Famous Reviews by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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The volume before us, if we were to describe it very shortly, we should
characterize as a tissue of moral and devotional ravings, in which
innumerable changes are rung upon a few very simple and familiar ideas:
--but with such an accompaniment of long words, long sentences, and
unwieldy phrases--such a hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical
sublimities, that it is often extremely difficult for the most skilful
and attentive student to obtain a glimpse of the author's meaning--and
altogether impossible for an ordinary reader to conjecture what he is
about. Moral and religious enthusiasm, though undoubtedly poetical
emotions, are at the same time but dangerous inspirers of poetry;
nothing being so apt to run into interminable dulness or mellifluous
extravagance, without giving the unfortunate author the slightest
intimation of his danger. His laudable zeal for the efficacy of his
preachments, he very naturally mistakes for the ardour of poetical
inspiration;--and, while dealing out the high words and glowing phrases
which are so readily supplied by themes of this description, can
scarcely avoid believing that he is eminently original and impressive:--
All sorts of commonplace notions and expressions are sanctified in his
eyes, by the sublime ends for which they are employed; and the mystical
verbiage of the methodist pulpit is repeated, till the speaker
entertains no doubt that he is the elected organ of divine truth and
persuasion. But if such be the common hazards of seeking inspiration
from those potent fountains, it may easily be conceived what chance Mr.
Wordsworth had of escaping their enchantment,--with his natural
propensities to wordiness, and his unlucky habit of debasing pathos with
vulgarity. The fact accordingly is, that in this production he is more
obscure than a Pindaric poet of the seventeenth century; and more
verbose "than even himself of yore"; while the wilfulness with which he
persists in choosing his examples of intellectual dignity and tenderness
exclusively from the lowest ranks of society, will be sufficiently
apparent, from the circumstance of his having thought fit to make his
chief prolocutor in this poetical dialogue, and chief advocate of
Providence and Virtue, _an old Scotch Pedlar_--retired indeed from
business--but still rambling about in his former haunts, and gossiping
among his old customers, without his pack on his shoulders. The other
persons of the drama are, a retired military chaplain, who has grown
half an atheist and half a misanthrope--the wife of an unprosperous
weaver--a servant girl with her infant--a parish pauper, and one or two
other personages of equal rank and dignity.

The character of the work is decidedly didactic; and more than nine-tenths
of it are occupied with a species of dialogue, or rather a series
of long sermons or harangues which pass between the pedlar, the author,
the old chaplain, and a worthy vicar, who entertains the whole party at
dinner on the last day of their excursion. The incidents which occur in
the course of it are as few and trifling as can be imagined;--and those
which the different speakers narrate in the course of their discourses,
are introduced rather to illustrate their arguments or opinions, than
for any interest they are supposed to possess of their own.--The
doctrine which the work is intended to enforce, we are by no means
certain that we have discovered. In so far as we can collect, however,
it seems to be neither more nor less than the old familiar one, that a
firm belief in the providence of a wise and beneficent Being must be our
great stay and support under all afflictions and perplexities upon
earth--and that there are indications of his power and goodness in all
the aspects of the visible universe, whether living or inanimate--every
part of which should therefore be regarded with love and reverence, as
exponents of those great attributes. We can testify, at least, that
these salutary and important truths are inculcated at far greater
length, and with more repetitions, than in any ten volumes of sermons
that we ever perused. It is also maintained, with equal conciseness and
originality, that there is frequently much good sense, as well as much
enjoyment, in the humbler conditions of life; and that, in spite of
great vices and abuses, there is a reasonable allowance both of
happiness and goodness in society at large. If there be any deeper or
more recondite doctrines in Mr. Wordsworth's book, we must confess that
they have escaped us;--and, convinced as we are of the truth and
soundness of those to which we have alluded, we cannot help thinking
that they might have been better enforced with less parade and
prolixity. His effusions on what may be called the physiognomy of
external nature, or its moral and theological expression, are eminently
fantastic, obscure, and affected.--It is quite time, however, that we
should give the reader a more particular account of this singular
performance.

It opens with a picture of the author toiling across a bare common in a
hot summer day, and reaching at last a ruined hut surrounded with tall
trees, where he meets by appointment with a hale old man, with an
iron-pointed staff lying beside him. Then follows a retrospective account
of their first acquaintance--formed, it seems, when the author was at a
village school; and his aged friend occupied "one room,--the fifth part
of a house" in the neighbourhood. After this, we have the history of
this reverend person at no small length. He was born, we are happy to
find, in Scotland--among the hills of Athol; and his mother, after his
father's death, married the parish schoolmaster--so that he was taught
his letters betimes: But then, as it is here set forth with much
solemnity,

From his sixth year, the boy, of whom I speak,
In summer, tended cattle on the hills.

And again, a few pages after, that there may be no risk of mistake as to
a point of such essential importance--

From early childhood, even, as hath been said,
From his _sixth year_, he had been sent abroad,
_In summer_, to tend herds: Such was his task!

In the course of this occupation, it is next recorded, that he acquired
such a taste for rural scenery and open air, that when he was sent to
teach a school in a neighbouring village, he found it "a misery to him,"
and determined to embrace the more romantic occupation of a Pedlar--or,
as Mr. Wordsworth more musically expresses it,

A vagrant merchant bent beneath his load;

--and in the course of his peregrinations had acquired a very large
acquaintance, which, after he had given up dealing, he frequently took a
summer ramble to visit. The author, on coming up to this interesting
personage, finds him sitting with his eyes half shut;--and, not being
quite sure whether he's asleep or awake, stands "some minutes space" in
silence beside him. "At length," says he, with his own delightful
simplicity--

At length I hailed him--_seeing that his hat
Was moist_ with water-drops, as if the brim
Had newly scooped a running stream!--
--"'Tis," said I, "a burning day;
My lips are parched with thirst;--but you, I guess,
Have somewhere found relief."

Upon this, the benevolent old man points him out a well in a corner, to
which the author repairs; and, after minutely describing its situation,
beyond a broken wall, and between two alders that "grew in a cold damp
nook," he thus faithfully chronicles the process of his return--

My thirst I slaked--and from the cheerless spot
Withdrawing, straightway to the shade returned,
Where sate the old man on the cottage bench.

The Pedlar then gives an account of the last inhabitants of the deserted
cottage beside them. These were, a good industrious weaver and his wife
and children. They were very happy for a while; till sickness and want
of work came upon them; and then the father enlisted as a soldier, and
the wife pined in the lonely cottage--growing every year more careless
and desponding, as her anxiety and fears for her absent husband, of whom
no tidings ever reached her, accumulated. Her children died, and left
her cheerless and alone; and at last she died also; and the cottage fell
to decay. We must say, that there is very considerable pathos in the
telling of this simple story; and that they who can get over the
repugnance excited by the triteness of its incidents, and the lowness of
its objects, will not fail to be struck with the author's knowledge of
the human heart, and the power he possesses of stirring up its deepest
and gentlest sympathies. His prolixity, indeed, it is not so easy to get
over. This little story fills about twenty-five quarto pages; and
abounds, of course, with mawkish sentiment, and details of preposterous
minuteness. When the tale is told, the travellers take their staffs, and
end their first day's journey, without further adventure, at a little
inn.

The Second book sets them forward betimes in the morning. They pass by a
Village Wake; and as they approach a more solitary part of the
mountains, the old man tells the author that he is taking him to see an
old friend of his, who had formerly been chaplain to a Highland
regiment--had lost a beloved wife--been roused from his dejection by the
first euthusiasm [Transcriber's note: sic] of the French Revolution--had
emigrated on its miscarriage to America--and returned disgusted to hide
himself in the retreat to which they were now ascending. That retreat is
then most tediously described--a smooth green valley in the heart of the
mountain, without trees, and with only one dwelling. Just as they get
sight of it from the ridge above, they see a funeral train proceeding
from the solitary abode, and hurry on with some apprehension for the
fate of the misanthrope--whom they find, however, in very tolerable
condition at the door, and learn that the funeral was that of an aged
pauper who had been boarded out by the parish in that cheap farm-house,
and had died in consequence of long exposure to heavy rain. The old
chaplain, or, as Mr. Wordsworth is pleased to call him, the Solitary,
tells this dull story at prodigious length; and after giving an inflated
description of an effect of mountain-mists in the evening sun, treats
his visitors with a rustic dinner--and they walk out to the fields at
the close of the second book.

The Third makes no progress in the excursion. It is entirely filled with
moral and religious conversation and debate, and with a more ample
detail of the Solitary's past life, than had been given in the sketch of
his friend. The conversation is exceedingly dull and mystical; and the
Solitary's confessions insufferably diffuse. Yet there is very
considerable force of writing and tenderness of sentiment in this part
of the work.

The Fourth book is also filled with dialogues ethical and theological;
and, with the exception of some brilliant and forcible expressions here
and there, consists of an exposition of truisms, more cloudy, wordy, and
inconceivably prolix, than any thing we ever met with.

In the beginning of the Fifth book, they leave the solitary valley,
taking its pensive inhabitant along with them, and stray on to where the
landscape sinks down into milder features, till they arrive at a church,
which stands on a moderate elevation in the centre of a wide and fertile
vale. Here they meditate for a while among the monuments, till the vicar
comes out and joins them;--and recognizing the pedlar for an old
acquaintance, mixes graciously in the conversation, which proceeds in a
very edifying manner till the close of the book.

The Sixth contains a choice obituary, or characteristic account of
several of the persons who lie buried before this groupe of moralizers;
--an unsuccessful lover, who finds consolation in natural history--a
miner, who worked on for twenty years, in despite of universal ridicule,
and at last found the vein he had expected--two political enemies
reconciled in old age to each other--an old female miser--a seduced
damsel--and two widowers, one who devoted himself to the education of
his daughters, and one who married a prudent middle-aged woman to take
care of them.

In the beginning of the Eighth Book, the worthy vicar expresses, in the
words of Mr. Wordsworth's own epitome, "his apprehensions that he had
detained his auditors too long--invites them to his house--Solitary,
disinclined to comply, rallies the Wanderer, and somewhat playfully
draws a comparison between his itinerant profession and that of a
knight-errant--which leads to the Wanderer giving an account of changes
in the country, from the manufacturing spirit--Its favourable effects--
The other side of the picture," etc., etc. After these very poetical
themes are exhausted, they all go into the house, where they are
introduced to the Vicar's wife and daughter; and while they sit chatting
in the parlour over a family dinner, his son and one of his companions
come in with a fine dish of trouts piled on a blue slate; and, after
being caressed by the company, are sent to dinner in the nursery.--This
ends the eighth book.

The Ninth and last is chiefly occupied with the mystical discourses of
the Pedlar; who maintains, that the whole universe is animated by an
active principle, the noblest seat of which is in the human soul; and
moreover, that the final end of old age is to train and enable us

To hear the mighty stream of _Tendency_
Uttering, for elevation of our thought,
A clear sonorous voice, inaudible
To the vast multitude whose doom it is
To run the giddy round of vain delight--

with other matters as luminous and emphatic. The hostess at length
breaks off the harangue, by proposing that they should all make a little
excursion on the lake,--and they embark accordingly; and, after
navigating for some time along its shores, and drinking tea on a little
island, land at last on a remote promontory, from which they see the sun
go down,--and listen to a solemn and pious, but rather long prayer from
the Vicar. They then walk back to the parsonage door, where the author
and his friend propose to spend the evening;--but the Solitary prefers
walking back in the moonshine to his own valley, after promising to take
another ramble with them--

If time, with free consent, be yours to give,
And season favours.

--And here the publication somewhat abruptly closes.

Our abstract of the story has been so extremely concise, that it is more
than usually necessary for us to lay some specimens of the work itself
before our readers. Its grand staple, as we have already said, consists
of a kind of mystical morality: and the chief characteristics of the
style are, that it is prolix and very frequently unintelligible: and
though we are very sensible that no great gratification is to be
expected from the exhibition of those qualities, yet it is necessary to
give our readers a taste of them, both to justify the sentence we have
passed, and to satisfy them that it was really beyond our power to
present them with any abstract or intelligible account of those long
conversations which we have had so much occasion to notice in our brief
sketch of its contents.

* * * * *

There is no beauty, we think, it must be admitted, in such passages; and
so little either of interest or curiosity in the incidents they
disclose, that we can scarcely conceive that any man to whom they had
actually occurred, should take the trouble to recount them to his wife
and children by his idle fireside--but, that man or child should think
them worth writing down in blank verse, and printing in magnificent
quarto, we should certainly have supposed altogether impossible, had it
not been for the ample proofs which Mr. Wordsworth has afforded to the
contrary.

Sometimes their silliness is enhanced by a paltry attempt at effect and
emphasis:--as in the following account of that very touching and
extraordinary occurrence of a lamb bleating among the mountains. The
poet would actually persuade us that he thought the mountains themselves
were bleating;--and that nothing could be so grand or impressive.
"List!" cries the old Pedlar, suddenly breaking off in the middle of one
of his daintiest ravings--

--"List!--I heard,
From yon huge breast of rock, a solemn bleat;
Sent forth as if it were the Mountain's voice!
As if the visible Mountain made the cry!
Again!"--The effect upon the soul was such
As he expressed; for, from the Mountain's heart
The solemn bleat appeared to come; there was
No other--and the region all around
Stood silent, empty of all shape of life.
--It was a lamb--left somewhere to itself!

What we have now quoted will give the reader a notion of the taste and
spirit in which this volume is composed; and yet, if it had not
contained something a good deal better, we do not know how we should
have been justified in troubling him with any account of it. But the
truth is, that Mr. Wordsworth, with all his perversities, is a person of
great powers; and has frequently a force in his moral declamations, and
a tenderness in his pathetic narratives, which neither his prolixity nor
his affectation can altogether deprive of their effect.

* * * * *

Besides those more extended passages of interest or beauty, which we
have quoted, and omitted to quote, there are scattered up and down the
book, and in the midst of its most repulsive portions, a very great
number of single lines and images, that sparkle like gems in the desart,
and startle us with an intimation of the great poetic powers that lie
buried in the rubbish that has been heaped around them. It is difficult
to pick up these, after we have once passed them by; but we shall
endeavour to light upon one or two. The beneficial effect of intervals
of relaxation and pastime on youthful minds, is finely expressed, we
think, in a single line, when it is said to be--

Like vernal ground to Sabbath sunshine left.

The following image of the bursting forth of a mountain-spring, seems to
us also to be conceived with great elegance and beauty.

And a few steps may bring us to the spot,
Where haply crown'd with flowrets and green herbs;
The Mountain Infant to the Sun comes forth
Like human life from darkness.--

The ameliorating effects of song and music on the minds which most
delight in them, are likewise very poetically expressed.

--And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left,
Deposited upon the silent shore
Of Memory, images and precious thoughts,
That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.

Nor is any thing more elegant than the representation of the graceful
tranquillity occasionally put on by one of the author's favourites; who,
though gay and airy, in general--

Was graceful, when it pleased him, smooth and still
As the mute Swan that floats adown the stream,
Or on the waters of th' unruffled lake
Anchored her placid beauty. Not a leaf
That flutters on the bough more light than he,
And not a flower that droops in the green shade,
More winningly reserved.--

Nor are there wanting morsels of a sterner and more majestic beauty; as
when, assuming the weightier diction of Cowper, he says, in language
which the hearts of all readers of modern history must have responded--

--Earth is sick,
And Heaven is weary of the hollow words
Which States and Kingdoms utter when they speak
Of Truth and Justice.

These examples, we perceive, are not very well chosen--but we have not
leisure to improve the selection; and, such as they are, they may serve
to give the reader a notion of the sort of merit which we meant to
illustrate by their citation.--When we look back to them, indeed, and to
the other passages which we have now extracted, we feel half inclined to
rescind the severe sentence which we passed on the work at the
beginning:--But when we look into the work itself, we perceive that it
cannot be rescinded. Nobody can be more disposed to do justice to the
great powers of Mr. Wordsworth than we are; and, from the first time
that he came before us, down to the present moment, we have uniformly
testified in their favour, and assigned indeed our high sense of their
value as the chief ground of the bitterness with which we resented their
perversion. That perversion, however, is now far more visible than their
original dignity; and while we collect the fragments, it is impossible
not to lament the ruins from which we are condemned to pick them. If any
one should doubt of the existence of such a perversion, or be disposed
to dispute about the instances we have hastily brought forward, we would
just beg leave to refer him to the general plan and the characters of
the poem now before us.--Why should Mr. Wordsworth have made his hero a
superannuated Pedlar? What but the most wretched and provoking
perversity of taste and judgment, could induce any one to place his
chosen advocate of wisdom and virtue in so absurd and fantastic a
condition? Did Mr. Wordsworth really imagine, that he favourite
doctrines were likely to gain any thing in point of effect or authority
by being put into the mouth of a person accustomed to higgle about tape,
or brass sleeve-buttons? Or is it not plain that, independent of the
ridicule and disgust which such a personification must give to many of
his readers, its adoption exposes his work throughout to the charge of
revolting incongruity, and utter disregard of probability or nature?
For, after he has thus wilfully debased his moral teacher by a low
occupation, is there one word that he puts into his mouth, or one
sentiment of which he makes him the organ, that has the most remote
reference to that occupation? Is there any thing in his learned,
abstracted, and logical harangues, that savours of the calling that is
ascribed to him? Are any of their materials such as a pedlar could
possibly have dealt in? Are the manners, the diction, the sentiments, in
any, the very smallest degree, accommodated to a person in that
condition? or are they not eminently and conspicuously such as could not
by possibility belong to it? A man who went about selling flannel and
pocket-handkerchiefs in this lofty diction, would soon frighten away all
his customers; and would infallibly pass either for a madman, or for
some learned and affected gentleman, who, in a frolic, had taken up a
character which he was peculiarly ill qualified for supporting.

The absurdity in this case, we think, is palpable and glaring; but it is
exactly of the same nature with that which infects the whole substance
of the work--a puerile ambition of singularity engrafted on an unlucky
predilection for truisms; and an affected passion for simplicity and
humble life, most awkwardly combined with a taste for mystical
refinements, and all the gorgeousness of obscure phraseology. His taste
for simplicity is evinced, by sprinkling up and down his interminable
declamations, a few descriptions of baby-houses, and of old hats with
wet brims; and his amiable partiality for humble life, by assuring us,
that a wordy rhetorician, who talks about Thebes, and allegorizes all
the heathen mythology, was once a pedlar--and making him break in upon
his magnificent orations with two or three awkward notices of something
that he had seen when selling winter raiment about the country--or of
the changes in the state of society, which had almost annihilated his
former calling.

ON KEATS

[From _The Edinburgh Review_, August, 1820]

1. _Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By JOHN KEATS. 8vo. pp. 207. London,
1818.

2. _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems._ By JOHN
KEATS, Author of _Endymion_. 12mo. pp. 200. London, 1820.

We had never happened to see either of these volumes till very lately--
and have been exceedingly struck with the genius they display, and the
spirit of poetry which breathes through all their extravagance. That
imitation of our older writers, and especially of our older dramatists,
to which we cannot help flattering ourselves that we have somewhat
contributed, has brought on, as it were, a second spring in our poetry;
--and few of its blossoms are either more profuse of sweetness or richer
in promise, than this which is now before us. Mr. Keats, we understand,
is still a very young man; and his whole works, indeed, bear evidence
enough of the fact. They are full of extravagance and irregularity, rash
attempts at originality, interminable wanderings, and excessive
obscurity. They manifestly require, therefore, all the indulgence that
can be claimed for a first attempt:--but we think it no less plain that
they deserve it; for they are flushed all over with the rich lights of
fancy, and so coloured and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry, that
even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is
impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our
hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present. The models upon
which he has formed himself, in the Endymion, the earliest and by much
the most considerable of his poems, are obviously the Faithful
Shepherdess of Fletcher, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson;--the
exquisite metres and inspired diction of which he has copied with great
boldness and fidelity--and, like his great originals, has also contrived
to impart to the whole piece that true rural and poetical air which
breathes only in them and in Theocritus--which is at once homely and
majestic, luxurious and rude, and sets before us the genuine sights and
sounds and smells of the country, with all the magic and grace of
Elysium. His subject has the disadvantage of being mythological; and in
this respect, as well as on account of the raised and rapturous tone it
consequently assumes, his poetry may be better compared perhaps to the
Comus and the Arcades of Milton, of which, also, there are many traces
of imitation. The great distinction, however, between him and these
divine authors, is, that imagination in them is subordinate to reason
and judgment, while, with him, it is paramount and supreme--that their
ornaments and images are employed to embellish and recommend just
sentiments, engaging incidents, and natural characters, while his are
poured out without measure or restraint, and with no apparent design but
to unburden the breast of the author, and give vent to the overflowing
vein of his fancy. The thin and scanty tissue of his story is merely the
light framework on which his florid wreaths are suspended; and while his
imaginations go rambling and entangling themselves everywhere, like wild
honeysuckles, all idea of sober reason, and plan, and consistency, is
utterly forgotten, and is "strangled in their waste fertility." A great
part of the work, indeed, is written in the strangest and most
fantastical manner that can be imagined. It seems as if the author had
ventured everything that occurred to him in the shape of a glittering
image or striking expression--taken the first word that presented itself
to make up a rhyme, and then made that word the germ of a new cluster of
images--a hint for a new excursion of the fancy--and so wandered on,
equally forgetful whence he came, and heedless whither he was going,
till he had covered his pages with an interminable arabesque of
connected and incongruous figures, that multiplied as they extended, and
were only harmonized by the brightness of their tints, and the graces of
their forms. In this rash and headlong career he has of course many
lapses and failures. There is no work, accordingly, from which a
malicious critic could cull more matter for ridicule, or select more
obscure, unnatural, or absurd passages. But we do not take _that_ to be
our office;--and just beg leave, on the contrary, to say, that any one
who, on this account, would represent the whole poem as despicable, must
either have no notion of poetry, or no regard to truth.