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SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.

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was, and past bearing further fruit of song, the laureate wreath of England ely never invested worthier brows.

n July, 1847, the poet's only daughter, Dora, then Mrs. Quillinan, died. e event was no surprise either to herself or to others: knowing her end was r for some time before it came, she looked at it calmly, and met it as became ›ul that had lived in the presence of so much moral beauty. Still the afflicbore hard upon her aged parents, and would probably have been too much them, but that they had the full strength of Christian faith to console and tain them. On the 23d day of April, 1850, the anniversary of Shakeare's birth, and also of his death, Wordsworth himself died, his age being ty years and sixteen days. He was buried, according to his declared wish, ide his children in Grasmere churchyard. Mrs. Wordsworth survived her band some three years, and was then gathered to his side.

or a long series of years Wordsworth's poetry had decidedly up-hill work, I made its way very slowly. He can hardly be said even to have found the t audience, though few: he had to educate his own audience, and that,

, from the bottom upwards; had to develop the faculties for understanding 1, and create the taste to enjoy him. The critical law-givers of the time, or se who passed for such, were nearly all down upon him from the first: the inburgh Review, whose verdict was then well-nigh omnipotent with the readpublic, could see neither truth nor beauty in his works, and had nothing obloquy and ridicule to bestow upon them; in fact all the dogs of criticism, and little, "Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart," joined in barking against him, I kept up their miserable chorus of vituperation, till they were fairly shamed of it by a new generation of thinkers and writers.

Through this long pelting of detraction the poet stood unmoved; it seems eed not to have hurt so much as his patience. Writing, in May, 1807, to a y dear friend, who had expressed great uneasiness on his account, he has following: "It is impossible that any expectations can be lower than mine cerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is called the olic. I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any merit m a living poet, but merely think of the pure, absolute, honest ignorance in ich all worldlings, of every rank and situation, must be enveloped, with pect to the thoughts, feelings, and images on which the life of my poems ends. It is an awful truth, that there neither is, nor can be, any genuine oyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, wish to live, in the broad light of the world, among those who either are, are striving to make themselves, people of consideration in society. This is a th, and an awful one, because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my se of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for -d."

Again, wishing to make his friend as easy-hearted as himself on the subject, continues thus: "Trouble not yourself upon their present reception; of at moment is that compared with what I trust is their destiny? To console e afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to ach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, to feel, and erefore to become more actively and securely virtuous ;- this is their office, hich I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is ortal in us) are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware how far it would em to many I overrate my own exertions, when I speak in this way. I am t, however, afraid of such censure, insignificant as probably the majority of ose poems would appear to very respectable persons. I do not mean London ts and witlings, for these have too many foul passions about them to be spectable, even if they had more intellect than the benign laws of Providence ll allow to such a heartless existence as theirs; but grave, kindly-natured,

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umes are not without some recommendations, even for readers of this class; but their imagination has slept; and the voice which is the voice of my poetry, without imagination, cannot be heard."

I must quote one passage more, where the poet is referring to that portion of his contemporaries who were called the reading public: "Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read books; they merely snatch a glance at them, that they may talk about them. And even if this were not so, never forget what, I believe, was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen; this, in a certain degree, even to all persons, however wise and pure may be their lives, and however unvitiated their taste. But for those who dip into books in order to give an opinion of them, or talk about them to take up an opinion,- for this multitude of unhappy, and misguided, and misguiding beings, an entire regeneration must be produced; and if this be possible, it must be a work of time. To conclude, my ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings; and, after what I have said, I am sure yours will be the same. I doubt not you will share with me an invincible confidence that my writings will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society wherever found; and that they will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier."

