breathe her native air, when she attunes her voice to strains like these. How singular, that the author of the Lyrical Ballads should seem to be most at home in grave and lofty numbers! Yet such is the fact: Wordsworth will be venerated as a moral and religious poet, when, as a theorist, he will be sunk into oblivion.

But it is chiefly by his sonnets that Wordsworth will be known to posterity. Boileau says,

"Un sonnet sans défaut vaut seul un long poëme,
Mais en vain mille auteurs y pensent arriver;

A peine

-Peut on admirer deux ou trois entre mille."

If we consider how many have attempted, and how few have succeeded in this species of composition, we shall acknowledge the truth of the latter part of the above assertion. The very shortness of the sonnet is its difficulty. Like the man who had not time to write a short letter, many authors, more especially in the present day, seem to have no leisure to condense their thoughts. They are able, indeed, to pour out their unpremeditated verse with much facility; and if they be men of real talent, some merit will undoubtedly be found in their compositions; but this merit must necessarily be of an expanded kind. Water runs apace-richer potations issue more slowly from the cask. Now a sonnet is worth nothing unless it condense the elasticity of thought into its own small compass. We do not require that a hogshead should be filled with ottar of roses; but we do demand that the small and portable vial should contain a precious essence. When we read the sonnets of Milton, or of Warton, we feel that each of them is the result of more thought, and more tends to produce thought in others, than many a long poem which has issued from a mind of weaker stuff. On this ground, more than on account of their nonconformity to the sonnet rules, I should deny the name of sonnet to the compositions of Bowles, or Mrs. Charlotte Smith. They may be pretty songs, or pathetic elegies, but they are not sonnets. They were popular, for they neither resulted from deep thought, nor required deep thought for the comprehension of them. The sonnets of Shakspeare and Milton (however admired

by the few) have never been popular, because they address themselves to the understanding as well as the heart, to the imagination rather than to the fancy. Of this stamp are the sonnets of Wordsworth. They may therefore fail to delight the popular palate in an equal degree with (as some wit called them) "Mrs. Charlotte Smith's whipt syllabubs in black glasses;" but they will be dear to the lovers of original excellence as long as any thinking minds can be found in the community. They will be remembered for there is something in a good sonnet peculiarly rememberable. "Brevity," says, Shakspeare, "is the soul of wit;" and inasmuch as the soul survives the body, condensed wisdom also possesses a principle of longevity beyond the "thews and outward flourishes" of wordy rhetoric. Proverbs live, while whole epics perish. Amongst Wordsworth's miscellaneous sonnets (and they are numerous) there is scarcely one which is not goodthere are many which are strikingly fine. They are all written after the strictest model of the legitimate sonnet, which, from its artful construction and repeated rhymes, presents many difficulties to the composer; and yet there is an ease in Wordsworth's management of the sonnet, which proves that this is a kind of composition the most congenial, the most fitted to his powers. The lines are sufficiently broken to prevent the repetition of the same rhymes from palling on the ear; yet not so much as altogether to prevent their recurrence from being perceived, (a fault by no means uncommon,) so as to confound the distinction between rhyme and blank verse. The subjects are varied; and from Wordsworth's sonnets it would be easy to select specimens of the descriptive, the pathetic, the playful, the majestic, the fanciful, the imaginative. I have already presented my reader with a glorious example of Wordsworth's majestic style, in the sonnet to Milton. I will now, therefore, confine myself to one other specimen, which appears to me to combine many of the characteristics which I have mentioned distinctively above:

"Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?
Festively she puts forth in trim array,

As vigorous as a lark at break of day:
Is she for tropic suns or polar snow?

What boots th' inquiry ?-Neither friend nor foe
She cares for; let her travel where she may,
She finds familiar names, a beaten way
Ever before her, and a wind to blow.
Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?
And almost as it was when ships were rare,
(From time to time, like pilgrims, here and there
Crossing the waters,) doubt and something dark,
Of the old sea some reverential fear

Is with me at thy farewell, joyous bark!”

