"With nature do they never wage A foolish strife; they see A happy youth, and their old age "Down to the vale this water steers, How merrily it goes, When he does turn his attention upon life, we find always the most beautiful echoes of Christian tenderness and sorrow. In an elegy, suggested by a picture representing a storm, he alludes to the bitter recollection of a domestic loss which had befallen him, and is pleased to see the image of pain reflected in external na ture. "Oh 'tis a passionate work!-Yet wise and well; Well chosen is the spirit that is here; That hulk that labours in the deadly swell, This rueful sky, the pageantry of fear. And this huge castle, standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves, Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind; Such happiness, wherever it is known, Is to be pitied for 'tis surely blind. But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, And frequent sights of what is to be born, Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.Not without hope we suffer and we mourn." Surely nothing can be finer than this. It is impressed with the true character of that kind of social sentiment, which is drawn from a source not liable to fail. In his sonnets, we see what form citizenship is made to assume, when growing up in contiguity with the other habits of mind cultivated by Wordsworth. How these compositions, so pregnant with feeling and reflection, upon the most interesting topics, should not have been more generally known, is a problem difficult to be solved. The following is one of them, containing reflections on the moral effects of slavery. "There is a bondage which is worse to bear Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, and wall, Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary Thrall : "Tis his who walks about in the open air, One of a Nation who, henceforth, must wear Their fetters in their Souls. For who could be, Who, even the best, in such condition, free From self-reproach, reproach which he must share With Human Nature? Never be it ours To see the Sun how brightly it will shine, And know that noble Feelings, manly Powers, Instead of gathering strength must droop and pine, And Earth with all her pleasant fruits and flowers Fade, and participate in Man's decline. As Mr Wordsworth's habits of thought, and not his merely poetical powers, were meant to form the subject of this discussion, we have not adverted to some of his detached performances, which are master-pieces in their way. These would offer a separate subject for criticism. But, as they are little known (in Scotland especially), we shall quote the whole of one of his most exquisite minor pieces. RUTH. "WHEN Ruth was left half desolate "And she had made a Pipe of straw, Had built a Bower upon the green, "Beneath her Father's roof, alone Pleased with herself, nor sad nor gay, "There came a Youth from Georgia's shore A military Casque he wore He brought them from the Cherokees; "From Indian blood you deem him sprung "With hues of genius on his cheek,' While he was yet a Boy The moon, the glory of the sun, "He was a lovely Youth! I guess And, when he chose to sport and play, 66 Among the Indians he had fought; Of pleasure and of fear; By such a Youth, in the green shade, "He told of Girls, a happy rout! To gather strawberries all day long; "He spake of plants, divine and strange, That every hour their blossoms change, Ten thousand lovely hues! With budding, fading, faded flowers -Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam "The Youth of green savannahs spake, Of islands, that together lie "And then he said, How sweet it were A fisher or a hunter there, A gardener in the shade, Still wandering with an easy mind "What days and what sweet years! Ah me! Our life were life indeed, with thee And all the while,' said he, to know "Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me, "Beloved Ruth !'-No more he said. She thought again-and did agree "And now, as fitting is and right, Even so they did; and I may say "Through dream and vision did she sink, "But, as you have before been told, So beautiful, through savage lands "The wind, the tempest roaring high, "Whatever in those Climes he found A kindred impulse, seemed allied "Nor less to feed voluptuous thought "Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween For passions linked to forms so fair "But ill he lived, much evil saw A Man who without self-control "And yet he with no feigned delight "But now the pleasant dream was gone; "Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, But, when they thither came, the Youth Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth Could never find him more. Thy corpse shall buried be; "God help thee, Ruth!'"