Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, го LOVE UNKNOWN. Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sad: And have, of whom some grounds, which may improve, Look'd on a servant, who did know his eye, A stream of blood, which issued from the side Many a fault, more than my lease will bear; (I sigh to tell) The offerer's heart. "Your heart was hard, I fear." 7 Indeed 'tis true. I found a callous matter Unto my house, where to repair the strength But when I thought to sleep out all these faults, I found that some had stuff'd the bed with thoughts, It must be he. "Your heart was dull, I fear." [The three poems are at pp. 87, 40, and 133 respectively. S. C.] CHAPTER XX. The former subject continued-The neutral style, or that common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from Chaucer Herbert, and others. I HAVE no fear in declaring my conviction, that the excellence defined and exemplified in the preceding chapter is not the characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's style; because I can add with equal sincerity, that it is precluded by higher powers. The praise of uniform adherence to genuine, logical English is undoubtedly his; nay, laying the main emphasis on the word uniform, I will dare add that, of all contemporary poets, it is his alone. For, in a less absolute sense of the word, I should certainly include Mr. Bowles, Lord Byron, and, as to all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the exceptions in their works being so few and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in the quotation from Garve, I appear to find more, and more undoubted specimens in the works of others; for instance, among the minor poems of Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illustrious Laureate. To me it will always remain a singular and noticeable fact; that a theory, which would establish this lingua communis, not only as the best, but as the only commendable style, should have proceeded from a poet, whose diction, next to that of Shakspeare and Milton, appears to me of all others the most individualized and characteristic. And let it be remembered too, that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. Wordsworth's critical preface by the purpose and object, which he may be supposed to have intended, rather than by the sense which the words themselves must convey, if they are taken without this allowance. A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of Shakspeare's principal plays, would without the name affixed scarcely fail to recognise as Shakspeare's a quotation from any other play, though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth's style, whenever he speaks in his own person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis persona of THE RECLUse. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth. The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference to the persons introduced: "It seems, as I retrace the ballad line by line That but half of it is theirs, and the better half is thine."1 Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion of Mr. Wordsworth's publications, and having studied them with a full feeling of the author's genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian the little poem on the rainbow? "Along the river's stony marge A thousand lambs are on the rocks, That plaintive cry! which up the hill Comes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll." Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea-Loch in THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY? Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little ones by the fireside as "Yet had he many a restless dream; Both when he heard the eagle's scream, Beside a lake their cottage stood, For to this lake, by night and day, The great Sea-water finds its way, Through long, long windings of the hills, And drinks up all the pretty rills And rivers large and strong: Then hurries back the road it came- As long as earth shall last. And, with the coming of the tide, Between the woods and lofty rocks; And to the shepherds with their flocks Bring tales of distant lands."5 [Ib., iii., pp. 145-6. Mr. Wordsworth has altered" sweetly" in the |