of its religion. From the first line of the Lyrical Ballads' to the last of the 'Excursion,' it is avowedly one system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life, and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human heart-the human mind-the human soul-to use his own fine words-is 'the haunt and main region of his song.' There are few, perhaps none of our affections-using that either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by term in its largest sense-which have not been Wordsworth. In his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great both the truth and beauty of the representation? We think there is—and that it lies in his Religion.

had wilfully remained ignorant of it for many cendent genius, we do not fear to say the most years; and we have instructed as many open to the most serious charges-on the score more, whose hearts were free, how to look on it with those eyes of love which alone can discover the beautiful. Communications have been made to us from across the Atlantic and from the heart of India-from the occident and orient-thanking us for having vindicated and extended the fame of the best of our living bards, till the name of Wordsworth has become a household word on the Mississippi and the Ganges. It would have been so had we never been born, but not so soon." But as it was the labor of his earlier years to teach the pub-and lamentable defect in that image, marring lic to understand and admire this great poet, so it becomes the duty of his maturer age to take care that the admiration which "In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to he has thus been the main cause of instil- his Excursion,' is there any allusion made exling into the public mind, shall prove not a cept of the most trivial and transient kind, to blind idolatry, but a discriminating devo- Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be tion. Accordingly, with the respect due called a Christian poet. The hopes that lie beto great ability employed in the cause of yond the grave-and the many holy and awful virtue for upwards of half a century, yet shrined and fed-are rarely if ever part of the feelings in which on earth these hopes are enwith the candor and dignified sincerity with character of any of the persons-male or female which one man of genius ought to deal with-old or young-brought before us in his beautianother, he points out, in the course of ful Pastorals. Yet all the most interesting and these volumes, not a few defects of omis- affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitively sion and commission in the works of this delineated-and innumerable of course are the great artist:-Sometimes, indeed, as in the occasions on which, had the thoughts and feelinstance we are about to quote, where he ings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's heart during the hours of inspiration-and he ventures to bring into question Words often has written like a man inspired-they must worth's claim to the character of afreligious have found expression in his strains; and the poet in the Christian sense, and censures, personages, humble or high, that figure in his in the "Excursion," the absence of any representations, would have been, in their joys thing beyong a kind of natural-religious or their sorrows, their temptations and their trials, creed-such as might have been entertainChristians. But most assuredly this is not the ed under a system of refined mythologies poetry published previous to the Excursion'— case; the religion of this great Poet-in all his -or at best (to quote an expression of Ben-is but the Religion of the Woods.' tham) a species of poetical Church-of-En "In the Excursion,' his religion is brought glandism;-in a manner so plain and un-forward -- prominently and conspicuously-in compromising as may not unlikely appear many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedler, startling, as it certainly will be new to the Poet, and Solitary. And a very high religion it students of Wordsworth; the religious There are glimpses given of some of the Chrisoften is; but is it Christianity? No-it is not. character of his inspiration having been tian doctrines; just as if the various philosophialways taken for granted as one of those cal disquisitions, in which the Poem abounds, bases upon which all argument as to his would be imperfect without some allusion to the merits must proceed. We are not pre-Christian creed. The interlocutors-cloquent as pared to say that we as yet fully acquiesce in the remarks we are about to quote; but believing that they must have proceeded from deep consideration of the subject

66

they all are--say but little on that theme; nor do they show-if we except the priest-much interest in it-any solicitude; they may all, for any thing that appears to the contrary, be deists. Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from entering on such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance of this having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem. Nor could it have been the case with such a man-a man privileged, by the power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations of the "Among the great living poets, Wordsworth earth, on all themes, however high and holy, is the one whose poetry is to us the most which the children of men can feel and underinexplicable-with all our reverence for his trans-stand. Christianity, during almost all their dis

and coming, as they do, from a mind certainly not disposed to regard the poetry of Wordsworth, or its influences, in an unfavorable spirit, we extract the passage as one well worthy of mature study on the part of

his warmest admirers :

quisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as poor in which he takes us is the religion preachthey kept journeying among the hills.

