AFFECTED ECSTACIES.

519

We have kept the book too long open, however, at one place, and shall now take a dip in it nearer the beginning. The following account of the Pedlar's early training, and lonely meditations among the mountains, is a good example of the forced and affected ecstasies in which this author abounds.

While yet a Child, with a Child's eagerness
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye

On all things which the moving seasons brought
To feed such appetite: nor this alone
Appeas'd his yearning: in the after day
Of Boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags,
He sate, and even in their fix'd lineaments,
Or from the pow'r of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppress'd,
Ev'n in their fixed and steady lineaments

He trac'd an ebbing and a flowing mind."―p. 11.

We should like extremely to know what is meant by tracing an ebbing and flowing mind in the fixed lineaments of naked crags?- but this is but the beginning of the raving fit.

In these majestic solitudes, he used also to read his Bible; - and we are told that

"There did he see the writing!-All things there
Breath'd immortality, revolving life

And greatness still revolving; infinite!

There littleness was not; the least of things
Seem'd infinite; and there his spirit shap'd
Her prospects; nor did he believe, -he saw!
What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,

Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart
Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude.”— p. 14, 15.

What follows about nature, triangles, stars, and the laws of light, is still more incomprehensible.

"Yet still uppermost

Nature was at his heart, as if he felt,

Though yet he knew not how, a wasting pow'r

In all things which from her sweet influence

Might tend to wean him.

Therefore with her hues,

520

WORDSWORTH

DULL MYSTICISM.

Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms,
He cloth'd the nakedness of austere truth.
While yet he linger'd in the rudiments
Of science, and among her simplest laws,
His triangles-they were the stars of heav'n,
The silent stars! Oft did he take delight
To measure th'altitude of some tall crag
Which is the eagle's birthplace, or some peak
Familiar with forgotten years, that shows
Inscrib'd, as with the silence of the thought,
Upon its bleak and visionary sides; -

and I have heard him say

That often, failing at this time to gain
The peace requir'd, he scann'd the laws of light
Amid the roar of torrents, where they send
From hollow clefts up to the clearer air

A cloud of mist, which in the sunshine frames
A lasting tablet for the observer's eye
Varying its rainbow hues. But vainly thus,
And vainly by all other means, he strove

To mitigate the fever of his heart."-p. 16-18.

The whole book, indeed, is full of such stuff. The following is the author's own sublime aspiration after the delight of becoming a Motion, or a Presence, or an Energy among multitudinous streams.

"Oh! what a joy it were, in vig'rous health,
To have a Body (this our vital Frame

With shrinking sensibility endu'd,
And all the nice regards of flesh and blood)
And to the elements surrender it

As if it were a spirit! How divine
The liberty, for frail, for mortal man
To roam at large among unpeopled glens
And mountainous retirements, only trod
By devious footsteps; regions consecrate
To oldest time! and, reckless of the storm
That keeps the raven quiet in her nest,
Be as a Presence or a Motion! — one
Among the many there; and, while the Mists
Flying, and rainy Vapours, call out Shapes
And Phantoms from the crags and solid earth
As fast as a Musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument; and, while the Streams
(As at a first creation and in haste
To exercise their untried faculties)
Descending from the regions of the clouds,
And starting from the hollows of the earth
More multitudinous every moment --rend

THE STREAM OF LIFE!

Their way before them, what a joy to roam
An equal among mightiest Energies!
And haply sometimes with articulate voice,
Amid the deaf'ning tumult, scarcely heard
By him that utters it, exclaim aloud
Be this continu'd so from day to day,

521

Nor let it have an end from month to month!"-p. 164, 165.

We suppose the reader is now satisfied with Mr. Wordsworth's sublimities-which occupy rather more than half the volume: - Of his tamer and more creeping prolixity, we have not the heart to load him with many specimens. The following amplification of the vulgar comparison of human life to a stream, has the merit of adding much obscurity to wordiness; at least, we have not ingenuity enough to refer the conglobated bubbles and murmurs, and floating islands, to their Vital proto.. types.

