TO RICHARD HODGSON, Knave of Clubs, Secretary. MY DEAR KNAVE,-Great geniuses are subject from their very nature to ebbs and flows of inspiration. Milton and Dryden, during the best half of every year, could never rise higher than to Essays on Divorce, Prefaces, Translations, and English Grammars. Just so it is with me at present; and I, your appointed Laureat, after having put in practice every mean I ever heard of for creating verses, as biting the nails, scratching the head, &c., have absolutely effected nothing, saving six lines and a half of a Sonnet to Mary, and the joke of an Epigram without any beginning. The very truth of it is, I am at low water mark; and accordingly, actuated, as I am, by the purest patriotism for our Club and its bantling, I resign my mantle of poetry for this Number to other bards less affected by weather than myself; though I claim it as my right, virtute officii, that you make them understand, that, like the Cæsars of the Empire, they are bound, if their verses be good, to refer all their credit and success to the auspicious influence of Gerard Montgomery, their Augustus. Having doffed, therefore, my mantle of Poetry, I sit clothed in my short coat of Criticism, after the universal example of modern Poets, who rarely send forth a volume of verses without associating it with another in prose, to prove the said verses to be the best that were ever written. Not that I am going to waste a sheet and an hour in proving my poems such, for that would be superfluous but what from the vehement desire I have of venting my spleen against Golightly and M'Farlane, who cannot endure the writings of the Poets nicknamed the Lake School, (whether nar' toxy, or directly, is a doubt,) and what from my own long and constant admiration of them, I have determined to devote this my interlunar page to a short and popular elucidation of the genius of the most eminent among the said poets, William Wordsworth; Allan le Blanc having engaged to furnish, if called for, a full and complete account of the more mysterious and esoteric department of his metaphysics. I have just before said that these persons had been nicknamed a School of Poets; and I said so, because, if we understand by that term what we do when talking of the Schools of Plato or Raffaelle, it is to all intents and purposes a misnomer. Every one knows that in schools of philosophy and painting the precepts and the manner are scrupulously obeyed and imitated; and when any striking aberration from that standard has occurred, the author of such separation has ever been considered the founder of We are happy to perceive that the recent change of weather has induced the Hon. G. Montgomery to change his mind.-Vide Godiva.-P. C. a new sect or school in his own person. Now whoever is at all acquainted with the writings of the Lake Poets (I use the term at present for conciseness) must have perceived, that, so far from there existing any imitation of, or intimate communion with each other, with respect to the choice of subject-matter, or the manner of treating it in their works, nothing can be more essentially different, in almost all points of importance, than they are; and as far as concerns the individual genius of each person, I will venture to say that there do not exist such opposite and strikingly various characters of intellect in any other given number of writers of the present day, whether English or Foreign. I shall not stay now to exemplify this position at length, because it is no more than what every one who reads these authors must acknowledge, and what to those who will turn a deaf ear to a charmer, "charm he never so wisely," is immaterial whether it be fact or not. In the meantime it may be worth while to observe this first instance of that liberal and discriminating criticism, that abhorrence of misrepresentation and sneering, which has so honourably distinguished a certain Scotch (pace M Farlani dixerim) Review, and with which the Lake Poets have been for a long period of time so unceasingly and conspicuously favoured, to the no small detriment of the shares rightly appertaining to many a famous bard of the present time. But the motives, which prompted this imposition of a nickname are not very mysterious, at least to the initiated; having pocketed all that was to be extracted by conversation and repeated epistolary correspondence with these very men, those generous critics found it necessary, in order to avoid the suspicion of plagiarism, to turn sharp round upon their benefactors, to whom they owed the reputation by which they got their bread, quiz all their little peculiarities, and finally "spit in their faces and call them asses!" Accordingly, after sporting whole sheets full of admired reasoning, and, as was generally supposed, original theory, (almost the whole of which, it is well known by many persons in this country, was actually stolen from the unreserved communications of one of the most distinguished of these writers,) they have the charity to fall most especially foul upon that very person; and, in consideration of his favours, pleasantly denominate him "fool," "simpleton," " ingenious gentleman," or "old woman;" and, with a discrimination and significancy peculiarly their own, pronounce all his writings "Lakish!" In short, they know the meaning of the proverb, "Give a dog," &c., and acted upon its benevolent principles; in lieu of all particulars, one formula was amply sufficient. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were "Lake Poets," and their works of course Lakish!" These Scotchmen were born with the malignity of Caligula, but purloined his wit as usual, and gave a collective name to destroy at once. 66 Since, however, this consummation so devoutly wished for has not taken place, and the reputation and pervading influence of these bespattered Poets, so far from decreasing to a nonentity under the "unceasing stowre," have on the contrary gone on slowly, but steadily widening and deepening, and still continue so to do, it becomes a matter of reasonable curiosity to inquire into the causes which have preserved and invigorated them under this tyranny of abuse, whilst not a few of their contemporaries, who, at their first appearance, were bepraised ad nauseam by these same learned Thebans, are now sinking fast, some into neglect, and others into contempt. Now a Poet, in the highest and strictest sense of that word, is he who is a worỳs, a Maker, an Inventor, whose Imagination, or Shaping Power, can and does embody the forms of things unknown, and can create realities out of airy nothings. This energy, which is the highest heaven of Invention in a Poet, is not however peculiar, in an exclusive manner, to a writer of verses;-it may exist as vitally and essentially in prose ;-rhythm and metre are to this Power, as two wings to a Soul, investing it with the robes and resemblances of a Seraphim. Therefore the Wise Man of Israel was a Poet, when he burst forth, "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah; comely as Jerusalem; terrible as an army with banners." Therefore Demosthenes was a Poet, when by an instantaneous effort of his power he evoked the canonized shades of his ancestors, and caused them, as it were, to flit over the spellbound mob around him,—«Οὐ μὰ τοὺς ἐν Μαραθῶνι προκινδυνευ σαντας τῶν προγόνων,” κ.τ.λ. Therefore Jeremy Taylor was a Poet when he prayed for humility, And yet I know thou resistest the proud, and didst cast the morning stars, the angels, from heaven, into chains of darkness, when they grew giddy and proud, walking upon the battlements of heaven, beholding the glorious regions that were above them." This power is the essence of all rightful Poetry; or, in other words, it is that without which Poetry is not. The second accomplishment of an absolute poet, or, rather, of Poetry, is Imitation; by which term I mean all efforts of the mind, which are not in a genuine sense original and self-springing, but are modelled after prototypes existing somewhere in rerum naturâ; i. e. all descriptions of passive Nature and Art;-Dramatic representations of manners-and Satire, &c., because all these, in their external form and composition, merely aim at imitating objects set before them, and they become more or less really Poetical, as they are more or less powerfully impregnated with the living soul and breath of the Imagination. The last requisite for perfection is, as was hinted above, a copious and splendid command of language, and thorough acquaintance with the laws of metre, tempered by an ear tuned up, if it were possible, to the "noiseless music of the spheres." It may be fairly questioned whether this beau ideal has ever been realized amongst men in all its members;-the most glorious specimens of this, the most sublime exaltation of human intellect, are undoubtedly Homer and Shakspeare, even without the Margites. That many have been endowed more or less with detached emanations of the Poetical Power, and that more have possessed the auxiliar accomplishments, without that Power, is also as certain but to enter upon that subject would be endless;-it is more my immediate object to show that a large portion of the spirit, and an absolute empire over the dependencies, are in the present day centered in the person of William Wordsworth. This object, I imagine, cannot be more effectually attained, and certainly not more expeditiously and delightfully to the reader and myself, than by extracting a few passages of different kinds, containing all the essentials, as before laid down, of genuine Poetry; but which shall not be connected particularly with the Author's more private theory, as it is quite necessary, according to all good reasoning, to show that Wordsworth is generally a great Poet, before it can be proved even worth the while to investigate that theory at all. For I acknowledge that there is no intrinsic excellence in Singularity of itself, unless it be grounded on, and spring from, the immutable laws of reason and nature, and be therefore singular, simply because it is a straight line exposing the obliquities of a thousand crooked ones. My first proof is the beginning of the "Address to H. C. six years old:". "O Thou! whose fancies from afar are brought; And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion, and the self-born carol; In such clear water, that thy Boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream Suspended on a stream as clear as sky, Where earth and heaven do make one imagery; O blessed Vision! happy Child! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I think of thee with many fears For what may be thy lot in future years." I make no comments upon this extract, or those which follow; because I really suppose that there can be no lover of poetry in any shape who will not confess this and them to be admirable, and such as neither Milton nor Shakspeare in their highest moments would have been ashamed of. My second proof: "She was a Phantom of Delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; To be a moment's ornament; I saw her upon nearer view A countenance in which did meet I produce then my third proof from "Ruth :"- Of islands, that together lie Among the evening clouds. |