-Such pains And all the congregation sing she had That she in half a year was mad And in a prison housed; And there, exulting in her wrongs, "Yet sometimes milder hours she knew, "When Ruth three seasons thus had lain But of the Vagrant none took thought; "Among the fields she breathed again; The engines of her pain, the tools The vernal leaves, she loved them still. "A Barn her winter bed supplies; "An innocent life, yet far astray! Sore aches she needs must have! but less And there she begs at one steep place, This flute, made of a hemlock stalk, "Farewell! and when thy days are told, A Christian psalm for thee." In some respects Mr Wordsworth may be considered as the Rousseau of the present times. Both of them were educated among the mountains, at a distance from the fermentations of social life, and acquired, from their way of existence, certain peculiar sentimental habits of meditation, which were pitched in a different key from the callous, sarcastic, and practical way of thinking, prevalent among their contemporaries of the cities. Rousseau mingled in the throng; but found himself there like a man dropped out of the clouds. The peculiarity of his habits made him wretched; and his irritation perverted the employment of his genius. Mr Wordsworth has acted more wisely in keeping aloof, and continuing to cultivate his mind according to its pristine bias, and forbearing to grapple too closely with the differently educated men of cities. Rousseau makes a fine encomium upon the mountains, which, as it is connected with the present subject, we shall quote: A general impression (which every body experiences, though all do not observe it) is, that, on high mountains where the air is pure and subtle, we feel greater lightness and agility of body, and more serenity in the mind. The pleasures are there less violent; the passions are more moderate; meditations receive there a certain great and sublime cha racter proportioned to the objects that strike us; a certain tranquil pleasure which has nothing sensual. We are there grave without melancholy; quiet without indolence; contented with existing and thinking, all too lively pleasures are blunted, and lose the sharp points which render them painful; they leave in the heart only a slight and agreeable emotion; and thus an happy climate makes the passions of mankind subservient to his felicity, which elsewhere are his torment. I question whether any violent agitation or vapourish disorder could hold out against such an abode if continued for some time; and I am surprised that baths of the salutary and beneficial air of the mountains are not one of the principal remedies of medicine and morality." 2 L consider as of paramount authority in ON THE REVIVAL OF A TASTE FOR literature. OUR ANCIENT LITERATURE. THE strong disposition that has of late discovered itself in this and other literary countries of Europe, to recover the vestiges of earlier times, and especially to restore its ancient literature, may have been determined, perhaps, in some degree, by accidental causes, and by such as cannot be traced. Yet it seems reasonable also to ascribe such a remarkable turn in the mind of a most cultivated age, appearing at the same time in countries of a very different character, to some more general and necessary cause. And perhaps, without seeming fanciful, something may be shewn to this effect, which may dispose us to regard such an inclination in the genius of an age like our own, as so far from repugnant to its character of extreme civilization, that it may rather seem to arise out of it. Mr Hume has observed, that in the great poem of Spenser, the genius of the author is encumbered and disguised under the antiquated and fantastical costume of chivalry, which he has chosen to assume. We believe there, are few readers of poetry of the present day, to whom this very circumstance does not constitute one essential interest and beauty of the work, and few judges of the character of poets to whom the spirit of chivalry does not appear to have raised, refined, and purified even the genius of Spenser that genius which could itself raise, refine, and purify whatsoever it touched. The opinion of that writer upon literature in general, and especially upon such a subject as poetry, may be considered perhaps as the literary opinion of his own, and still more, of a preceding age, much rather than as the offspring of his own mind. For judgments on such subjects as these can scarcely be conceived of as native to a mind, in all its own habits of speculation so alien to them. Nor is it very probable, that on subjects on which he could not feel himself strong, he would in a work, not of ingenious and speculative argument, but of grave history, have hazarded himself in opinions, in which he did not secretly feel some countenance from those judgments that he was accustomed to But be this as it may, the great fact in literary history, with which we have supposed Mr Hume's remark to be connected, will hardly be called in question. The feelings with which our ancient poetry was generally regarded at the beginning and at the close of the last century, were essentially different. In our Augustan age, we see the mind of the country tending with determined force from that ancient literature; and in these later days we have seen it returning upon the treasures of those older times, with an almost passionate admiration. How far this revolution of sentiment upon this particular point, may be connected with that great change which, in nearly corresponding time, has manifested itself in the poetical temper of the country, would be a curious and interesting inquiry. It is not what we have now in view. But we cannot help observing, in passing, that the just estimate and passionate feeling of poetry do really appear to have declined and revived amongst us, in point of time at least, in correspondence with the temporary neglect and returning love of our own ancient records, And if some of our readers should be scarcely aware what the estimate of poetry has been in this country in the former part of the last century, we must remind them of that curious literary passage of Goldsmith, who, in. his Vicar of Wakefield, puts into the mouth of a speaker, evidently intended as a person of authority of judg ment, high praise of the tragedies of that era of our stage, for their adherence to nature, contemptuously comparing them with the monstrous and gigantic delineation of our elder dramatists, not excepting Shakspeare.