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Princes protecting sciences and art

I've often seen, in copper-plate and print; I never saw them elsewhere, for my part, And therefore I conclude there's nothing in't; But everybody knows the Regent's heart;

I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; Each board to have twelve members, with a seat To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat :— From princes I descend to the nobility:

In former times all persons of high stations, Lords, baronets, and persons of gentility,

Paid twenty guineas for the dedications: This practice was attended with utility;

The patrons lived to future generations, The poets lived by their industrious earning,So men alive and dead could live by learning. Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune; [mend: Now, we must starve unless the times should Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune If their addresses are diffusely penn'd; Most fashionable authors make a short one

To their own wife, or child, or private friend,
To show their independence, I suppose;
And that may do for gentlemen like those.
Lastly, the common people I beseech-

Dear people! if you think my verses clever,
Preserve with care your noble parts of speech,
And take it as a maxim to endeavour
To talk as your good mothers used to teach,

And then these lines of mine may last for ever;
And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tail'd words in osity and ation.
I think that poets (whether Whig or Tory)

(Whether they go to meeting or to church) Should study to promote their country's glory With patriotic, diligent research;

That children yet unborn may learn the story,

With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch: It stands to reason-This was Homer's plan, And we must do-like him-the best we can. Madoc and Marmion, and many more,

Are out in print, and most of them are sold; Perhaps together they may make a score;

Richard the First has had his story told, But there were lords and princes long before,

That had behaved themselves like warriors bold; Among the rest there was the great King Arthur, What hero's fame was ever carried farther?

King Arthur, and the Knights of his Round Table,
Were reckon'd the best king, and bravest lords,
Of all that flourish'd since the tower of Babel,
At least of all that history records;
Therefore I shall endeavour, if I'm able,

To paint their famous actions by my words:
Heroes exert themselves in hopes of fame,
And having such a strong decisive claim,

It grieves me much, that names that were respected
In former ages, persons of such mark,
And countrymen of ours, should lie neglected,
Just like old portraits lumbering in the dark:
An error such as this should be corrected,
And if my Muse can strike a single spark,

Why then (as poets say) I'll string my lyre; And then I'll light a great poetic fire;

I'll air them all, and rub down the Round Table, And wash the canvas clean, and scour the frames, And put a coat of varnish on the fable,

And try to puzzle out the dates and names; Then (as I said before) I'll heave my cable, And take a pilot, and drop down the Thames-These first eleven stanzas make a proem, And now I must sit down and write my poem.

SIR GAWAIN.

SIR Gawain may be painted in a word—
He was a perfect loyal cavalier;
His courteous manners stand upon record,
A stranger to the very thought of fear.
The proverb says, As brave as his own sword;
And like his weapon was that worthy peer,
Of admirable temper, clear and bright,
Polish'd yet keen, though pliant yet upright.
On every point, in carnest or in jest,

His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit, Were deem'd the very touchstone and the test Of what was proper, graceful, just, and fit; A word from him set every thing at rest

His short decisions never fail'd to hit; His silence, his reserve, his inattention, Were felt as the severest reprehension:

His memory was the magazine and hoard,

Where claims and grievances, from year to year, And confidences and complaints were stored, [peer: From dame and knight, from damsel, boor, and Loved by his friends, and trusted by his lord, A generous courtier, secret and sincere, Adviser-general to the whole community, He served his friend, but watch'd his opportunity. One riddle I could never understand

But his success in war was strangely various; In executing schemes that others plann'd, He seem'd a very Cæsar or a Marius ; Take his own plans, and place him in command, Your prospect of success became precarious: His plans were good, but Launcelot succeeded And realized them better far than he did. His discipline was steadfast and austere, Unalterably fix'd, but calm and kind; Founded on admiration, more than fear,

It seem'd an emanation from his mind; The coarsest natures that approach'd him near Grew courteous for the moment and refined; Beneath his eye the poorest, weakest wight Felt full of point of honour, like a knight. In battle he was fearless to a fault,

