his own funds and resources, by affecting poverty in the midst of abundance, he possesses a compass of poetical expression, a sentimental chastity of imagination, and an elevation of moral feeling, which entitle him to rank with that small number to whom his country is indebted for the gifts of genius without the corruption of principle.

"The Kirk of Ulpha to the Pilgrim's eye

Is welcome as a Star, that doth present

Its shining forehead through the peaceful rent
Of a black cloud diffus'd o'er half the sky;
Or as a fruitful palm-tree towering high
O'er the parched waste beside an Arab's tent;
Or the Indian tree whose branches, downward bent,
Take root again, a boundless canopy.

How sweet were leisure! could it yield no more
Than mid that wave-washed Church-yard to recline,
From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine;
Or there to pace, and mark the summits hoar
Of distant moon-lit mountains faintly shine,

Sooth'd by the unseen River's gentle roar."—(P. 32.)

The two following sonnets conduct the river to its home, with a peaceful pomp of expression and placid composure of accompanying allusion, terminating very naturally and gracefully together the process of thought and the course of the stream.

"Not hurled precipitous from steep to steep;

Lingering no more mid flower-enamelled lands
And blooming thickets; nor by rocky bands
Held; but in radiant progress tow'rd the Deep
Where mightiest rivers into powerless sleep
Sink, and forget their nature;-now expands
Majestic Duddon, over smooth flat sands,
Gliding in silence with unfettered sweep!
Beneath an ampler sky a region wide

Is opened round him;-hamlets, towers, and towns,
And blue-topp'd hills, behold him from afar;

In stately mien to sovereign Thames allied,

Spreading his bosom under Kentish downs,

With Commerce freighted or triumphant War.-(P. 33.)

And then follows the verses which, though not the last of the series, would, we think, have closed it with more impressiveness of effect than those by which it is in the next sonnet concluded

"But here no cannon thunders to the gale;
Upon the wave no haughty pendants cast
A crimson splendour; lowly is the mast
That rises here, and humbly spread the sail;

While less disturbed than in the narrow Vale
Through which with strange vicissitudes he pass'd,
The Wanderer seeks that receptacle vast
Where all his unambitious functions fail.
And may thy Poet, cloud-born Stream! be free,
The sweets of earth contentedly resigned,
And each tumultuous working left behind
At seemly distance, to advance like Thee,
Prepared, in peace of heart, in calm of mind
And soul, to mingle with Eternity !"—(P. 34.)

Of" Vaudracour and Julia," the poem which follows, we cannot speak in the same terms of praise as of the sonnets, of which we have just taken our leave. It is one of those examples of failure from ambitious sinking to which Mr. Wordsworth is occasionally abandoned. The tale has nothing in it very new; but the breaking of lovers' hearts, and the bursting of nature's ties by the artificial arrangements and usages of society, can never cease to command our sympathies. Vaudracour, a youth of high birth, living with his parents in a small town among the mountains of Auvergne, woos a maid of the same place, of great charms, but unhappily sprung from a plebeian stock. Their union is implacably opposed by the stern parents of the young man; and the interdict only serves, as might be expected in a case of virtuous love, to confirm the affections of the youthful pair. We shall not follow the story to its catastrophe, which we do not think would be estimated at the value of the room it would demand; enough has been told to introduce the extract, which we think will afford a fair specimen of the style; of which the merit, it would seem, in the opinion of Mr. Wordsworth, and the rest of this humble school, consists in telling a story in verse, as one gossip would tell it to another over their tea, or in a stage-coach. The angry father is made to threaten; and the effect of the menace is related in the following explicit and matter-of-fact language.

"You shall be baffled in your mad intent
If there be justice in the Court of France,'
Muttered the Father.-From this time the Youth
Conceived a terror,-and, by night or day,
Stirred no where without arms. To their rural seat,
Meanwhile, his Parents artfully withdrew
Upon some feign'd occasion, and the Son
Remained with one attendant. At midnight
When to his chamber he retired, attempt
Was made to seize him by three armed men,
Acting, in furth'rance of the Father's will,
Under a private signet of the State.
One, did the Youth's ungovernable hand

Assault and slay;-and to a second

gave
A perilous wound,-he shuddered to behold
The breathless corse; then peacefully resigned
His person to the law, was lodged in prison,

And wore the fetters of a criminal."-(P. 77.)

Now the meaning of the terms and phrases in the above passage are certainly not subject to mistake; and as far as perspicuity is desirable, and it is without doubt an indispensable requisite in all composition, there is merit in this style of poetry; but it is a merit which is shared in equal degree by every welldrawn contract for the hire of a house, or the minutes of the proceedings of a turnpike meeting; and if the extracted passage be poetry, the documents alluded to are only not poetry, because they are not metrical. We venture, however, to think, that a flat and frigid diction cannot be exalted into poetry by rhyme or rhythm; and that something more than plain good-sense, and clear statement, is of the essence of that species of composition, which from the first ages of the world men have agreed to call poetry. Of the diction of poetry we should say emphatically it should be that" in qua non eminent venæ nec ossa numerantur: sed temperatus ac bonus sanguis implet membra, et exsurget toris, ipsos quoque nervos rubor tegit et decor commendat."

