human
Can you write a poem for me in the style of Gilbert Parker?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem in the style of Gilbert Parker:
  I  Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of
contemporary writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets-
Comparison between the poets before and since
II   Supposed irritability of genius brought to the test of
facts--Causes and occasions of the charge--Its injustice
III  The Author's obligations to Critics, and the probable
occasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey's
works and character
IV  The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface--Mr. Wordsworth's
earlier poems--On Fancy and Imagination--The investigation
of the distinction important to the Fine Arts
V  On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle
VI  That Hartley's system, as far as it differs from that of
Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded
in facts
VII  Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian Theory--Of
the original mistake or equivocation which procured its
admission--Memoria technica
VIII  The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined
first by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the
doctrine of Harmonia praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism
--None of these systems, or any possible theory of
Association, supplies or supersedes a theory of
Perception, or explains the formation of the Associable
XI  Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its
conditions?--Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the
existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a
privileged order--The Author's obligations to the Mystics-
To Immanuel Kant--The difference between the letter and
The spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of
Prudence in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt
to complete the Critical system-Its partial success and
ultimate failure--Obligations to Schelling; and among
English writers to Saumarez
X  A Chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude
preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination
or Plastic Power--On Pedantry and pedantic expressions--
Advice to young authors respecting publication--Various
anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the progress
of his opinions in Religion and Politics
XI  An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel
themselves disposed to become authors
XIII  On the Imagination, or Esemplastic power
XIV  Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally
proposed--Preface to the second edition--The ensuing
controversy, its causes and acrimony--Philosophic
definitions of a Poem and Poetry with scholia
XV  The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a
Critical analysis of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and
XVI  Striking points of difference between the Poets of the
present age and those of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries--Wish expressed for the union of the
characteristic merits of both
XVII  Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--
Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially
unfavourable to the formation of a human diction-The
best parts of language the product of philosophers, not of
clowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and generic--
The language of Milton as much the language of real life,
yea, incomparably more so than that of the cottager
--Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby
imposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction
XIX  Continuation--Concerning the real object, which, it is
probable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical
preface--Elucidation and application of this
XX  The former subject continued--The neutral style, or that
common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from
Chaucer, Herbert, and others
XXI  Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals
XXII  The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the
is deduced--Their proportion to the beauties--For the
greatest part characteristic of his theory only
XXIII  Critique on Bertram
XXIV  Conclusion
Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in
In the spring of 1796, when I had but little passed the verge of
manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. They were
insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of
Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I
discipline, my mind had undergone, Ne falleretur rotundo sono et
versuum cursu, cincinnis, et floribus; sed ut inspiceret quidnam
subesset, quae, sedes, quod firmamentum, quis fundus verbis; an
figures essent mera ornatura et orationis fucus; vel sanguinis e
disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him, and
inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man. His very
admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The poems
There are indeed modes of teaching which have produced, and are
in whose halls are hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old--
storing the memory, during the period when the memory is the
predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the
qui laudibus amplis
Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terra
Obruta; vivit amor, vivit dolor; ora negatur
Dulcia conspicere; at fiere et meminisse relictum est.
It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender
Poetry--(though for a school-boy of that age, I was above par in
English versification, and had already produced two or three
Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute,
And found no end in wandering mazes lost.
This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious both to my
doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth
translated into the language of poetry. On this last point, I had
How like a younker or a prodigal
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,
Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind!
How like the prodigal doth she return,
With over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails,
Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind!
to the imitation in the Bard;
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
Youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That hush'd in grim repose, expects it's evening prey.
imitation it depended wholly on the compositor's putting, or not
------thy image on her wing
Before my fancy's eye shall memory bring,--
The reader must make himself acquainted with the general style of
imagery. The reader will find them in the note  below, and will I
I have often thought, that it would be neither uninstructive nor
------genus irritabile vatum.
A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent
There's no philosopher but sees,
That rage and fear are one disease;
Tho' that may burn, and this may freeze,
They're both alike the ague.
imagination the ever-varying form; the latter must impress their
benevolence of nature to sheltered navies; or in aqueducts that,
that our great bard--
------grew immortal in his own despite.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Tho' I once gone to all the world must die;
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead:
You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
Where breath most breathes, e'en in the mouth of men.
manifested in another Sonnet.
Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the praise of all-too-precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,
Making their tomb, the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead?
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.
He, nor that affable familiar ghost,
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
As victors of my silence cannot boast;
I was not sick of any fear from thence!
But when your countenance fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd I matter, that enfeebled mine.
contempt of his censurers.
Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,--
listening to the music of his own thoughts, or if additionally
cheered, yet cheered only by the prophetic faith of two or three
solitary individuals, he did nevertheless
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bore up and steer'd
Right onward.
analogon of genius, which, in certain states of society, may even
conformation of body, obtuse pain, or constitutional defect of
But, alas! the multitude of books and the general diffusion of
their guard. And hence individuals below mediocrity not less in
natural power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers who have
passions of mankind . But as it is the nature of scorn, envy, and
characteristic of genius.
circumstances, such considerations must needs be. Yet it never
Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier
unintermitting as that of poetry; and indeed as that of literary
experience. I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this
Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis, apes!
The Author's obligations to critics, and the probable occasion--
To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news-journals of
various name and rank, and to satirists with or without a name in
Whatever may have been the case with others, I certainly cannot
attribute this persecution to personal dislike, or to envy, or to
before they were known as authors, I have had little other
grounds of my belief, rather than the belief itself; and not to
express dissent, till I could establish some points of complete
Lastly, with as little semblance of reason, could I suspect any
Harrington, Machiavel, and Spinoza, are not read, because Hume,
transfers, rather than removes the difficulty. Be it, that, by an
descend upon them?
preceding, but by greater splendour, a deeper pathos, profounder
interest:" or from dedication to Monarch or Pontiff, in which the
-si d'alloi megaloi: to d'eschaton kory-
phoutai basilensi. Maeketi
paptaine porsion.
Eiae se te touton
upsou chronon patein, eme
te tossade nikaphorois
omilein, prophanton sophian kath' El-
lanas eonta panta.--OLYMP. OD. I.
there was a gradual sinking in the etiquette or allowed style of
pretension.
Poets and Philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number,
qualifications which adapt their oriental brethren for the
"A Book was writ of late called Tetrachordon;"
and, as characteristic of his rhythm and metre, cite his literal
translation of the first and second Psalm! In order to justify
yourself, you need only assert, that had you dwelt chiefly on the
information, such as experience would not have authorized me in
anticipating. And as to compositions which the authors themselves
Haec ipsi novimus esse nihil,
why should we judge by a different rule two printed works, only
because the one author is alive, and the other in his grave? What
conceive by what perversity of judgment, these relaxations of his
finished pictures in one splendid fancy piece, in which,
notwithstanding, the moral grandeur rises gradually above the
brilliance of the colouring and the boldness and novelty of the
controversial writings, Milton, claiming the privilege of self-
defence, asserts of himself, and challenges his calumniators to
important to the Fine Arts.
I have wandered far from the object in view, but as I fancied to
proselytes.
volumes altogether. Others more catholic in their taste, and yet
proportion to the elevation of his style and subject. Not a few,
In the critical remarks, therefore, prefixed and annexed to the
possessed both genius and a powerful intellect, they felt very
Fair is foul, and foul is fair;
That this conjecture is not wide from the mark, I am induced to
believe from the noticeable fact, which I can state on my own
However this may be, it was assuredly hard and unjust to fix the
------with academic laurels unbestowed;
and that this bare and bald counterfeit of poetry, which is
continue as undecided as  that between Bacchus and the frogs in
CH.  Brekekekex, koax, koax.
Ouden gar est' all', hae koax.
Oimozet' ou gar moi melei.
CH.  Alla maen kekraxomestha
g', oposon hae pharynx an haemon
chandanae di' haemeras,
brekekekex, koax, koax!
CH.  Oude men haemas su pantos.
oudepote. Kekraxomai gar,
kan me deae, di' haemeras,
eos an humon epikrataeso tou koax!
CH.  Brekekekex, KO'AX, KOAX!
During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became
'Tis storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour,
All day the floods a deepening murmur pour;
The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight
Dark is the region as with coming night;
Yet what a sudden burst of overpowering light!
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm,
Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form;
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline;
Those Eastern cliffs a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned that flame with gold;
Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire
The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire.
heterogeneous elements, which had only a temporary use, they
reflection and human associations had given both variety, and an
additional interest to natural objects, which, in the passion and
illogical phrases, at once hackneyed and fantastic, which hold so
incongruity . I did not perceive anything particular in the mere
collective, unconscious good sense working progressively to
desynonymize  those words originally of the same meaning, which
succeed in establishing the actual existence of two faculties
Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber,
from Shakespeare's
What! have his daughters brought him to this pass?
Wordsworth has himself given, will be found to differ from mine,
chiefly, perhaps as our objects are different. It could scarcely
themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our
common consciousness.
miscellany as this can authorize; when in such a work (the
conveyed in such a form, as is calculated either to effect a
On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle to
There have been men in all ages, who have been impelled as by an
instinct to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote
established between the voluntary and the spontaneous. In our
determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a
First, then, I deny Hobbes's claim in toto: for he had been
importance, Hobbes builds nothing on the principle which he had
impressions that are left, (or in the language of Mr. Hume, the
ideas,) are linked together. Whenever therefore any one of the
representare." To time therefore he subordinates all the other
exciting causes of association. The soul proceeds "a causa ad
Hobbes; nor of nervous or animal spirits, where inanimate and
irrational solids are thawed down, and distilled, or filtrated by
operations of thought, whether representations or volitions, as
attributes utterly and absurdly heterogeneous.
The general law of association, or, more accurately, the common
successive; second, vicinity or connection in space; third,
sufficiently powerful.
rather than any other ad libitum.
remainder seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick or
possession. She added, that he was a very learned man and a great
This authenticated case furnishes both proof and instance, that
comprehensive, it would require only a different and apportioned
technica.
Hartleian process has been rejected by his followers, and the
ourselves to have surmounted, and "at one bound high overleap all
The metaphysic's but a puppet motion
That goes with screws, the notion of a notion;
The copy of a copy and lame draught
Unnaturally taken from a thought
That counterfeits all pantomimic tricks,
And turns the eyes, like an old crucifix;
That counterchanges whatsoe'er it calls
By another name, and makes it true or false;
Turns truth to falsehood, falsehood into truth,
By virtue of the Babylonian's tooth.