Here we have beautiful description, majesty of numbers, a lively fancy, a touch of pathos, and a fine exercise of the imaginative powers. I cannot conclude this branch of my subject, without pointing out to the reader's notice, more especially, Wordsworth's Introductory Sonnet, that on the extinction of the Venetian Republic, and the series of Sonnets on the river Duddon. That, in particular, which begins,

"Hail, twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour,"

is a fine instance of the vigour with which an original mind can refresh a hackneyed theme. It is rather unlike the sonnets of young ladies and young masters on the same subject.

The reader has now before him the claims of Wordsworth (fairly stated, as I hope) to public notice. That he is a true poet, no one, who has read the extracts which I have given from his works, can for a moment doubt. He is not a mere versifier, who rhymes away the vacant hour. He is not a mere trifler in the art, who amongst other elegant studies, resorts to poetry as a recreation. It is evident that poetry has been to him "the stuff of which his life is wrought." In spite of his attempts to identify poetry and prose, he cannot think in prose, he cannot

write in prose. He is all over poetical feeling. A poet he was born, and a poet he will die. Let him speak of himself in his early days:

66

I cannot paint

What then I was. 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 then to me
An appetite: a feeling, and a love."

Tintern Abbey.

Let him exhibit himself at a later period :

“Life's autumn past, I stand on winter's verge,
And daily lose what I desire to keep:
Yet rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies

Of a most rustic ignorance,

than see and hear

The repetitions wearisome of sense,

Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place."

Can any one doubt that this man is a poet? The young and fervent, who admire Lord Byron's intense enthusiasm in the perception of external nature, know not how much of it was kindled at Wordsworth's altar. In the noble author's works, they may have met with many a contemptuous sarcasm on Wordsworth and his poetry. They ought to be informed, that these expressions of contempt and dislike are but the results of the natural tendency of men to hate their benefactors. Perhaps also something of good policy mingled with a bitterer feeling. Lord Byron might wish to make it seem impossible that he should borrow from one whom he despised so heartily. But it was a part of Lord Byron's daring character, never to be deterred from seizing upon any materials, which suited his purpose, by the fear of detection. In these things, to put a good face upon the matter is half the battle. Thuswhether it was that he thought that the boldest thieves are ever the least suspected, or that his contemptuous appreciation of his contemporaries, led him to believe that posterity would rather suppose that they plundered from him, than he from them,—as Ben Jonson says, "would deem it to be his as well as theirs,"- -or even, perhaps, that his works alone would survive to future ages-certain it is, that instead of timidly and laboriously pilfering from old and obscure authors, Lord Byron at once appropriated to himself the finest thoughts of living writers. Whenever a

peculiarly original idea was started, it was sure to appear on the next published pages of Lord Byron. Thus, when Montgomery sang,

"He only, like the ocean-weed uptorn,

And loose along the world of waters borne,
Was cast companionless from wave to wave,"

Lord Byron echoed,

"I am as the weed

Torn from the rock on ocean's foam to sail,

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail." With regard to Lord Byron's obligations to Wordsworth, they are less verbal, and therefore less palpable; but no one, who is acquainted with the works of the two authors, can doubt but that Wordsworth is to be traced most palpably through the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold. A poem, by Lord Byron, called the "Grave of Churchill," a fact literally rendered, is in its style a close copy of Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence," from which I have given extracts. In a wonderfully fine passage in the Excursion, Wordsworth desires to "surrender himself to the elements," as if he " were a spirit," and exclaims

"While the mists

Flying, and rainy vapours call out shapes

And phantoms from the crags and solid earth
As fast as a musician scatters sounds

Out of an instrument

What a joy to roam

An equal amongst mightiest energies!"

Lord Byron seems to have had this in his thoughts, when he made Manfred say—

"Oh that I were

The viewless spirit of a lovely sound!

Born and dying

With the blest tone that made me."

The difference is only that Wordsworth's hopeful and cheering idea has become desponding and gloomy, in passing through the alembic of Lord Byron's brain. In