dency and challenge which roused all the existing world of critics against it. The young poet set himself to instruct mankind, not only in the legitimate way, by the real message which he had to deliver, but by revolutionizing the very form and fashion under which poetry had hitherto taught the world. This was a very different matter from Cowper's loyal return to that stately medium of blank verse, which has been so dear to all the greatest of English poets. It was a fanciful theory, brought into being in the numberless discussions which arose between the two young enthusiasts, who combined with the fervor of their personal convictions a certain contempt for the judgment of the world, heightened by confidence in its inevitable docility, and submission one time or another to themselves, its natural leaders. They knew, and were rather pleased to think, that critics would be puzzled and startled; but they did not understand nor believe it possible that they themselves might strain their theory into extravagance, and go further than good taste or good sense sanctioned. According to Coleridge's explanation of this theory, he himself was to take up the supernatural and romantic, as in the "Ancient Mariner," while Wordsworth. whose mind took a different bent, was "to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to the things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us—an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes and see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand."

This attempt to teach and elevate it by ostentatiously simple means, roused the public into something more than mere disapproval; and we cannot think that in this its decision was so far wrong as, in view of Wordsworth's eventual fame, the reader of to-day would be warranted in supposing. To begin a serious and affecting poem thus

"A little child, dear brother Jim," which, as originally written, was, we are told, the first line (now incomplete) of "We are Seven"; to concentrate the in

terest in a first volume of poetry upon sc long and so extraordinary a production a the "Idiot Boy"; to introduce into serious verse

"A household tub, like one of those

Which women use to wash their clothes;"— were sins sufficient to weigh down a great many beauties. And when we add that all this was done not accidentally, b with serious intention, and from a heigh of superiority, as if something sacred and sublime was in the narrative of Johnty's ride and Harry Gill's shivering-something which the common reader was not suff ciently refined or elevated to appreciate

the indignation of the public appeas to a certain extent, justifiable. This foo ish and quite unnecessary idea was insiste upon as the very essence and soul of the poet's mission by Wordsworth himself. until maturing years improved his percep tions and taste. Nothing could be more distinctly characteristic of the self-absorp tion of his nature. He was a law to himself. The example of all older poetry and the opinion of the world were nothing to him, until time had gradually revealed the fact, which is so often imperceptible t youth, that all things are not equally inportant-that in poetry, as in life, there are different magnitudes, and that the ful est truth to nature does not demand a slavish adherence to fact. What he inte ded to demonstrate was, that the feelings of Betty Foy while her boy was lost wer as deep and tragical, and as worthy of revelation to the world, as would have been those of a queen; and there is no doubt that this is perfectly true. The notion that any one denied its truth exist ed only in Wordsworth's fancy. But the choice of such colloquial familiarity of treatment as suggests a jocular rather tha a serious meaning, the absolute insign cance of the incident, and the absence d any attempt to give dignity or grace to the story, balked its effect completely as 2 exposition of nature; while the humor n it is too feeble, too diffuse, to give it a lively comic interest. Cowper had vertured to be quite as colloquial and realistic in "John Gilpin," with electrical effect: but then the spirit and pure fun of that performance was inimitable, whereas Wordsworth's fun never rose beyond 3 tame reflective banter. Thus, in his long est poem, he failed, and failed utterly, i

this pleasant bit of revelation, though it was not intended for his eye.

The mixture of success and failure to which we have just referred reappears in almost identically the same manner in the greater work written at this time, and intended to be published in this volume, but which did not see the light for many years-the poem of "Peter Bell." Here once more the poet breaks down in what he means to be the most important part of his work, and makes a brilliant success at a point were it has never occurred to him to seek it. We know no description of the kind which can bear comparison with the first part of "Peter Bell." The sketch of the Potter is one of those extraordinary pictures which, once produced, nothing can obliterate. It is simple fact, true to the individual man's outward appearance, temper, manners, and character, as if it had been a photograph; and at the same time it is absolute truth, embracing a whole race of men, transcending the little limits of the generations, true to-day and to the end of the world. Nor is it the portrait of the Potter alone which is set before us. With a subtle skill the poet brings in himself, with all his fine perceptions, the vision and faculty divine of his own eyes and soul, as painters sometimes bring in a tender and visionary background of blue sky, to throw up and bring into fuller relief the rude figure that occupies the front of the picture. A certain cunning, unexpressed wonder, and comparison of this strange being with himself, is, we can see all through, in Wordsworth's thoughts—a comparison which, all unseen as he feels himself to be, makes him at once smile and sigh. Thus, with a half-humorous, half-wistful minuteness, he shows us in glimpses the world so lovely to himself, which surrounds that unawakened soul; the hamlets which lie "deep and low," each "beneath its little patch of sky and little lot of stars;" the "tender grass' "leading its earliest green along the lane; the unconscious sweetness of the April morn, through which "the soul of happy sound is spread;" the soft blue sky melting through the high branches on the forest's edge. All this rises softly before us, while Peter, unconcerned and rude, leading his lawless life in the midst, roving among the vales and streams, sleeping beside his asses on the hills, couched on the warm heath, below the sun

shine or under the trees, and neither noting nor caring, trudges through the whole with the surly half-contempt of his kind.

