that this will be found to be the case in "all poems to which any value can be attached; therefore, in this respect, he only places himself in the rank of a good, not an original writer. As to the circumstance, which he tells us distinguishes his poems from the popular poetry of the day, viz. that the feeling dignifies the subject, and not the subject the feeling, I shall consider, by and by, whether it be not calculated to produce originality of a vicious kind, and whether there should not rather be a mutual proportion between the subject and the passion connected with it. Our author's renunciation of such phrases and figures of speech as have long been the common poetical stock in trade, seems again only to place him in a higher rank than the mere schoolboy poet, who pilfers his English Gradus for flowers of rhetoric. Every poet that rises above mediocrity, knows that he damns himself by the use of wornout tropes and metaphors. Pope, who introduced a peculiar language into poetry, a set mode of expressing certain. things, was original as the first founder of a vicious school, and in his case the severe good sense of his meaning atoned for the tinkling of his rhyme. Darwin was original from the very profusion with which he heaped these commonplaces together; but their imitators have never risen to eminence; and originality of expression seems to be expected from a writer of any pretensions. But Wordsworth has spoken too vaguely on this head. The term poetic diction, seems to infer a diction common to poets; but the language of metrical composition may be elevated beyond that of prose by modes as various as the authors who use it. The poetic diction of Milton is not, in a certain sense, that of Gray, nor is that of Collins in its external forms similar to that of Cowper. I am the more explicit on this point, because one of Wordsworth's principal claims to originality seems to lie in his having formed a diction of his own, and in having run counter to the taste of the age in so doing. He magnifies his own boldness by asserting that an author is sup posed, by the act of writing in verse, to make a formal engagement to gratify certain known habits of association, and thus to apprise his reader not only that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded." I reply to this, that the love of novelty is stronger in man than habit itself, and that there would be nothing to gratify this inherent thirst, if we met with nothing but the same classes of ideas and expressions. Wordsworth grants that the tacit promise which a poet is supposed to make his reader, has in different eras of literature excited very different expectations, as in the various ages of Shakspeare, of Cowley, and of Pope. I ask, what made the ages of Shakspeare, Cowley, and Pope? Their own genius. It is the era that conforms to the poet, not the poet to the age. And even at one and the same period there have been, and may be, as many different styles of writing, as there are great and original writers. Spenser was contemporary with Shakspeare, and in our own day more especially we see almost as many schools of poetry as there are poets. Byron, Scott, Southey, Moore, Campbell, and Crabbe, have not only each asserted his own freedom, but have easily induced the world to affix its sign manual to their charter. I should rather affirm, then, that a poet is supposed to make a formal engagement" to produce something new, to be a creator indeed, or his title to the appellation will scarcely be allowed. It follows, then, that Wordsworth's writings may be original, in as far as they differ from the productions of the present day, but not because they differ from such productions. His renouncing the common poetic diction is not an original part of his theory, however it may produce originality in his practice. Having now attempted to show that what is good in Wordsworth's theory is not new, I will endeavour to prove that what is new is not good. Wordsworth tells us that, in his choice of situations and incidents, "low and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart ,find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language." I answer, that they do so or not according to the powers of him who is their interpreter. I urge, that a true poet finds the same passions in every sphere of life, and makes them speak a plain and emphatic language by his own art. Love and hatred, hope and fear, joy and sorrow, lay bare the human heart, beneath the ermined robe, not less than beneath the shepherd's frock, and strong emotion breaks the fetters of restraint as easily as one would snap asunder a silken thread. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Naked we all came into the world, naked we must all go out of it, and naked we all appear, in a mental sense, when nature's strong hand is upon us. Accordingly, Shakspeare makes his Cleopatra scold like any scullion wench, when the messenger tells her of Antony's marriage with Octavia; nor does she confine her rage to words, but expounds it more intelligibly still by striking the unlucky herald, and "haling him up and down."