The inventor of the watch, if this doctrine be true, did not in
sensation of proceeding life (nisus vitalis) associated with the
Far, very far am I from burthening with the odium of these
proceeded from the heart. But whether they be such, no man can be
------who deem themselves most free,
When they within this gross and visible sphere
Chain down the winged thought, scoffing ascent,
Proud in their meanness; and themselves they cheat
With noisy emptiness of learned phrase,
Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
Self-working tools, uncaus'd effects, and all
Those blind omniscients, those almighty slaves,
Untenanting creation of its God!
The attention will be more profitably employed in attempting to
discover and expose the paralogisms, by the magic of which such a
voluntary control over it.
The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined first by
Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonia
systematizer of the Leibnitzian doctrine, contents himself with
answers no purpose; unless, indeed, a difficulty can be solved by
materialism; a system which could not but be patronized by the
deducing and concluding would equally demand an explanation; and
possess the soul,
And like a God by spiritual art,
Be all in all, and all in every part.
Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it is utterly
unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so
intelligible as far as my present subject requires, it will be
associated.--2. That the hypothesis of an external world exactly
inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own
pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy and
Obligations to Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez.
observe, to collect, and to classify. But I soon felt, that human
consequences and cleared of all inconsistencies, was not less
impracticable than contranatural. Assume in its full extent the
position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, assume it
Innumerabili and the "De la causa, principio et uno," of the
Cogito; a philosophy of seeming hardihood, but certainly the most
intellectual powers were never stimulated into feverous energy by
transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who
penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of
money-changers were suffered to make a den of thieves.
contention,--I love peace: the souls of men are dear unto me: yet
And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?
--a sophism, which I fully agree with Warburton, is unworthy of
commentator, the pious and fervid William Law.
opinions, would have seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the
commentary on my own works."
degenerated into a crude  egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic
hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy:
ordinans, which we were permitted exoterice to call GOD; and his
I have introduced this statement, as appropriate to the narrative
learnt from him. In this instance, as in the dramatic lectures of
public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had
obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano
introduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its
however, on whom (for the greater part) their master's cloak had
fallen without, or with a very scanty portion of, his spirit, had
mechanics. With exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which
reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever shall be
references to his books, which I could not at all times make with
superfluous; be not charged on me as an ungenerous concealment or
propositum studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam magnum rebus
brooked."
audience for abstrusest themes, and truths that can neither be
communicated nor received without effort of thought, as well as
patience of attention.
"Che s'io non erro al calcolar de' punti,
Par ch' Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
E'l Somaro e'l Castron si sian congiunti.
Il tempo d'Apuleio piu non si nomini:
Che se allora un sol huom sembrava un Asino,
Mille Asini a' miei di rassembran huomini!"
"Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I met with it
Sinensis the oxyd of hydrogen saturated with caloric. To use the
authority of our genuine divines and philosophers, before the
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her bring,
Discursive or intuitive: discourse 
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, in kind the same.
I say, that I was confirmed by authority so venerable: for I had
Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt to deviate from the
necessaries of life had been furnished, in buying books, or in
REDEMPTION. The work was most severely handled in THE MONTHLY or
advertisements, carriage, and so forth, so much."--Still nothing
amiss. Selleridge (for orthography is no necessary part of a
bookseller's literary acquirements) L3. 3s. "Bless me! only three
warehouse-room in our book cellar." The work was in consequence
gentleman used to tell the anecdote with great humour and still
greater good nature.
With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I was a far more than equal
preaching by the way in most of the great towns, as an hireless
believed to be the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even
My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a
pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massive gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odours snatched from beds of amaranth,
And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!
My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy
This, I have said, was my second and last attempt. On returning
piece. At the ninth number I dropt the work. But from the London
I now devoted myself to poetry and to the study of ethics and
psychology; and so profound was my admiration at this time of
Hartley's ESSAY ON MAN, that I gave his name to my first-born. In
Now that the hand of Providence has disciplined all Europe into
enthusiasts who, flattered by the morning rainbow of the French
If in Spain too disappointment has nipped our too forward
principle contains in itself the germs of a prophecy; and, as the
fulfilment of its oracles supplies the outward and, (to men in
general,) the only test of its claim to the title. Wearisome as
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining.
Our very sign-boards, (said an illustrious friend to me,) give
journals at present, and for some years past.
Whether the spirit of jacobinism, which the writings of Burke
surveillance of myself and friend. There must have been not only
reflections on men, nature, and society, yet supply in itself a
natural connection to the parts, and unity to the whole. Such a
cathedrals into stables, destroyed the rarest trophies of art and
A long interval of quiet succeeded; or rather, the exhaustion had
indifference among the many, and a tendency to infidelity or
scepticism in the educated classes. At length those feelings of
philosophy, once more rose triumphant and effected the French
The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
They break their manacles, to wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain.
O Liberty! with profitless endeavour
Have I pursued thee many a weary hour;
But thou nor swell'st the victor's pomp, nor ever
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power!
Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee,
(Nor prayer nor boastful name delays thee)
From Superstition's harpy minions
And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves,
Thou speedest on thy cherub pinions,
The guide of homeless winds and playmate of the waves!
distinguished from the FATE of certain ancient philosophers in no
described."
Silver and gold man searcheth out:
Bringeth the ore out of the earth, and darkness into light.
But where findeth he wisdom?
Where is the place of understanding?
The abyss crieth; it is not in me!
Ocean echoeth back; not in me!
Whence then cometh wisdom?
Where dwelleth understanding?
Hidden from the eyes of the living
Kept secret from the fowls of heaven!
Hell and death answer;
We have heard the rumour thereof from afar!
GOD marketh out the road to it;
GOD knoweth its abiding place!
He beholdeth the ends of the earth;
He surveyeth what is beneath the heavens!
And as he weighed out the winds, and measured the sea,
And appointed laws to the rain,
And a path to the thunder,
A path to the flashes of the lightning!
And he counted it;
He searched into the depth thereof,
And with a line did he compass it round!
But to man he said,
The fear of the Lord is wisdom for thee!
And to avoid evil,
That is thy understanding. 
The understanding meantime suggests, the analogy of experience
facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a
philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (that is,
according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic
Heidelberg. But my chief efforts were directed towards a grounded
Tychsen I received as many lessons in the Gothic of Ulphilas as
paraphrase of the gospel, and the most important remains of the
Within less than a century after Luther's death the German was
qualified approbation of the opposition, and with far greater
interdependence of property.
pledge, that genuine impartiality with a respectable portion of
notorious of these mob-sycophants! From the commencement of the
Things of this nature scarce survive that night
That gives them birth; they perish in the sight;
Cast by so far from after-life, that there
Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were!
appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on a Duc d'Enghien ,
and the writer of a newspaper paragraph. Like a true vulture ,
practical results of such principles, we owe to that fortunate
recantation even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously
To have lived in vain must be a painful thought to any man, and
laboured altogether in vain, that from the articles written by me
though the least flattering to an author's self-love, had been
But are books the only channel through which the stream of
intellectual usefulness can flow? Is the diffusion of truth to be
feelings, or the gratification they derive from thinking
comparatively, and in proportion to the claims, which others are
Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewed on my corpse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis
Perlegis invidiae, curasque revolvis inanes,
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo.
Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
Omnia paulatim consumit longior aetas,
Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Vox aliudque sonat--Jamque observatio vitae
Multa dedit--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.
beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: never pursue
manufactory or counting house, from the law-court, or from having
Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very
Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question."
strictest performance of professional duties. Among the numerous
conspired with the freedom of the government to double all its
salutary powers by the removal of its abuses.
------the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts; 
department of human knowledge without some bearing on the various
relate the origin or first excitement of all the literature and
Et Pater Aeneas et avunculus excitat Hector.
sympathize. He learns to manage his genius more prudently and
permit, but require such ample documents from the biography of
faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable
gaebe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset
A chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or
omission of the chapter that follows.
visionary. I understand his ignorance.
penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all my attempts to
In lieu of the various requests which the anxiety of authorship
videlicet, to preserve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good
spirits. Till I had discovered the art of destroying the memory a
subordination and apt arrangement: to such a mind I would as
Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.
Still less dare a favourable perusal be anticipated from the
encircles the scanty vale of human life, is the horizon for the
supply . How and whence to these thoughts, these strong
Likewise in the fifth book of the fifth Ennead, speaking of the
"The vision and the faculty divine;"
contemplate the man of simple and disinterested goodness with
fulfilment; for man must either rise or sink.
intuitive of the spiritual in man (i.e. of that which lies on the
understanding itself is but the shadowy abstraction of living and
element of their being, the tremulous reciprocations of which
The history of philosophy (the same writer observes) contains
interpreted, however, they have not produced the effect, which
Leibnitz himself, in a most instructive passage, describes as the
regularity and a coincidence of all the parts in the very object,
question will be, by what right is it demanded? On this account I
introduction of Postulates in philosophy. The word postulate is
But here an important distinction presents itself. Philosophy is
imagination to the intuition of it.
philosophic energy. To theoroun mou, theoraema poiei, osper oi
geometrai theorountes graphousin; all' emon mae graphousaes,
contemplating describe lines correspondent; but I not describing
The postulate of philosophy and at the same time the test of
philosophic capacity, is no other than the heaven-descended KNOW
THYSELF! (E coelo descendit, Gnothi seauton). And this at once
representation with the object represented.
unconscious. Our problem is to explain this concurrence, its
possibility and its necessity.
intelligence can supervene to it, or how itself can grow into
philosophy, the one of the two poles of fundamental science.
and final aim, than in its proper objects, which are not as in
principles of knowledge, and the final test of truth.
Now these essential prejudices are all reducible to the one
prejudice.
The other position, which not only claims but necessitates the
admission of its immediate certainty, equally for the scientific
identity is the office and object of his philosophy.
It is to the true and original realism, that I would direct the
application, and for the particular purpose may be sufficiently
authenticated by the result, before it has itself been fully
Truth is correlative to being. Knowledge without a correspondent
blindness supplies the place of sight?
power, which renders the movement harmonious and cyclical.
We are to seek therefore for some absolute truth capable of
absurdity.
antecedence in its very conception.
SCHOLIUM. If we affirm of a board that it is blue, the predicate
thing, is no less a contradiction, than an infinite circle or a
But neither can the principle be found in a subject as a subject,
antitheses.
SCHOLIUM. If a man be asked how he knows that he is? he can only
answer, sum quia sum. But if (the absoluteness of this certainty
having been admitted) he be again asked, how he, the individual
But if we elevate our conception to the absolute self, the great
If then I know myself only through myself, it is contradictory to
identity of object and of representation; for herein consists the
principle of the ultimate science alone, i.e. of transcendental
natural philosophy, which is its opposite pole. In its very idea
therefore as a systematic knowledge of our collective KNOWING,
consciousness. We are not investigating an absolute principium
principle of a total and undivided philosophy, as, for prudential
consciousness may be the modification of a higher form of being,
Makar, ilathi moi;
Pater, ilathi moi
Ei para kosmon,
Ei para moiran
Ton son ethigon!
agency, and application of which form the contents of the ensuing
plurimis rejiciantur, quippe quorum, secundum leges cognitionis
abstractas, illas in concreto exsequi et in intuitus commutare
Critics, who are most ready to bring this charge of pedantry and
philosophy, may furnish an equal, and (caeteris paribus) even a
stronger presumption against their own philosophic talent.
tenets defended by Hume, Priestley, and the French fatalists or
But the worst and widest impediment still remains. It is the
reason, vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we
general. To aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine,
different. But it will probably appear in the next chapter, that
On the imagination, or esemplastic power
O Adam, One Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,
If not deprav'd from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life;
But more refin'd, more spiritous and pure,
As nearer to him plac'd, or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assigu'd,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportion'd to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery: last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd,
To vital spirits aspire: to animal:
To intellectual!--give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
REASON receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive. 
Sebomai noeron
Kruphian taxin
Ou katachuthen. 
The venerable sage of Koenigsberg has preceded the march of this
master-thought as an effective pioneer in his essay on the
mathematics by metaphysics, as Berkeley did in his ANALYST, or of
establishing and pacifying the unsettled, warring, and embroiled
domain of philosophy. An imitation of the mathematical method had
infinite, both alike indestructible. The problem will then be to
reasoning, it will then remain for us to elevate the thesis from
"You ask my opinion concerning your Chapter on the Imagination,
"As to myself, and stating in the first place the effect on my
"The effect on my feelings, on the other hand, I cannot better
shadows, while everywhere shadows were deepened into substances:
If substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either!
A tale obscure of high and passionate thoughts
To a strange music chanted!
winding steps of an old ruined tower. Secondly, a still stronger
Your affectionate, etc."
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but
attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more
successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my
compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an
length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a
opinions, and of alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of
philosophy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our
proposed. According to the difference of the object will be the
"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November," etc.
contents, may be entitled poems.
demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced and
species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by
likewise entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of
interesting reflections; I of course admit this as another fit
collects rapidly the general result unattracted by the component
concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the
representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and
Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through the senses to our minds.
The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a critical
analysis of Shakespeare's VENUS AND ADONIS, and RAPE of LUCRECE.
In the application of these principles to purposes of practical
criticism, as employed in the appraisement of works more or less
characteristics of original poetic genius in general.
indifferently with ideal beauty; till his wife, elated by her
husband's praises, modestly acknowledged that she had been his
characters themselves, and the whole representation of those
thousand outward images, and now beautiful, now fanciful
Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air.
In the two following lines for instance, there is nothing
objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in
Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd
Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.
Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,
By twilight glimpse discerned, mark! how they flee
From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
Streaming before them.
"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye."
"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come--
*     *     *     *     *     *
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent."
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April drest in all its trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them, where they grew
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were, tho' sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play!"
Gonimon men poiaetou------
------hostis rhaema gennaion lakoi,
will the imagery supply, when, with more than the power of the
With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms, which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;--
Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.
country!--Truly indeed--
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue,
Which Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold,
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.
difference between the poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and that of the present age. The remark may perhaps be
portraiture. In his diction and metre, on the other hand, he is
comparatively careless. The measure is either constructed on no
intelligent purpose. And the language from Pope's translation of
Homer, to Darwin's Temple of Nature , may, notwithstanding some
contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future
conquests. Animadverte, says Hobbes, quam sit ab improprietate
verborum pronum hominihus prolabi in errores circa ipsas res! Sat
Egregie vero J. C. Scaliger, in Lib. I. de Plantis: Est primum,
perfect simplicity. This their prime object they attained by the
Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--Rustic life
language of impassioned feeling; he undertook a useful task, and
unendangered.
exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which
passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent
particular places or employments, the poet owes the show of
excellent remark of Dr. Henry More's, that "a man of confined
particularly unfortunate, as well as that of the many respectable
mountaineers, whose manners have been so often eulogized, are in
imaginary golden age.
An old man stout of heart, and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength: his mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs,
And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes
When others heeded not, He heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.
The Shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him, and he to himself would say,
`The winds are now devising work for me!'
And truly, at all times, the storm, that drives
The traveller to a shelter, summoned him
Up to the mountains: he had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So lived he, until his eightieth year was past.
And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd's thoughts.
Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air; the hills, which he so oft
Had climbed with vigorous steps; which had impressed
So many incidents upon his mind
Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear;
Which, like a book, preserved the memory
Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts,
So grateful in themselves, the certainty
Of honourable gain; these fields, these hills
Which were his living Being, even more
Than his own blood--what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
affection in its ordinary workings.
; and the five following stanzas, with the exception of the four
justly said to form the best part of language. It is more than
probable, that many classes of the brute creation possess
capricious habits of expression;" it may be answered, that the
rustic, but for that of good sense and natural feeling.
Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially
different from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre--Its
necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby imposed on the
exclusively, as that class would use, or at least understand; but
subordinate and arrange the different parts according to their
relative importance, as to convey it at once, and as an organized
"In distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
Weep in the public roads, alone.
But such a one, on English ground,
And in the broad highway, I met;
Along the broad highway he came,
His cheeks with tears were wet
Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;
And in his arms a lamb he had."
public road; a grown man I mean, that was neither sick nor hurt,"
"At all times of the day and night
This wretched woman thither goes;
And she is known to every star,
And every wind that blows
And there, beside the Thorn, she sits,
When the blue day-light's in the skies,
And when the whirlwind's on the hill,
Or frosty air is keen and still,
And to herself she cries,
Oh misery! Oh misery!
Oh woe is me! Oh misery!"
"The Vision and the Faculty divine."
One point then alone remains, but that the most important; its
subordinate importance. The number of such words would be small
indeed, in our language; and even in the Italian and Greek, they
accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general admiration of
certain master intellects, the first established lights of
inspiration, to whom that dialect happened to be native.
Essence, in its primary signification, means the principle of
thing, which really exists, is mathematically circular. Thus too,
supporters of the common belief. Mr. Wordsworth, in consequence,
"In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
_A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire._
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain:
_I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more, because I weep in vain."_
An idealist defending his system by the fact, that when asleep we
heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and, vice versa, whether in the
present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an
expect, and the former bound to supply this species and degree of
"There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
POL.                      Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art,
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art,
Which does mend nature,--change it rather; but
The art itself is nature."
The discussion on the powers of metre in the preface is highly
"Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader!
Hast sent the hare? or hast thou swallow'd her?"
recollection, and consequently the preservation, of any series of
And, thus continuing, she said,
"I had a Son, who many a day
Sailed on the seas; but he is dead;
In Denmark he was cast away;
And I have travelled far as Hull to see
What clothes he might have left, or other property.
The Bird and Cage they both were his
'Twas my Son's Bird; and neat and trim
He kept it: many voyages
This Singing-bird hath gone with him;
When last he sailed he left the Bird behind;
As it might be, perhaps, from bodings of his mind.
He to a Fellow-lodger's care
Had left it, to be watched and fed,
Till he came back again; and there
I found it when my Son was dead;
And now, God help me for my little wit!
I trail it with me, Sir! he took so much delight in it."
"The simplest, and the most familiar things
Gain a strange power of spreading awe around them,") 
"The ancient spirit is not dead;
Old times, thought I, are breathing there;
Proud was I that my country bred
Such strength, a dignity so fair:
She begged an alms, like one in poor estate;
I looked at her again, nor did my pride abate."
technical chemistry), of mordaunt between it and the super-added
passion has its proper pulse, so will it likewise have its
objection, or rather on his objection to this reply, as already
anticipated in his preface.
Fourthly, and as intimately connected with this, if not the same
"A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire."
thing, would be noticed as giving a poetic cast to a man's
conversation. Should the sportsman exclaim, "Come boys! the rosy
The second line,
"And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;--"
supernatural in nature, which had given them such dear delight in
condemn as puerile in a modern poet?
"By this the northern wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre,
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wild deep wandering arre
And chearfull chaunticlere with his note shrill
Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery carre
In hast was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that night so long his roome did fill."
"At last the golden orientall gate
Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre,
And Phoebus fresh, as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre,
And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy ayre:
Which when the wakeful elfe perceived, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sun-bright armes and battailous array;
For with that pagan proud he combat will that day."
"I put my hat upon my head
And walk'd into the Strand;
And there I met another man,
Whose hat was in his hand."
instructive, and even interesting work; but take the following
"And to the end we may with better ease
Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to shew
What were the times foregoing near to these,
That these we may with better profit know.
Tell how the world fell into this disease;
And how so great distemperature did grow;
So shall we see with what degrees it came;
How things at full do soon wax out of frame."
"Ten kings had from the Norman Conqu'ror reign'd
With intermix'd and variable fate,
When England to her greatest height attain'd
Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state;
After it had with much ado sustain'd
The violence of princes, with debate
For titles and the often mutinies
Of nobles for their ancient liberties."
"For first, the Norman, conqu'ring all by might,
By might was forc'd to keep what he had got;
Mixing our customs and the form of right
With foreign constitutions, he had brought;
Mast'ring the mighty, humbling the poorer wight,
By all severest means that could be wrought;
And, making the succession doubtful, rent
His new-got state, and left it turbulent."
"well-languaged Daniel;" but likewise, and by the consent of his
equally appropriate, dignified and euphonic.
poetic diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon
differences of style it at once inspires and justifies; what
ornament or connection. For, even as truth is its own light and
evidence, discovering at once itself and falsehood, so is it the
present only the outlines and external appearance of the fruit. A
"Thee, eye of heaven! this great Soul envies not;
By thy male force is all, we have, begot.
In the first East thou now beginn'st to shine,
Suck'st early balm and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein'd career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night this western world of mine:
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
Who before thee one day began to be,
And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive
Or the next stanza but one:
"Great Destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast mark'd out a path and period
For every thing! Who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends see'st at one instant: thou
Knot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless brow
Ne'er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look,
And shew my story in thy eternal book," etc.
As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of
"Inoculation, heavenly maid! descend!"
"Queen of all harmonious things,
Dancing words and speaking strings,
What god, what hero, wilt thou sing?
