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obvious, be used with equal success, to give | tions on the state of the poor have been often to the purest and loftiest of works a ludicrous replete with thoughts "informed by nobleness," air. But the mightiest offence of the Edin- and rich in examples of lowly virtue, which burgh Review is the wilful injustice which it have had power to make the heart glow with has done to Wordsworth, or rather to the mul- a genial warmth which Reviews can rarely titude whom it has debarred from the noblest inspire. stock of intellectual delights to be found in Its attack on Lady Morgan, whatever were modern poetry, by the misrepresentation and the merits of her work, was one of the coarsest the scorn which it has poured on his effusions. insults ever offered in print by man to woman. It would require a far longer essay than this to But perhaps its worst piece of injustice was expose all the arts (for arts they have been) its laborious attempt to torture and ruin Mr. which the Review has employed to depreciate Keats, a poet, then of extreme youth, whose this holiest of living bards. To effect this work was wholly unobjectionable in its tenmalignant design, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and dencies, and whose sole offence was a friendSouthey, have been constantly represented as ship for one of the objects of the Reviewer's forming one perverse school or band of inno- hatred, and his courage to avow it. We can vators-though there are perhaps no poets form but a faint idea of what the heart of a whose whole style and train of thought more young poet is, when he first begins to exercise essentially differ. To the same end, a few his celestial faculties-how eager and tremupeculiar expressions-a few attempts at sim-lous are his hopes-how strange and tumultuplicity of expression on simple themes-a few ous are his joys-how arduous is his difficulty extreme instances of naked language, which of imbodying his rich imaginings in mortal the fashionable gaudiness of poetry had incited —were dwelt on as exhibiting the poet's intellectual character, while passages of the purest and most majestic beauty, of the deepest pathos, and of the noblest music, were regarded as unworthy even to mitigate the critic's scorn. To this end, Southey-who, with all his rich and varied accomplishments, has comparatively but a small portion of Wordsworth's genius -and whose "wild and wondrous lays" are the very antithesis to Wordsworth's intense musings on humanity, and new consecrations of familiar things-was represented as redeeming the school which his mightier friend degraded. To this end, even Wilson-one who had delighted to sit humbly at the feet of Wordsworth, and who derived his choicest inspirations from him—was praised as shedding unwonted lustre over the barrenness of his master. But why multiply examples? Why attempt minutely to expose critics, who in "thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears" can find matter only for jesting-who speak of the high, imaginative conclusion of the White Doe of Rylston as a fine compliment of which they do not know the meaning-and who begin a long and laborious article on the noblest philosophical poem in the world with-" This will never do?"

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language-how sensibly alive are all his feelings to the touches of this rough world! Yet we can guess enough of these to estimate, in some degree, the enormity of a cool attack on a soul so delicately strung—with such aspirations and such fears-in the beginning of its high career. Mr. Keats-who now happily has attained the vantage-ground whence he may defy criticism-was cruelly or wantonly held up to ridicule in the Quarterly Reviewto his transitory pain, we fear, but to the lasting disgrace of his traducer. Shelley has less ground of complaining-for he who attacks established institutions with a martyr's spirit, must not be surprised if he is visited with a martyr's doom. All ridicule of Keats was unprovoked insult and injury-an attack on Shelley was open and honest warfare, in which there is nothing to censure but the mode in which it was conducted. To deprecate his principles-to confute his reasonings-to expose his inconsistencies-to picture forth vivid¡y all that his critics believed respecting the tendencies of his works-was just and lawful; but to give currency to slanderous stories respecting his character, and above all, darkly to insinuate guilt which they forebore to develope, was unmanly, and could only serve to injure an honourable cause. Scarcely less disgraceful to the Review is the late elaborate piece of abuse against that great national work, the new edition of Stephens's Greek Thesaurus. It must, however, be confessed, that several articles in recent numbers of the Review have displayed very profound knowledge of the subjects treated, and a deep and gentle spirit of criticism.