The foremost in the thickest of the field; His eager valour knew no pause nor halt, And the red rampant lion in his shield Scaled towns and towers, the foremost in assault, With ready succour where the battle reel'd: At random like a thunderbolt he ran, And bore down shields, and pikes, and horse, and

[man.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the seventh of April, 1770. With his brother, (the Rev. Dr. | WORDSWORTH, author of Greece, Historical and Picturesque,) he was sent at an early age to the Hawkshead grammar school, in Lancashire, whence, in his seventeenth year, he was removed to St. John's College, Cambridge. On leaving the university, he made the pedestrian tour through France, Switzerland and Italy, commemorated in his Descriptive Sketches in Verse, which, with an Epistle to a Young Lady from the Lakes in the North of England, were published in 1793. He was in Paris at the commencement of the French Revolution, lodging in the same house with BRISSOT, but was driven from the city by the Reign of Terror. Returned to England, he passed a considerable time at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, where he became intimately acquainted with COLERIDGE. It was during his residence here that he completed the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, which was published in 1798. He soon after made a tour through a part of Germany, where he was joined by COLERIDGE, with whom, at the end of thirty years, he revisited that country. In 1803 he married MARY HUTCHINSON, and settled at Grassmere, a home subsequently exchanged for his present beautiful residence at Rydal, in Westmoreland. In 1807 he published a second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, and in 1809 a prose work On the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal to each other. In 1814 appeared The Excursion, "being a portion of The Recluse, a poem,” which was followed, in 1815, by The White Doe of Rylstone; in 1819 by Peter Bell the Waggoner; in 1820 by The River Duddon, a series of sonnets, Vaudracour and Julia and other pieces, and Ecclesiastical Sketches; in 1822 by Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, and A Description of the Lakes in the North of England; in 1835 by Yarrow Revisited and other Poems; and in 1842 by his last volume, Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years, including The Borderers, a Tragedy,

written in 1785.

Sir ISAAC NEWTON is reported to have said that any man of good ability who could have paid the same long and undivided attention to mathematical pursuits that he had, would have wrought out the same results. Probably almost any thoughtful and well-educated person, devoting a long and quiet life to the cultivation of poetry, would sometimes produce passages of sublimity and beauty. Mr. WORDSWORTH has produced very many such; but he has written no single great poem, harmonious and sustained, unless exceptions be found in two or three of his shorter pieces. In the beginning of his career, acting upon the belief that a man of genius must "shape his own road," he affected an originality of style. He determined to be simple, and became puerile; he disdained to owe anything to the dignity of his subjects, and often selected such as were contemptible. He complained that poetry had been written in an inflated and unnatural diction, compounded of a "certain class of ideas and expressions," to the exclusion of all others, and vaunted of his courage in setting these aside. But the complaint was ill-grounded; there was mannerism enough, inflation enough, in the beginning of this century, but there was also genuine simplicity and tenderness, and independence of feeling and expression. CHAUCER and SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE and MILTON, were studied as well as POPE; and CowPER and THOMSON and BURNS had as truly as himself written "the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation." The principles he ostentatiously avowed were a mere repetition of what nearly every poet whose works retain a place in English literature had practically acknowledged. Sportsmen have a phrase, "running the thing into the ground," which has been applied to the racing of asses; and Mr. WORDSWORTH, in the White Doe of Rylstone, Peter Bell, and other pieces, has merely applied the art to simplicity of diction. In him mannerism, an obstinate adherence to a theory, well nigh ruined a great poet; for such he has shown himself to be when the divine afflatus has obtained a mastery

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over the rules by which he has chosen to be fettered. The general scope of his poetry is shown in the following extract from the conclusion of the first book of The Recluse, introduced into the preface to The Excursion :

Ox man, on nature, and on human life,
Musing in solitude, I oft perceive
Fair trains of imagery before me rise,
Accompanied by feelings of delight,

Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mix'd;
And I am conscious of affecting thoughts

And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes
Or elevates the mind, intent to weigh
The good and evil of our mortal state.
To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come,
Whether from breath of outward circumstance,
Or from the soul-an impulse to herself,-
I would give utterance in numerous verse.
Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope-
And melancholy fear subdued by faith;
Of blessed consolations in distress;
Of moral strength, and intellectual power;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;

Of the individual mind that keeps her own
Inviolate retirement, subject there
To conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence which governs all;

I sing:-"fit audience let me find, though few!"
So pray'd, more gaining than he ask'd, the bard,
Holiest of men-URANIA, I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven!
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep-and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
All strength, all terror, single or in bands,
That ever was put forth in personal form;
Jehovah with his thunder and the choir
Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones-
I pass them unalarm'd. Not Chaos, not

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,

Nor aught of blinder vacancy-scoop'd out
By help of dreams-can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our minds, into the mind of man,
My haunt, and the main region of my song.
By words

Which speak of nothing more than what we are,
Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external world
Is fitted; and how exquisitely, too,-
Theme this but little heard of among men,-
The external world is fitted to the mind;
And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be call'd) which they with blended might
Accomplish: This is our high argument.

Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft
Must turn elsewhere-to travel near the tribes
And fellowships of men, and see ill sights
Of madding passions mutually inflamed;
Must hear humanity in fields and groves
Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang

Brooding above the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore

Within the walls of cities; may these sounds
Have their authentic comment-that even these
Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!
-Descend, prophetic spirit! that inspirest
The human soul of universal earth,
Dreaming on things to come; and dost possess
A metropolitan temple in the hearts

Of mighty poets; upon me bestow
A gift of genuine insight; that my song
With star-like virtue in its place may shine;
Shedding benignant influence--and secure,
Itself, from all malevolent effect

Of those mutations that extend their sway
Throughout the nether sphere!

It was for a long time the custom to treat WORDSWORTH With unmerited contempt. His faults were so conspicuous as to blind men to his merits. The fashion is changed, and he is now as much overpraised. The stone which the builders rejected, has by a few been placed at the head of the corner, but it cannot remain there. He has written poetry worthy of the greatest bards of all the ages, and as wretched verbiage and inanity as any with which paper was ever assoiled.

Mr. WORDSWORTH has been an eminently happy man in his circumstances. Depressed by no poverty, worn out with no over-exertion, and successful in his few efforts of a private nature, nothing has disturbed the tranquillity of his life. He has realized the vision of literary ease and retirement which has mocked the ambition of so many men of genius. All other poets of high reputation have passed considerable portions at least of their lives in the current of society, but his days have been spent in the beautiful region of his home, and the quiet meditation of his works.

Few men have been more beloved than Mr. WORDSWORTH in private life. Among his intimate friends have been COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, and many of the other eminent men of his time. On the death of SOUTHEY he was ap pointed Poet Laureate, and, at seventy-five, he promises to live yet many years to enjoy his fame and the honours of his station.

The selections from WORDSWORTH in this volume are in but few instances complete poems. I have chosen rather to give in detached passages some of his most beautiful and sublime thoughts, with enough of the characteristic to enable the reader to perceive the peculiarities of his style. No one but the author of the Lyrical Ballads would have written "We are Seven."

A complete edition of the works of Mr. WORDSWORTH has been published in Philadelphia, under the superintendence of Professor HENRY REED, of the University of Pennsylvania, a gentleman to whom he owes much of his reputation in America; and another edition was published several years ago in New Haven.

INSCRIPTION FOR A SEAT IN THE

GROVES OF COLEORTON.

