In paying so much attention to "The Excursion' (of which, in a more extended notice, the two books entitled, "The Churchyard amongst the Mountains would have claimed the profoundest attention), we yiela less to our own opinion than to that of the public. Or, perhaps, it is not so much the public as the vulgar opinion, governed entirely by the consideration that "The Excursion" is very much the longest poem of its author; and, secondly, that it bears currently the title of a philosophic poem; on which account it is presumed to have a higher dignity. The big name and the big size are allowed to settle its rank. But in this there is much delusion. In the very scheme and movement of The Excursion" there are two defects which interfere greatly with its power to act upon the mind as a whole, or with any effect of unity; so that, infallibly it will be read, by future generations, in parts and fragments; and, being thus virtually dismembered into many small poems, it will scarcely justify men in allowing it the rank of a long one. One of these defects is the undulatory character of the course pursued by the poem, which

resistance to the revolution was, in many high quarters, a sacred duty; and that this resistance it was which forced out, from the Revolution itself, the benefits which it has since diffused. To speak by the language of mechanics, the case was one which illustrated the composition of forces. Neither the Revolution singly, nor the resistance to the Revolution singly, was calculated to regenerate social man. But the two forces in union where the one modified, mitigated, or even neutralized the other, at times, and where, at times, each entered into a happy combination with the other, -yielded for the world those benefits which, by its separate tendency, either of the two was fitted to stifle.

does not ascend uniformly, or evo per se, on keep one steady level, but trespasses, as if by for. Treat etfulness, or chance, into topics furnishing little inspiren, by nation, and not always closely connected with the presidin be evadel theme. In part this arises from the accident that a sl, but dight tissue of narrative connects the different sections; a estion, nd to this the movement of the narrative, the fluctuat ality anons of the speculative themes, are in part obedient: the inte he succession of the inci it war accession of the thoughts,

dents becomes a law for the s as oftentimes it happens the proximate occasions of the the

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it these incidents are the The ughts. Yet, as the narra. tive is not of a nature to be influmoulded by any determinate principle of coercing passion, but bends easily to the ca pices of chance and the moment, unavoidably it stamps, by reaction, a desultory or even incoherent character upon the train of the philosophic discussions. You know not what is coming next; and, when it does come, you do not always know why it comes. This has the effect of crumbling the poem into separate segments, and causes the whole (when looked at as a whole) to appear a rope of sand. A second defect lies in the colloquial form which the poem sometimes assumes. It is angerous to conduct a philosophic discussion by talking. If the nature of the argument could be supposed to roll through logical quillets, or metaphysical conundrums, so that, on putting forward a problem, the interlocutor could bring matters to a crisis, by saying, "Do you give it up?"— in that case there might be a smart reciprocation of dialogue, of swearing and denying, giving and taking, butting, rebutting, and "surrebutting;" and

1 "Surrebutting: " this is not, directly, a term from Aristotle's

1

nterlocutory or amabæan character erration. But the topics, and the urchts being moral, in which always

quality of the argumen

t

the reconciliation of the he feelings is to be secured by ion her than the understanding to be

gradual persuasion, rar

tirel

ว

brilliant conversational sword.

floored by a solitary blow, inevitably it becomes impossible that anything of this play, cut-and-thrust, " cartery itself an opening. Mere the speakers should be prosy." n sometimes disposed to say, it short," are sensible that he

"and" tierce," can make for decorum requires that the And you yourself, though "Do now, dear old soul, cut cannot cut it short. Dis

They must have

This in itself is

quisitions, in a certain key, can ho more turn round upon a sixpence than a coach-and-six. sea-room to "wear" ship, and to tack. often tedious; but it leads to a worse tediousness: a practised eye sees from afar the whole evolution of the coming argument; and then, besides the pain of hearing the parties preach, you hear them preach from a text which already in germ had warned you of all the buds and blossoms which it was laboriously to produce. And this second blemish, unavoidable if the method of dialogue is adopted, becomes more painfully apparent through a third, almost inalienable from the natural constitution of the subjects concerned. It is, that in cases where a large interest of human nature is treated, such as the position of man in this world, his duties, his difficulties, many parts become necessary as transitiona.

mint, but indirectly it is; for it belongs to the old science of “special pleading," which, in part, is an offset from the Aristote lian logic.

or connecting links, which, per se, are not attractive, nor can by any art be made so. Treating the whole theme in extenso, the poet is driven, by natural corollary, or by objections too obvious to be evaded, into discussions not chosen by his own taste, but dictated by the logic or the tendencies of the question, and by the impossibility of dismissing with partiality any one branch of a subject which is essential to the integrity of the speculation, simply because it is at war with the brilliancy of its development.

Not, therefore, in "The Excursion" must we look for that reversionary influence which awaits Wordsworth with posterity. It is the vulgar superstition in behalf of big books and sounding titles; it is the weakness of supposing no book entitled to be considered a power in the literature of the land, unless physically it is weighty, that must have prevailed upon Coleridge and others to undervalue, by comparison with the direct philosophic poetry of Wordsworth, those earlier poems. which are all short, but generally scintillating with gems of far profounder truth. Let the reader understand, however, that, by "truth," I understand, not merely that truth which takes the shape of a formal proposition, reducible to "mood" and "figure," but truth which suddenly strengthens into solemnity an impression very feebly acknowledged previously, or truth which suddenly unveils a connection between objects aways before regarded as irrelate and independent. In astronomy, to gain the rank of discoverer, it is not required that you should reveal a star absolutely new; find out with respect to an old star some new affection1. for instance, that it has an ascertainable parallax

and immediately you bring it within the verge of a human interest; or of some old familiar planet, that its satellites suffer periodical eclipses, and immediately you bring it within the verge of terrestrial uses. Gleams of steadier vision, that brighten into certainty appearances else doubtful, or that unfold relations else unsuspected, are not less discoveries of truth than the revelations of the telescope, or the conquests of the diving-bell. It is astonishing how large a harvest of new truths would be reaped, simply through the accident of a man's feeling, or being made to feel, more deeply than other men. He sees the same objects, neither more nor fewer, but he sees them engraved in lines far stronger and more determinate; and the difference in the strength makes the whole difference between consciousness and sub-con sciousness. And in questions of the mere understanding, we see the same fact illustrated: the author who rivets notice the most, is not he that perplexes men by truths drawn from fountains of absolute novelty,- truths unsunned as yet, and obscure from that cause; but he that awakens into illuminated consciousness old lineaments of truth long slumbering in the mind, although too faint to nave extorted attention. Wordsworth has brought many a truth into life, both for the eye and for the understand ing, which previously had slumbered indistinctly for al

men.

For instance, as respects the eye, who does not ac knowledge instantaneously the strength of reality in that saying upon a cataract seen from a station two miles off, that it was "frozen by distance"? In all nature there is not an object so essentially at war with the stiffening of frost, as the headlong and desperate life