"On man, on nature, and on human life, Musing in solitude!"

ed in those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealing organ, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree, But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, telary spirit of the lowly dwelling. Can this be lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tuor perceiving it, looked upon it with a cold and right? Impossible. And when we find the Christian indifferent regard, and passed by into the poetry religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering good as ever was produced by human genius, from the cloudy skies. Their talk is of 'Palmyra what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world central, in the desert,' rather than of Jerusalem. of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful in which he breathes, nor fears to declare to all poetry is bestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian.

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men that he believes himself to be one of the

order of the High Priests of nature ?"

"This omission is felt the more deeply-the more sadly-from such introduction as there is So far, indeed, from being of too vague and of Christianity; for one of the books of the 'Excursion' begins with a very long, and a very generalizing a kind, we should rather say noble eulogy on the Church Establishment in that the character of the criticism containEngland. How happened it that he who pro-ed in these volumes and similar essays, is nounced such eloquent panegyric-that they mainly distinguished from the greater part who so devoutly inclined their ear to imbibe it-of the popular criticism of the day, by its

should have been all contented with

"That basis laid, these principles of faith Announced,"

combination of analyses of parts, often very detailed, with general views as to the plan and spirit of the work reviewed. Inand yet throughout the whole course of their dis-deed its minute dissection of particular cussions, before and after, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity, or a

Christian Church in the world?

passages, both as to thought and diction, carries us back to the school of Johnson "We do not hesitate to say, that the thought- and Addison, rather than to our own time. In ful and sincere student of this great poet's works, criticism, as in political opinion, and in many must regard such omission-such inconsistency other speculative questions, there seems to or contradiction-with more than the pain of re- be a pediodical oscillation; and in proporgret; for there is no relief afforded to our defraud- tion to the height to which the pendulum ed hearts from any quarter to which we can had been carried on the one side, is the force look. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of a Christian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof-for our delight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before the heavenly splendor; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after all this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation into the mysteries, we are put of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and and though we have much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most ingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion.

off with a well-merited encomium on the Church

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of its recoiling impulse towards the other. The grasp and comprehension of Dr. Johnson's mind, no doubt, prevented him from yielding too much to the current which had then set in favor of mere verbal criticism; and though we may often think that his principles of criticism were too purely rationalizing, and his spmpathies with the higher efforts of the imagination cold and unimpassioned, yet he certainly combines, in a manner which, we think, would at the present day be well worthy of imitation, the "This utter absence of Revealed Religion, criticism of generals with particulars. But when it ought to have been all-in-all-for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we regard with Johnson the manly and philosophic the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance criticism of the last century may be said to shocks far deeper feelings within us than those of close. After him it took the direction of mere taste; and throws over the whole poem to which judgments of detail-examinations of fragthe tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy sus-mentary passages-censures of broken mepicion of hollowness and insincerity in that po- taphors-eulogies of mere polish and coretical religion which at the best is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. with a happy daring either in design or exrectness of expression-till all sympathy Above all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over the orthodox Church- ecution, disappeared. The evil having thus of-Englandism-for once to quote a not inexpres- reached an extreme, it was natural that the sive barbarism of Bentham-which every now tendency towards an opposite system should and then breaks out either in passing compliment be carried too far. It has been usual to as-amounting to but a bow-or in eloquent lau-cribe that greater latitude of view and dation, during which the poet appears to be pros-warmth of tone which characterizes the crititrate on his knees. He speaks nobly of cathe

drals, and ministers, and so forth, reverendly cism of the nineteenth century, to the inadorning all the land; but in none-no, not one fluence of Germany; but although the spirit of the houses of the humble, the hovels of the of our criticism was unquestionably mate

