however, be denied that they are marked by a self-
willed, exaggerated adherence to the theory of
poetry he had promulgated, the effect of
something that is very like a spirit of contradiction.
In a playful adaptation of Milton's sonnet,
Tetrachordon, Wordsworth defends his choice
of subjects by the admiration felt or professed
for Tam o' Shanter. He overlooks the utter
difference between the mode in which Burns
conceived and executed that poem, and
himself his Benjamin the Waggoner. Burns was
for the time the hero himself. In Tam o'
Shanter, and still more in the Jolly Beggars,
he expresses the very passions of the characters
he presents to us. Wordsworth, constitutionally
incapable of the emotions of a boon
companion, merely describes and moralises on the
waywardness of his Benjamin. We sympathise
with the common humanity of Burns's genial
reprobates; we feel the cold shadow of
Wordsworth's Benjamin to be a hideous intruder
among the fine poetical imagery and thought
with which he is mixed up.

In 1807, Wordsworth published two volumes,
containing his own contributions to the Lyrical
Ballads, with many additional poems. Minute
detached criticism is not the object of this
sketch. Suffice it to say that many pieces in
these volumes are unsurpassed in English
poetry, or in the poetry of any language. The
Song at the feast of Brougham Castle has a
rich lyrical exuberance of feeling; the
Laodamia is as severely beautiful as a Greek
statue; Hartleap Well is full of mellow
humanity; Rob Roy's Grave, the Highland
Girl, 'She was a phantom of delight,'-- every
piece, in short, is replete with delightful sentiment
and graphic pictures of rural nature.
The objects of some of these poems obviously
originate in a mistaken apprehension of the
scope and purpose of poetry. Wordsworth
was a curious observer of the workings of the
human mind, and he sometimes confounded
the pleasure derived from such metaphysical
scrutiny with the pleasure derived from the
presentation of poetical imaginings. Hence,
what is questionable in his Idiot Boy, his
Harry Gill, and some others.

The Excursion, the most ambitious, and,
with all its defects, the greatest of his works,
was published in 1814. Here the poet was in
his true element. Wordsworth's genius was
essentially moralising and reflective. Incidents
and adventure had no charm for him. He
arrived at his knowledge of character by an
inductive process, not like Shakespeare, by the
intuition of sympathy and imagination. He
had no power of perceiving those light and
graceful peculiarities of men and society,
generally designated manners, vivid presentations
of which constitute the charm of so many
poets; but he was tremulously alive to the
charms of inanimate nature.

'————The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were there to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.'

His soul was full of lofty and imaginative
conceptions of moral truths. He, therefore,
after severe examination of his own poems,
resolved to rest his claims to immortality on
his composition of  'a philosophical poem,
containing views of Man, Nature, and
Society; and to be entitled The Recluse, as
having for its principal subject the sensations
and opinions of a poet living in retirement.'

How far this projected work has been
advanced to completion, we have no means of
knowing. A preliminary work, descriptive of
the growth of his own powers, is, he has
informed us, finished. The Recluse was to
consist of three parts, the first and third containing
chiefly meditations in the author's own person;
the intermediate introducing characters in a
semi-dramatic form. It is to be regretted
that his second part has alone been published,
for Wordsworth's genius was essentially
undramatic. But notwithstanding the disadvantages
under which the poet laboured from the
selection of an uncongenial form, and his
imperfect mastery of blank verse (a measure
of which, perhaps. Milton alone among our
English poets has developed the full measure,
and varied power of modulation), the
Excursion is, undoubtedly, a poem in the highest,
and truest sense of the word. The philosophical
musings with which it abounds, are
alike profound and elevating. And nothing
can surpass the deep pathos of the episodes
of Margaret and Ellen.

The subsequent publications of Wordsworth
may be briefly enumerated. Peter Bell and
the Waggoner appeared within two years
after the Excursion; and the White Doe of
Rylstone soon followed them. A miscellaneous
volume, of which the River Duddon
was the most prominent, was published in
1820, and Yarrow Revisited, in 1835. Of all
these works, it may suffice to say that they
are highly characteristic of the author, and
contain many beauties.

Wordsworth's poetry had long to contend
against the conventional prepossessions of the
literary world. From the beginning,
however, his genius was felt by superior minds,
and by a few young unprejudiced enthusiasts.
His first admirers were literally a sect, and
their admiration was, like the devotion of all
sectarians, ardent and indiscriminating. They
have, however, served as interpreters between
him and the reading public, and thus his
merits have come to be generally
acknowledged. His writings lent a tone to the
works of some who, like Shelley, dissented
from his theory; and some who, like Byron,
systematically scoffed at them. The public
taste was thus insensibly approximated to
them. Even yet, however, Wordsworth is
probably more praised than liked. But the