The Quarterly Review, inferior to the Edinburgh in its mode of treating matters of mere reason and destitute of that glittering eloquence of which Mr. Jeffrey has been so lavish -is far superior to it in its tone of sentiment, taste, and morals. It has often given intimations of a sense that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the philosophy" of the Northern Reviewers. The British Review is, both in evil and good, It has not regarded the wealth of nations as far below the two great Quarterly Journals. every thing, and the happiness of nations as It is, however, very far from wanting ability, nothing-it has not rested all the foundations and as it lacks the gall of its contemporaries, of good on the shifting expediences of time- and speaks in the tone of real conviction, it has not treated human nature as a mere though we do not subscribe to all its opinions, problem for critics to analyze and explain. we offer it our best wishes. Its articles on travels have been richly tinged with a spirit of the romantic. Its views of religious sectarianism-unlike the flippant impieties of its rival-have been full of real kindliness and honest sympathy. Its disquisi

The Pamphleteer is a work of very meritorious design. Its execution, depending less on the voluntary power of its editor than that of any other periodical work, is necessarily unequal. On the whole, it has imbodied a great number

of valuable essays-which give a view of different sides of important questions, like the articles of the Edinburgh, but without the alloy which the inconsistency of the writers of the last mingle with their discussions. It has, we believe, on one or two occasions, suggested valuable hints to the legislature-especially in its view of the effects arising, from the punishment of the pillory-which, although somewhat vicious and extravagant in its style, set the evils of that exhibition in so clear a light, that it was shortly after abolished, except in the instance of perjury. As the subject had not been investigated before, and the abolition followed so speedily, it may reasonably be presumed that this essay had no small share in terminating an infliction in which the people were, at once, judges and executioners-all the remains of virtue were too often extinguished -and justice perpetually insulted in the execution of its own sentences.

The Retrospective Review is a bold experiment in these times, which well deserves to succeed, and has already attained far more notice than we should have expected to follow a periodical work which relates only to the past. To unveil with a reverent hand the treasures of other days to disclose ties of sympathy with old time which else were hidden-to make us feel that beauty and truth are not things of yesterday-is the aim of ǹo mean ambition, in which success will be without alloy, and failure without disgrace. There is an air of youth and inexperience doubtless about some of the articles; but can any thing be more pleasing than to see young enthusiasm, instead of dwelling on the gauds of the "ignorant present," fondly cherishing the venerableness of old time, and reverently listening to the voices of ancestral wisdom? The future is all visionary and unreal-the past is the truly grand, and substantial and abiding. The airy visions of hope vanish as we proceed; but nothing can deprive us of our interest in that which has been. It is good, therefore, to have one periodical work exclusively devoted to "auld lang syne." It is also pleasant to have one which, amidst an age whose literature is "rank with all unkindness," is unaffected by party or prejudice, which feeds no depraved appetite, which ministers to no unworthy passion, but breathes one tender and harmonions spirit of revering love for the great departed. We shall rejoice, therefore, to see this work "rich with the spoils of time," and gradually leading even the mere readers of periodical works, to feel with the gentle author of that divine sonnet, written in a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon:

"Not harsh nor rugged are the winding ways Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers." These, we believe, are all the larger periodical works of celebrity not devoted to merely scientific purposes. Of the lesser Reviews, the Monthly, as the oldest, claims the first notice; though we cannot say much in its praise. A singular infelicity has attended many of its censures. To most of those who have conduced to the revival of poetry it has opposed its jeers and its mockeries. Cowper, who first restored "free nature's grace" to our pictures

of rural scenery-whose timid and delicate soul shrunk from the slighest encounter with the world—whose very satire breathed gentleness and good-will to all his fellows-was agonized by its unfeeling scorn. Kirke White, another spirit almost too gentle for earthpainfully struggling by his poetical efforts to secure the scanty means of laborious study, was crushed almost to earth by its pitiable sentence, and his brief span of life filled with bitter anguish. This Review seems about twenty years behind the spirit of the times; and this, for a periodical work, is fully equal to a century in former ages.

