cessaries of life for the purpose of creating an artificial scarcity, and of thus obtaining an excessive profit ;-usury-the taking of an unlawful interest for money-dishonest application of things committed to our care, and unfaithful discharge of any sort of trust, as executors, guardians, and trustees, by serving their own interest at the expense of that which is confided to them ;-retaining any thing that belongs to another, even if it be accidentally found, unless the right owner, on due enquiry, cannot be discovered; going to law on frivolous or unjust pretences;-every kind of injury, or hindrance, to the prosperity of our neighbour in word or deed;-prodigality on the one hand, and parsimony on the other the waste of property on improper objects, and the needlessly profuse expenditure on goods of that which ought to be husbanded in order that the greatest benefit may be produced; and the opposite fault of niggardly withholding what ought to be dispensed, thus becoming guilty of omission with regard to the duties of charity and humanity;-too great carefulness for the future, with respect to temporal provision, which betrays a want of reliance on the power and goodness of a superintending Providence; and on the other side, inattention to our own concerns, and the neglecting to cultivate the talents committed to our trust, among which our temporal possessions, whether many or few, are assuredly to be ranked;-idleness, in the pursuit of a lawful calling, or the engaging in one which is unlawful, both of which are intrinsically immediate infringements of the law, and lead through many channels to the most heinous crimes." Vol. III. p. 286. We have now gone through the whole of this performance, which we conceive cannot fail to add to the reputation, which its author has already acquired by various publications. We cordially wish it an extensive circulation, convinced that it will be found highly serviceable, to those classes of persons, who are mentioned in the Preface. To the younger Clergy, in particular, we think it will prove very useful in the composition of sermons :-we mean in that portion of it, in which copious extracts are made from the Scriptures, which bear upon particular points of Faith or Practice. We take our leave, therefore, of the author, returning him our best thanks for having opposed this barrier to that flood of fanaticism, which threatens to carry every thing before it, until reason, religion, and morality, are swept away into the ocean of infidelity. ART. VI. Ecclesiastical Sketches. By William Wordsworth. ART. VII. Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820. By William Wordsworth. Longman. 1822. IT is always with much pleasure that we meet with Mr. Wordsworth. Indeed, although we are known to confine ourselves in a more particular manner to the superintendance of a graver department of literature, we are by no means ashamed to confess, that, amidst the serious, and not seldom painful cares attendant upon our ordinary watchings, we have often felt refreshment and delight from our occasional excursions into the softer and more peaceful regions of poetry and romance. We leave with a pardonable eagerness the interminable and too often, it is to be feared, fruitless contest, with the hydras of fanaticism and infidelity, and hasten to seek quietness and repose, in the consideration of the efforts of innocent ambition, and in the discussion of interests which do not break the peace of mankind. By such efforts however are not meant to be understood the vapid sweetness, the voluptuous prettinesses, and the unmasked blasphemies of writers, who are the burthens and disgraces of their times, but the productions of men who have deeply conceived the nobleness of their vocation, who have drunk at the living fountains of that immortal triumvirate Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, who caught, if any did, the falling mantle, and inherited a double portion of the spirit of prophecy. In such poetry, in the poetry of Comus and Samson Agonistes, there is all that can soothe, charm and teach; every thing that can purify the heart and enlighten the mind. We render a very high, but not an undeserved tribute, when we say, that amongst those, who in uniformity of purpose, depth of imagination, and chastity of conception;-as philosophers, poets, and Christians;-have sustained the dignified and almost sacred character of a poet: few have approached nearer to the almost unattainable perfection of those masters of English verse than William Wordsworth. The "Ecclesiastical Sketches" consist of a series of Sonnets upon the chief incidents and most interesting vicissi tudes of fortune, which have befallen the Church of England from the grove-sacrifices of the Druids down to the late Act of Parliament, for the building of new places of public worship, to meet the immense increase in the numbers of our population. There are three parts; the first extending from the introduction of Christianity into Britain, to the consum. mation of the Papal dominion; the second, to the close of the troubles in the reign of Charles I.; and the third, from the Restoration to the present times. The idea of a succession in topographical or historical order, of fragments of poetry, which, though treating respectively of separate incidents, should yet be intimately connected together, and in fact form but one poem in the whole, seems to have originated with Mr. Coleridge; but the "River Duddon" is the first instance of such a plan being carried into execution. The Sonnets of Petrarch and Shakspeare, though frequently pursuing the same subject for pages together, are essentially different in their method. The design of this present work is explained by the poet himself in the Introduction, and as we wish to make a few remarks upon its merits, we shall quote the whole