All kindling fast and far along,

Alive with passion" swift and strong,

claim even more vindication of his sole right than Sir John Herschel asserts for Bacon in these terms:- "it is not the introduction of inductive reasoning, as a new and hitherto untried process, which characterises the Baconian philosophy, but his keen perception, and his broad and spirit-stirring, almost enthusiastic, announcement of its paramount importance, as the alpha and omega of science, as the grand and only chain for the linking together of physical truths, and the eventual key to every discovery and every application. Those who would deny him his just glory on such grounds would refuse to Jenner or to Howard their civic crowns, because a few farmers in a remote province had, time out of mind, been acquainted with vaccination, or philanthropists, in all ages, had occasionally visited the prisoner in his dungeon." Preliminary Discourse, p. 114.

The exquisite taste and beauty of some of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry indeed merit the admiration with which it has, at length, met. But the general tone and principle of his school of poetry must be considered in a different feeling.

The principle seems to originate, as usual, in inclination to make our own circumstance the standard, as it so often appears— even appearing the calm reason of philosophic meditation when it may be only the dim and dreamy Hindoo optimism of constitutional languor, sweetly and beautifully mild, and placid, and very intolerably.

The case of that style of diction which Mr. Wordsworth has in a great measure adopted affords an illustration of this view. Of course the simple precision of natural expression which he advocates, and in several instances has felicitously exemplified, would at once be recognised by any one of pure and classical taste, or accustomed to the precise expression exacted by Mr.

All forth and instant, far and high,
In its own voice, its melody78 :

Wordsworth's predecessor Aristotle,* and many others. Mr. Wordsworth's is often mere simplicity itself; either, in his own words,

"Trick'd out in proud disguise of Beggar's weeds

or literally just adapted to subjects which naturally inspire and only admit mean language; for the use of which the same laudation may be due as to a beggar (continuing the allusion) for wearing his own rags.

The vulgar (so called) themes which Mr. Wordsworth espepecially patronises are, of course, in some measure, under some circumstances, interesting in themselves, and as affording what he considers "the primary laws of our nature," "the essential passions of the heart," the "elementary feelings," the "plainer and more emphatic language." But those can scarcely be constituted the optimity of all that is interesting and important. "The primary laws of our nature," "the essential passions," the "elementary feelings," developed in Goody Blake,† Simon Lee,†

* See IIept IIount. xxii.

Λέξεως δὲ ἀρετὴ σαφῆ καὶ μὴ ταπεινὴν εἶναι. § 1.

It might perhaps be considered invidious to cite these poems, but that these, and others, are severally and distinctly adduced by Mr. Wordsworth, in his Preface, and recommended to particular consideration, in very respectful terms, and in some amplitude of observation. They have certainly several striking passages.

Song such science and such might,
Where all the beautiful and bright

Johnny Foy,† The Old Cumberland Beggar, or the Pedlar,* may be well worth study: but the relative degree of interest and importance may be ascertained and assigned; and also the merit of one who, by taste and circumstances, becomes so familiarized with that class of objects as to be exquisitely well versed, no doubt, in the thinkings and feelings which they afford, and to acquire the very tone and expression which, only, they suggest and admit.

The relative value of Mr. Wordsworth's class of subjects may be assigned to it.

There is also another class for other study.

To look calmly and steadily in contemplation, of which Mr. Wordsworth often speaks, is, of course, in the spirit of all philosophic thought: but it may be well to look vividly also. Exactly in the sense which the author of this poem would express is what Mr. Wordsworth speaks of as his purpose in opposition to that poetry the reader's pleasure in which is a "perturbed and dizzy state of mind in which if he does not find himself, he imagines that he is balked of a peculiar enjoyment which poetry can, and ought to bestow." The antipodes to that dizziness would be the faint, dim, dreamy languor, the "sober sad antithesis to glowing," the Hindoo optimism, which has been

"Beneath the Moon that shines so bright,

Till she is tired, let Betty Foy

With girt and stirrup fiddle faddle ;" etc.

"Burr, burr-now Johnny's lips they burr,

As loud as any mill, or near it," etc. The Idiot Boy.

* But that wonderful hybrid cannot, of course, be mentioned as anything natural: however beautiful or sublime.

Lives as souls may live in light.

Poetry is rapture high,

Far inspir'd Transcendency79,

alluded to; and of something like which perhaps Mr. Wordsworth speaks when he says:

"In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature's gentlest boon!"

Extremes meet. Dizziness and dreaminess may coincide at last; of which one of the most eminent of Mr. Wordsworth's school was a miserably pitiful example. (See note 8.)

See notes 52, 53.

(77) "Aristotle, I have been told, hath said," (Atò kai piλoσoφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν·—Περὶ Ποιητ. ix, 3) "that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion;"-etc. Wordsworth.

(78) " Atque his quidem illecebris et congruitate, qua animum humanum demulcet, addito etiam consortio musices, unde suavius insinuari possit,"-etc. Bacon, De Augm. Scient. II, xiii, vol. VII, p. 145; Works, Lond. 1826.

(79) ̓Αλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον· τὸ γὰρ παράδειγμα δεῖ ὑπερέχειν πρὸς ἅ φασι τἄλογα. Arist. Περὶ Ποιητ. χχν, 28. xxv,

166

ea a fundamento prorsus nobili excitata videtur, quod ad dignitatem humanæ naturæ imprimis spectat. Cum enim mundus sensibilis sit anima rationali dignitate inferior, videtur poesis. hæc humanæ naturæ largiri, quæ historia denegat;"-etc. "Adeo ut poesis ista, non solum ad delectationem, sed etiam ad animi magnitudinem, et ad mores conferat. Quare et merito etiam divinitatis cujuspiam particeps videri possit; quia animum erigit, et in sublime rapit ;"-etc. Bacon, De Augm. Scient. II, xiii, vol. VII, p. 144, 5.

Power and Beauty and delight,
In the poet's vision-might;

To the others but as story

When they hear him in his glory;
Voice of thought of things that are
The higher and as yet afar.

But Poetry the power may be

Most when most Reality:

That Transcendence far and high
Gaz'd" as is the starry sky

When Science sees with sunlike eye:
It that seem'd all mystery given 80,

80

Fire divinest flash'd from heaven,

Won in conscious scient might,

Won as is th' electric light,

(80) Plato, Paidp. 49, 50, vol. I, p. 68-70; and notes p. 69. Απολ. Σωκρ. 7, vol. II, p. 296-9. Ἴων, 5, vol. II, p. 445, etc.; and the notes, especially those of Nitzsch (Prolegom.); and compare the ἀλλὰ σοφοὶ μέν που ἐστε ὑμεῖς οἱ ῥαψῳδοὶ καὶ οἱ ὑποκριταὶ καὶ ὧν ὑμεῖς ᾄδετε τὰ ποιήματα· εγὼ δὲ οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢτἀληθῆ λέγω, οἷον εἰκὸς ἰδιώτην ἄνθρωπον. of Socrates (4, p. 440), and Mueller's note. Mévwv, 41. vol. IV, p. 85. Nóμot, III, 4, vol. VIII, p. 19; comparing Nitzsch on "Iwv, 5, vol. II, p. 445; IV, 9, p. 121; and Ast's note. Arist. Περὶ Ποιητ. xvii, 4. Proclus on the Пoλurɛia of Plato, in Taylor's Introduction to the Rhetoric etc. of Aristotle, p. vii-xxiv; Lond. 1811. Taylor's note upon Proclus on the Timæus of Plato, vol. II, p. 470; Lond. 1820. Mitscherlich's notes on Hor. Carm. II, xix, 1, 5; III, xxv, 1.

Hor. A. P. 295; 408.

H