Far other notice does the Eclectic Review require. It is, indeed, devoted to a party; and to a party whose opinions are not very favourable to genial views of humanity, or to deep admiration of human genius. But not all the fiery zeal of sectarianism which has sometimes blazed through its disquisitions-nor all the strait-laced nicety with which it is sometimes disposed to regard earthly enjoyments-nor all the gloom which its spirit of Calvinism sheds on the mightiest efforts of virtue-can prevent us from feeling the awe-striking influences of honest principle-of hopes which are not shaken by the fluctuations of time-of faith which looks to "temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The Eclectic Review, indeed, in its earliest numbers, seemed resolved to oppose the spirit of its religion to the spirit of intellect and humanity, and even went to the fearful excess of heaping the vilest abuse on Shakspeare, and of hinting that his soul was mourning in the torments of hell, over the evils which his works had occasioned in the world. But its conductors have since

This marvellous effusion of bigotry is contained in volume of the Review, p. 75. The Reviewer commences an article on Twiss's Index to Shakspeare in the third with the following tremendous sentence: sensible of the value of time, and the relation which the "If the compiler of these volumes had been properly employment of it bears to his eternal state, we should not have had to present our readers with the pitiable spectacle of a man advanced in years consuming the embers of vitality in making a complete verbal Index to the Plays of Shakspeare."

After acknowledging the genius of Shakspeare, the Reviewer observes, " He has been called, and justly too, the Poet of Nature.' A slight acquaintance with the religion of the Bible will show that it is of human nature in its worst shape, deformed by the basest passions, and became the priest; and the incense offered at the altar agitated by the most vicious propensities, that the poet of his goddess will spread its poisonous fumes over the hearts of his countrymen, till the memory of his works is extinct. Thousands of unhappy spirits, and thousands yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back with unutterable anguish on the nights and days in which the plays of Shakspeare ministered to their guilty delights." The Reviewer further complains of the inscription on Garrick's tomb (which is absurd enough, though on far different grounds)-as "the absurd and impious epitaph upon the tablet raised to one of the miserable retailers of his impurities!" "We commiserate," continues the critic, "the heart of the man who can read the following lines without indignation :—

And till eternity, with power sublime,
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary time,
Shakspeare and Garrick, like twin stars, shall shine,
And each irradiate with a beam divine.'

Par nobile fratrum! Your fame shall last during the empire of vice and misery, in the extension of which you have acted so great a part! We make no apology for our sentiments, unfashionable as they are. Feeling the imcountable not merely for the direct effects, but also for portance of the condition of man as a moral agent, acthe remotest influence of his actions, while we execrate the

changed, or have grown wiser. Their Reviews of poetry have been, perhaps, on the whole, in the purest and the gentlest spirit of any which have been written in this age of criticism. Without resigning their doctrines, they have softened and humanized those who professing of an inscription on some rusty coin sufthem, and have made their system of religion look smilingly, while they have striven to preserve it unspotted from the world. If occasionally they introduce their pious feelings where we regard them as misplaced, we may smile, but not in scorn. Their zeal is better than heartless indifference-their honest denunciations are not like the sneers of envy or the heartless jests which a mere desire of applause inspires. It is something to have real principle in times like these-a sense of things beyond our frail nature-even where the feeling of the eternal is saddened by too harsh and exclusive views of God, and of his children: for, as observed by one of our old poets, "Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"†

a murder, or an authentic description of a birth-day dress, or the nice development of a family receipt, communicated, in their pages, to maiden ladies of a certain age an incalcula ble pleasure-and when the learned decipherficed to give them a venerableness in the eyes of the old. If they, then, ever aspired to criticism, it was in mere kindness-to give a friendly greeting to the young adventurer, and afford him a taste of unmingled pleasure at the entrance of his perilous journey. Now they are full of wit, satire, and pungent remark touching familiarly on the profoundest questions of philosophy as on the lightest varieties of manners-sometimes overthrowing a system with a joke, and destroying a reputation in the best humour in the world. One magazinethe Gentleman's-almost alone retains "the homely beauty of the good old cause," in pristine simplicity of style. This periodical work is worthy of its title. Its very dulness is agreeable to us. It is as destitute of sprightlitiquarian disquisitions are very pleasant, giving ness and of gall as in the first of its years. Its an

