A VAGUE YET TERRIFIC IMPERSONATION. 1 - 233 seemed either," that is, substance seemed shadow, shadow seemed substance. Thus uncertain in its horror to his eyes, "black it seemed as night;" not utter darkness, but something black and grim, "darkness visible' fierce- not as a Fury-for that would be something too definite, since the image of a fury is of something conceived to exist-but fierce as ten furies, an expression in which all individuality is lost, and nothing conveyed to the mind but an idea of aggregated and accumulated fierceness. "Terrible as hell" is still more vague, and purposely so, or rather so under the power of the emotion; yet in all this obscurity, unsubstantiality, and shadowiness, it shook a dreadful dart (observe how much effect is in that word, it), something not described by any quality, as of size or shape, but merely "dreadful "-how, why, or in what dreadful, we know not; while this motion of its weapon directs the mind to look on the Shape that brandishes it, and lo! that which seemed its head — not its head, but that which in that fury-haunted and infernal darkness seemed its head-the likeness-not the reality-but the likeness of a kingly crown had on! Poetry alone could give such an Imagination as this for painting would at once of necessity give outlines, features, realities, which, however enveloped in obscurity, would be fatal to the fearful effect, and embody too sensibly the here almost unembodied attributes of this seeming, shadowy, threatening, scarcely-existing, yet most terrific Impersonation! Shepherd. Had ma twa een been shut the noo, like them o' a Methodist minister sayin grace, I could hae sworn that you was Mr North, Mr Tickler. His verra vice! And then, as to the matter, the same licht o' truth fitfully brichtenin through the glimmer or gloom o' a mair or less perfeck incomprehensibility. An' that's what you twa chiels ca' pheelosofical creetyschism? Tickler. Pray recite, James, a passage from the Excursion, that I may make it undergo a similar process of investigation into the principles of composition. Shepherd. Mee receet a passage frae The Excursion? 1 In Schiller's Ballad of "The Diver," the word "it" is used with the same effect: da Kroch's heran, there it (the shapeless sea-monster) was creeping near. "The It in the original," says Sir E. B. Lytton, "has been greatly admired. The poet thus vaguely represents the fabulous misshapen monster, the Polypus of the ancients."-The Poems and Ballads of Schiller, p. 8, 2d edition. 234 WORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION North. What is your opinion of that Poem, Tickler? Tickler. The Excursion is full of fine poetry, but it is not what the author intended it to be, and believes that it is — a Great Poem. Mr Wordsworth cannot conceive a mighty plan. His imagination is of the first order; but his intellect does not seem to me, who belong, you know, North, to the old school, commanding and comprehensive. His mind has many noble visions, but they come and go, each in its own glory; a phantasmagorial procession, beautiful, splendid, sublime, but not anywhere forming a Whole, on which the spectator can gaze, entranced by the power of unity. Shepherd. Entranced by the power o' Unity! Haversclavers! Tickler. Considered as a work that is to hand down his name to future ages, among those of our great English poets, our Spensers and our Miltons, I must think it a failure, and that it will for ever exclude him from that band of immortals. But you have taught me, sir, to see that it contains passages of such surpassing excellence, in the description of external nature, and in the delineation of feeling, passion, and thought, that I think they may be set by the side of the best passages of a similar kind to be found within the whole range of poetry. Shepherd. That's praise aneuch to satisfy ony reasonable man. North. We are not now speaking for the satisfaction of Mr Wordsworth, but of ourselves Shepherd. And the warld. North. My admiration of Mr Wordsworth's genius is well known to the universe, and has often been expressed with more enthusiasm than has been accompanied by the sympathies even of the wisest. I hope it is nevertheless judicious; and I have always given reasons for my delight in his works. But the admiration of some of his critics has, of late years, been anything but judicious; and the language in which it has been expressed, so outrageous, as to do greater injury to his just and fair fame, than all the attacks of his mightiest or meanest enemies. The Excursion has been often compared by the Cockneys with Paradise Lost; and that portion of the Reading Public who know something of Mr Wordsworth's poetry, but not much, have become indignant and disgusted at such foolery, and transferred, unconsciously, to the bard IS NOT TO BE COMPARED WITH PARADISE LOST. 235 himself some of those ungenial feelings with which it was inevitable and right that they should.regard the idiots who had set him up as their idol. His genius is indeed worthy of far other worship. Tickler. With Milton! Shakespeare! forsooth! Why, Paradise Lost is, by the consent of all the civilised world, declared to be the grandest and most sublime poem that ever emanated from the mind of man, equally so in conception and execution. It embraces all that human beings can feel or comprehend of themselves, their origin, and their destiny. The Excursion is an eloquent and poetical journal of a few days' walk among the mountains of the north of England, kept by one of the party, in which every syllable, good, bad, and indifferent, that was uttered by the three friends, was carefully recorded, and many connecting descriptions introduced by the journalist himself, who was the only one of the trio who had "the accomplishment of verse." I have said enough already to expose the frantic folly of those who speak in the same breath of Paradise Lost and The Excursion. Shepherd. Quite aneuch. North. I am delighted to find you so reasonable, Tickler. Tickler. Nay, I am even an