We have made these observations by way of preface to a letter from a Correspondent, which will in some measure illustrate the ideas we have expressed. We will now detain our reader with no further meditation, but will introduce Somnolentus, and leave him to speak for himself.

"SIR,-I was sitting yesterday evening in my room, 'Sicut meus est mos,

Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis,'

when my sleeping, or my waking thoughts, for in truth they were something between both, turned upon the vicissitudes to which my residence,-a small chamber seven feet by six,-had been subject before I entered into possession of it. I determined to ask a narrative of these changes from the most aged of my Penates. (My Penates, Sir, consist of three small representations of Messrs. Homer, Virgil, and Milton.) I was particularly curious to learn in what fray or accident Homer himself, who appeared, from his ancient look, to have weathered many a storm, had lost that nose, which, if I may form a conjecture from the stump of it which remains, formed in the olden time a distinguished feature of his countenance. While I was engaged in these speculations, and was hesitating whether to address the old Gentleman by Ode, Elegy, or Sonnet, I thought I perceived a slight motion of his head, which enabled him to fix his eyes upon a part of the wall immediately surmounting the chimney-piece. Not a little amazed at this extraordinary phenomenon, I shook off my disposition to drowsiness, and hastened to the scene of action: I observed a small protuberance in the part of the wall to which my tutelary Deity had directed my attention; this, partly from curiosity, partly from idleness, I immediately cut open, and discovered judge of my surprise and pleasure, when I discovered a Manuscript, a real and inestimable Manuscript. I forthwith sent my lower boy for a candle, and composed myself in my arm-chair to wait for its arrival. A thousand conjectures passed across my brain, as to the actual value of the treasure which the Bard of antiquity had consigned to my hands. Was it another Iliad? Was it a Map of the site of ancient Troy? Was it à solution of the disputes respecting the author of the Odyssey? The light came, and I broke open the dear Packet. I discovered nothing but the inclosed narrative, which I send to you, Mr. Editor, without any conjectures as to its origin or author. Had Homer really wished to convey to me any account of the scenes he had witnessed, I cannot think he would have chosen English Prose for the vehicle of his narrative; although he has, as you see, headed his paper with a motto from his own Poem. I am, Sir, Your's,

SOMNOLENTUS.”

σε "Ομη περ φύλλων γενεὴ, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

"You have always been civil to the Poet who now addresses you from the chimney-piece; you have had my works bound in handsome Russia, and you have whitewashed one of my ears which had suffered among your predecessors. I know your thoughts; and have gratitude enough to endeavour to meet your wishes.

"The tenant, then, who, about twenty years ago, introduced me to my present post of danger, was a regular steady young man, who rose at seven and slept at ten, went through all his studies properly, and walked very upright. In the last year of his residence here he found himself in want of chimney ornaments; and, after hesitating for two days between me and a painted image of Confucius, he installed me in the post which I have since, through various vicissitudes, preserved. By the bye, I was sixpence the cheaper of the two.

"His successor was a gentleman who possessed great poetical talent, and I had therefore reason to anticipate from him a favourable treatment. Here I was lamentably disappointed. The taste of my new master lay rather in the soft than the sublime. Perhaps it was in consequence of this, that, upon his taking possession, he insulted me by putting Ovid and Pope upon the same shelf. With Ovid I had no acquaintance. Pope is a man whom I detest. He has, as you well know, altogether expatriated me; he has made me and my heroes think, speak, and act, like English beaux. Besides which, some of the noblest names in my catalogue have been murdered by him without provocation or apology. It was not long, however, before I was liberated from these odious compeers. What became of Pope I know not. Poor Ovid had his head broke by a Fourth Form boy, who found some difficulty in learning his verses. I was once in a similar predicament; but Ovid was a flimsy hollow fellow; I am made of more solid materials.

"The poet was followed by an orator. He put up Demosthenes and Cicero on my right and left, and instituted a society here for the cultivation of eloquence. Many were the discussions which I witnessed in this reign. Upon one occasion, indeed, my very existence was threatened; for the subject in dispute was, "Shall Homer be burnt?" There was every probability that the question would be decided in the affirmative, when the President rescued me from my executioners, and locked me up in a closet with his rolls and butter. The next day a violent political debate took place, which, after raging with unremitting violence for two hours, was dissolved in the following manner. The whole body of members started from their seats, as if by instinct, overturned the furniture, demolished the windows, hurled cinders, snuffers, jugs, tongs, pokers, &c. at the President's head, to the utter subversion of his authority, and the imminent danger of his person. Cicero

and Demosthenes perished in the fray. You will not be surprised to learn that after this the Parliament was dissolved.

"The next inhabitant of this abode was a hard drinker. I was terribly handled by this monster. He cut off my nose, because I deprived Polyphemus of an eye; and flung a pewter vessel at my cranium, because he thought fit to misconstrue the words

"OU TOT' 'EVI"

Not any pot.

He mutilated me

I was very glad when this gentleman left me. as cruelly as a commentator, and I hated him almost as bitterly. "His successor behaved to me in a much more becoming manner. He belonged to the race of Dandies, who were springing up very rapidly at this period. To be sure, he offended my eyes too often by the sight of my works deprived of their binding, and disgraced by pencilled annotations; and, in an equal degree, he offended my olfactory nerves by a bottle of Eau de Cologne, which he set up by my side. But in the main he was civil and inoffensive. He made to me a most studied inclination of his body every morning, before he completed his toilet; but whether his devotion was occasioned by my description of his prototype Paris, or by his Parisian attachment to the mirror which is suspended over my head, I cannot take upon me to determine. He used such a variety of unguents, that, before his departure, I smelt of the oil, from necessity, almost as much as my friend Virgil does from inclination.