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A great deal has been written upon Wordsworth; for, in truth, no one who has once been fairly touched by his power, or caught the spirit of his poetry, can ever shake off its influence, or keep from thinking about it. Probably the most searching and most deeply-considered criticism that his works have called forth is found in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, written while the tempest of detraction against Wordsworth was in full blast. At the close of that masterly review, the best piece of poetical criticism, I suspect, in the language, Coleridge sums up the merits of his friend's poetry as follows: First: An austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. In poetry, in which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of a blameless style; namely, its untranslatableness in words of the same language, without injury to the meaning. Be it observed, however, that I include in the meaning of a word, not only its correspondent object, but likewise all the associations which it recalls. In poetry it is practicable to preserve the diction uncorrupted by the affectations and misappropriations which promiscuous authorship, and reading, not promiscuous only because it is disproportionally conversant with the compositions of the day, have rendered general. Yet, even to the poet, composing in his own province, it is an arduous work; and, as the result and pledge of a watchful good sense, of fine and luminous distinction, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the honour which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable, and the more valuable for being rare.

"The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's works is a corre

spondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments, won, not from books, but from the poet's own meditative observation. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. His Muse, at least when in her strength of wing, and when she lovers aloft in her proper element,

Makes audible a linkèd lay of truth,

Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes.

"Both in respect of this and of the former excellence, Mr. Wordsworth strikingly resembles Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our golden

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izabethan age, now most causelessly neglected; -- Samuel Daniel, whose dicn bears no mark of time, no distinction of age; which has been, and, as g as our language shall last, will be, so far the language of to-day and for er, as that it is more intelligible to us than the transitory fashions of our own rticular age. A similar praise is due to his sentiments. No frequency of usal can deprive them of their freshness. For though they are brought into full day-light of every reader's comprehension, yet are they drawn up from oths which few in any age are privileged to visit, into which few in any age ve courage or inclination to descend. If Mr. Wordsworth is not, equally h Daniel, alike intelligible to all readers of average understanding in all ssages of his works, the comparative difficulty does not arise from the greater purity of the ore, but from the nature and uses of the metal. A poem is not cessarily obscure, because it does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a rk be perspicuous to those for whom it is written, and fit audience find, ugh few.'

Third, and wherein he soars far above Daniel:- The sinewy strength 1 originality of single lines and paragraphs; the frequent curiosa felicitas of diction. This beauty, and as eminently characteristic of Wordsworth's etry, his rudest assailants have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge 1 admire.

Fourth: The perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as en immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the works of

ure.

Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly transparent lake, image is distinguished from the reality only by its greater softness and lusLike the moisture or the polish on a pebble, genius neither distorts nor se-colours its objects; but, on the contrary, brings out many a vein and my a tint which escape the eye of common observation, thus raising to the k of gems what had been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the veller on the high road of custom.

Fifth: A meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtile thought with sensibil; a sympathy with man as man ; the sympathy indeed of a contemplator, rather n a fellow-sufferer or co-mate, (spectator haud particeps,) but of a contemplafrom whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; injuries of wind or weather, of toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise human face divine. The superscription and the image of the Creator rein legible to him under the dark lines with which guilt or calamity had caned or cross-barred it. Here the man and the poet lose and find themselves each other, the one as glorified, the latter as substantiated. In this mild and losophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer. Such he so he writes.

Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of IMAGINATION the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of Fancy, Wordsrth, to my feelings, is not always graceful, and is sometimes recondite. The ness is occasionally too strange, or demands too peculiar a point of view, or uch as appears the creature of predetermined research, rather than spontaous presentation. Indeed his fancy seldom displays itself as mere and undified fancy. But in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern iters to Shakespeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed d his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an stration, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects

'add the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the poet's dream.'"

I must add, that Wordsworth was far from being an overweening truster in

Lown cenius

On the contrary he was a most earnest careful painstaking

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WORDSWORTH: SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.