enthusiastic Wordsworthian. North. Although the plan of The Excursion is altogether inartificial, and far from felicitous in any respect, yet it affords room for the display of Mr Wordsworth's very original genius, which delights in description of all that is grand and beautiful, on the earth, and in the heavens above the earth, and which is, on all such occasions, truly creative. The Three Friends wander wherever the wind wafts them, poetising and philosophising in the solitudes. Sometimes the objects before them awaken their spirits the rocks, or the houses, or the clouds --and not unfrequently they forget "the visible diurnal sphere," and, in fine flights of imagination, visit the uttermost parts of the earth. The "impulses of deeper kind that come to them in solitude," they delightedly obey; and soon as those impulses cease, they are all equally willing, according to the finest feelings of humanity, to cross the thresholds of "huts where poor men lie," and to converse of, or with them, cheerfully and benignantly; or when more solemn thoughts again arise, to walk into the Churchyard among the Mountains, and muse and meditate among the stoneless turfs above the humble dead, or among the pillars of the sacred pile, on which hang 236 THE EXCURSION AND THE TASK. the escutcheons, or are painted the armorial bearings, of the high-born ancestry of hall and castle. Shepherd. Ay, sir, these Books are delichtfu'-divine. North. I love to hear you say so, my dear James. They are divine. Tickler. Would that all those exquisite pictures had been by themselves, without the cumbrous machinery of the clumsy plan-if plan it may be called. North. It is obvious that a parallel might be drawn, though I have no intention now of doing so, between The Excursion and The Task. Wordsworth, if not by nature, certainly by the influences of his life, has far higher enthusiasm of soul than Cowper. He has seen far more of the glories of creation than it was given that other great poet to see; and hence, when he speaks of external nature, his strains are generally of a loftier mood. But Cowper was not ambitious and Wordsworth's chief fault is ambition. The author of The Task loved nature for her own sake—the author of The Excursion loves her chiefly for the sake of the power which she inspires within him—for the sake of the poetry that his gifted spirit flings over all her cliffs, and infuses into all her torrents. It often requires great effort to follow Wordsworth in his hymns-nor can any reader do so who has not enjoyed some of the same privileges in youth that have all his life long been open to that poet-above all, the privileges of freedom from this world's carking cares, enjoyed to the uttermost among the steadfast spectacles, or sudden apparitions of nature. But almost all persons alike, who have ever lived in the country at all, can go along with Cowper. Fields, hedgerows, groves, gardens, all common rural sights and sounds, and those too of all the seasons, are realised in The Task, so easily and naturally, that we see and hear as we read, with minds seldom, perhaps, greatly elevated above the everyday mood, but touched with gentle and purest pleasure, and filled with a thousand delightful memories. Wordsworth's finest strains can be felt or understood only when our imagination is ready to ascend to its highest sphereand to the uninitiated they must be unintelligible, and that is indeed their very highest praise. But the finest things in The Task may be enjoyed at all times, and almost by every cultivated mind. That too is their highest praise. To which of the two kinds of poetry the palm should be given, it would be hard to say; but it is easy to know which of the two must WORDSWORTH'S PEDLAR. 237 be the more popular. Were it for nothing else than its rural descriptions, The Task would still be a favourite poem with almost all classes of readers. Noble as they are, and, in our opinion, frequently equal, if not superior to anything of the kind in poetry, the rural descriptions of Wordsworth (rural is but a poor word here) can never be sympathised with by the million, for not ten in a thousand are, by constitution or custom, capable to understand their transcendent excellence. Tickler. There must, I fear, be some wrong-headedness in the poet, who, from the whole range of human life, deliberately selected a pedlar for his highest philosophical character in a philosophical poem. Shepherd. Dinna abuse pedlars, Mr Tickler. In Scotland they're aye murdered. Tickler. Mr Jeffrey murdered the pedlar in The Excursion. Shepherd. Na. Mr Wordsworth. North. No impertinence, gents. Shepherd. Nae wut without a portion o' impertinence. Shepherd. But then, you see, you may be impertinent, as you was the noo, notwithstanding. North. The first twenty pages of The Excursion enable the reader to know on what grounds, and for what reasons, Mr Wordsworth has chosen, in a moral work of the highest pretensions, to make his chief and most authoritative interlocutor a pedlar. Much small wit has been sported on the subject, about pieces of tape and ribbon, thimbles, penknives, kneebuckles, pin-cushions, and other pedlar-ware; and perhaps such associations, and others, essentially mean or paltry, must, to a certain extent, connect themselves in most, or all minds, with the idea of such a calling. There is neither difficulty nor absurdity, however, in believing that an individual, richly endowed with natural gifts, may be a pedlar-and certainly that mode of life not only furnishes, but offers the best opportunities to a man of a thoughtful and feeling mind, of becoming intimately and thoroughly acquainted with all the ongoings of humble life. Robert Burns was an exciseman. Yet it does not follow from this, that there is wisdom in the choice of such a small retired merchant for the chief spokesman in a series of dialogues, in which one of the greatest poets of England is to take a part. Of many things spoken of in those dialogues, such a pedlar, in virtue of his profession, was an excellent |