rially influenced, at a later period, by the on a great scale, and to dash objects off sweepstudy of German literature, we are convincingly by bold strokes-such, indeed, as have aled that, in its origin, it owed little or no-most always distinguished the mighty masters thing to that source. In truth, in both coun- before your eyes-Thomson before your imaginof the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper sets nature tries the change took place about the same ation. Which do you prefer? Both. Be assurtime, and was owing to the same cause, viz. ed that both poets had pored night and day upon the natural reaction which followed against her-in all her aspects-and that she had rean effete and worn-out system. In the com- vealed herself fully to both. But they, in their mencement, the change was certainly most religion, elected different modes of worship-and beneficial to literature. The point of view both were worthy of their mighty mother. In from which we were taught to regard the one mood of mind we love Cowper best, in anproduction of poetry and art was raised; almost a Task-and sometimes the Task is out other Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are while, at the same time, it was not sublimat- of Season. There is delightful distinctness in ed to such an extent as to render every thing all the pictures of the Bard of Olney-glorious misty and indistinct, or to substitute for a gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard criticism dealing with the common feelings of Ednam. Cowper paints trees-Thomson that interest humanity, the vapors of a shawoods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous dowy system of metaphysics. But by de- lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty grees it was found to be much easier to drous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, Burrampooter--Cowper, in many no very wondeal with these generalities and abstractions, or awakens our fancy to the murmur of some than to descend to particulars ;--to frame a single waterfall. But a truce to antithesis-a theory, or write a philosophical essay hav- deceptive style of criticism-and see how Thoming the slenderest application to the case in son sings of Snow. Why, in the following lines, hand, than to direct the criticism to the real as well as Christopher North in his Winter appreciation of the work to be reviewed. Rhapsody— The poet or the author seemed to disappear entirely from the scene; leaving nothing behind but a cloudy background, on which might be traced a magnified image of the reviewer. At best, our criticism became in a great measure limited to some sketch of the general design of the work, and its relation to the particular theory patronized for the time by the critic; often praising or blaming empirically, and without statement of reasons at all; and generally without any due thought bestowed upon this inquirywhether upon any theory or upon any plan whatever, the execution of the work was careful, classical, and compact; or, on the contrary, slovenly, disjointed, in harmonious, or even ungrammatical.

The cherish'd fields
Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Put on their winter-robe of purest white.
Along the mazy current.'

Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature
of an ocular spectrum.

the beauty of the epithet 'brown,' where all that "Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note is motionless is white

'The foodless wilds

Pour fourth their brown inhabitants.'
That one word proves the poet. Does it not?

"The entire description from which these two
sentences are selected by memory-a critic you
may always trust to-is admirable; except in
one or two places where Thomson seems to
have striven to be strongly pathetic, and where
he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to
have ceased to be perfectly natural. Thus-
'Drooping, the ox
The fruit of all his toil.
Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands

We do not here mean to say that our Periodical Criticism has not been distinguished by many admirable exceptions from this general censure, we shall not at present indicate particularly where they are to We see him, and could paint him in oils. But, "The image of the ox is as good as possible. be found, but we are satisfied that, as ap- to our mind, the notion of his 'demanding the plied to much of the criticism of our last fruit of all his toils'-to which we freely acdecennium, the remark is just. Now, to this knowledge the worthy animal was well entitled system of general blame and praise, unac--sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantasticompanied by a due application of critical cal. Call it doubtful-for Jemmy was never utparticulars, the practice of the writer of terly in the wrong in any sentiment. Againthese Recreations stands completely op'The bleating kind posed. Witness the following observations, Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, which form the commencement of a very With looks of dumb despair.' beautiful paper, entitled, "A Few Words on The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick ShepThomson:" herd agreed with us-one night at Ambrose'sthat the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreed with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his

"Thomson's genius does not so often delight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature as that of Cowper. It loves to paint VOL. II. No. I. 6

own feeling in a corresponding condition, to ani- | times stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in mals who dreadlessly followed their instincts.- an awkward but alarming attitude, of hunger Thomson redeems himself in what immediately mixed with fear. A single wolf seldom or never succeeds

"Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet. People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. A line-two wordsmay show that they are the Muse's sons. How exquisitely does Burns picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change?

