and the music are
both changing-nor are they yet fully attuned
to each other-and, meanwhile, it was desirable
that a poet should preside, whose strains formed
a fine "musical confusion," like that of old in
the "wood of Crete"-of the old and the new
-of the Conservative and the Democratic-of

Milman is a fine poet, but not a great one. Croly is, or ought to have been, a great poet; but is not sufficiently known, nor en rapport with the spirit of the time. Bowles is deadMoore dying. Lockhart and Macaulay have written clever ballads; but no shapely, continuous, and masterly poem. John Wilson, alias Christopher North, has more poetry in his eye, brow, head, hair, figure, voice, talk, and the prose of his Noctes," than any man living; but his verse, on the whole, is mawkish-and his being a Scotchman will be a stumblingblock to many, though not to us; for, had Campbell been alive, we should have said at once, let him be laureate-if manly grace, classic power, and genuine popularity, form qualifications for the office. Tennyson, considering all he has done, has received his full meed already. Let him and Leigh Hunt repose under the shadow of their pensions. Our gifted friends, Bailey, of "Festus," and Yendys, of the "Roman," are yet in blossom-though it is a glorious blossom. Henry Taylor is rather in the sere and yellow leaf-nor was his leaf ever, in our judgment, very fresh or ample: a masterly builder he is, certainly, but the materials he brings are not highly poetical. When Dickens is promoted to Scott's wizard throne, let Browning succeed Wordsworth on the forked Helvellyn! Landor is a vast monumental name; but, while he has overawed the higher intellects of the time, he has never touched the general heart, nor told the world much, except his great opinion of himself, the low opinion he has of almost every body else, and the very learned reasons and sufficient grounds he has for supporting those twin opinions. Never was such power so wasted and thrown away. The proposition of a lady laureate is simply absurd, without being witty. Why not as soon have proposed the Infant Sappho? In short, if we ask again, "Where is the poet worthy to wear the crown which has dropped from the solemn brow of "old Pan," "sole king of rocky Cumberland ?"-Echo, from Glaramara, or the Langdale Pikes, might well answer, "Where?