"Though Nature could not touch his heart
By lovely forms, and silent weather,
And tender sounds, yet you might see
At once, that Peter Bell and she
Had often been together.

A savage wildness round him hung
As of a dweller out of doors;
In his whole figure and his mien
A savage character was seen
Of mountains and of dreary moors.

To all the unshaped half-human thoughts
Which solitary Nature feeds

'Mid summer storms or winter's ice,
Had Peter joined whatever vice
The cruel city breeds.

His face was keen as is the wind
That cuts along the hawthorn-fence;
Of courage you saw little there,
But, in its stead, a medley air
Of cunning and of impudence.
He had a dark and sidelong walk,
And long and slouching was his gait ;
Beneath his looks so bare and bold,
You might perceive, his spirit cold
Was playing with some inward bait.
His forehead wrinkled was and furred;
A work, one half of which was done
By thinking of his whens' and 'kows;
And half, by knitting of his brows
Beneath the glaring sun.

There was a hardness in his cheek,
There was a hardness in his eye,
As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!"

The manner in which this wonderful

portrait is made to expound and set forth, not only its own feelingless and rude character, but at the same time the poetic lous. It is the most forcible and terse nature behind and around it, is marvelanalysis, and yet it is no analysis, but a reproduction of two types of humanity the The power and truth of the picture is most distinct and apart from each other. brought out, not by sympathy, but by the reverse of sympathy-the writer and his subject standing, as it were, at the two opposite poles of existence. Strange is the effect, however, when the reader turns from this amazing beginning to the "tale" so called which follows, and learns how Peter found an ass upon the banks of "the murmuring river Swale"; how the

ass,

"With motion dull, Upon the pivot of his skull Turned round his long left ear;"

how he lengthened out

"More ruefully a deep-drawn shout,
The hard dry see-saw of his horrible bray;

how Peter found the corpse of the poor animal's master in the water, and was

guided by the ass home to the poor man's cottage, carrying the news of his death to his widow and children; and how the stillness and solemnity of the night, and this strange adventure, made such an impression upon the Potter, that he "Forsook his crimes, renounced his folly, And after ten months' melancholy Became a good and honest man.

Here the fall in power and interest from the picture of the man to the record of his doings is very notable. The one is instinct with life and meaning; the other maundering, diffuse, and obscure: the one a model of continuous thought and happy expressions; the other strained into ludicrous simplicity and fact-faithfulness, provoking laughter at its most solemn moment, yet not bold enough to rise into true humor. This distinction is very remarkable, and shows at once how true was the poet's instinct and how imperfect his theory. "The tale," he himself informs us, was founded upon an anecdote I read in a newspaper of an ass being found hanging his head over a canal in a wretched position. Upon examination à dead body was found in the water, and proved to be the body of his master. In the woods of Alfoxden I used to take great delight in noticing the habits, traits, and physiognomy of asses; and I have no doubt that I was thus put upon writing the poem of 'Peter Bell' out of liking for the creature that is so often dreadfully abused." Thus it would appear that it was for the story that the poem was written. Wordsworth's intention, no doubt, was to prove that his simple banal tale about an ass and a drowned pedlar would instruct the world as much as a greater subject, and reveal to it, as no one had yet revealed, the virtues of asses and their masters. This was his meaning-but Genius balked him, and, by the way, without any set purpose or didactic meaning, made this picture of the wild tramp and wanderer a picture which can never die.

To return, however, to the history. The volume of "Lyrical Ballads" had been just published, when, with a philosophy or indifference which probably was

partly affected, the three young origina tors of it-for it is impossible to deny Dorothy Wordsworth her share in the off for the Continent. The Wordsworths book, though she never wrote a line-set parted from Coleridge at Hamburg, and went on to the little university town of Goslar, not far from Brunswick. We are