"I believe these are all the gentlemen who have inhabited this chamber since I was appointed the Guardian of it. I presume it will be uninteresting to you to learn the changes which have taken place in the paper of the room, its chairs, or its carpeting. Various were the tastes of its possessors; and various, of course, were the improvements they introduced. You, Sir, are now the occupier of the apartment, and, without flattery, I have no reason, as yet, to be dissatisfied with you. You have brought me into very good company; yet I must say Virgil is apt to give himself airs, and, though nobody has less vanity than myself, I am sometimes vexed at hearing Milton ranked above me. By the bye, you clapped a sprig of laurel on Milton's head the other day. I say nothing but at your age, Sir! methinks you might have known where such a decoration was due."

Here ends the manuscript. We certainly have one reason which induces us most strongly to attribute it to the Spirit of Homer. Whoever has read of Calypso, of the Sirens, and the Lostrygones, must be aware of the old gentleman's propensity to fiction. Now our MS. does decidedly in this point bear marks of Homeric manufacture, for we have little doubt that it is, like the Odyssey,-All a Hum!

ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.

To Richard Hodgson, Knave of Clubs, &c. &c.

MY DEAR SEC.-I now come to the latter department of my humble vindication of William Wordsworth's Poems, in which I proposed to myself to take notice of those other, ingredients of matter or style, which are, or are supposed to be, peculiarly characteristic of those productions. But before 1 proceed any farther, I must here remark, that the distinction which I have apparently created between Wordsworth as a Poet generally, and the same as a Poet in a sense peculiar to himself, is in reality little better than imaginary; the whole of his Poems, from the shortest to the longest, from the most humble to the most impassioned, being composed strictly upon the principles of one grand comprehensive system; and consequently the extracts in my first letter being just as thoroughly and genuinely the offsprings of that system as any thing which I may think it right to quote hereafter in this my second. The real foundation of the distinction, if this, that the class of Poetry from which those quotations were made is one, with the external dress of which the world is commonly entertained in the writings of others; whereas a few specimens, which I shall take the liberty of presenting to your readers in this essay, will be either the living impressions produced on the heart and the mind by common incidents and natural objects, or they will be the emanations of impassioned feelings, deep thought, and high imagination, and which imperiously demand from the Reader a corresponding sensibility, and an associated temper of the affections, without which much of the most exalted Poetry in the world must of necessity appear dead and meaningless phraseology, from the simple cause that the Reader is himself not sufficiently alive to perceive or be animated by the life that is before him. The motto and defence of all original thinkers must be, and ever has been, " Intelligibilia, non Intellectum fero."

Having premised thus much, to guard against misapprehension, I now enter upon the particular subject of this letter, namely, the principles which are the foundation as well as the pervading spirit of Wordsworth's Poems. And here I have to lament the utter impossibility of doing any thing like justice to my cause within the narrow limits which necessity imposes on me; though certainly it is some consolation to remember that even Wordsworth himself, with all the eagerness of an advocate, and all his own nervous and fervid eloquence, has finished an exposition of his system with confessing that he found a full and satisfying development of his principles impracticable within the space allowed him in a Preface. What the Poet himself has left undone, I will not presume to fulfil, but will rather content myself by mention

ing one or two of the grand creative articles of his faith, upon which every thing he has written is built up, and which, if duly attended to, will lead us, without fear of wandering, into the hidvden and wonderful abysses of his Thoughts, and the treasure-house of his Imagination.

This Poet, then, in the first place, is a lover of Nature; not a -blind confounder of the Creator with his own creation-not a soul-less grovelling worshipper of the earth without even the supposition of a Providence ;-none of these, but a genuine, pure, reli"gious lover of the Universe, from an ardent belief that it is the symbol and visible exponent of the immeasurable wisdom, and goodness, and majesty of that Almighty God, who is, and was, and is to come. Penetrated, as he himself says, “ to his heart of hearts," with this living idea, he can pass by in neglect or contempt no component part of this mysterious whole; he denies not to any being, animate or inanimate, its due share of his love; he recognizes in all and singular of the infinite germs of the Universe, the finger and the impress of a superior Being; in winter or summer, in storm or sunshine, in solitudes or in crowds, in joy or affliction, he is still one and the same; ever extracting from human contingencies their universal essence; ever inspiring, in return, his own passionate and blended sympathies, whilst he chastens, subdues, and purifies every thought and every wish by a spirit of unutterable and boundless love. It follows intimately, from the foregoing convictions, that no natural object or incident (with obvious and manifest exceptions) can be too low or insignificant for Poetry; nay, to carry the principle to its legitimate length, that not seldom in rustic life the passions are more vigorous and decisive, the moving springs of thought and action more simple and unelaborate, and the whole system of society more genuine and unadulterated, than when encumbered and concealed by forms of city ceremonial, and deadened by the depraving habitude of perpetual though unconscious deceit. Low life, therefore, is not destitute of admirable materials for poetry; and this particularly, when it is, as is usually the case, associated with the beautiful and sublime of Nature; but these are only the rude materials of poetry; they cannot become Poetry itself, unless they are arranged, and modified, and combined by the Fancy; and, above all, impregnated and shaped by the Imagination of the Poet. To express what I mean more clearly by examples, I would entreat my readers to recall to their minds for a few moments the "Tam o' Shanter" of Burns, and any of Bloomfield's or Clare's verses, and they will instantly understand and feel the mighty difference with which similar or even humbler subjects may be treated by a Poet and a Verse-maker. Here then it is, that Wordsworth lives and breathes in the full enjoyment of creative