What happy man to equal glories bring?
Begin, begin thy noble choice,
And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice.
Pisa does to Jove belong,
Jove and Pisa claim thy song.
The fair first-fruits of war, th' Olympic games,
Alcides, offer'd up to Jove;
Alcides, too, thy strings may move,
But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy prove?
Join Theron boldly to their sacred names;
Theron the next honour claims;
Theron to no man gives place,
Is first in Pisa's and in Virtue's race;
Theron there, and he alone,
Ev'n his own swift forefathers has outgone."
What Man shall we celebrate?
Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,
But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,
The first-fruits of the spoils of war.
But Theron for the four-horsed car,
That bore victory to him,
It behoves us now to voice aloud:
Of renowned fathers
The Flower, even him
Who preserves his native city erect and safe."
impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any
condemnation of which no reason can be assigned, except that it
practicable, or capable of furnishing either rule, guidance, or
It might appear from some passages in the former part of Mr.
overwhelming  in its consequences, that I cannot, and I do not,
suffered himself to express, in terms at once too large and too
possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative,
fables made on their first publication, or conduces more to their
colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women, (who are the
"And after this forth to the gate he wente,
Ther as Creseide out rode a ful gode pass,
And up and doun there made he many' a wente,
And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!
Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solas
As woulde blisful God now for his joie,
I might her sene agen come in to Troie!
And to the yondir hil I gan her Bide,
Alas! and there I toke of her my leve
And yond I saw her to her fathir ride;
For sorow of whiche mine hert shall to-cleve;
And hithir home I came whan it was eve,
And here I dwel, out-cast from ally joie,
And steal, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.
"And of himselfe imaginid he ofte
To ben defaitid, pale and woxin lesse
Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,
What may it be? who can the sothe gesse,
Why Troilus hath al this hevinesse?
And al this n' as but his melancolie,
That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.
Anothir time imaginin he would
That every wight, that past him by the wey,
Had of him routhe, and that thei saien should,
I am right sory, Troilus wol dey!
And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey,
As ye have herde: suche life gan he to lede
As he that stode betwixin hope and drede:
For which him likid in his songis shewe
Th' encheson of his wo as he best might,
And made a songe of words but a fewe,
Somwhat his woful herte for to light,
And whan he was from every mann'is sight
With softe voice he of his lady dere,
That absent was, gan sing as ye may here:
This song, when he thus songin had, ful Bone
He fil agen into his sighis olde
And every night, as was his wonte to done;
He stode the bright moone to beholde
And all his sorowe to the moone he tolde,
And said: I wis, whan thou art hornid newe,
I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe!"
As other men, so I myself do muse,
Why in this sort I wrest invention so;
And why these giddy metaphors I use,
Leaving the path the greater part do go;
The other recalls a still odder passage in THE SYNAGOGUE: or THE
SHADOW OF THE TEMPLE, a connected series of poems in imitation of
O how my mind
Is gravell'd!
Not a thought,
That I can find,
But's ravell'd
All to nought!
Short ends of threds,
And narrow shreds
Of lists,
Knots, snarled ruffs,
Loose broken tufts
Of twists,
Are my torn meditations ragged clothing,
Which, wound and woven, shape a suit for nothing:
One while I think, and then I am in pain
To think how to unthink that thought again.
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box, where sweets compacted lie
My music shews, ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round,
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises;
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of Glory ringing in our ears
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.
Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sad
And in my faintings, I presume, your love
Will more comply than help. A Lord I had,
And have, of whom some grounds, which may improve,
I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.
To him I brought a dish of fruit one day,
And in the middle placed my heart. But he
(I sigh to say)
Look'd on a servant, who did know his eye,
Better than you know me, or (which is one)
Than I myself. The servant instantly,
Quitting the fruit, seiz'd on my heart alone,
And threw it in a font, wherein did fall
A stream of blood, which issued from the side
Of a great rock: I well remember all,
And have good cause: there it was dipt and dyed,
And wash'd, and wrung: the very wringing yet
Enforceth tears. "Your heart was foul, I fear."
Indeed 'tis true. I did and do commit
Many a fault, more than my lease will bear;
Yet still ask'd pardon, and was not denied.
But you shall hear. After my heart was well,
And clean and fair, as I one eventide
(I sigh to tell)
Walk'd by myself abroad, I saw a large
And spacious furnace flaming, and thereon
A boiling caldron, round about whose verge
Was in great letters set AFFLICTION.
The greatness shew'd the owner. So I went
To fetch a sacrifice out of my fold,
Thinking with that, which I did thus present,
To warm his love, which, I did fear, grew cold.
But as my heart did tender it, the man
Who was to take it from me, slipt his hand,
And threw my heart into the scalding pan;
My heart that brought it (do you understand?)
The offerer's heart. "Your heart was hard, I fear."
Indeed 'tis true. I found a callous matter
Began to spread and to expatiate there:
But with a richer drug than scalding water
I bath'd it often, ev'n with holy blood,
Which at a board, while many drank bare wine,
A friend did steal into my cup for good,
Ev'n taken inwardly, and most divine
To supple hardnesses. But at the length
Out of the caldron getting, soon I fled
Unto my house, where to repair the strength
Which I had lost, I hasted to my bed:
But when I thought to sleep out all these faults,
(I sigh to speak)
I found that some had stuff'd the bed with thoughts,
I would say thorns. Dear, could my heart not break,
When with my pleasures ev'n my rest was gone?
Full well I understood who had been there:
For I had given the key to none but one:
It must be he. "Your heart was dull, I fear."
Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mind
Did oft possess me; so that when I pray'd,
Though my lips went, my heart did stay behind.
But all my scores were by another paid,
Who took my guilt upon him. "Truly, Friend,
"For aught I hear, your Master shews to you
"More favour than you wot of. Mark the end.
"The font did only what was old renew
"The caldron suppled what was grown too hard:
"The thorns did quicken what was grown too dull:
"All did but strive to mend what you had marr'd.
"Wherefore be cheer'd, and praise him to the full
"Each day, each hour, each moment of the week
"Who fain would have you be new, tender quick."
without this allowance.
A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of
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."
Wordsworthian the little poem on the rainbow?
"The Child is father of the Man, etc."
Or in the LUCY GRAY?
"No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor;
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door."
"Along the river's stony marge
The sand-lark chants a joyous song;
The thrush is busy in the wood,
And carols loud and strong.
A thousand lambs are on the rocks,
All newly born! both earth and sky
Keep jubilee, and more than all,
Those boys with their green coronal;
They never hear the cry,
That plaintive cry! which up the hill
Comes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll."
"Yet had he many a restless dream;
Both when he heard the eagle's scream,
And when he heard the torrents roar,
And heard the water beat the shore
Near where their cottage stood.
Beside a lake their cottage stood,
Not small like our's, a peaceful flood;
But one of mighty size, and strange;
That, rough or smooth, is full of change,
And stirring in its bed.
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
Returns on errand still the same;
This did it when the earth was new;
And this for evermore will do,
As long as earth shall last.
And, with the coming of the tide,
Come boats and ships that sweetly ride,
Between the woods and lofty rocks;
And to the shepherds with their flocks
Bring tales of distant lands."
But, as you have before been told,
This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,
And, with his dancing crest,
So beautiful, through savage lands
Had roamed about with vagrant bands
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth--so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart
A kindred impulse, seemed allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.
Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of nature wrought,
Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent;
The stars had feelings, which they sent
Into those magic bowers.
Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween,
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent
For passions linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment."
"Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him.--And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
With long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced,
That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,
Then sometimes in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene 
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."
The second shall be that noble imitation of Drayton  (if it was
not rather a coincidence) in the lines TO JOANNA.
--"When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space,
Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld
That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud.
The Rock, like something starting from a sleep,
Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again!
That ancient woman seated on Helm-crag
Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar
And the tall Steep of Silver-How sent forth
A noise of laughter; southern Lougbrigg heard,
And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone.
Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky
Carried the lady's voice!--old Skiddaw blew
His speaking trumpet!--back out of the clouds
From Glaramara southward came the voice:
And Kirkstone tossed it from its misty head!"
Fitter hope, and nobler doom;
He hath thrown aside his crook,
And hath buried deep his book;
Armour rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls,--
'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the Lance!
Bear me to the heart of France,
Is the longing of the Shield--
Tell thy name, thou trembling Field!--
Field of death, where'er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory!
Happy day, and mighty hour,
When our Shepherd, in his power,
Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword,
To his ancestors restored,
Like a re-appearing Star,
Like a glory from afar,
First shall head the flock of war!"
"Alas! the fervent harper did not know,
That for a tranquil Soul the Lay was framed,
Who, long compelled in humble walks to go,
Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
The words themselves in the foregoing extracts, are, no doubt,
Wordsworth's poems being less derived either from excitement of
persons of no every-day powers and acquirements, who had read the
Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals.
recurrence of similar merits or defects, and as faithfully
meritorious, and far more faithfully and in general far more ably
"No private grudge they need, no personal spite
The viva sectio is its own delight!
All enmity, all envy, they disclaim,
Disinterested thieves of our good name:
Cool, sober murderers of their neighbour's fame!"
Every censure, every sarcasm respecting a publication which the
betrays, that he knows more of his author, than the author's
creature can be degraded, that of a gossip, backbiter, and
pasquillant: but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals the
sanctuary, and secure place of refuge; offers abominations on the
resentment.
previously lay aside their individuality, and pledge themselves
Putting aside the too manifest and too frequent interference of
national party, and even personal predilection or aversion; and
occasions which I find for blame and regret in the conduct of the
groundless or exaggerated charge.
"O then what soul was his, when on the tops
Of the high mountains he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked--
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth,
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank
The spectacle! sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live: they were his life."
reason!--as furnishing evidence that the writer was raving, or he
analysed and found consonant with all the best convictions of my
understanding; and the imagery and diction of which had collected
feelings; that I should admit such lines to be mere nonsense or
intrare potest.
What then if this very critic should have cited a large number of
acknowledges to possess eminent and original beauty? What if he
Suppose too all this done without a single leading principle
established or even announced, and without any one attempt at
"The gayest, happiest attitude of things."
The reverse, for in all cases a reverse is possible, is the
advantages of education, both from books and from the more awful
"A vagrant Merchant bent beneath his load."
"Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits,
Their passions and their feelings="
If Mr. Wordsworth have set forth principles of poetry which his
arguments are insufficient to support, let him and those who have
In a comparatively small number of poems he chose to try an
conceptions. The poem entitled FIDELITY is for the greater part
preceding stanzas of the same poem.