We are not ignorant or unwilling to allow that there is a great beauty in the use of familiar words, skilfully applied and combined, and that some of the most affecting and sublime passages in our great poets are constituted of materials of the cheapest quality but they are no longer cheap or ordinary in the place into which we find them transplanted; and in giving to them this new value lies the profound secret of the poetical artist. It is by arrangement, and disposition, and combination, that he draws out the latent powers of language, and by the contact of new affinities, mysteriously varies its nature, and endows it with new properties. But if words or phrases of vulgar origin still retain in their new situation the savour of their plebeian stock, they retain also their full disqualification for the post and preferment to which they are advanced. Poets, such as Shakspeare and Milton, have each been the fountain of honour, from which sometimes a language of the lowest birth has derived a nobility of rank. Something doubtless is to be ascribed to the prerogative of transcendent excellence, and something to prescription, and the reconciling effect of time and usage; but the magic really resides in that fine and discriminative tact, which at once detects the capabilities of homely expressions, and snatches them warm and breathing from the intercourse of

common life, to impart their freshness and stamina, and to take on themselves another nature.

But the phraseology and idiom of vulgar life is not irrespectively and absolutely poetical; nor is carelessness of phrase, the franchise of the muse's votary. We live, indeed, in times unfavourable to discipline in all its departments; men claim to write at their ease, as well as to live at their ease; but either habit is equally grounded in mistake, and ends in equal disappointment. To be really at ease, can only consist with being secure of doing well, and this security is only to be arrived at by much preparatory labour, save in some few instances of felicitous endowment. It may be a proper object of a writer's ambition to avoid the appearance of study, but this semblance of facility is in general the fruit only of perseverance, and the consummation of skill. Nothing so deceives and betrays as this appearance of ease in the great models of imitation. The character of labour is lost in the maturity of attainment, and what seems to move with the smallest effort is frequently the least gratuitous in its origin, or facile in contrivance. Thus unfortunately the ease of impertinence is mistaken for the ease of accomplishment, as well in composition as in manners; and to this error we owe the quantity of flippant colloquial trash, which at the present period claims to be poetry, and has its claim extensively allowed. With these men of low standard and presumptuous claims, we are far from intending to class Mr. Wordsworth: but we cannot help regretting that his example should afford countenance to an affectation, so destructive of sound taste, and so encouraging to unqualified pretenders. If all that the poet has to do is to come intelligibly to the point, and deliver himself like a man of business, the inference is strong on the side of the aphorism, that a poet is born such, and not made; for who can not be a poet, on such easy terms, if he will relinquish his last or his spade, and take up the pen. If it is but to lessen the danger which threatens us, in this age of scribes and scholars, of the daily multiplication of rhyming plough-boys, and inspired shoe-makers, we conjure Mr. Wordsworth not to give the sanction of his broad example to a mode, of versifying within the competency of "most men, many women, and some children," to attain.

That Mr. Wordsworth touches the bottom from choice and not necessity, and that his will and not his poverty consents, we think is plainly proved by a great part of his productions, and especially by the specimens contained in the book before us, in which he shows himself not merely acquainted with the deepest operations of feeling, and conversant with all

the springs of natural tenderness, but a master of poetical expression. To justify this remark, we will lay before our readers, what we do not fear to call a most exquisite ode, which the poet tells us was composed upon an evening of extraordinary splendor and beauty:

"Had this effulgence disappeared

With flying haste, I might have sent
Among the speechless clouds a look
Of blank astonishment;.

But 'tis endued with power to stay,
And sanctify one closing day,
That frail Mortality may see,

What is?-ah no, but what can be!
Time was when field and watery cove
With modulated echoes rang,

While choirs of fervent Angels sang

Their vespers in the grove;

Or, ranged like stars along some sovereign height,
Warbled, for heaven above and earth below,

Strains suitable to both.-Such holy rite,

Methinks, if audibly repeated now

From hill or valley, could not move

Sublimer transport, purer love,

Than doth this silent spectacle-the gleam

The shadow-and the peace supreme!

"No sound is uttered,-but a deep

And solemn harmony pervades

The hollow vale from steep to steep,
And penetrates the glades.
Far-distant images draw nigh,
Call'd forth by wond'rous potency
Of beamy radiance, that imbues

Whate'er it strikes, with gem-like hues!
In vision exquisitely clear,

Herds range along the mountain side;
And glistening antlers are descried;

And gilded flocks appear.

Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve!

But long as god-like wish, or hope divine,

Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe
That this magnificence is wholly thine!
-From worlds not quickened by the sun
A portion of the gift is won;

An intermingling of Heaven's pomp is spread
On ground which British shepherds tread!

"And, if there be whom broken ties

Afflict, or injuries assail,

Yon hazy ridges to their eyes

Present a glorious scale,