of the passage in which it is declared: "I, who descended with glad step to chase We considered the poem on the River Duddon beautiful in the conception of the whole, and unusually finished in the individual details; there was an air and a freshness of nature about each address or description, which made us believe they must have been the easy effusions of the moment on the very spot; it was willingly imagined that the turn of the stream, a rustic bridge, a village steeple, or a waterfall might have actually called forth the various tones of feeling with which those objects were associated, and those feelings themselves were so true and genuine, that we have never since made a pilgrimage by the side of a river, without wishing for the power of engraving such exquisite memorials of our journey, as we went along. There was a reality in the language, a successive and reciprocal juxta-position of the painter and the object, which was very uncommon, and a sort of fellowship between the traveller and the river, which jus tified the appellation of companion during their society, and might have dignified some natural tears at their parting. Now we cannot say that we have felt or seen any thing like this in the poem before us; there is much to be admired as animated poetry, and almost every thing to be commended as the outpouring of right and disciplined affections; but the peculiar charm of the "River Duddon" is totally wanting. It was one thing to realize the suggestion of poor Burns, "The muse, nae poet ever fand her, and quite another to pick out from the gentle tomes of the venerable Bede, and the no less venerable Fuller, certain historical facts, and to versify them in mere succession. It was one thing to follow the grassy banks of a real river where, as was the case in Valchiusa, non palazzi, non teatro o loggia, Ma 'n lor vece un abete, un faggio, un pino Levan di terra al ciel nostr' intelletto and a very different thing to create by the assistance of a good library, and a painted stream of time, the indistinct image of an allegorical one. Nature supplied the materials in the one case, books in the other; accordingly on the one hand there is substance, picturesqueness, and colouring; on the other, superficial brilliancy, languor, and coldness. We wish the method of this work appeared alone objectionable to us, but we are obliged to say that in our judgment not less than two-thirds of the Sonnets themselves are equally so. We know Mr. W. is not ignorant of the nature of this species of composition; he has himself written many sonnets which were never surpassed in depth of thought, and beauty of rhythm; to justify which assertion we need only refer from memory to the one beginning with, "The world is too much with us!" and therefore we impute it to the vice of the plan itself, that he has now contrived to publish 102 Sonnets, every third of which has in some respects, scarcely more pretensions to be called or deemed a Sonnet than an Epic poem. We hope we shall be pardoned if we spend a few words upon this subject. It is to be understood that fourteen lines irregularly rhymed within each other do not necessarily constitute a .Sonnet; that if the Faery Queen, or the Paradise Lost were to be subdivided into fragments of the aforesaid number of verses, such fragments would not be Sonnets; that there is therefore something peculiar which is essential to, and characteristic of, the true Sonnet. It is to an ignorance or disregard of this fact, that all those numberless silly little things to" Mary," or "the Moon," owe their untimely birth. Now in this, as in many other cases, it is easier to describe by a negative than an affirmative, to teach what is not than to show what is a Sonnet. A circumstantial narrative (Sonnet xv. 1st part) is not a Sonnet, neither a parable_with a didactic application (XVI. ditto) nor a political reflection (IX. 2d part). A Sonnet should be concise in its style, deep or pathetic in its sentiments, and above all, absolute and entire within itself. It should be rather imaginative, than fanciful; it should rather have metaphors than similes. La brevità del Sonetto non comporta, che una sola parola sia vana, ed il vero subietto e materia del Sonetto debbe essere qualche acuta e gentile sentenza, narrata attamente, ed in pochi versi ristretta, e fuggendo la oscurità e durezza. This is the opinion of Lorenzo de Medici. It is to be observed, that the "acuta e gentile sentenza" (words which no translation can reach) not only includes striking and noble, but also affecting and delicate thoughts; and therefore the Sonnets "To the Nightingale," and "On his deceased Wife," are equally legitimate, and in their nature as excellent as those "When the Assault was intended to the City," and the second to Cyriack Skinner. In these, there is no mere narration, no formal moralizing; what there might have been is changed and transfigured by the poet into allusion, thanksgiving, tears and prayer. Some respectable versifiers, with the foregoing definition, or description of a Sonnet before their eyes, have fallen into another error. They read that a Sonnet should consist of one single thought or idea, and accordingly having found it impossible to eke out such their solitary thought beyond the first seven or eight lines at the utmost, and there being an absolute necessity to indite the full fourteen, they press into the service some meaningless, or most inapplicable simile, and by virtue of a certain filtering process, which every moderate poet understands instinctively, extend its faint residuum over the required distance. This originates in a misapprehension of the spirit of the rule. It was never meant that a Sonnet, any more than any other composition, should be built upon a single unmixed observation or fact, whether real or imaginary; no such Egyptian bondage as |