"There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud--
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sun-beams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier holds it fast."
Or compare the four last lines of the concluding stanza with the
former half.
"Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
On which the Traveller thus had died,
The Dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his Master's side:
How nourish'd here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime,--
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate!"
The first characteristic, though only occasional defect, which I
appear to myself to find in these poems is the inconstancy of the
transitions from lines or sentences of peculiar felicity--(at all
Cromwell, in which prose and verse are intermixed (not as in the
"And one, the rarest, was a shell,
Which he, poor child, had studied well:
The shell of a green turtle, thin
And hollow;--you might sit therein,
It was so wide, and deep."
"Our Highland Boy oft visited
The house which held this prize; and, led
By choice or chance, did thither come
One day, when no one was at home,
And found the door unbarred."
"'Tis gone forgotten, let me do
My best. There was a smile or two--
I can remember them, I see
The smiles worth all the world to me.
Dear Baby! I must lay thee down:
Thou troublest me with strange alarms;
Smiles hast thou, sweet ones of thine own;
I cannot keep thee in my arms;
For they confound me: as it is,
I have forgot those smiles of his!"
"Thou hast a nest, for thy love and thy rest
And though little troubled with sloth
Drunken lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveller as I.
Happy, happy liver!
_With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to th' Almighty giver,_
Joy and jollity be with us both!
Hearing thee or else some other,
As merry a brother
I on the earth will go plodding on
By myself cheerfully till the day is done."
"Close by a Pond, upon the further side,
He stood alone; a minute's space I guess,
I watch'd him, he continuing motionless
To the Pool's further margin then I drew;
He being all the while before me full in view."
"And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Beside the little pond or moorish flood
Motionless as a Cloud the Old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth altogether, if it move at all."
"My former thoughts returned; the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
But now, perplex'd by what the Old Man had said,
My question eagerly did I renew,
'How is it that you live, and what is it you do?'
"He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said, that gathering Leeches far and wide
He travell'd; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the Ponds where they abide.
`Once I could meet with them on every side;
'But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
'Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may.'
While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The Old Man's shape, and speech, all troubled me
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently."
Indeed this fine poem is especially characteristic of the author.
"The fig-tree; not that kind for fruit renown'd,
"But such as at this day, to Indians known,
"In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms
"Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
"The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
"About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade
"High over-arch'd and ECHOING WALKS BETWEEN;
"There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
"Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
"At hoop-holes cut through thickest shade."
magical penny duplex, the excitement of vision by sound and the
Wordsworth would have us entertain at all times, as men, and as
readers; and by the excitement of this lofty, yet prideless
impartiality in poetry, he might hope to have encouraged its
disturbed or offended by any thoughts or images, which the poet
himself has not presented.
In the plain presence of his dignity."
"Oh! many are the Poets that are sown
By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts
The vision and the faculty divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least."
To use a colloquial phrase, such sentiments, in such language, do
But be this as it may, the feelings with which,
"I think of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul, that perished in his pride;
Of Burns, who walk'd in glory and in joy
Behind his plough, upon the mountain-side"--
subject, had invented an account of his birth, parentage and
education, with all the strange and fortunate accidents which had
MESSIAH of Klopstock, or in CUMBERLAND'S CALVARY; and not merely
suggested by it as in the PARADISE LOST of Milton. That illusion,
characteristic of a Pedlar? One sentiment, that might not more
plausibly, even without the aid of any previous explanation, have
profession in which the language of learning and refinement are
natural and to be expected? Need the rank have been at all
"Among the hills of Athol he was born
There, on a small hereditary Farm,
An unproductive slip of rugged ground,
His Father dwelt; and died in poverty;
While He, whose lowly fortune I retrace,
The youngest of three sons, was yet a babe,
A little One--unconscious of their loss.
But ere he had outgrown his infant days
His widowed Mother, for a second Mate,
Espoused the teacher of the Village School;
Who on her offspring zealously bestowed
Needful instruction."
"From his sixth year, the Boy of whom I speak,
In summer tended cattle on the Hills;
But, through the inclement and the perilous days
Of long-continuing winter, he repaired
To his Step-father's School,"-etc.
distinguished from verbal: for, as in the latter there is a
"They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude!"
"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."    Vol. I. p. 328.
"Twelve hours, twelve bounteous hours are gone, while I
Have been a traveller under open sky,
Much witnessing of change and cheer,
Yet as I left I find them here!"
Whereat the poet, without seeming to reflect that the poor tawny
applied to the immense empire of China improgressive for thirty
centuries:
"The weary Sun betook himself to rest:--
--Then issued Vesper from the fulgent west,
Outshining, like a visible God,
The glorious path in which he trod.
And now, ascending, after one dark hour,
And one night's diminution of her power,
Behold the mighty Moon! this way
She looks, as if at them--but they
Regard not her:--oh, better wrong and strife,
Better vain deeds or evil than such life!
The silent Heavens have goings on
The stars have tasks!--but these have none!"
The last instance of this defect,(for I know no other than these
"Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind,--
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find!
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A Present which is not to be put by!"
operations, are not accompanied with consciousness; who else is
constituted God. Yet not even these would confound the part, as a
circumstance, because they had meant to drink their wine in the
So with regard to this passage. In what sense can the magnificent
"To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;"--
Surely, it cannot be that this wonder-rousing apostrophe is but a
Wordsworth, may be mimicked by copyists, he may be plundered by
imaginative power his sense would want its vital warmth and
To these defects which, as appears by the extracts, are only
occasional, I may oppose, with far less fear of encountering the
misappropriations, which promiscuous authorship, and reading not
advantages which language alone, at least which language with
constantly, so imperceptibly, and as it were by such elements and
positively unfit, we shall learn to value earnestly and with a
imitation are, which a contemporary writer, and especially a
invalidate the justice of this eulogy so applied.
Makes audible a linked lay of truth,
Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
"O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in every thing;"
"I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Has oftener left me mourning;"
"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
The Blackbird in the summer trees,
The Lark upon the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free!
But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
If there is one, who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,
It is the man of mirth.
My days, my Friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved;"
or the sonnet on Buonaparte, page 202, vol. II. or finally (for a
"To be a Prodigal's Favorite--then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner--behold our lot!
O Man! That from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not."
Wordsworth is not equally with Daniel alike intelligible to all
necessarily obscure, because it does not aim to be popular. It is
"Fit audience find, though few."
"Canzone, i' credo, che saranno radi
Color, che tua ragione intendan bene,
Tanto lor sei faticoso ed alto."
"O lyric song, there will be few, I think,
Who may thy import understand aright:
Thou art for them so arduous and so high!"
Polla oi ut' anko-
nos okea belae
endon enti pharetras
phonanta synetoisin; es
de to pan hermaeneon
chatizei; sophos o pol-
la eidos phua;
mathontes de labroi
panglossia, korakes os,
akranta garueton
Dios pros ornicha theion.
perfectly transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the
"So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle. with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away."
"Upon yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.
While thus before my eyes he gleams,
A Brother of the Leaves he seems;
When in a moment forth he teems
His little song in gushes
As if it pleased him to disdain
And mock the Form which he did feign
While he was dancing with the train
Of Leaves among the bushes."
completely Wordsworth's, commencing
"Three years she grew in sun and shower"--
expressive of that deranged state, in which, from the increased
Imagination and Passion, the alien object to which it had been so
"Suck, little babe, oh suck again!
It cools my blood; it cools my brain;
Thy lips, I feel them, baby! They
Draw from my heart the pain away.
Oh! press me with thy little hand;
It loosens something at my chest
About that tight and deadly band
I feel thy little fingers prest.
The breeze I see is in the tree!
It comes to cool my babe and me."
"Thy father cares not for my breast,
'Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest;
'Tis all thine own!--and if its hue
Be changed, that was so fair to view,
'Tis fair enough for thee, my dove!
My beauty, little child, is flown,
But thou wilt live with me in love;
And what if my poor cheek be brown?
'Tis well for me, thou canst not see
How pale and wan it else would be."
Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of
creature of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream."
I shall select a few examples as most obviously manifesting this
faculty; but if I should ever be fortunate enough to render my
analysis of Imagination, its origin and characters, thoroughly
"But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks!--and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane;--a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pinal umbrage tinged
Perennially--beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries--ghostly shapes
May meet at noontide; FEAR and trembling HOPE,
And TIME, the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glazamara's inmost caves."
The effect of the old man's figure in the poem of RESOLUTION AND
INDEPENDENCE, vol. II. page 33.
"While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The Old Man's shape, and speech, all troubled me
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently."
Or the 8th, 9th, 19th, 26th, 31st, and 33rd, in the collection of
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy;
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy!
The Youth who daily further from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
And page 352 to 354 of the same ode.
"O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised!
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither,--
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
And since it would be unfair to conclude with an extract, which,
though highly characteristic, must yet, from the nature of the
"Fast the church-yard fills;--anon
Look again and they all are gone;
The cluster round the porch, and the folk
Who sate in the shade of the Prior's Oak!
And scarcely have they disappeared
Ere the prelusive hymn is heard;--
With one consent the people rejoice,
Filling the church with a lofty voice!
They sing a service which they feel:
For 'tis the sun-rise now of zeal;
And faith and hope are in their prime
In great Eliza's golden time."
"A moment ends the fervent din,
And all is hushed, without and within;
For though the priest, more tranquilly,
Recites the holy liturgy,
The only voice which you can hear
Is the river murmuring near.
--When soft!--the dusky trees between,
And down the path through the open green,
Where is no living thing to be seen;
And through yon gateway, where is found,
Beneath the arch with ivy bound,
Free entrance to the church-yard ground--
And right across the verdant sod,
Towards the very house of God;
Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,
Soft and silent as a dream.
A solitary Doe!
White she is as lily of June,
And beauteous as the silver moon
When out of sight the clouds are driven
And she is left alone in heaven!
Or like a ship some gentle day
In sunshine sailing far away
A glittering ship that hath the plain
Of ocean for her own domain."
"What harmonious pensive changes
Wait upon her as she ranges
Round and through this Pile of state
Overthrown and desolate!
Now a step or two her way
Is through space of open day,
Where the enamoured sunny light
Brightens her that was so bright;
Now doth a delicate shadow fall,
Falls upon her like a breath,
From some lofty arch or wall,
As she passes underneath."
The following analogy will, I am apprehensive, appear dim and
fantastic, but in reading Bartram's Travels I could not help
Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me to prophesy but I could
ridicule Mr. Wordsworth's compositions.