The chilly frost beneath the silver beam, Crept gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!' Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit of perception or conception-or memory. whatever else you choose to call it; for our part, we call it genius

'An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career Arrests the bickering stream.'

or

And afterwards, having frozen the entire stream into a 'crystal pavement,' how strongly doth he conclude thus

'The whole imprison'd river growls below.' Here, again, 'tis pleasant to see the peculiar genius of Cowper contrasted with that of Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting, for the most part, in tranquil images-for his life was past amidst tranquil nature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power. Cowper says

'On the flood,

Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight
Lies undissolved, while silently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away.'

attacks a man. He cannot stand the face.

But a person would need to have a godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an army of wolves some thousand strong. It would be the height of prethought Byron, to attempt it. If so, then sumption in any man, though beautiful as Moore

'The godlike face of man avails him nought,' is, under the circumstances, ludicrous. Still more so is the trash about 'beauty, force divine" It is too much to expect of an army of wolves some thousand strong, and hungry as the grave,' that they should all fall down on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh and blood, merely because the young lady was so beautiful that she might have sat to Sir Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr. Watts's Souvenir. 'Tis all stuff, too, about the generous lion standing in softened gaze at beauty's bright glance. True, he has been known to look with a certain sort of

soft surliness upon a pretty Caffre girl, and to walk past without eating her-but simply beHottentot Venus. The secret lay not in his cause, an hour or two before, he had dined on a heart, but in his stomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely has Spenser changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of the attendant lion of

'Heavenly Una, with her milkwhite lamb!' But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it in this passage, has vulgarized and blurred by it the natural and inevitable emotion of terror and pity. Famished wolves howking up the dead is a dreadful image-but inhuman to relate,' is not an expression heavily laden with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel, unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, is revolting, and miserably mars the

terrible truth."

The homeliness of some of the illustrations and expressions in the preceding passage, will enable the reader to form some idea of the very singular style of these "All those children of the Pensive Public who Recreations-illustrating the grandest obhave been much at school, know Thomson's description of the wolves among the Alps, Apen-liness, perplexing critics. jects by the most familiar, and, by its homeThis imbroglio nines, and Pyrenees,

'Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave!
Burning for blood, bony and gaunt and grim,' &c.
The first fifteen lines are equal to any thing in
the whole range of English descriptive poetry;
but the last ten are positively bad. Here they

are

'The godlike face of man avails him nought!
Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance
The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze,
Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey.
But if, apprised of the severe attack,
The country be shut up, lured by the scent,
On churchyard drear (inhuman to relate!)
The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig

appears of course still more conspicuous and even startling, in those papers where the writer abandons himself with less restraint to the comic vein.

with the most fanciful illustrations, or folSide by side lowing close on some passage of poetic and musical diction, comes some picture most prosaically ludicrous-some slang phrase of the day-some quotation, how changed from its origina! application!-or some Scotch expression, tempting to the writer by its graphic force and the comic associations with which it is connected. The result is a strange composite, blending all orders of architecture, and employing Wild beasts do not like the look of the human all materials, from porphyry and lapis lazuli eye-they think us ugly customers, and some-down to the commonest brick and mortar.

The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which, Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl.'