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workman; was never weary of retouching his poems, and spared no labour, that he might lift and chasten them into fair accordance with his own ideas. And, with all his sturdy self-reliance, -a self-reliance that belongs to all genius of a high order, - he had a spirit of willing deference to thoughtful and genial criticism on his poems. All this was because in his view the office of poct was invested with religious consecration: he regarded his calling as divine, his art as a sacred thing; and to treat it as a mere plaything, or to use it for any selfends, was to him nothing less than downright profanation. On this point he has left the following markworthy passage: I can say without vanity, that I have bestowed great pains on my style, full as much as any of my contemporaries have done on theirs. I yield to none in love for my art. I therefore labour at it with reverence, affection, and industry. My main endeavour, as to style, has been that my poems should be written in pure intelligible English." Again, he speaks of the poet's office in the following high strain: "The Sun was personified by the ancients as a charioteer driving four fiery steeds over the vault of heaven; and this solar charioteer was called Phoebus, or Apollo, and was regarded as the god of poetry, of prophecy, and of medicine. Phoebus combined all these characters. And every poet has a similar mission on Earth: he must also be a Phoebus in his own way; he must diffuse health and light; he must prophesy to his generation; he must teach the present age by counselling with the future; he must plead for posterity; and he must imitate Phoebus in guiding and governing all his faculties, fiery steeds though they be, with the most exact precision, lest, instead of being a Phoebus, he prove a Phaeton, and set the world on fire, and be hurled from his car: he must rein-in his fancy, and temper his imagination, with the control and direction of sound reason, and drive on in the right track with a steady hand."

In conclusion: Wordsworth is now generally admitted to take rank as one of the five great chiefs of English song; the others being, of course, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. As for Shakespeare, he stands altogether apart, in the solitude of his own unchallenged superiority, unapproached, and unapproachable; so that no one should think of trying any other poet by his measure. As to the others, it is not yet time to settle Wordsworth's comparative merits. To pronounce him as great a poet as Milton, would probably be rash: but I make bold to affirm that he is more original than Milton; in fact, the most original of all English poets, with the single exception of Shakespeare. And a long experience has fully satisfied me that, next after Shakespeare, he is the best of them all for use as a text-book in school: and this, because, with fair handling, he kindles a purer, deeper, stronger enthusiasm, and penetrates the mind with a more potent and more enduring charm. He makes the world appear a more beautiful and happier place, human life a nobler and diviner thing; and wherever the taste has once been set to him, wherever his power has once made any thing of a lodgment, the person never outgrows the love of him, nor thinks of parting company with him. His poems have now been my inseparable companion for some thirty-five years; and every year has made them dearer to my heart; every year has added to my reverence for their author, and to my gratitude for the unspeakable benediction they have been to If I can do even a little towards diffusing a knowledge and love of this precious inheritance, I shall think I have not lived altogether in vain.

me.

POEMS

BY

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

RUTH.

WHEN Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone

From battle and from jeopardy,
He 'cross the ocean came.

With hues of genius on his cheek
In finest tones the Youth could speak:
While he was yet a boy,

The Moon, the glory of the Sun,
And streams that murmur as they run,
Had been his dearest joy.

He was a lovely youth! I guess
The panther in the wilderness
Was not so fair as he;

And, when he chose to sport and play,
No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.

Among the Indians he had fought,
And with him many tales he brought

She seem'd to live; her thoughts her own; Of pleasure and of fear;
Herself her own delight;

Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

There came a youth from Georgia's shore;
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees:
The feathers nodded in the breeze,
And made a gallant crest.

From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
But no! he spake the English tongue,
And bore a soldier's name;

And, when America was free

Such tales as told to any maid

By such a youth, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear.

He told of girls, -a happy rout!-
Who quit their fold with dance and shout,
Their pleasant Indian town,

To gather strawberries all day long;
Returning with a choral song
When daylight is gone down.

He spake of plants that hourly change
Their blossoms, thro' a boundless range
Of intermingling hues :

With budding, fading, faded flowers,
They stand the wonder of the bowers
From morn to evening dews.1

1 Referring, perhaps, to the cotton- fect white, and then gradually passing plant; which keeps putting forth new through every variety of shade to a dark flowers through a period of several weeks; brown.

the bl

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