So much for the detractors from Wordsworth's merits. On the other
flatter myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my
advocates. More indiscriminate than mine their admiration may be:
Wordsworth's reputation. His fame belongs to another age, and can
meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers, with whom he is,
Were the collection of poems, published with these biographical
For more than eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled
SIBYLLINE LEAVES, and the present volume, up to this page, been
When Hope grew round me, like the climbing vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine!
appearance; and within an hour the number of those on deck was
countrymen, that now begins to form a distinction and a bond of
Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.
The two Danes were brothers. The one was a man with a clear white
ANSWER.  You do me too much honour, Sir.
English very fine?
THE DANE.  O!--is, is, am, am, am. Yes, yes--I know, I know.
ANSWER.  I am, thou art, he is, we are, ye are, they are.
ANSWER.  And art, Sir! is--?
ANSWER.  Sir! a man like you cannot talk on any subject without
discovering the depth of his information.
ANSWER.  The grammar, Sir? The language, I presume--
ANSWER.  Ten thousand pardons!
THE DANE.  Vell, and I was only fourteen years--
ANSWER.  Only fourteen years old?
THE DANE. No more. I vas fourteen years old--and he asked me all
language.
ANSWER.  A prodigy! an absolute prodigy!
THE DANE.  No, no, no! he was a bishop, a great superintendent.
ANSWER.  Yes! a bishop.
THE DANE.  A bishop--not a mere predicant, not a prediger.
THE DANE.  Often! Dhere is not von instance recorded in dhe whole
ANSWER.  And since then, Sir--?
THE DANE.  I was sent ofer to dhe Vest Indies--to our Island, and
undertakings which he proposed to himself to commence, till, the
brandy aiding his vanity, and his vanity and garrulity aiding the
must place her last and boldest step on this side the altar. What
It was cold, the cabin was at open war with my olfactories, and I
indeed insensible of the mephitis.
irresistibly laughable.
Accordingly we hauled anchor, and passed gently up the river. At
Cuxhaven both sides of the river may be seen in clear weather; we
beautiful island, forty miles from Cuxhaven, the wind continuing
slack. This holm or island is about a mile and a half in length,
orchard, and each with its own separate path: a village with a
labyrinth of paths, or rather a neighbourhood of houses! It is
affectation of tastes and enjoyments for which men's habits have
disqualified them. Pass them by on Saturdays and Sundays with the
To a lady.
Meine liebe Freundinn,
See how natural the German comes from me, though I have not yet
Englander! vhee goes it!"--which is certainly a proof of great
Amtsschreiberinn--the colonel's lady, die Frau Obristinn or
modified without being disturbed or superseded by them. This
remember, with the same feeling at the time I was reading a
"Their visnomies seem'd like a goodly banner
Spread in defiance of all enemies."
effort occasioned nor was there wanting beside it one of those
abominable custom. Our emigrant acquaintance was, we found, an
considerable sums, by a refusal to make further advances, and in
consequence of their intrigues had received an order to quit the
specimen), I heard a tolerable Italian pun, and an interesting
"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
and Shakespeare put it in my head to go to the French comedy.
distinctly that sense of individuality which belongs to real
existence. Paradoxical as it may sound, one of the essential
interpreted it as insulting irony, you appropriate with infinite
satisfaction, when you share the garbage with the whole stye, and
surprised by it, when we know how it will turn out?
preceding chapter, at least ten times for once that they find any
incidents are concerned, already stock plays. All the stories, at
P.  But how can you connect with such men and such actions that
P.  (aside.) That is, he gratifies your envy by libelling your
superiors.
P.  Excellent! But you have forgotten those brilliant flashes of
And now--good night! Truly! I might have written this last sheet
apartments were taken off from one corner. Between these and the
houses among us, and, being painted red and green, it cuts and
tesselates the buildings very gaily. From within three miles of
arbours and trellis work, and thick vegetable walls, and trees in
pauses and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,
"with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,"
myself, and W---- interpreted Klopstock's French as I had already
understand me : and I, who wished to hear his opinions, not to
correct them, was glad that he did not.
We now took our leave. At the beginning of the French Revolution
Klopstock wrote odes of congratulation. He received some honorary
detestation of the crimes and follies of the Revolutionists, he
blackened in the blaze. Over that part of the woods which lay
I will conclude this letter with the mere transcription of notes,
nomenclature. "Klopstock having wished to see the CALVARY of
unreasonable, but calumnious. Secondly, I attribute little other
Heaven preserve you, and                         S. T. COLERIDGE.
Quid quod praefatione praemunierim libellum, qua conor omnem
offendiculi ansam praecidere?  Neque quicquam addubito, quin ea
disquisition on the modern drama, a critique on the Tragedy of
taste.--The letter was written to a friend: and the apparent
abruptness with which it begins, is owing to the omission of the
introductory sentences.
You remember, my dear Sir, that Mr. Whitbread, shortly before his
British stage not only from horses, dogs, elephants, and the like
respecting the first production of the Tragic Muse which had been
But to understand the true character of the ROBBERS, and of the
The so-called German drama, therefore, is English in its origin,
throughout Europe. A popularity so extensive, and of a work so
accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and
constitutional hardihood,--all these advantages, elevated by the
habits and sympathies of noble birth and national character, are
"Self-contradiction is the only wrong!
For, by the laws of spirit, in the right
Is every individual character
That acts in strict consistence with itself."
responsibility, of a present Providence, and of both present and
future retribution) may influence the characters and actions of
character representative and symbolical, therefore instructive;
character, she yet died to save me!--this, sir, takes hold of two
womanhood: and, on the other hand, it is among the miseries, and
abides in the dark ground-work of our nature, to crave an outward
intellect; and this is the open attraction of his Richard, Iago,
Edmund, and others in particular. But again; of all intellectual
interest the wildest tales of ghosts, wizards, genii, and secret
talismans. On this propensity, so deeply rooted in our nature, a
"GHOST.--Monster! behold these wounds!
"D. JOHN.--I do! They were well meant and well performed, I see.
"GHOST.------Repent, repent of all thy villanies.
My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries,
Heaven will pour out his judgments on you all.
Hell gapes for you, for you each fiend doth call,
And hourly waits your unrepenting fall.
You with eternal horrors they'll torment,
Except of all your crimes you suddenly repent. (Ghost sinks.)
"D. JOHN.--Farewell, thou art a foolish ghost. Repent, quoth he!
what could this mean? Our senses are all in a mist sure.
"D. ANT.--And nature is unalterable in us too.
"STATUE-GHOST.--Will you not relent and feel remorse?
"D. JOHN.--Could'st thou bestow another heart on me I might. But
with this heart I have, I can not.
"D. LOPEZ.--These things are prodigious.
"D. LOP.--If we could, 'tis now too late. I will not.
(Thunder and lightning. D. Lop. and D. Ant. are swallowed up.)
"D. JOHN.--Think not to fright me, foolish ghost; I'll break your
(Thunder and lightning--chorus of devils, etc.)
"D. JOHN.--These things I see with wonder, but no fear.
Were all the elements to be confounded,
And shuffled all into their former chaos;
Were seas of sulphur flaming round about me,
And all mankind roaring within those fires,
I could not fear, or feel the least remorse.
To the last instant I would dare thy power.
Here I stand firm, and all thy threats contemn.
Thy murderer (to the ghost of one whom he had murdered)
Stands here! Now do thy worst!"
(He is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.)
"D. LOP.--The rascal is afraid of you after death.
(One knocks hard at the door.)
"D. JOHN.--(to the servant)--Rise and do your duty.
"SERV.--Oh the devil, the devil!  (Marble ghost enters.)
"D. JOHN.--Ha! 'tis the ghost! Let's rise and receive him! Come,
Here, Governour, your health! Friends, put it about! Here's
excellent meat, taste of this ragout. Come, I'll help you, come
eat, and let old quarrels be forgotten.  (The ghost threatens him
not forgetting your sweet sister.                (devils enter.)
"D. JOHN.--Are these some of your retinue? Devils, say you? I'm
sorry I have no burnt brandy to treat 'em with, that's drink fit
for devils," etc.
Nor is the scene from which we quote interesting, in dramatic
world's distance from the spirit of modern jacobinism. The latter
themselves alone.
But what is there to account for the prodigy of the tempest at
expectation, one man saves himself by his prodigious powers as a
swimmer, aided by the peculiarity of his destination--
FIRST MONK.--Change, change those drenched weeds--
PRIOR.--I wist not of them--every soul did perish--
Enter third Monk hastily.
"THIRD MONK.--No, there was one did battle with the storm
With careless desperate force; full many times
His life was won and lost, as tho' he recked not--
No hand did aid him, and he aided none--
Alone he breasted the broad wave, alone
That man was saved."
"Off! ye are men--there's poison in your touch.
But I must yield, for this" (what?) "hath left me strengthless."
So end the three first scenes. In the next (the Castle of St.
"PIET.--Hugo, well met. Does e'en thy age bear
Memory of so terrible a storm?
HUGO.--They have been frequent lately.
PIET.--They are ever so in Sicily.
HUGO.--So it is said. But storms when I was young
Would still pass o'er like Nature's fitful fevers,
And rendered all more wholesome. Now their rage,
Sent thus unseasonable and profitless,
Speaks like the threats of heaven."
"Long ere the storm arose, her restless gestures
Forbade all hope to see her blest with sleep."
"The limner's art may trace the absent feature."
"Restore the scenes in which they met and parted?"
"The thoughts, the recollections, sweet and bitter,
Or the Elysian dreams of lovers when they loved."
"This has her body, that her mind:
Which has the better bargain?"
overcomes the main difficulty of most first acts, to wit, that of
"That she who bore him had recoiled from him,
Nor known the alien visage of her child,
Yet still she (Imogine) lov'd him."
"But thou art Bertram's still, and Bertram's ever."
"How the lip works! How the bare teeth do grind!
And beaded drops course  down his writhen brow!"
The dramatic effect of which passage we not only concede to the
"PRIOR.--I will awake him from this horrid trance. This is no
natural sleep! Ho, wake thee, stranger!"
This is rather a whimsical application of the verb reflex we must
natural; for lethargy itself could not withstand the scolding
"When their drenched hold forsook both gold and gear,
They griped their daggers with a murderer's instinct;"
familiarity with atrocious events and characters appeared to have
appeals, and craving alone for the grossest and most outrageous
accustomed state of raving, blasphemy, and nonsense. Next follows
blasphemous execrations, his fixed and deliberate resolve to
"The rivulet, that bathed the convent walls,
Into a foaming flood: upon its brink
The Lord and his small train do stand appalled.