* The great interpreter of nature contrives to "keep his reader in the company of flesh and blood, while he leads him through every sphere of existence." Wordsworth also chose rural life, "because in that condition, the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." I fear that more of the poet than the philosopher is apparent in this sentiment: or, if Wordsworth will have it that poet and philosopher are nearly synonymous terms, I fear that he has given his own individual feelings as representatives of those belonging to man as a species. The philosophic poet should take care to support his theory upon facts established by observation, or (as Wordsworth himself elsewhere says) should possess "the ability to observe with accuracy, think as they are in themselves, and with fidelity to describe them, unmodified by any passion or feeling existing in the mind of the describer:" but Wordsworth, though, doubtless, conversant with humble life, has thrown the lines of his own mind over its whole sphere; otherwise he never could assert that the passions of men in that condition are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. "The necessary charac * Cleopatra herself says, on being addressed by her handmaid Iras, as "Royal Egypt's Empress," "Peace, peace, Iras, No more but a mere woman, and commanded ter of rural occupations" seems rather to have a tendency to blunt the mind's sensibility to external nature, than to sharpen its perceptions of grace and beauty. "Our elementary feelings," indeed, may be said to co-exist in a state of greater simplicity in humble life-if by "elementary feelings" the poet means such feelings as are connected with the care of our subsistence. To support life is the great object of the poor, and this object absorbs their powers, blunts their sensibilities, and confines their ideas to one track of association. The rustic holding his plough looks at the furrow which he traces, and not at the mountain which soars above his head. The shepherd watches his dog and his sheep, but not the clouds that shift their hues and forms in the western sky-or if he regards them, it is only as prognostics of such and such weather. I have conversed much with those in rustic life, and amongst them have scarcely ever met with one who manifested any sympathy with external nature. There may be exceptions to the general insensibility of the poor, but Wordsworth has mistaken the exceptions for illustrations of the rule itself. If any class of men, in a low station, betoken that the beautiful objects of nature are incorporated with their passions, we must look for them not amongst the tillers of the earth, but amongst those who occupy their business in the great waters. Sailors have leisure to admit the wonders of nature through the eye into the mind. The stagnation of a calm, or the steady movement of their vessel, often leaves them unoccupied, and throws their attention outward. The natural craving of the mind after employment makes them seize whatever offers itself to fill up vacuity of thought, and nature becomes less their chosen pleasure than their last resource. Accordingly, I have often remarked that more unconscious poetry drops from the lips of sailors, than from men in any other low station of life. Again, the affections of the heart become deadened in the poor, or rather change their character altogether. Life, which is so hardly sustained by them, is not in their eyes the precious thing which it is in ours; death, which they only view as a rest from toil or pain, is not looked upon by them with the same emotion with which we regard it. Whether "to be, or not to be," is a question which they decide by balance of utility. A poor woman once said to me, "If he Lord pleases to take either me or my husband from our dear children, I hope my husband will go first; for I think I could do better for them than he could ;" and I am sure she gave the true reason for wishing to survive her partner, and was not influenced in her wish by any selfish love of life. Here the essential passions of the heart (of which love between the sexes may be considered the very strongest) had given place to factitious feelings generated by a peculiar condition of life, and, this being the case, those feelings were no longer elementary, or such as are common to all mankind. In fact there seems to be no surer way of preventing oneself from seeing man as he is, than to confine one's view to any, even the most apparently natural condition of life. Man must be weighed in the gross, before he can be estimated in the abstract. Wordsworth, moreover, informs us, that he has adopted the very language of men in low and rustic life," because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because from their rank in society, and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and motions in simple and unelaborated expressions." I have before attempted to show that the hourly communications" of these men are with their implements of husbandry, and that, like oil and water, they and the beautiful forms of nature may be in perpetual contact, without becoming incorporated. That they are less under the influence of social vanity I doubt, and for the very same reason that Wordsworth believes it, viz. from the narrow circle of their intercourse; for the fewer opportunities men have of comparing themselves with numbers, the less do they know their own deficiencies, and I doubt not but that the vanity of an alehouse politician is as great as, and infinitely more besotted than, the vanity of a member of parliament. I have also little doubt, but that the contempt with which a ploughman would look down upon me for not knowing oats from barley, would transcend that of an astronomer at my not being able to distinguish between Cassiopea and Ursa Major. However we human beings may differ in |