The British Critic is a highly respectable work, which does not require our praise, or us the feeling of sentiment without seeming to offer any marks for our censure. It is, in a great measure, devoted to the interests of the obtrude it on us, or to be designed for a disChurch and of her ministers. It has sometimes we would not on any account lose the veteran play of the peculiar sensibility of their authors. shown a little sourness in its controversial Mr. Urban-though he will not, of course, sufdiscussions-but this is very different, indeed, fice as a substitute for his juvenile competitors from using cold sneers against unopposing but we heartily wish that he may go flourishauthors. Its articles of criticism on poetrying on in his green old age and honest selfif not adorned by any singular felicity of expression-have often been, of late, at once clear-sighted and gentle.

of old times, undisturbed by his gamesome complacency, to tell old stories, and remind us and ambitious progeny!

The Edinburgh Monthly Review is, on the Yet we must turn from his gentle work to whole, one of the ablest and fairest of the gaze on the bright Aurora Borealis, the new Monthly Reviews, though somewhat dispro-and ever-varying Northern Light-Blackwood's portionably filled with disquisitions on matters of state policy.

Magazine. We remember no work of which so much might be truly said, both in censure Few literary changes within the late change and in eulogy-no work, at some times so ful years have been more remarkable than the profound, and at others so trifling-one moalteration in the style and spirit of the maga-ment so instinct with noble indignation, the zines. Time was when their modest ambition reached only to the reputation of being the "abstracts and brief chronicles" of passing events-when they were well pleased to afford vent to the sighs of a poetical lover, or to give light fluttering for a month to an epigram on a lady's fan-when a circumstantial account of names, we cannot but shudder at the state of those who have opened fountains of impurity at which fashion leads its successive generations greedily to drink."-Merciful Heaven!

We will give an instance of this-with a view to exhibit the peculiarities into which exclusive feelings lead; for observation, not for derision. In a very benutiful article on Wordsworth's Excursion, the critic notices a stanza, among several, on the death of Fox, where the poet-evidently not referring to the questions of immortality and judgment, but to the deprivations sustained by the world in the loss of the objects of its

admiration-exclaims,

"A power is passing from the earth
To breathless nature's vast abyss;
But when the mighty pass away,
What is it more than this,

That man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet to God return?

Such ebb and flow will ever be,

Then wherefore shall we mourn?”

On which the Reviewer observes; "The question in the last two lines needs no answer: to that in the four preceding ones we must reply distinctly, 'It is appointed to men once to die, but after this the JUDGMENT."-Heb.

ix. v. 27.

↑ Daniel.

next so pitifully falling into the errors it had denounced-in one page breathing the deepest and the kindliest spirit of criticism, in another condescending to give currency to the lowest calumnies. The air of young life-the exuberance both of talent and of animal spiritswhich this work indicates, will excuse much of that wantonness which evidently arises from the fresh spirit of hope and of joy. But there are some of its excesses which nothing can palliate, which can be attributed to nothing but malignant passions, or to the baser desire of extending its sale. Less censurable, but scarcely less productive of unpleasant results, is its practice of dragging the peculiarities, the conversation, and domestic habits of distinguished individuals into public view, to gratify a diseased curiosity at the expense of men by whom its authors have been trusted. Such a course, if largely followed, would destroy all that is private and social in life, and leave us nothing but our public existence. How must the joyous intercourses of society be chilled, and the free unbosoming of the soul be checked, by the feeling that some one is present who will put down every look, and word, and tone, in a note-book, and exhibit them to the com

mon gaze! If the enshading sanctities of life are to be cut away, as in Peter's Letters, or in the Letters from the Lakes-its joys will speedily perish. When they can no longer nestle in privacy, they will wither. We cannot, however, refuse to Blackwood's contributors the praise of great boldness in throwing away the external dignities of literature, and mingling their wit and eloquence and poetry with the familiarities of life, with an ease which nothing but the consciousness of great and genuine talent could inspire or justify. Most of their jests have, we think, been carried a little too far. The town begins to sicken of their pugilistic articles; to nauseate the blended language of Olympus and St. Giles's; to long

for inspiration from a purer spring than Belsher's tap; and to desire sight of Apollo and the Muses in a brighter ring than that of Moulsey-hurst. We ought not to forget the debt which we owe to this magazine for infusing something of the finest and profoundest spirit of the German writers into our criticism, and for its "high and hearted” eulogies of the greatest, though not the most popular of our living poets.

We have thus impartially, we think, endeavoured to perform the delicate task of characterizing the principal contemporaries and rivals of the New Monthly Magazine;-of which our due regard to the Editor's modesty forbids us to speak.

ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH.

[NEW MONTHLy Magazine.]

How charming is divine Philosophy!.
Not harsh nor crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute!-MILTON.

Blessings be on him and immortal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,
The Poet who on earth hath made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!-WORDSWORTH.

OUR readers will be disappointed if they expect to find in this article any of the usual flippancies of criticism. Were we accustomed to employ them, its subject would utterly confound us. Strange is their infatuation who can fancy that the merits of a great poet are subjected to their decision, and that they have any authority to pass judicial censures, or confer beneficent praises, on one of the divinest of intellects! We shall attempt to set forth the peculiar immunities and triumphs of Wordsworth's genius, not as critics, but as disciples. To him our eulogy is nothing. But we would fain induce our readers to follow us "where we have garnered up our hearts," and would endeavour to remove those influences by which malignity and prejudice have striven to deter them from seeking some of the holiest of those living springs of delight which poets have opened for their species.

ing sentiment-or one new gleam cast on the inmost recesses of the soul, is more than a sufficient compensation for a thousand critical errors. False doctrines of taste can endure only for a little season, but the productions of genius are "for all time." Its discoveries cannot be lost-its images will not perishits most delicate influences cannot be dissipated by the changes of times and of seasons. It may be a curious and interesting question, whether a poet laboriously builds up his fame with purpose and judgment, or, as has most falsely been said of Shakspeare, "grows immortal in his own despite ;" but it cannot affect his highest claims to the gratitude and admiration of the world. If Milton preferred Paradise Regained to Paradise Lost, does that strange mistake detract from our revering love? What would be our feeling towards critics, who should venture to allude to it as A minute discussion of Wordsworth's system a proof that his works were unworthy of pewill not be necessary to our design. It is rusal, and decline an examination of those manifestly absurd to refer to it as a test of his works themselves on the ground that his perpoetical genius. When an author has given verse taste sufficiently proved his want of numerous creations to the world, he has fur- genius? Yet this is the mode by which ponished positive evidence of the nature and ex-pular Reviewers have attempted to depreciate tent of his powers, which must preclude the Wordsworth-they have argued from his theonecessity of deducing an opinion of them from ries to his poetry, instead of examining the the truth or falsehood of his theories. One poetry itself-as if their reasoning was better noble imagination-one profound and affect-than the fact in question, or as if one eternal

image set up in the stateliest region of poesy, had not value to outweigh all the truths of criticism, or to atone for all its errors?

hinted allusion, or nice shade of feeling, which may adorn it. If by "poetic diction" is intended the vivid expression of poetic thoughts, to annihilate it, is to annihilate poetry; but if it means certain ornamental phrases and forms of language not necessary to such expression, it is, at best, but a splendid error. Felicity of language can never be other than the distinct expression of felicitous thought. The only art of diction in poetry, as in prose, is the nice bodying forth of each delicate vibration of the feelings, and each soft shade of the images, in words which at once make us conscious of their most transient beauty. At all events, there was surely no offence in an individual's rejecting the aid of a style regard