With torch and bell from their high battlements
The monks do summon to the pass in vain;
He must return to-night."
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
chapel, with all the vessels and other preparations for the holy
"No more I know, I wish I did,
And I would tell it all to you;
For what became of this poor child
There's none that ever knew."
Our whole information  is derived from the following words--
"PRIOR.--Where is thy child?
CLOTIL.--(Pointing to the cavern into which she has looked)
Oh he lies cold within his cavern-tomb!
Why dost thou urge her with the horrid theme?
PRIOR.--(who will not, the reader may observe, be disappointed of
It was to make (query wake) one living cord o' th' heart,
And I will try, tho' my own breaks at it.
Where is thy child?
wizard woods."
Now these two lines consist in a senseless plagiarism from the
"I die no felon's death,
A warriour's weapon freed a warriour's soul!"
majority of instances, leads, and almost compels the Afflicted to
Me longus silendi
Edit amor, facilesque luctus
Hausit medullas. Fugerit ocyus,
Simul negantem visere jusseris
Aures amicorum, et loquacem
Questibus evacuaris iram.
Olim querendo desinimus queri,
Ipsoque fletu lacryma perditur
Nec fortis  aeque, si per omnes
Cura volat residetque ramos.
Vires amicis perdit in auribus,
Minorque semper dividitur dolor,
Per multa permissus vagari
continued reflection should strengthen my present belief, that my
Who lives, that's not
Depraved or depraves? Who dies, that bears
Not one spurn to the grave of their friends' gift?
however various the sources of this panegyric may have been. And,
existence of which they had perhaps entertained no suspicion--for
"O we are querulous creatures! Little less
Than all things can suffice to make us happy:
And little more than nothing is enough
To make us wretched."
Aye, here now! (exclaimed the critic) here come Coleridge's
of the two following passages. The first is spoken in answer to a
"What people? How convened? or, if convened,
Must not the magic power that charms together
Millions of men in council, needs have power
To win or wield them? Rather, O far rather
Shout forth thy titles to yon circling mountains,
And with a thousand-fold reverberation
Make the rocks flatter thee, and the volleying air,
Unbribed, shout back to thee, King Emerick!
By wholesome laws to embank the sovereign power,
To deepen by restraint, and by prevention
Of lawless will to amass and guide the flood
In its majestic channel, is man's task
And the true patriot's glory! In all else
Men safelier trust to Heaven, than to themselves
When least themselves: even in those whirling crowds
Where folly is contagious, and too oft
Even wise men leave their better sense at home,
To chide and wonder at them, when returned."
"And yet Sarolta, simple, inexperienced,
Could see him as he was, and often warned me.
Whence learned she this?--O she was innocent!
And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom!
The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air,
Feared soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter.
And the young steed recoils upon his haunches,
The never-yet-seen adder's hiss first heard.
O surer than suspicion's hundred eyes
Is that fine sense, which to the pure in heart,
By mere oppugnancy of their own goodness,
Reveals the approach of evil."
reasoning, before all others.--I remembered Catullus's lines.
Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri,
Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium.
Omnia sunt ingrata: nihil fecisse benigne est:
Immo, etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis;
Ut mihi, quem nemo gravius nec acerbius urget,
Quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.
I refer to this review at present, in consequence of information
In the sermon and the notes both the historical truth and the
therefore, of defending myself, which I could easily effect by a
experience, that he needs something, joined with the strong
Christianity, a man must have been a Christian, and this is the
superseding but as involving a glad undoubting faith in the two
coercendos affectus in solo intellectu consistit; ergo nemo
beatitudine gaudet, quia affectus coercuit, sed contra potestas
libidines coercendi ex ipsa beatitudine oritur.
instance certain opinions, be they unbelief, or misbelief, are
theologically and impersonally, i.e. of Psilanthropism and
alla broton
ton men keneophrones auchai
ex agathon ebalon;
ton d' au katamemphthent' agan
ischun oikeion paresphalen kalon,
cheiros elkon opisso, thumos atolmos eon.
 The authority of Milton and Shakespeare may be usefully pointed
already denizens of our language, such as blood-stained, terror-
stricken, self-applauding: or when a new epithet, or one found in
 See the criticisms on the Ancient Mariner, in the Monthly and
Critical Reviews of the first volume of the Lyrical Ballads.
 This is worthy of ranking as a maxim, (regula maxima,) of
"No more will I endure love's pleasing pain,
Or round my heart's leg tie his galling chain."
 Cowper's Task was published some time before the Sonnets of Mr.
Pensive at eve, on the hard world I mused,
And m poor heart was sad; so at the Moon
I gazed and sighed, and sighed; for ah how soon
Eve saddens into night! mine eyes perused
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass
That wept and glitter'd in the paly ray
And I did pause me on my lonely way
And mused me on the wretched ones that pass
O'er the bleak heath of sorrow. But alas!
Most of myself I thought! when it befel,
That the soothe spirit of the breezy wood
Breath'd in mine ear: "All this is very well,
But much of one thing, is for no thing good."
Oh my poor heart's inexplicable swell!
Oh I do love thee, meek Simplicity!
For of thy lays the lulling simpleness
Goes to my heart, and soothes each small distress,
Distress the small, yet haply great to me.
'Tis true on Lady Fortune's gentlest pad
I amble on; and yet I know not why
So sad I am! but should a friend and I
Frown, pout and part, then I am very sad.
And then with sonnets and with sympathy
My dreamy bosom's mystic woes I pall:
Now of my false friend plaining plaintively,
Now raving at mankind in general;
But whether sad or fierce, 'tis simple all,
All very simple, meek Simplicity!
And this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil'd,
Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild,
Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt.
Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade!
Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.
What the she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd:
And aye, beside her stalks her amorous knight
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white.
Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high noon
Peeps to fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest-moon!
Your poem must eternal be,
Dear sir! it cannot fail,
For 'tis incomprehensible,
And without head or tail.
 Of old things all are over old,
Of good things none are good enough;--
We'll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.
I too will have my kings, that take
From me the sign of life and death:
Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds,
Obedient to my breath.
Wordsworth's Rob Roy.--Poet. Works, vol. III. p. 127.
 Pope was under the common error of his age, an error far from
Shakespeare, not only in the general construction, but in all the
occasionally varying the illustrations of the same thoughts, was
 In the course of one of my Lectures, I had occasion to point out
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, etc.
enlightened and highly educated persons, who at different times
poetry, to receive pleasure from the separate images and phrases
astra phaeinaen amphi selaenaen
phainet aritretea--
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
the sense or the diction be the more absurd. My answer was; that,
perception of the faults in certain passages, has been more than
repaid to me by the additional delight with which I read the
remainder.
More foul diseases than e'er yet the hot
Sun bred thro' his burnings, while the dog
Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog
And deadly vapour from his angry breath,
Filling the lower world with plague and death,
to Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar,
The rampant lion hunts he fast
With dogs of noisome breath;
Whose baleful barking brings, in haste,
Pine, plagues, and dreary death!
Terrific Glory! for his burning breath
Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death!
visualized puns.
 Especially in this age of personality, this age of literary and
conjectures.
 If it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half the
 This is one instance among many of deception, by the telling the
Great wit (meaning genius) to madness sure is near allied.
Now if the profound sensibility, which is doubtless one of the
projectile or to the attractive force exclusively.
 For as to the devotees of the circulating libraries, I dare not
compliment their pass-time, or rather kill-time, with the name of
manufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes,
characterized by the power of reconciling the two contrary yet
 Ex. gr. Pediculos e capillis excerptos in arenam jacere
incontusos; eating of unripe fruit; gazing on the clouds, and (in
 I have ventured to call it unique; not only because I know no
chiefly, because it is a compilation, which, in the various
 It is not easy to estimate the effects which the example of a
previously informed the public that I had been dishonoured at
 In opinions of long continuance, and in which we have never
 Without however the apprehensions attributed to the Pagan
su d' ouk edeisas ton huophon ton rhaematon,
kai tas apeilas; XAN, ou ma Di', oud' ephrontisa.--Ranae, 492-3.
And here let me hint to the authors of the numerous parodies, and
conceal and convey wit and wisdom in the semblance of folly and
childish poem, by writing another still sillier and still more
childish, can only prove (if it prove any thing at all) that the
existing here merely in caricature, detracts from the libeller's
heart, without adding an iota to the credit of his understanding.
 The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul's fair emblem, and its only name--
But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
Of mortal life! For to this earthly frame
Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.
 Mr. Wordsworth, even in his two earliest poems, The Evening Walk
"'Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry;
Where hardly given the hopeless waste to cheer,
Denied the bread of life the foodful ear,
Dwindles the pear on autumn's latest spray,
And apple sickens pale in summer's ray;
Ev'n here content has fixed her smiling reign
With independence, child of high disdain."
regretted that Mr. Wordsworth has not republished these two poems
 This is effected either by giving to the one word a general, and
application, or excitement of the same sound, will call forth a
equivocation either by the substitution of a new word, or by the
genere, and where it is not used scholastically for the universal
 I here use the word idea in Mr. Hume's sense on account of its
reader will not be displeased with the following interesting
virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible
compositions, and love the purity of the idea." Des Cartes having
appropriated to another meaning, that I could not use it without
intensify: though, I confess, it sounds uncouth to my own ear.
 And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley by a grin.
 An American Indian with little variety of images, and a still
 The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoisnsus may, perhaps,
Fichte's idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature.
Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus,
Here on this market-cross aloud I cry:
I, I, I! I itself I!
The form and the substance, the what and the why,
The when and the where, and the low and the high,
The inside and outside, the earth and the sky,
I, you and he, and he, you and I,
All souls and all bodies are I itself I!
All I itself I!
(Fools! a truce with this starting!)
All my I! all my I!
He's a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!
Thus cried the God with high imperial tone;
In robe of stiffest state, that scoffed at beauty,
A pronoun-verb imperative he shone--
Then substantive and plural-singular grown
He thus spake on! Behold in I alone
(For ethics boast a syntax of their own)
Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye,
In O! I, you, the vocative of duty!
I of the world's whole Lexicon the root!
Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight
The genitive and ablative to boot:
The accusative of wrong, the nominative of right,
And in all cases the case absolute!
Self-construed, I all other moods decline:
Imperative, from nothing we derive us;
Yet as a super-postulate of mine,
Unconstrued antecedence I assign
 It would be an act of high and almost criminal injustice to pass
physiological and physical Science." The latter work is not quite
comets, etc. which, whether just or erroneous, are by no means
posterity, consists in the masterly force of reasoning, and the
copiousness of induction, with which he has assailed, and (in my
necessity and efficiency to every system that merits the name of
author's views, as far as concerns himself, are unborrowed and
completely his own, as he neither possessed nor do his writings
superseded a considerable part of my labours.
