the great, dull sinuous river flashing here and there in the light. But it is the Nile, the old Saturn of a stream—a divinity yet, though younger river gods have deposed him. Hail! O venerable father of crocodiles! . . . At dawn in the morning we were on deck; the character had not altered of the scenery about the river. Vast flat stretches of land were on either side, recovering from the subsiding inundations; near the mud villages, a country ship or two was roosting under the date trees; the landscape everywhere stretching away level and lonely. In the sky the east was a long streak of greenish light, which widened and rose until it grew to be of an opal color, then orange; then, behold, the round red disc of the sun rose flaming up above the horizon. All the waters blushed as he got up; the deck was all red; the steersman gave his helm to another, and prostrated himself on the deck, and bowed his head eastward and praised the maker of the sun; it shone on his white turban as he was kneeling and gilt [?] up his bronze face and sent his blue shadow over the glowing deck. The distances, which had been gray, were now purple; and the broad stream was illuminated. As the sun rose higher, the morning blush faded away; the sky was cloudless and pale and the river and the surrounding landscape were dazzlingly clear. . . . It is poor work, this landscape painting in print. Shelley's two Sonnets are the best views that I know of the Pyramids — better than the reality; for a man may lay down the book, and in quiet fancy conjure up a picture out of these magnificent words, which sha'n't be disturbed by any pettinesses or mean realities.' — Thackeray; Cornhill to Cairo, xv.

Lines 6-8 are not clear. The meaning seems to be: The passions of Ozymandias (stamped on the broken statue) survive the hand of the sculptor that mocked (imitated) them and the heart of the vain-glorious king that nourished them.

WORDSWORTH.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born in Cumberland in 1770, - fifteen months before the death of Gray. His family was of that upper middle class, the backbone of English society, which has furnished the mother-country her greatest poets, statesmen, sailors and men of science (Shakespeare and Milton, Pitt and Gladstone, Nelson and Rodney, Newton and Darwin). The beauty of the lonely Cumberland hills sank deep into his boyish heart; deep sank also the spirit of reverence which men of medieval Cambridge lovingly expressed in

That branching roof1

Self-poised and scooped into ten thousand cells,

Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die.

After taking his degree in 1791, he travelled in France, - sympathizing at first with the French Revolutionists, but soon recoiling in horror at their excesses. A small legacy enabled him to devote himself to literature; the result was the Lyrical Ballads, published with Coleridge in 1798. From this time on, for nearly fifty years, Wordsworth made his home among the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland; here it was he grew into closer and closer communion with Nature, interpreting her every mood and

hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.

Such a life brings with it the bliss of solitude, but he who lives it cannot touch the depths and heights of passion explored by those who live in the great world and are themselves a part of the great deeds they sing. Nor did Wordsworth mistake his calling; he states clearly that his office is to add sunshine

to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous.'

In 1813 Wordsworth settled at the home indissolubly associated with his name- - Rydal Mount. He was now forty-three years of age and nearly all his best work was done. After this there came to him, slowly but surely, the reverence and affection of all that was best in England - but the fountains of poetic

1 King's College Chapel. Wordsworth was a student at St. John's.
2 See Introduction to The Ancient Mariner.

inspiration had well-nigh run dry. In 1843 he reluctantly accepted the Laureateship. He died on the 23d of April, 1850,

FRIENDS. Arnold.

With heart as calm as lakes that sleep
In frosty moonlight glistening,

Or mountain torrents, where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep

To their own far-off murmurs listening.

Coleridge, DeQuincey, Scott, Southey, Lamb, Dr. Thomas

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

LIFE AND TIMES. Those who have the courage to read all the verse that Wordsworth wrote will find it in the splendid 11-vol. edition of Professor William Knight (Paterson). Vols. ix.-xi. contain the Life. Opinions will always differ widely as to whether it is possible to make an interesting biography out of Wordsworth's uneventful and self-centred existence, but there can hardly be two opinions as to the dulness of Myer's Wordsworth (E. M. L.). The nature of Calvert's Wordsworth, A Biographic Esthetic Study, is sufficiently indicated by noting that the author considers The Idiot Boy an 'incomparable artistic feat.'

Coleridge: Biographia Literaria; Cap. iv. xiv. xvii.-xx. xxii. A much better exposition of Wordsworth's poetic philosophy than the poet was able to give himself; does not fail to point out what Wordsworth could never see, - the characteristic defects in his verse.

De Quincey: Autobiography, from 1803 to 1808; Cap. iii.-v. (The Lake Poets.) These are chiefly personal reminiscences; the unsympathetic might call them small-beer chronicles. They leave us with the impression that Wordsworth's personality was decidedly unlovely. Essay on Wordsworth's Poetry.

