too, that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. Wordsworth’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 personae 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, etc.”
Or in the LUCY GRAY?
“No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor;
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door.”
Or in the IDLE SHEPHERD-BOYS?
“Along the river’s stony marge
The sand-lark chants a joyous song;
The thrush is busy in the wood,
And carols loud and strong.
A thousand lambs are on the rocks,
All newly born! both earth and sky
Keep jubilee, and more than all,
Those boys with their green coronal;
They never hear the cry,
That plaintive cry! which up the hill
Comes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll.”
Need I mention the exquisite description of the SeaLoch in THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY. Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little ones by the fireside 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 our’s, 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 roamed 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, seemed 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 linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.”
But from Mr. Wordsworth’s