BENEATH yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound, Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground, Stand yet-but, stranger! hidden from thy viewThe ivied ruins of forlorn Grace Dieu; Erst a religious house, which day and night With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite: And when those rites had ceased, the spot gave birth To honourable men of various worth: There, on the margin of a streamlet wild, Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child; There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks, Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks; Unconscious prelude to heroic themes, Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage, With which his genius shook the buskin'd stage. Communities are lost, and empires die, And things of holy use unhallow'd lie; They perish;-but the intellect can raise, From airy words alone, a pile that ne'er decays.

A YOUTHFUL POET CONTEMPLATING NATURE.

For the growing youth,
What soul was his, when from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He look'd-
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay

In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd,
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being: in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffer'd no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him; it was blessedness and love!
A herdsman on the lonely mountain top,
Such intercourse was his, and in this sort
Was his existence oftentimes possessed.
Oh then how beautiful, how bright appear'd
The written promise! Early had he learned
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die;
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
All things, responsive to the writing, there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving; infinite;
There littleness was not; the least of things
Seem'd infinite; and then his spirit shaped
Her prospects, nor did he believe,-he saw.

What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,
Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart
Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he call'd those ecstasies to mind, [quired
And whence they flow'd; and from them he ac-
Wisdom, which works through patience; thence he
In oft recurring hours of sober thought, [learn'd
To look on nature with an humble heart,
Self-question'd where it did not understand,
And with a superstitious eye of love.

EVENING IN THE MOUNTAINS.

Has not the soul, the being of your life,
Received a shock of awful consciousness,
In some calm season, when these lofty rocks,
At night's approach, bring down th' unclouded sky
To rest upon their circumambient walls;
A temple framing of dimensions vast,
And yet not too enormous for the sound
Of human anthems-choral song, or burst
Sublime of instrumental harmony,

To glorify the Eternal! What if these
Did never break the stillness that prevails
Here, if the solemn nightingale be mute,
And the soft woodlark here did never chant
Her vespers, Nature fails not to provide
Impulse and utterance. The whispering air
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights,
And blind recesses of the cavern'd rocks;
The little rills and waters numberless,
Inaudible by daylight, blend their notes
With the loud streams: and often, at the hour
When issue forth the first pale stars, is heard,
Within the circuit of this fabric huge,
One voice-one solitary raven, flying
Athwart the concave of the dark-blue dome,
Unseen, perchance above the power of sight-
An iron knell! With echoes from afar,
Faint, and still fainter.

SKATING.

NOT seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cross the bright reflection of a star,
Image that, dying still before me, gleam'd

Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes

When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopp'd short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheel'd by me, even as if the earth had roll'd,
With visible motion, her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler; and I stood and watch'd
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

ON REVISITING THE WYE.

THESE beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:-feelings, too,
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremember'd acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift
Of aspect more sublime; that blesses most
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

Is lighten'd:-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on-
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things. If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world
Has hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turn'd to thee,
O silvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turn'd to thee!
And now with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again :
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts,
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope, [first
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad varied moments all gone by)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrow'd from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts
Have follow'd; for such loss I would believe
Abundant recompense. For I have learn'd
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power
To soften and subdue. And I have felt
A passion that disturb'd me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interposed,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting sun,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and on the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects and all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive; well-pleased to recognise,
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

CLOUDS AFTER A STORM.

-A SINGLE Step which freed me from the skirts Of the blind vapour, open'd to my view Glory beyond all glory ever seen By waking sense or by the dreaming soulThe appearance instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city-boldly say

[turf,

A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth
Far sinking into splendour-without end!
Fabric it seem'd of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires;
And blazing terrace upon terrace high
Uplifted here serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars, illumination of all gems!
Oh 'twas an unimaginable sight;
Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks, and emerald
Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,
Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge
Fantastic pomp of structure without name,
In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapp'd.
Right in the midst, where interspace appear'd
Of open court, an object like a throne
Beneath a shining canopy of state
Stood fix'd; and fix'd resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,

But vast in size, in substance glorified ;
Such as by Hebrew prophets were beheld
In vision-forms uncouth of mightiest power,
For admiration and mysterious awe!

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