not told what moved them to choose a place so much out of the way and so little known. Their intention was to learn German, and to make themselves acquainted with German society; but this purpose failed, as neither of them were capable of easy acquaintanceship, and the seclusion in which they had spent the last three years had not, doubtless, improved their social capabilities. A severe, cold, pitiless winter came on, and, strangely enough, Wordsworth's mind rushed back to England and its beloved scenes. Few times of his life were more fruitful than the six months of dreary weather during which he froze in a fur-lined pelisse, and cursed the rampant horse of Brunswick which galloped on the dismal black metal of his stove. Perhaps the very sights and sounds of the strange land, whither he had come to forget England, brought it back to him more warmly; or perhaps it is possible, though no one seems able to say, there was in truth as well as in poetry a dead Lucy left behind in one of these peaceful solitudes, whose ending had driven him away to this strange place. There is no information whatever to be found on this subject, either from himself or his friends. The five exquisite little poems which bear that name, snatches as they seem of some sad and tender story, have no explanation whatever attached to them. They were all written at Goslar; they are full of tender and real feeling, and of the deep reflective pensiveness which comes after sharp sorrow has spent itself; and they all hang together with a unity and reality which makes it very difficult to believe that they meant nothing. Why they should be separated and kept out of their natural arrangement, as they are in all the editions of Wordsworth we have seen, it is very hard to tell. Three of them we find included in the Poems Founded on the Affections," and two in the "Poems of the Imagination,”-a curiously arbitrary distinction, made, we suppose, by Wordsworth himself, either to veil the personal meaning contained in

them or in obedience to some solemn crotchet, such as entered his mind from time to time; but a future editor would do well to piece together these broken threads, and put the five little lays which embody all we know of Lucy together under her name. They belong as truly to each other as do the poems out of which Mr. Tennyson's "Maud" is formed. We should be disposed to place the verses in the following order :--1st, "Strange fits of passion have I known;" 2d, "She dwelt among the untrodden ways;" 3d, "Three years she grew in sun and shower;"4th, "I travelled among unknown men;" 5th, "A slumber did my spirit seal." Any one who reads them in this succession will see at a glance what a consistent story they convey, and with what an exquisite tenderness and natural feeling it is told. It differs from "Maud," not only in being much shorter and less definite, but also in the strange, sad calm given by the fact that the whole is written after Lucy's death --a fact which makes it still less likely that Lucy herself was a mere creature of the poet's imagination; and in every other respect their unity and distinctness is not less than that of Mr. Tennyson's exquisitely-constructed tale.

In Goslar, too, were composed the poems, also belonging to each other by the clearest connection, concerning Matthew, upon which we have already remarked, along with many more of less importance. One of these may be mentioned, solely as showing the curious polemical way in which Wordsworth chooses now and then to treat his own work, laboring to prove how it is done better than other people's, and with more advantage to the world. In respect to the little poem called "Lucy Gray," one of the sweetest and best known of his ballads, he says: "The way in which this incident was treated, and the spiritualizing of the character, might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences which I have endeavored to throw over common life, with Crabbe's matter-of-fact style of handling subjects of the same kind." Strange that the hand which had just framed such an idyll as that of Lucy--such a wonderful sketch of human life and wayward pathetic fancy as that portrayed in "The Fountain" and "The Two April Mornings"--should take the trouble to flourish these pretty verses in the face of the

world like the banner of a new sect! But so it was. Wordsworth would seem to have wanted even so much of the critical faculty as would have shown to him how much of his work was forever, and how much only for a day.

In the spring of 1799, Wordsworth left Goslar. He was now nearly thirty, his published works had met no reception from the public, neither had he as yet done anything which could have justified to sceptical friends his desultory and undecided life. "He had been composing minor poems," says his biographer, “bu: he now projected something of a higher aim and more comprehensive scope. . . . After much consideration, he chose his own intellectual being as his subjectthe growth of his own mind." The poem thus undertaken was that which was published only after Wordsworth's death under the title of "The Prelude." It was intended, as its name signified, to be the commencement of a series of works, of which "The Excursion" was the only one completed. It was to be the ante-chapel to the Gothic cathedral full and fair, with apse and chapels, with high altar and echoing aisles, which Wordsworth intended to make of his works. Great seemed the possibilities that opened before him, and long and full the life which he still had to labor in, and therefore his projects were equally illimitable. In the autumn of 1799, after some months of residence with friends, he and his sister finally returned to their own mountain country, and established themselves at Grasmere. We quote from the unpublished remnant of "The Re cluse," his incomplete work, the following description, printed in Dr. Wordsworth's biography of the poet, of his settlement here among his native hills :"On Nature's invitation do I come, By reason sanctioned. Can the choice mislead, That made the calmest, fairest spot on earth, My own?--and not mine only, -for with me With all its unappropriated good, Enshrined-say rather peacefully embowered-· Under yon orchard, in yon humble cot, A younger orphan of a home extinct, Ay, think on that, my heart, and cease to stir;The only daughter of my parents, dwells;Pause upon that, and let the breathing frame No longer breathe, but all be satisfied. Oh! if such silence be not thanks to God For what hath been bestowed, then where, where

then

Shall gratitude find root? Mine eyes did ne'er
Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind
Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts,