revere, making the usual complaints to me concerning both the style and subjects of Mr. Wordsworth's minor poems, I admitted that there were some few of the tales and incidents in which I could not myself find a sufficient cause for their having been recorded in metre. I mentioned Alice Fell' as an instance. Nay," replied my friend, with more than usual quickness of manner, "I cannot agree with you there!-that, I own, does seem to me a remarkably pleasing poem." In the Lyrical Ballads (for my experience does not enable me to extend the remark equally unqualified to the two subsequent volumes), I have heard at different times, and from different individuals, every single poem extolled and reprobated, with the exception of those of loftier kind, which, as was before observed, seem to have won universal praise. This fact of itself would have made me diffident in my censures, had not a still stronger ground been furnished by the strange contrast of the heat and long continuance of the opposition, with the nature of the faults stated as justifying it. The seductive faults, the dulcia vitia of Cowley, Marini, or Darwin, might reasonably be thought capable of corrupting the public judgment for half a century, and require a twenty years' war, campaign after campaign, in order to dethrone the usurper, and re-establish the legitimate taste. But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading, or, at best, trivial associations and characters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost religious admirers, and this, too, among young men of ardent minds, liberal education, and not 6 -with academic laurels unbestowed; and that this bare and bald counterfeit of poetry, which is charac 5 [Poet. Works, I., 13. Ed.] [John Baptist Marini, or Marino, a celebrated poet, known by the name of Il Cavalier Marino, was born at Naples, Oct. 18, 1569, died in the same city, March 21, 1625. He wrote a poem called Adonice, which was dedicated to Louis XIII., and first published at Paris, in folio, 1651. He left many other poems, among them, La Strage de gl'Innocenti, Ven., 1633, 4to., and La Lira, Rime Amorose, Maratime, Boscherecce, &c., 16mo., Ven., 1629. S. C.] terized as below criticism, should for nearly twenty years have well-nigh engrossed criticism, as the main, if not the only, butt of review, magazine, pamphlet, poem, and paragraph;-this is, indeed, matter of wonder. Of yet greater is it, that the contest should still continue as undecided as that between Bacchus and the frogs in Aristophanes; when the former descended to the realms of the departed to bring back the spirit of old and genuine poesy : 7 Without, however, the apprehensions attributed to the Pagan reformer of the poetic republic. If we may judge from the preface to the recent collection of his poems, Mr. W. would have answered with Xanthias σὺ δ ̓ οὐκ ἔδεισας τὸν ψόφον τῶν ῥημάτων, καὶ τὰς απειλάς ; ΞΑΝ. οὐ μὰ Δί', οὐδ ̓ ἐφρόντισα. And here let me hint to the authors of the numerous parodies and pretended imitations of Mr. Wordsworth's style, that at once to conceal and convey wit and wisdom in the semblance of folly and dulness, as is done in the Clowns and Fools, nay, even in the Dogberry, of our Shakspeare, is doubtless a proof of genius, or, at all events, of satiric talent; but that the attempt to ridicule a silly and childish poem, by writing another still sillier and still more childish, can only prove (if it prove anything at all) that the parodist is a still greater blockhead than the original writer, and, what is far worse, a malignant coxcomb to boot. The talent for mimicry seems strongest where the human race are most degraded. The poor, naked, half-human savages of New Holland were found excellent mimics; and, in civilized society, minds of the very lowest stamp alone satirize by copying. At least, the difference which must blend with and balance the likeness, in order to constitute a just imitation, existing here merely in caricature, detracts from the libeller's heart, without adding an iota to the credit of his understanding. * Rana, 492-3. ["And if, bearing in mind the many Poets distinguished by this prime quality, whose names I omit to mention; yet, justified by recollection of the insults which the ignorant, the incapable, and the presumptuous, have heaped upon these and my other writings, I may be permitted to anticipate the judgment of posterity upon myself, I shall declare (censurable, I grant, if the notoriety of the fact above stated does not justify me) that I have given in these unfavorable times, evidence of exertions of this faculty upon its worthiest objects, the external universe, the moral and religious sentiments of Man, his natural affections, and his acquired passions; which have the same ennobling tendency as the productions of men, in this kind, worthy to be holden in undying remembrance.”— Preface to Wordsworth's Poems, 1815, Ed.] During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled Descriptive Sketches; and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the form, style, and manner of the whole poem, and in the structure of the particular lines and periods, there is a harshness and acerbity connected and combined with words and images all a-glow, which might recall those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of a hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit is elaborating. The language is not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demands always a greater closeness of attention than poetry,—at all events, than descriptive poetry-has a right to claim. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity. In the following extract, I have sometimes fancied that I saw an emblem of the poem itself, and of the author's genius as it was then displayed : ""Tis storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour, Dark is the region as with coming night; The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire."10 The poetic Psyche, in its process to full development, undergoes as many changes as its Greek namesake, the butterfly." And it is remarkable how soon genius clears and purifies itself from the faults and errors of its earliest products; faults which, in its earliest compositions, are the more obtrusive and confluent, because as heterogeneous elements, which had only a temporary use, they constitute the very ferment, by which themselves are carried off. Or we may compare them to some diseases, which must work on the humors, and be thrown out on the surface, in order to secure the patient from their future recurrence. I was in my twenty-fourth year when I had the happiness of knowing Mr. Wordsworth personally, and while memory lasts I shall hardly forget the sudden effect produced on my mind by his recitation of a manuscript poem, which still remains unpublished, but of which the stanza and tone of style were the same as those of The Female Vagrant, as originally printed in the first volume of the Lyrical Ballads." There was here no mark of strained 10 [Poet. Works, I., p. 80. Ed.] 11 The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made Of mortal life! For in this earthly frame Our's is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame, And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed. 12 [The poem to which reference is here made was intituled "An Adventure on Salisbury Plain." Mr. Wordsworth afterwards broke it up, and "The Female Vagrant" is composed out of it. Ed.] thought, or forced diction, no crowd or turbulence of imagery; and, as the poet hath himself well described in his Lines on re-visiting the Wye, manly reflection and human associations had given both variety, and an additional interest to natural objects, which, in the passion and appetite of the first love, they had seemed to him neither to need nor permit. The occasional obscurities, which had risen from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language, had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once hackneyed and fantastic, which hold so distinguished a 13 [For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, II., pp. 164-5. Ed.] |