"The tenor

Which my life holds, he readily may conceive
Whoe'er hath stood to watch a mountain Brook
In some still passage of its course,
and seen,
Within the depths of its capacious breast,
Inverted trees, and rocks, and azure sky;
And, on its glassy surface, specks of foam,
And conglobated bubbles undissolv'd,
Numerous as stars; that, by their onward lapse,
Betray to sight the motion of the stream,
Else imperceptible; meanwhile, is heard
Perchance a roar or murmur; and the sound
Though soothing, and the little floating isles
Though beautiful, are both by Nature charg'd
With the same pensive office; and make known
Through what perplexing labyrinths, abrupt
Precipitations, and untoward straits,

The earth-born wanderer hath pass'd; and quickly,
That respite o'er, like traverses and toils

Must be again encounter'd.-Such a stream

Is Human Life."-p. 139, 140.

The following, however, is a better example of the useless and most tedious minuteness with which the author so frequently details circumstances of no interest in themselves, of no importance to the story,—and possessing no graphical merit whatsoever as pieces of

522 WORDSWORTH

CORNER SEATS

BABY HOUSES!

description. On their approach to the old Chaplain's cottage, the Author gets before his companion,

"when behold

An object that entic'd my steps aside!
It was an Entry, narrow as a door;
A passage whose brief windings open'd out
Into a platform; that lay, Sheep-fold wise,
Enclos'd between a single mass of rock

And one old moss-grown wall; a cool Recess,
And fanciful! For, where the rock and wall
Met in an angle, hung a tiny roof,

Or penthouse, which most quaintly had been fram'd
By thrusting two rude sticks into the wall,
And overlaying them with mountain sods!
To weather-fend a little turf-built seat

Whereon a full-grown man might rest, nor dread
The burning sunshine, or a transient shower;
But the whole plainly wrought by Children's hands!
Whose simple skill had throng'd the grassy floor
With work of frame less solid; a proud show
Of baby-houses, curiously arrang'd!

Nor wanting ornament of walks between,
With mimic trees inserted in the turf,
And gardens interpos'd. Pleas'd with the sight,
I could not choose but beckon to my Guide,
Who, having enter'd, carelessly look'd round,
And now would have pass'd on; when I exclaim'd,
'Lo! what is here?' and, stooping down, drew forth
A Book," &c.
- p. 71, 72.

And this book, which he

"found to be a work

In the French Tongue, a Novel of Voltaire,"

leads to no incident or remark of any value or importance, to apologize for this long story of its finding. There is no beauty, we think, it must be admitted, in these passages; and so little either of interest or curiosity in the incidents they disclose, that we can scarcely conceive that any man to whom they had actually occurred, should take the trouble to recount them to his wife and children by his idle fireside; — but, that man or child should think them worth writing down in blank verse, and printing in magnificent quarto, we should certainly have supposed altogether impossible, had it

A LAMB BLEATING!

523

not been for the ample proofs which Mr. Wordsworth has afforded to the contrary.

Sometimes their silliness is enhanced by a paltry attempt at effect and emphasis:-as in the following account of that very touching and extraordinary occurrence of a lamb bleating among the mountains. The poet would actually persuade us that he thought the mountains themselves were bleating; and that nothing could be so grand or impressive. "List!" cries the old Pedlar, suddenly breaking off in the middle of one of his daintiest ravings

From yon huge breast of rock, a solemn bleat!
Sent forth as if it were the Mountain's voice!
As if the visible Mountain made the cry!
Again!'- The effect upon the soul was such
As he express'd; for, from the Mountain's heart
The solemn bleat appear'd to come! There was
No other and the region all around

-

Stood silent, empty of all shape of life.

It was a Lamb-left somewhere to itself!"-p. 159. What we have now quoted will give the reader a notion of the taste and spirit in which this volume is composed: And yet, if it had not contained something a good deal better, we do not know how we should have been justified in troubling him with any account of it. But the truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his perversities, is a person of great powers; and has frequently a force in his moral declamations, and a tenderness in his pathetic narratives, which neither his prolixity nor his affectation can altogether deprive of their effect. We shall venture to give some extracts from the simple tale of the Weaver's solitary cottage. Its heroine is the deserted wife; and its chief interest consists in the picture of her despairing despondence and anxiety, after his disappearance. The Pedlar, recurring to the well to which he had directed his companions, observes,

-"As I stoop'd to drink,

Upon the slimy foot-stone I espied

The useless fragment of a wooden bowl,

Green with the moss of years; a pensive sight