reflected from the passions of his youth—a spirit which I, at least, often find wanting in his more domestic and homely compositions.

The Pedlar's friend and fellow-countryman has retired, after leading a life of great excitement, to be happy with a wife whom he loves,

To a low cottage, in a sunny bay,

Where the salt sea innocuously breaks,

And the low breeze as innocently breathes,
On Devon's leafy shores.

The loss, however, of this devoted wife, preceded, and, as far as man can judge, produced, by the untimely deaths of two lovely children, shatters the fabric of his happiness for ever. Hope is over for him now, and life, however long, must continue grey and without sunlight to the end. Grief, nevertheless -that is the active throbbing and stinging of grief, dies away— sorrow exhausts itself, in his case, as in that of all others; and though the manner in which the memory of the dead is, or seems to be, forgotten sometimes jars upon the heart, if this were not so, the work of the world could hardly be carried on.

He fell at first, as men do, into a state of uncomplaining apathy-of restless indifference, letting the days slip by him as they would. From that abstraction he was roused, but how? Even as a thoughtful shepherd, by a flash

Of Lightning startled in a gloomy cave

Of these wild Hills; for lo! the Dread Bastile,
With all the chambers in its horrid towers,
Fell to the ground-by violence overthrown.

And straightway from the arch

A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise

The appointed seat of equitable law-
And mild Paternal sway.

Here we have the revolutionary Wordsworth over again; Just as in the natural influences shaping the Pedlar's mind, we have a repetition of Wordsworth's youth as it appears in the two

books called 'Childhood' and 'Schooltime." The Pedlar, moreover, as well as Wordsworth, is a poet, one sown by Nature indeed, and having taught himself, somehow, to engraft upon this original stock or root no small amount of prose, but still a poet. The mountains and the mists,' 'the presences of Nature,' and 'the souls of lonely places,' act upon these two, just as if the two were one. So also, when we come to the French Revolution, the Pedlar's solitary friend introduces us to all those passions and sympathies with which Coleridge, at least, was familiar in Wordsworth then and long before. In these respects, as I have said, the men are not two but one. Hence 'The Excursion' owes much to the suppression of 'The Prelude.' And if the former poem had been given to the world in its due season, The Excursion' would hardly, I think, have appeared exactly in its present shape.

When, however, the Solitary has to surrender himself to another disappointment-to a second despair, and when the two despairs combine to form a pressure on the heart worse than any bitterness of death, we find ourselves in a new scene, and treading fresh ground. We know already how in a delirium of self-deceit he broke faith

with those, whom he had laid

In earth's dark chambers with a Christian's Hope.

But on awakening from this dream, he found that recollections and feelings supposed to be dead were still strong enough to pierce and torture his spirit to its inmost depths. This discovery was made on shipboard, where escape from his returning anguish was impossible. He then describes his grief and remorse in a strain of poetry that makes us angry with the public and the critics of that time for listening so coldly

But oh ye powers

Of soul and sense, mysteriously allied!
Oh never let the wretched, if a choice
Be left him, trust the freight of his despair

:

To a long voyage on the silent deep—
For like a plague will memory break out,
And, in the blank and solitude of things

Upon his spirit, with a fever's strength,

Will conscience prey. Feebly must they have felt
Who in old times attired with whips and snakes

The vengeful Furies.

Were turned on me.

Beautiful regards

The face of one I loved

The wife, the mother-pitifully fixing

Tender reproaches insupportable.

Disappointed, finally, both in Europe and America; and having thus lost all faith in the perfectibility of man, he retires to a lonely recess among the mountains with shattered fortunes and with a broken heart. He has formed no plan, and looks forward to nothing better than dreaming away the remainder of his time in a sort of lethargy-half-scepticism and half-indifference-believing nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing, and loving nothing. His fellow-countryman, however, and early friend, still trusts that the inborn energy of his active, intense, and glowing mind, originally derived from Nature, is only overlaid for a time, and has not been altogether extinguished among the ashes of that unhappy and ill-spent life. He, accordingly, invades the solitude, accompanied by Wordsworth.

After much earnest discourse, lofty speculation, and profound argument, the infidel hermit is so far influenced by these reasonings as to accompany them, multa reluctans, on their holiday tour. And we are given to understand that the various aspects of humanity presented to him, one by one, do not fail of their intended effect.

It is believed by his friends that the every day life of man, with its lights and shadows, its sorrows and consolations, will not be thrown open to his inspection in vain. The cure, indeed, is imperfect, but a seed is sown, we are led to hope, that cannot wither-a fire kindled within that must burn on till the needful purification is accomplished.

The plot of the poem, as far as there is plot, is thus before you. And though, as I shall point out by and by, there are many fine passages, indeed many separate poems, beautiful in themselves, embedded in the latter half of 'The Excursion,' the finest continuous poetry occurs just whilst the outline of the plot is coming into shape-just whilst our Solitary is struggling against the benign influences put forth on his behalf by these wise and true-hearted friends. As soon as this obstinate resistance is overcome, and they pass onward together, the interest of the dialogue slackens, and the narrative becomes weaker and less poetical; we then join company with a model Rector, known both to Wordsworth and the Pedlar. There comes in also the Rector's Wife, though of this particular lady little is said.

The introduction of the worthy ecclesiastic does not add to the spirit of the poem. The second, third, and fourth books are still those to which we most frequently turn. It is in them that, for the most part, we find those magnificent descriptions of scenery, intuitions, as it were, into the heart of Nature herself —such as, whether found here or elsewhere, place Wordsworth, in one quality of a poet-I mean as the interpreter between God as the Creator of the world and less inspired men-above all his rivals and contemporaries. I content myself with only mentioning the unsurpassed description of the collapsing storm in the second book, that you may refer to it if you will. The biography, I think I may so call it, of the mountain heights which overhang the secluded home occupied by the Solitary is, I doubt not, also familiar to you, but I wish to quote it, as showing with what exquisite grace and subtlety, both of feeling and language, Wordsworth sets forth the analogies, existing in Nature, between the separate senses, at any rate as far as man is concerned.

Many are the notes

Which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores :
And well those lofty brethren bear their part

In the wild concert chiefly when the storm
Rides high; then all the upper air they fill
With roaring sound that ceases not to flow,
Like smoke, along the level of the blast,
In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song
Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;
And, in the grim and breathless hour of noon,
Methinks that I have heard them echo back
The thunder's greeting :-nor have Nature's laws
Left them ungifted with a power to yield
Music of finer tone; a harmony,

So do I call it, though it be the hand

Of silence, though there be no voice ;—the clouds,
The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,
Motions of moonlight, all come thither--touch,
And have an answer-thither come, and shape
A language not unwelcome to sick hearts
And idle spirits.

1

There is, I think, a picture of the same kind, seen by the same inner eye, or rather, seen and heard together, by the same poet-instinct, which is ear and eye at once, in a smaller poem, more beautiful still. It is where the poet, buried deep in a woodland recess, discerns that the evening breeze has entered the glade; because, although the oak trees remain unmoved, the more sensitive ash feels the touch and ripple of that voiceless wind, and makes, in obedience thereto,

A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs.

These exquisite descriptive passages, however, were not, according to all probability, in Wordsworth's own opinion, and are not, I apprehend, in the opinion of his disciples, the most valuable portions of his work. Great poets, I believe, and small ones also perhaps, in their degree, are to be found in two very different kinds of men. The Bard, or born singer of the tribe, whose stormy verses record the battles of his countrymen, whose love ditties give renown to their bright-haired maids— whose mournful numbers attest the grief and loyalty of the clan, when some great chief passes away into the land of