It reminds us of St. Mark's at Venice, in which Saracenic domes are strangely imposed upon Gothic naves, and blocks of Egyptian granite are fantastically mingled with Italian marble and mosaic: yet all blended into a marvellous arabesque, and possessing a strange unity and originality of character.

by the author's knowledge of the minute details of nature, as well as by that power of suggestion and imitation which can make the meanest thing that feels, the means of unlocking the deepest sources of the pathetic or sublime. It has the grandeur, without the quaintness and pedantry, of Sir Thomas Brown's sepulchral strains:

With all this, however, we must own that we would not regret if the contrasts "Why do the songs of the Blackbird and were somewhat less violent, and if here Thrush make us think of the songless STARLING? It matters not. We do think of him, and see him and there an obtrusive epithet or image too-a lovely bird, and his abode is majestic. were eliminated. We do not know that to What an object of wonder and awe is an old any of them the term coarseness can be just- Castle to a boyish imagination! Its height how ly applied. But if the line of division be- dreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear tween the sublime and the ridiculous be carries him, and hangs him over the battlements! slender, still more so is that which sepaWhat beauty in those unapproachable wall-flowrates the familiar from the vulgar: anders, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice, and make the horror pleaswere there no other reason for erring on ing! That sound so far below, is the sound of a the side of caution, it should be sufficient stream the eye cannot reach-of a waterfall that the style, seductive as it always must echoing for ever among the black rocks and pools. be from its variety and apparent ease, The school-boy knows but little of the history of would soon become intolerable in imita- the old Castle-but that little is of war, and tion. The transitions from the most elevat- witchcraft, and imprisonment, and bloodshed. ed views to the most ludicrous-and from he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appals himthe most select and ornate expression to mid-day. There and then it was that we first the most homely vernacular, may be har- saw a Starling. We heard something wild and monized; and are, no doubt, to a great ex- wonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon tent harmonized in this case by the dex- the edge of the battlements, or flew out of the terous workmanship of genius. But the chinks and crannies. There were Martens, too, enforced sentimentalism, or still more en- Swallows-Jack-daws clamoring afresh at every so different in their looks from the pretty Houseforced humor, of those who have attempt-time we waved our caps, or vainly slung a pebed this school of writing,-the absolute ble towards their nests-and one grove of elms, want of all fashion of the opposite elements to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, in their elaborate impromptus-their choice ever and anon, some noiseless Heron from the of coarse expression or imagery for its Muirs. own sake, and not as in the original, where "Ruins! Among all the external objects of it serves the purpose only of occasional imagination, surely they are most affecting! Some sumptuous edifice of a former age, still discords in music,-oblige us to say, that standing in its undecayed strength, has undoubtunless it were redeemed by the highest tal-edly a great command over us, from the ages ent, this style of writing is one of the most that have flowed over it; but the mouldering dangerous and offensive that can be at- edifice which Nature has begun to win to herself, tempted: and that, highly as we appreciate and to dissolve into her own bosom, is far more the generous spirit which the author of touching to the heart, and more awakening to these volumes has carried into criticism, ly because green leaves, and wild flowers, and the spirit. It is beautiful in its decay-not mereand the benefits which may be derived from creeping mosses soften its rugged frowns, but bethe application of humor as well as ima- cause they have sown themselves on the decay gination and judgment to the estimate of of greatness; they are monitors to our fancy, literature, we almost doubt whether the like the flowers on a grave, of the untroubled benefit has not been practically balanced rest of the dead. Battlements riven by the hand by the injury arising from the prevalence of time, and cloistered arches reft and rent, speak to us of the warfare and of the piety of our anof a system of criticism, founded, as is gen-cestors, of the pride of their might, and the conerally the case, rather on an imitation of sulations of their sorrow: they revive dim shahis manner than his spirit; and which has dows of departed life, evoked from the land of preserved and exaggerated his faults, with- forgetfulness; but they touch us more deeply out approaching his excellencies. when the brightness which the sun flings on the broken arches, and the warbling of birds that are nestled in the chambers of princes, and the moaning of winds through the crevices of towers, round which the surges of war were shattered and driven back, lay those phantoms again to rest in their silent bed, and show us, in the mon

We shall now select, almost at random, a few passages as characteristic of these volumes; beginning with one which occurs in the paper entitled Christopher in his Aviary-a paper eminently distinguished