Examines (briefly) Wordsworth's' theory of Poetic Diction and the philosophy of The Excursion;' calls attention to the penetration of Wordsworth's vision, and the depth of his sympathy with The Permanent in human nature.

Lowell: Among My Books, Second Series; Wordsworth. About half this Essay is biographical; the other half does not spare 'the historian of Wordsworthshire,' yet declares that his 'better utterances have the bare sincerity, the absolute abstraction from time and place, the immunity from decay that belong to the grand simplicity of the Bible.'

Stephen Hours in a Library, Vol. iii. This is an elaborate and eulogistic exposition of that Wordsworthian philosophy which (Mr. Matthew Arnold takes pains to assure us), 'so far at least as it may put on the form and habit of 'a scientific system of thought,' and the more it puts them on,' is an illusion. Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Wordsworth. In this Essay the most distinguished disciple of Wordsworth gives up about four-fifths of his master's verse as of little permanent value, but presents us with the other one-fifth as a 'great and ample body of powerful work' that will rank him superior to all modern poets save Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton and Goethe. French and German critics find it hard to treat this dictum with

seriousness, but it appeals strongly to the insularism and conservatism of the English mind.

Courthope: The Liberal Movement in English Literature, Essay in. (Wordsworth's Theory of Poetry). Shows that Wordsworth's best poems are written on principles that are directly opposed to the theories laid down in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.

Those who desire more Wordsworthian Criticism should consult 7. S. Mill's Autobiography, Cap. v.; Sharp's Studies in Poetry and Philosophy; John Morley's Studies in Literature; Whipple's Essays and Reviews, Vol. i.

TO A HIGHLAND GIRL.

The person and the place herein idealized are thus described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Tour of a Journey in Scotland: August 28, 1803. 'The landing was as pretty a sight as ever I saw. The bay, which had been so quiet two days before, was all in motion with small waves, while the swollen waterfall roared in our ears. The boat came steadily up, being pressed almost to the water's edge by the weight of its cargo; perhaps twenty people landed, one after another. The women were dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, and with their scarlet cardinals, the tartan plaids of the men and Scotch bonnets made a gay appearance. There was a joyous bustle surrounding the boat, which even imparted something of the same character to the waterfall in its tumult, and the restless grey waves; the young men laughed and shouted, the lassies laughed and the elder folk seemed to be in a bustle to be away. . . . The hospitality we had met with at the two cottages and Mr. MacFarlane's gave us very favorable impressions on this our first entrance into the Highlands, and at this day the innocent merriment of the girls, with their kindness to us, and the beautiful face and figure of the elder, come to my mind whenever I think of the ferry-house and waterfall of Loch Lomond, and I never think of the two girls but the whole image of that romantic spot is before me, a living image as it will be to my dying day.' Clough's delightful poem, The Bothie of Tober-NaVuolich, is an epic treatment of a subject similar to this.

TO A SKYLARK.

Wordsworth classed this beautiful lyric among his Poems of the Fancy, why, it is difficult to see. Its quality is more akin to that of Shelley's Ode to a Skylark than to that of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. See notes on the former poem.

TO THE CUCKOO.

See remarks, in the Biography, on Wordsworth's boyhood. Of the lines,

Shall I call thee Bird

Or but a wandering Voice?

Wordsworth has given the following exposition: 'This concise interrogation characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature of a corporeal existence; the imagination being tempted to this

exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight.' — Wordsworth's Prose Works, edited by Grosart, ii. 137.

TINTERN ABBEY.

This is the last poem in the first edition of The Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth classed it among his Poems of the Imagination. Matthew Arnold declares that the author's' categories are ingenious but far-fetched, and the result of his employment of them is unsatisfactory.' The critic accordingly places this composition among the Reflective and Elegiac Poems.

Coleridge tells us that Wordsworth's object, in the Poems of 1798, was 'to give the charm of novelty to things of every day and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonder of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not and hearts that neither feel nor understand.'

Had Wordsworth never pushed his poetical theories beyond this safe and desirable point, he would have spared the world many thousands of verses, his critics much grief and his friends many apologies.

But Tintern Abbey needs no apology: me judice, it attains almost perfectly the object which Coleridge has described; it answers perfectly to the author's definition of good poetry as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.'

35-49. It must have been of some such lines as these that John Stuart Mill was thinking when he wrote (Autobiography, Cap. v.): From them [Wordsworth's poems] I seemed to learn what would be the perennial source of happiness, when all the greater evils of life should have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence. There have certainly been, even in our own age, greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time what his did. I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings. At the conclusion of the Poems came the famous Ode, falsely called Platonic, Intimations of Immortality' in which, along with more than his usual sweetness of melody and rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand imagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, I found that he too had had similar experience to mine. I long continued to value Wordsworth less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed