Each little drop of wisdom as it falls
Into the dimpling cistern of his heart,
For this unnatural growth the trainer blame,
Pity the tree.

Oh give us once again the wishing cap
Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat
Of Jack the Giant-Killer, Robin Hood,
And Sabra in the Forest with St. George.

The child whose love is here, at least does reap
One precious good—that he forgets himself.

This passage, touched as it is with a flavour of wholesome bitterness, is eminently interesting and eminently wise. It is moreover, so far as I know, the first distinct protest against those Aikens's and Edgeworth's, who, deceived by their own fluent plausibilities, set themselves to the unpromising task of reaping corn fit to make bread, and gathering ripe fruit, in the early spring. The great aspiring faculties of wonder and reverence, together with the great creative faculty of the imagination, are apt to sicken and wither away, unless cultivated at the proper season. We know now that when Mirabeau said of Barnard, 'C'est un arbre qui croît pour être, un jour, mât de vaisseau,' he was not speaking of a man who had been educated, before his time, into diminutive symmetry and premature perfection. Such an oak is meant to bear his acorns as Nature had decreed; and then, well ribbed up into the sides of a seventyfour, to resist hostile cannon-balls. But this sort of knowledge we owe, in no small degree, to Wordsworth, and to the men whom Wordsworth influenced.

In the next book Wordsworth recounts his visit to the Alps. We should have fancied that the impression upon his mind would have been deeper than it is, and the results of that impression more valuable; but, somehow or other, we are disappointed. Poet of Nature as Wordsworth was-professionally

1 Of course I am not speaking of Miss Edgeworth as a novelist.

D

so we may say-there is nothing of his here on a level with Coleridge's 'Sunrise Hymn in the Vale of Chamounix.' Nay, when Wordsworth honours Mont Blanc by mentioning it, he merely gives utterance to a feeling well known to his readers, namely, 'You, being William Wordsworth, when you supplant the imaginative dream, created by yourself and cherished by yourself, of any place, either famous from natural or romantic associations by actually beholding it, lose more than you gain ; inasmuch as the reality disturbs the vision, and is a poor substitute for it.' This refinement may, perhaps, not be always wholly false; but it strikes ordinary 'Christians and eaters of beef' as somewhat morbid and fantastical. After all, it was God, I suppose, who created the Alps, and they have hitherto ranked among His successful operations.

That very day

From a bare ridge, we also first beheld,

Unveiled, the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved

To have a soulless image on the eye,

Usurping on a living thought—a thought

That never more could be.

Soon, however, the Vale of Chamounix repaid our travellers for the dethronement of their ideal Mont Blanc, and is finely described.

The wondrous vale

Of Chamounix stretched far below, and soon,

With its dumb cataracts, and streams of ice,

A motionless array of mighty waves;

Five rivers broad and deep, made rich amends,
And reconciled us to realities.

In spite, however, of Chamounix, he seems to have felt more love for the milder beauty and brighter colouring around the Italian lakes, than for the solemn glaciers and rugged precipices of the higher Alps. There is a very finè passage, narrating how he and his friend, deceived by irrelevant foreign clocks, went out into the massive forests about the town of Gravedona, in the belief that dawn was at hand.

We left the town

Of Gravedona, with this hope, but soon
Were lost, bewildered among woods immense,
And on a rock sate down to wait for day.
An open place it was, and overlooked
From high, the sullen water far beneath,
On which a dull red image of the moon
Lay bedded, changing often times its form
Like an uneasy snake. From hour to hour
We sate and sate, wondering, as if the night
Had been ensnared by witchcraft. On the rock
At last we stretched our weary limbs for sleep,
But could not sleep.

The cry of unknown birds,

The mountains, more by blackness visible,
And their own size, than any outward light;
The breathless wilderness of clouds; the clock
That told, with unintelligible voice,

The widely-parted hours; the noise of streams,

And sometimes rustling motions nigh at hand, &c.

In this gloomy resting-place, a prey to that indescribable feeling called by Walter Scott 'eeriness,' (that is, to get as near as we can, superstitious depression dominating the nerves, in defiance both of man's reason and his will,) these two Englishmen waited wearily for sunrise. To judge from what has been given us, whatever befell his companion, Wordsworth himself carried away from that summer night's watching more food for his imagination than from any other natural influence encountered by him in his Alpine tour. From any other natural influence, I say-I confine myself to that; because Wordsworth then first hailed, as a stimulus and a tonic, the rising breeze of the French Revolution.

I know of no book that brings before our eyes, with more liveliness and truth than this 'Prelude,' the happy delirium of that marvellous time.

For Europe in those days was thrilled with joy,
France standing on the top of golden hours-

So that human nature seemed, as it were, to be born again.

We can see with our own eyes, after reading this book, what we have hitherto known only as a fact. We can actually make a picture for ourselves, from Wordsworth's verses, of the intense anger and mortification with which Burke's warnings and prophecies, breaking in upon this rapturous exultation, like some funereal bell into the middle of a wedding feast, were received and resisted by all men, especially by the young. Carlyle has, no doubt, painted for us the French Revolution from the life with wonderful force; but, not to mention the contemptuous sarcasm underlying the movements of his pencil, he is a spectator only, and a spectator from a distance.

Wordsworth was an actor on the stage, a sharer in all those theatrical hopes and pleasures. He was, moreover, when he surrendered himself to these glorious self-deceptions, in the first freshness of youth. There was nothing then but flowers and garlands, and moonlight dances in the open air, to the honour of Liberty.

Unhoused beneath the evening star, we saw
Dances of Liberty, and in late hours

Of darkness, dances in the open air,

Deftly prolonged, though grey-haired lookers on
Might waste their breath in chiding.

The French Revolution was felt as a balmy breeze, just strong enough to make the waters ripple and the blossoms laugh in the sun. No one, except Burke, discerned in it the first breath of a hurricane, destined, not only to shake down flowers and fruits, but also to uproot the trees of the forest, and send ́temple and tower to the ground.' Wordsworth returned to France, as I have said, and took up his residence there for many months, in a more ominous season. The history of his feelings then (and to them I shall come back by-and-by) is at least as interesting as any part of the book; though his description of them is somewhat more bitterly written, and tinged with gloomier colcuring than of old. Between his first and his second landing in France, however, two books are inter

posed, one entitled 'Residence in London,' the other Retrospect,' and on both of these it is perhaps desirable to touch in passing. The Life in London is not one of the most important parts of the poem. It gives a diffuse account, in pompous blank verse that is hardly poetry, of matters very little worth recording, either in poetry or in prose. For instance, we have described for us, at a length quite unnecessary, the transactions of Bartholomew Fair. Nor does he seem, as far as we know, to have mingled at all with the leaders of the time. His descriptions of the Law Courts, of the Parliament, of the fashionable preacher, are of little merit. His satire, when he satirises, is languid; his life without interest, and his narrative dull. If there had been nothing better in 'The Prelude' than this, it would not have been within a hundred miles of Cowper's 'Task.' Altogether, this part of his career is the reverse of satisfactory. He seems, moreover, to suffer in mind; whether from the pressure of private sorrow, or from disappointment at the turn public affairs were taking, I do not know.

After spending a year in London, without much profit or pleasure, he proceeds to France once more, and becomes again a sharer in the hopes and fears, in the dangers and triumphs, of the great Revolution. It would seem, however, that either this latter half of 'The Prelude' must have rushed along at railroad speed; or that the present arrangement is not conclusive as to the order in which the books were written. We are told that the poem, begun in 1799, was finished in 1805, yet this seventh book (there are in all fourteen) begins as follows:

Six changeful years have vanished since I first
Poured forth, saluted by the evening breeze,
A glad preamble to this verse.

We may suppose, indeed, if we please, that after having roughly finished his task, he then revised the whole, and that the passage here referred to was then introduced for the first time. It is not a matter of great importance, except that if he did