which the words themselves must convey, if they are taken without this allowance. A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of Shakspeare's principal plays, would without the name affixed scarcely fail to recognize as Shakspeare's a quotation from any other play, though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth's style, whenever he speaks in his own person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis persona of THE RECLUSE. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth. The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference to the persons introduced : "It seems, as I retrace the ballad line by line That but half of it is theirs, and the better half is thine."* Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion of Mr. Wordsworth's publications, and having studied them with a full feeling of the author's genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian the little poem on the rainbow? "The Child is father of the Man, &c."t Or in the LUCY GRAY? "No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; The sweetest thing that ever grew [Altered from The Pet Lamb, P. W. p. 30.-S. C.] P. W. p. 2, line 7. "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety."—S. C.] [Ib. i. p. 16.-S. C.] Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea Loch in THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY. Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little ones by the fire-side as "Yet had he many a restless dream; Beside a lake their cottage stood, For to this lake, by night and day, And rivers large and strong: Then hurries back the road it came- As long as earth shall last. And with the coming of the tide, Come boats and ships that sweetly ride, Between the woods and lofty rocks; And to the shepherds with their flocks [Ib. i. p. 31.-S. C.] [Ib. iii. pp. 145-6. Mr. Wordsworth has altered "sweetly" in the last I might quote almost the whole of his RUTH, but take the following stanzas: "But as you have before been told, This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold, So beautiful, through savage lands The wind, the tempest roaring high, For him, a Youth to whom was given Whatever in those climes he found A kindred impulse, seemed allied To his own powers, and justified Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought, The breezes their own languor lent; Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween, Pure hopes of high intent: For passions linked to forms so fair And stately, needs must have their share But from Mr. Wordsworth's more elevated compositions, which already form three fourths of his works; and will, I trust, constitute hereafter a still larger proportion ;-from these, whether stanza to "safely." In the first I venture to prefer "the eagle's scream," which my father wrote, to "the eagles," as it is written by Mr. Wordsworth-because eagles are neither gregarious nor numerous, as the first expression seems to mark the nature of the bird, and to bring it more interestingly before the mind, than the last.—S. C.] [P. W. ii. p. 106.-S. C.] in rhyme or blank verse, it would be difficult and almost superfluous to select instances of a diction peculiarly his own, of a style which can not be imitated without its being at once recognized, as originating in Mr. Wordsworth. It would not be easy to open on any one of his loftier strains, that does not contain examples of this; and more in proportion as the lines are more excellent, and most like the author. For those, who may happen to have been less familiar with his writings, I will give three specimens taken with little choice. The first from the lines on the BOY OF WINANDER-MERE,*-who "Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him.-And they would shout Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced, * [There was a Boy. P. W. ii. p. 79.—S. C.] + Mr. Wordsworth's having judiciously adopted "concourse wild” in this passage for "a wild scene" as it stood in the former edition, encourages me to hazard a remark which I certainly should not have made in the works of a poet less austerely accurate in the use of words, than he is, to his own great honor. It respects the propriety of the word, "scene," even in the sentence in which it is retained. Dryden, and he only in his more careless verses, was the first, as far as my researches have discovered, who for the convenience of rhyme used this word in the vague sense, which has been since too current even in our best writers, and which (unfortunately, I think) is given as its first explanation in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and therefore would be taken by an incautious reader as its proper sense. Shakspeare and Milton the word is never used without some clear reference, proper or metaphorical, to the theatre. Thus Milton: "Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view."1 In I object to any extension of its meaning, because the word is already 1 [Par. Lost, iv. 1. 139.-S. C.] Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received more equivocal than might be wished; inasmuch as in the limited use, which I recommend, it may still signify two different things; namely, the scenery, and the characters and actions presented on the stage during the presence of particular scenes. It can therefore be preserved from obscurity only by keeping the original signification full in the mind. Thus Milton again, Prepare thee for another scene."1 * [Part of this poetical description has been altered or expanded, thus: And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call,-with quivering peals, Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause Then, sometimes, in that silence I fear it is presumptuous even to express a feeling, which hardly dares to be an opinion, about these fine verses (one of the most exquisite specimens of blank verse that I know, and fit to be placed beside the most exquisite specimens from Milton, though different from them in the kind of excellence) and yet I can not forbear to express the feeling, that the latter part of this quotation stood better at first; or that any improvement,-if any there be in the first of the two altered lines, is dearly purchased by the comparative languor which has thus been occasioned in the second: Of silence such as baffled his best skill seems to me almost prose in comparison with That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill, which presents the image (if so it may be called), at once without dividing it, while the spondaic movement of the verse corresponds to the sense. Neither can I think that "mirth" is here a superfluity even in addition to "jocund din;" the logic of poetic passion may admit or even require what the mere logic of thought does not exact: and what is the objection to "chanc'd," which Milton uses just in the same way in Paradise Lost 2 The utter silence of the owls, after such free and full communications, is as good an instance of chance, or an event of which we can not see the cause, as the affairs of this world commonly present; and the word seems to me particularly expressive.-S. C.] 1 [Par. Lost, xi. 1. 637.—S. C.] 2 Book lx. 1. 575. |