 But for sundry notes on Shakespeare, and other pieces which have
discoursing; but the discursion of the mind, the processes of
 See Laing's History of Scotland.--Walter Scott's bards, ballads,
 Thus organization, and motion are regarded as from God, not in
 Job, chap. xxviii.
 Wherever A=B, and A is not=B, are equally demonstrable, the
metabasis eis allo genos. Thus, the attributes of Space and time
 To those, who design to acquire the language of a country in the
advantage which I derived from learning all the words, that could
 This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne, is by no
She gave with joy her virgin breast;
She hid it not, she bared the breast,
Which suckled that divinest babe!
Blessed, blessed were the breasts
Which the Saviour infant kiss'd;
And blessed, blessed was the mother
Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap,
Hung o'er him with her looks of love,
And sooth'd him with a lulling motion.
Blessed; for she shelter'd him
From the damp and chilling air;
Blessed, blessed! for she lay
With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore,
With her virgin lips she kiss'd,
With her arms, and to her breast
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal, that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,
In the darkness and the night
For us she bore the heavenly Lord!
themselves were the chief agents in exciting, had ever lived in a
against which the existing laws had not provided both sufficient
 I seldom think of the murder of this illustrious Prince without
recollecting the lines of Valerius Flaccus:
------super ipsius ingens
Instat fama viri, virtusque haud laeta tyranno;
Ergo anteire metus, juvenemque exstinguere pergit.
 Theara de kai ton chaena kai taen dorkada,
Kai ton lagoon, kai to ton tauron genos.
Manuel Phile, De Animal. Proprietat. sect. I. i. 12.
 This distinction between transcendental and transcendent is
completed.
 April, 1825. If I did not see it with my own eyes, I should not
humbled. S. T. Coleridge.
contemplative nature." So Synesius:
'Odis hiera
'Arraeta gona
'En kai Pan'ta--(taken by itself) is Spinozism.
'En d' 'Apan'ton--a mere Anima Mundi.
'En te pro panton--is mechanical Theism.
Ta te kai ta legei,
Buthon arraeton
Su to tikton ephus,
Su to tiktomenon;
Su to photizon,
Su to lampomenon;
Su to phainomenon,
Su to kryptomenon
Idiais augais.
'En kai panta,
'En kath' heauto,
Kai dia panton.
Pantheism is therefore not necessarily irreligious or heretical;
 The impossibility of an absolute thing (substantia unica) as
 It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation of
himself, not confined to individuals; indeed in the very first
cogitat, is illogical: for quod est in specie, non NBCESSARIO in
"Hence it is clear, from what cause many reject the notion of the
irrepresentable and impossible in one and the same meaning; and,
according to the forms of sensuous evidence, the notion of the
continuous and the infinite is doubtless impossible. I am not now
faculties for the limits of things, as they really exist."
consistently and rightly denies the possibility of intellectual
 Franc. Baconis de Verulam, NOVUM ORGANUM.
 This phrase, a priori, is in common, most grossly misunderstood,
knowledge a priori, we do not mean, that we can know anything
 Jer. Taylor's Via Pacis.
 'Anaer morionous, a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek
 First published in 1803.
 These thoughts were suggested to me during the perusal of the
Aristotle, and the elegance of Quinctilian.
Gelido suo ruscel chiaro, e tranquillo
M'insegno Amor di state a mezzo'l giorno;
Ardean le solve, ardean le piagge, e i colli.
Ond' io, ch' al piu gran gielo ardo e sfavillo,
Subito corsi; ma si puro adorno
Girsene il vidi, che turbar no'l volli:
Sol mi specchiava, e'n dolce ombrosa sponda
Mi stava intento al mormorar dell' onda.
Aure dell' angoscioso viver mio
Refrigerio soave,
E dolce si, che piu non mi par grave
Ne'l ardor, ne'l morir, anz' il desio;
Deh voil ghiaccio, e le nubi, e'l tempo rio
Discacciatene omai, che londa chiara,
E l'ombra non men cara
A scherzare, a cantar per suoi boschetti,
E prati festa et allegrezza alletti.
Pacifiche, ma spesso in amorosa
Guerra co'fiori, e l'erba
Alla stagione acerba
Verdi insegne del giglio e della rosa,
Movete, Aure, pian pian; che tregua o posa,
Se non pace, io ritrove;
E so ben dove:--Oh vago, a mansueto
Sguardo, oh labbra d'ambrosia, oh rider, lieto!
Hor come un scoglio stassi,
Hor come un rio se'n fugge,
Ed hor crud' orsa rugge,
Hor canta angelo pio: ma che non fassi!
E che non fammi, O sassi,
O rivi, o belue, o Dii, questa mia vaga
Non so, se ninfa, o magna,
Non so, se donna, o Dea,
Non so, se dolce o rea?
Piangendo mi baciaste,
E ridendo il negaste:
In doglia hebbivi pin,
In festa hebbivi ria:
Nacque gioia di pianti,
Dolor di riso: O amanti
Miseri, habbiate insieme
Ognor paura e speme.
Bel Fior, tu mi rimembri
La rugiadosa guancia del bet viso;
E si vera l'assembri,
Che'n te sovente, come in lei m'affiso:
Et hor del vago riso,
Hor del serene sguardo
Io pur cieco riguardo. Ma qual fugge,
O Rosa, il mattin lieve!
E chi te, come neve,
E'l mio cor teco, e la mia vita strugge!
Anna mia, Anna dolce, oh sempre nuovo
E piu chiaro concento,
Quanta dolcezza sento
In sol Anna dicendo? Io mi pur pruovo,
Ne qui tra noi ritruovo,
Ne tra cieli armonia,
Che del bel nome suo piu dolce sia:
Altro il Cielo, altro Amore,
Altro non suona l'Ecco del mio core.
Hor che'l prato, e la selva si scoiora,
Al tuo serena ombroso
Muovine, alto Riposo,
Deh ch'io riposi una sol notte, un hora:
Han le fere, e git augelli, ognun talora
Ha qualche pace; io quando,
Lasso! non vonne errando,
E non piango, e non grido? e qual pur forte?
Ma poiche, non sent' egli, odine, Morte.
Risi e piansi d'Amor; ne pero mai
Se non in fiamma, o'n onda, o'n vento scrissi
Spesso msrce trovai
Crudel; sempre in me morto, in altri vissi:
Hor da' piu scuri Abissi al ciel m'aizai,
Hor ne pur caddi giuso;
Stance al fin qui son chiuso.
 "I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide."
 "Nay, rack your brain--'tis all in vain,
I'll tell you every thing I know;
Which is a little step beyond,
I wish that you would go:
Perhaps, when you are at the place,
You something of her tale may trace.
I'll give you the best help I can
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I'll tell you all I know.
'Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden's true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,
And she was happy, happy still
Whene'er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fixed the wedding-day,
The morning that must wed them both
But Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And, with this other maid, to church
Unthinking Stephen went--
Poor Martha! on that woeful day
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent;
A fire was kindled in her breast,
Which might not burn itself to rest.
They say, full six months after this,
While yet the summer leaves were green,
She to the mountain-top would go,
And there was often seen;
'Tis said a child was in her womb,
As now to any eye was plain;
She was with child, and she was mad;
Yet often she was sober sad
From her exceeding pain.
Oh me! ten thousand times I'd rather
That he had died, that cruel father!
*     *     *     *     *
*     *     *     *     *
Last Christmas when they talked of this,
Old Farmer Simpson did maintain,
That in her womb the infant wrought
About its mother's heart, and brought
Her senses back again:
And, when at last her time drew near,
Her looks were calm, her senses clear.
No more I know, I wish I did,
And I would tell it all to you
For what became of this poor child
There's none that ever knew
And if a child was born or no,
There's no one that could ever tell;
And if 'twas born alive or dead,
There's no one knows, as I have said:
But some remember well,
That Martha Ray about this time
Would up the mountain often climb."
 It is no less an error in teachers, than a torment to the poor
sufficiency, in repression and possible after-perversion of the
 Altered from the description of Night-Mair in the REMORSE.
"Oh Heaven! 'twas frightful! Now ran down and stared at
By hideous shapes that cannot be remembered;
Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing;
But only being afraid--stifled with fear!
While every goodly or familiar form
Had a strange power of spreading terror round me!"
 But still more by the mechanical system of philosophy which has
needlessly infected our theological opinions, and teaching us to
To you a morning good, good Sir! I wish.
You, Sir! I thank: to you the same wish I.
In those parts of Mr. Wordsworth's works which I have thoroughly
apposition, or in the connection by the genitive pronoun. Men in
theory of the preface, justified only by the narrator's being the
 I had in my mind the striking but untranslatable epithet, which
the celebrated Mendelssohn applied to the great founder of the
"Bless'd in the happy marriage of sweet words."
 Sammlung einiger Abhandlungen von Christian Garve.
 Mr. Wordsworth's having judiciously adopted "concourse wild" in
Shakespeare and Milton the word is never used without some clear
reference, proper or metaphorical, to the theatre. Thus Milton:
"Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view."
------"Prepare thee for another scene."
 Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,
Upon her verge that stands, the neighbouring vallies fill;
Helvillon from his height, it through the mountains threw,
From whom as soon again, the sound Dunbalrase drew,
From whose stone-trophied head, it on the Windross went,
Which tow'rds the sea again, resounded it to Dent.
That Brodwater, therewith within her banks astound,
In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound,
Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long,
Did mightily commend old Copland for her song.
Drayton's POLYOLBION: Song XXX.
 Translation. It behoves me to side with my friends, but only as
far as the gods.
 "Slender.  I bruised my shin with playing with sword and dagger
dinner: there's pippins and cheese to come."
 This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman
 Klopstock's observation was partly true and partly erroneous. In
three English lines will express four lines German. The reason is
 Praecludere calumniam, in the original.
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase,"
"Yea, when the launched bolt did sear her sense,
Her soul's deep orisons were breathed for him;"
"Was not this love? Yea, thus doth woman love!"
 The child is an important personage, for I see not by what
 Classically too, as far as consists with the allegorizing fancy
of the modern, that still striving to project the inward,
Johnson should have passed a contrary judgment, and have even
 Poor unlucky Metaphysicks! and what are they? A single sentence
Nosce te ipsum,
Tuque Deum, quantum licet, inque Deo omnia noscas.