Not only have Wordsworth's merits been improperly rested on his system, but that system itself has been misrepresented with no common baseness. From some of the attacks directed against it, a reader might infer that it recommended the choice of the meanest subjects, and their treatment in the meanest way; and that it not only represented poetry as fitly employed on things in themselves low and trivial, but that it forbade the clustering and delicate fancies about them, or the shedding on them any reconciling and softening lustre. Multitudes, indeed, have wondered as they read, not only that any per-ed as poetic, and relying for his fame on the sons should be deluded by its perverse insipidities, but that critics should waste their ridicule on an author who resigned at once all pretensions to the poetic art. In reality, this calumniated system has only reference to the diction, and to the subjects of poetry. It has merely taught, that the diction of poetry is not different from that of prose, and suggested that themes hitherto little dwelt on, were not unsuited to the bard's divinest uses. Let us briefly examine what ground of offence there is in the assertion or application of these positions.

naked majesty of his conceptions. The triumph is more signal when the Poet uses language as a mirror, clear, and itself invisible, to reflect his creations in their native hues,-than when he employs it as a stained and fallacious medium to exhibit its own varieties of tint, and to show the objects which it partially reveals in its own prismatic colouring.

But it is said that the subjects of Wordsworth's poetry are not in themselves so lofty as those which his noblest predecessors have chosen. If this be true, and he has yet sucSome have supposed that by rejecting a ceeded in discovering within them poetical diction as peculiar to poetry, Wordsworth affinities, or in shedding on them a new condenied to it those qualities which are its es- secration, he does not surely deserve ill of his sence, and those "harmonious numbers" species. He has left all our old objects of which its thoughts "voluntarily move." Were veneration uninjured, and has enabled us to his language equivocal, which it is not, the recognise new ones in the peaceful and faslightest glance at his works would show that miliar courses of our being. The question is he could have no design to exclude from it the not whether there are more august themes stateliest imaginings, the most felicitous allu- than those which he has treated, but whether sions, or the choicest and most varied music. these last have any interest, as seen in the He objected only to a peculiar phraseology-light which he has cast around them. If they a certain hacknied strain of inversion-which had been set up as distinguishing poetry from prose, and which, he contended, was equally false in either. What is there of pernicious heresy in this, unless we make the crafty politician's doctrine, that speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts, the great principle of poetry? If words are fitly combined only to convey ideas to the mind, each word having a fixed meaning in itself, no different mode of collocation can be requisite when the noblest sentiment is to be imbodied, from that which is proper when the dryest fact is to be asserted. Each term employed by a poet has as determinate an office-as clearly means one thing as distinguished from all others as a mathematician's scientific phrases. If a poet wishes lucidly to convey a grand picture to the mind, there can be no reason why he should resort to another mode of speech than that which he would employ in delivering the plainest narrative. He will, of course, use other and probably more beautiful words, because they properly belong to his subject; but he will not use any different order in their arrangement, because in both cases his immediate object is the same-the clear communication of his own idea to the mind of his reader. And this is true not only of the chief object of the passage, but of every

have, the benefits which he has conferred on humanity are more signal, and the triumph of his own powers is more undivided and more pure, than if he had treated on subjects which we have been accustomed to revere. We are more indebted to one who opens to us a new and secluded pathway in the regions of fantasy with its own verdant inequalities and delicate overshadings of foliage, than if he had stepped majestically in the broad and beaten highway to swell the triumphant procession of laurelled bards. Is it matter of accusation that a poet has opened visions of glory about the ordinary walks of life-that he has linked holiest associations to things which hitherto have been regarded without emotion-that he has made beauty "a simple product of the common day?" Shall he be denied the poetic faculty, who, without the attractions of story-without the blandishments of diction-without even the aid of those associations which have encrusted themselves around the oldest themes of the poet, has for many years excited the animosities of the most popular critics, and mingled the love and admiration of his genius with the lifeblood of hearts neither unreflecting nor ungentle?

But most of the subjects of Mr. Wordsworth, though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp,

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