— It would be well, if those whose reading leads them that way, would put together the evidence they find of the opinions which one age has entertained of another, to be taken in connexion with its own productions, as grounds. of the estimate of its mind. The two instances we have quoted may not appear, thus solitarily, to have so much weight to our readers as to us; yet surely it must be admitted, that so unpoetical a declaration from the hand of a poet is at least a strong probable indication of the overpowering opinion of his contemporaries, which could sq. far repress the native feeling of poetry in his mind. No man will believe that Goldsmith, now living, would have so judged. This return to our Ancient Poetry is with us a part of our general return to the Ancient Literature and the Ancient History of the Country: Our press speaks to the fact of the reviving study of general ancient literature, better than any statement. And, of the cha racter of our Historical researches, the history of England, by Hume, compared with the same history at a later period, by Dr Henry, and with that, at a still later date by Sharon Turner, may be taken in illustration at least, if not in evidence. Each of these last two works, as far as it carries down the history, is marked by an encreasing exactness of minute research, and a fuller and stronger presentation of the extant memorials of the times. In reading the volumes of Mr Turner, we may be excused for expressing the regret which every student of our early history must feel, that a work so valuable by its contents, should have been rendered less interesting, and almost, we might say, of less authority, by the style of the language in which the author has thought fit to convey them. It is to little purpose, however, to cite especial instances; for, after all, there is nothing to be done but to re fer the reader, at last, to his own knowledge for the fact assumed, that there has been, of late years, and is, at this time, in the mind of the country, as shewn in its literature, a strong determination of inquiry to the monuments of its earlier history, and an earnest desire to recover both for intellectual speculation, and for some thing perhaps of a moral love, the faithful representation of ages which had long been given up without regret or regard, to be lost in the darkness of time. Taking the fact for granted, we wish to propose some conjectures as to the natural causes of such a change. A people slowly emerging from a condition of barbarism into civilization, regards the change it is undergo ing with great admiration and pride, and with a stedfast conviction of the indispensable necessity to its welfare that this change should be, without remission, and to the utmost possible degree, carried into accomplishment. During the period of this progress, an era arrives when so much of refinement is attained, and so much of the pristine barbarism shaken off, that the people of the present age perceives itself to be distinct by civilization from its barbarous ancestors: and, it no sooner discovers the distinction, than its pride steps in to rend wider the separation, while a sort of feeling, even of hostility, ensues, to that dark and inveterate barbarism from which it is accomplishing its deliverance. Against feelings so deeply rooted and powerful, which are motions indeed of the very spirit of the nation, striving with full contention of its powers for highprized and important purposes, those feelings of imagination with which we look back upon antiquity, can have no strength to stand. They are swept down; or, indeed, they scarcely rise into existence;-for intellect and imagination, and all the higher and subtler faculties and affections of the mind, are involved in that one great movement of the people's spirit;-the whole mind of the nation looks forward to futurity. As soon as the pride of this deliverance is felt, as long as a sense presses of the importance of throwing back to a distance from themselves that antique barbarism, of making wide and impassable the gulph of separation; and, whenever some un→ wonted conflux of events, inflaming anew the zeal of amelioration, carries the whole passion of men's hearts into the future; so soon, so long, and so often, will they look with estrangement and aversion on the mighty past, and please and flatter themselves in this conscious exaltation, and in the dawn` ing illumination of a brighter day. This self-separation of the age of civilization from the age of darkness, may be observed, it is probable, in every nation, at different periods, in more or less fulness, according to the circumstances of the times; and the evidence of such a spirit may be found very variously scattered through the records of human feeling and opinion, as they shew themselves now in the workings of a solitary specula tive mind, and now in the consenting passions of a people; at one time in literature, at another in dress, at ano ther in revolutions that overturn Ems pires, and lay thrones prostrate. |