To supple hardnesses. But at the length
Out of the caldron getting, soon I fled

Unto my house, where to repair the strength
Which I had lost, I hasted to my bed;

But when I thought to sleep out all these faults
(I sigh to speak)

I found that some had stuff'd the bed with thoughts,
I would say thorns. Dear, could my heart not break,
When with my pleasures even my rest was gone?
Full well I understood who had been there:
For I had given the key to none but one:

It must be he. "Your heart was dull, I fear."
Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mind
Did oft possess me so, that when I prayed,
Though my lips went, my heart did stay behind.
But all my scores were by another paid,
Who took the debt upon him.-" Truly, friend,
For aught I hear, your Master shows to you
More favour than you wot of. Mark the end!
The font did only what was old renew:
The caldron suppled what was grown too hard:
The thorns did quicken what was grown too dull:
All did but strive to mend what you had marr❜d.
Wherefore be cheered, and praise him to the full
Each day, each hour, each moment of the week,
Who fain would have you be new, tender, quick!"

CHAPTER XX.

The former subject continued-The neutral style, or that common to Prose and Poetry exemplified by specimens from Chaucer, Herbert, and others.

I

HAVE no fear in declaring my conviction, that the excellence defined and exemplified in the preceding chapter is not the characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's style; because I can add, with equal sincerity, that it is precluded by higher powers. The praise of uniform adherence to genuine logical English is undoubtedly his; nay, laying the main emphasis on the word uniform, I will dare add that, of all contemporary poets, it is his alone. For in a less absolute sense of the word, I should certainly include Mr. Bowles, Lord Byron, and, as to all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the exceptions in their works being so few and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in the quotation from Garve, I appear to find more and more undoubted specimens in the works of others; for instance, among the minor poems of Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illustrious Laureate. To me it will always remain a singular and noticeable fact, that a theory which would establish this lingua communis, not only as

the best, but as the only commendable style, should have proceeded from a poet, whose diction, next to that of Shakespeare and Milton, appears to me, of all others, the most individualized and characteristic. And let it be remembered, too, that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. W.'s critical preface by the purpose and object which he may be supposed to have intended, rather than by the sense 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 Shakespeare's principal plays, would, without the name affixed, scarcely fail to recognise as Shakespeare'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 personæ 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 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?

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,

Both when he heard the eagle's scream,
And when he heard the torrents roar,
And heard the water beat the shore
Near where their cottage stood.

"Beside a lake their cottage stood,
Not small like ours, a peaceful flood;
But one of mighty size, and strange ;
That rough or smooth is full of change,
And stirring in its bed.

"For to this lake by night and day,
The great sea-water finds its way
Through long, long windings of the hills,
And drinks up all the pretty rills;
And rivers large and strong:

"Then hurries back the road it came-
Returns on errand still the same;
This did it when the earth was new;
And this for evermore will do,

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
Bring tales of distant lands."

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,

And with his dancing crest,

So beautiful, through savage lands

Had roam'd about with vagrant bands
Of Indians in the West.

"The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,

Might well be dangerous food

For him, a youth to whom was given
So much of earth, so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.

"Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound,
Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse; seem'd allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought
The beauteous forms of nature wrought

Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent,
The stars had feelings, which they sent
Into those magic bowers.

"Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween,

That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent :

For passions, link'd to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment."

But from Mr. Wordsworth's more elevated compositions, which already form three-fourths of his works, and will, I trust, constitute hereafter a still greater proportion;-from these, whether in rhyme or in blank verse, it would be difficult and almost superfluous to select instances of a diction peculiarly his own, of a style which cannot be imitated without being at once recognised 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 be less familiar with his writings, I will give three specimens taken with little choice. The first from the lines on the Boy of Windermere,—— who

"Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. And they would shout,
Across the watery vale and shout again

With long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild

Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced,
That pauses of deep silence mock'd his skill,
Then sometimes in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain torrents: or the visible scene· *

*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 honour. 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. In Shakespeare and Milton the word is never used without

Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received

Into the bosom of the steady lake."

The second shall be that noble imitation of Drayton * (if it was not rather a coincidence) in the Joanna:

"When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space,

Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld

That ravishment of mind, and laughed aloud.
The rock, like something starting from a sleep,
Took up the lady's voice, and laughed again!
That ancient woman seated on Helm-crag
Was ready with her cavern! Hammar-scar,
And the tall steep of Silver-How sent forth
A noise of laughter: southern Loughrigg heard,
And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone.
Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky
Carried the lady's voice!-old Skiddaw blew
His speaking trumpet!-back out of the clouds
From Glaramara southward came the voice:

And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head!"

The third, which is in rhyme, I take from the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the shepherd, to the estate of his ancestors:

"Now another day is come

Fitter hope, and nobler doom:
He nath thrown aside his crook,
And hath buried deep his book;
Armour rusting in the halls
On the blood of Clifford calls;
Quell the Scot, exclaims the lance!
Bear me to the heart of France,
Is the longing of the shield-

Tell thy name, thou trembling field!
Field of death, where'er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory!

Happy day, and mighty hour,

When our shepherd, in his power,

Mailed and horsed with lance and sword,

To his ancestors restored,

Like a re-appearing star,

Like a glory from afar,

First shall head the flock of war !"

.. Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill

Upon her verge that stands, the neighbouring vallies fill;

Helvillon from his height, it through the
mountains threw,

From whom as soon again, the sound
Dunbalrase drew,

From whose stone-trophied head, it on the
Wendross went,

Which, tow'rds the sea again, resounded it to Dent.

That Brodwater, therewith within her banks astound,

In sailing to the sea told it to Egremound, Whose buildings, walks and streets, with echoes loud and long,

Did mightily commend old Copland for her song!"

DRAYTON'S Polyolbion: Song XXX