let us hear his own account of what 'The Prelude' was, or, at least, was intended to be :

:

'Several years ago, when the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being able to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far nature and education had fitted him for such an employment. As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record in verse the origin and progress of his own powers, so far as he was acquainted with them. The preparatory poem (that is, this very Prelude), is biographical, and conducts the author's mind to the point where he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufficiently matured, for entering on the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works (namely "The Prelude,” and “The Recluse," which came to nothing as a whole), have the same kind of relationship to each other as the antechapel has to the body of a Gothic church.'

One would have said that this passage, instinct as it is with a modest confidence and a noble self-dedication to the poet's art, augured well for the poet's hopes. But, alas for the vanity of all human wishes! Alas for the evanescence of all human

expectations! 'The Prelude' was begun in 1799, it was finished in the summer of 1805. Now, after 1805 or 1806, at latest, the history of Wordsworth's mental progress was, comparatively speaking, of little importance to mankind. Those faculties which 'The Prelude' was to test and gauge may have been matured, but they were also somewhat chilled. Much fruit ripened, no doubt, after these years; but it did not ripen as genially as it should have done; and it is out of the beauty of promise, not out of the beauty of fulfilment, or the fondly anticipated harvests of perfection, that Wordsworth's wreath of immortality has, after all, to be woven. It is, if we may borrow his own metaphor, 'Of budding roses, not of roses in full bloom,' that his unfading coronal has been framed. The Prelude,' begun, as I have said in 1799, and ended in 1805, was looked upon by its author scarcely as a poem in itself; it was rather the stedfast and solemn preparation for a poetical career. In other words, it was, as he tells us, only a prelude. The great

ode of his life was destined to be sung to higher music; when the self-examination had been carried into effect, the education completed, the strength measured and ascertained. Alas! I say again, for the vanity of human wishes! for the evanescence of human expectations! The trained poet, who was so eager and so confident, rejoicing as a giant to run his course, did indeed run his course as a giant; but he ran it whilst the prelude was being written—whilst the process of education was going on-not after it had been accomplished and left behind. And this, perhaps, may be one reason-a somewhat melancholy reason, as I have said—why the world at large knew little or nothing of 'The Prelude,' till all worldly reputation had become 'the dream of a shadow,' till the eyes and ears of the poet were occupied by other lights, and other harmonies, than those of earth.

I know very well that the imagination helps us, when we speak of Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and the like, to raise up forms and pictures for the mind, without consciously analysing them into their ultimate elements. But if they are so analysed what we really mean is this. By Lord Byron we now mean 'Childe Harold,' 'Manfred,' 'The Siege of Corinth,' 'Don Juan,' &c. By Shelley, Alastor,' 'Adonais,' 'The Cenci,' and so on. By Wordsworth, in like manner, we mean little more than a certain number of his poems. And if we look into the matter, we shall find that, when 'The Prelude' was written and finished, these poems, or, at any rate, the great majority of them, were written and finished also. You can easily verify this statement for yourselves. Without wearying you by a long list of names, I will only observe that the 'Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey' were written in 1799; 'The Brothers' in 1800; and the 'Ode on the Anticipations of Immortality,' the latest, I think, of Wordsworth's productions, revealing his genius at its highest point of energy, between 1803 and 1806.

The principal effort made by him to surpass his earlier self, in the after years, was, perhaps, when he wrote The Excursion'

--a poem not published till 1814. It was, undoubtedly, a noble effort, a fluctus decumanus, if you will; but the fluctus decumanus of a tide, in my judgment, already on the ebb.

There will be, I dare say, many good critics dissenting vehemently from me upon such points; and against such critics I have nothing to say, except that I am bound to give utterance to my own opinions and not to theirs. Poetry is in some respects like personal beauty. If all opinions were absolutely in unison about them they would both be less interesting, and from the narrowing of their influence, they would affect men less than they do now. Nature herself throughout her realm seems to abhor monotony. You may, perhaps, recollect a story about Paley; how, with his broad Yorkshire dialect, he astonished his Bishop when that right reverend person condescended to inform his subordinate, that the day before them was the anniversary of his wedding day, and that during all the forty or fifty years that had elapsed since the auspicious event had taken place, no angry word had ever passed between him and his wife. 'Moighty dool, moighty dool, indeed, my lord!' broke at once from the lips of the unsympathising Archdeacon. Everybody agreed with Paley, of course; but, in justice to Mrs. Barrington, I must add, that the Bishop nobody believed.

Now, with regard to personal beauty, as with regard to poetry and art, Nature, abhorring as I have said monotony, has exerted herself to prevent this 'moighty doolness.' The endless varieties of temperament, of caprice, of eccentricity itself, are always in action; and looking to the interests of the whole, in healthy action, too. There are, in almost every constitution, certain special fibres that throb in answer to certain influences, and are silent to others; just as one Æolian harp may respond to a gust that meets with no reply but from it, though many similar Æolian harps may be close at hand.

Such varieties of impulse, acting upon various characters, are always at work in a thousand ways, and create a thousand

complications. They insinuate themselves into our judgments, to float between them and the absolute truth, colouring and modifying even the justest and clearest conceptions. They keep varying thus like clouds or shiftings of the atmosphere (at one moment in this valley, at another over the next), that colour and modify the white light of the sun.

When, therefore, I say that the poem of 'The Brothers,' written in 1800, constitutes for me Wordsworth's high-water mark, I do not expect, I do not ask for, universal acquiescence. Still, I believe that most of his admirers would agree that about the time when Wordsworth wrote 'The Brothers,' and other exquisite poems whose name is legion, he was moving onwards in all the freshness and power and majesty of his genius; and that, to the years 1799 and 1800, his greatest advance in poetry belongs. This being so, we can picture to ourselves with what buoyancy and strength, with what proud serenity, and in how exulting a spirit, the earlier portions of 'The Prelude' were written.

Taking for the moment 'The Brothers' as Wordsworth's finest poem, let us put this 'Prelude' aside for a little while, in order that we may sympathise with the stately self-reliance of the lonely bard, as he sat apart in his mountain home and felt

Divinity within him breeding wings
Wherewith to scorn the earth.

We know now how he paused at intervals in his noble task; and how he employed those intervals; or how, if he ever rested absolutely, it was to fix his eyes upon the future, in the sure and certain hope that he should behold, ere long, the temple of his glory rising, as it were, to the sound of solemn music, 'like a golden exhalation of the dawn.'

It is probably not necessary to trouble you with an analysis of The Brothers.' In order, however, to take nothing for granted-a great fault in argument, in criticism, in life itselfI must ask you to pardon me if I recall to your minds the

outline of this well-known composition. Two brothers of an
ancient family among the Cumberland dalesmen, whose love
for each other has been rendered more intense by poverty, by
orphanage, by the absence of other kindred, and by the closest
companionship from childhood, have had (after seeing the little
freehold, owned for centuries by men of their names, swallowed
up in a gulf of debt) to submit to one of the commonest forms
of our English sorrow-one of our English greatness at the
same time-inevitable separation for years, if not for ever.
These, whether it blew fair or foul, these two

Were brother Shepherds on their native hills.
They were the last of all their race and now,

When Leonard had approach'd his home, his heart
Fail'd in him; and, not venturing to enquire
Tidings of one whom he so dearly loved,
Towards the church-yard he had turn'd aside;
That, as he knew in what particular spot
His family were laid, he thence might learn
If still his brother lived, or to the file
Another grave was added. -He had found
Another grave,-near which a full half-hour
He had remain'd; but, as he gazed, there grew
Such a confusion in his memory,

That he began to doubt; and he had hopes
That he had seen this heap of turf before,—
That it was not another grave; but one
He had forgotten. He had lost his path,
As up the vale, that afternoon, he walk'd

Through fields which once had been well known to him :
And oh what joy the recollection now
Sent to his heart! He lifted up his eyes,
And, looking round, imagined that he saw
Strange alteration wrought on every side
Among the woods and fields, and that the rocks,
And everlasting hills themselves were changed.
Leonard then hears from the Vicar that-

If there were one among us who had heard
That Leonard Ewbank was come home again,
From the great Gavel, down by Leeza's Banks,
And down the Enna, far as Egremont,
That day would be a day of festival.