66 and caused the airy part to be mistaken for the substantial whole, the excrescence for the centre. Mr. Leigh Hunt was generally very felicitous in certain words and phrases, and admirable for reconciling the jarring discord of evil sayings and doings; but he had half-a-dozen words and phrases which people" agreed to hate," and he would never cease to use; and they were also provoked at his tendency to confuse the distinctions of sympathy and antipathy, by saying too much on the amiable side of the condemned, so that, after all, mankind seemed to be wrong in definitely deciding for the right. Metaphysically, he may be correct; but practice drives us mad." The Fish who became wiser when changed into a Man, and again wiser when changed into a Spirit, (see Hunt's inimitable poem on the subject,) might have had still more knowledge to communicate if he had been put back once more to a Fish. Something very like the principle here discussed, is discoverable in Chaucer and Shakspeare, who usually give the bane and antidote in close relation, do justice to every one on all sides, and never insist upon a good thing nor a bad one, but display an impartiality which often amounts to the humorous. Leigh Hunt's manner of doing this was the chief offence, for while the elder poets left the readers to their own conclusions, our author chose to take the case upon himself, so that he became identified with the provocation of those readers who were defeated of an expected decision. In Mr. Wordsworth's case there was a more deliberate and settled design in his offence. Subjects and characters seemed to be chosen, and entire poems written expressly with a view to provoke ridicule and contempt. He wrote many poems which were trivial, puerile, or mere trash. Not a doubt of it. There stand the very poems still in his works! Any body can see them-the ungrateful monuments of a great poet. Weakness, reared by his own hands, and kept in repair to his latest day! Let no false pen garble these remarks, and say that the essayist calls the high-minded and true poet Wordsworth bad names, and depreciates his genius; let the remarks of the whole be fairly taken. With this peremptory claim for justice and fair dealing on all sides, be it stated as an opinion, that poems, in which, by carrying a great principle to a ridiculous extreme, are gravely "exalted" garden-spades, common streets, small celandines, waggoners, beggars, household common-places, and matter-of-fact details, finished up like Dutch pictures and forced upon the attention as pre-eminently claiming profound admiration or reverence-that these deliberate outrages upon true taste, judgment, and the ideality of poetry, cost a great poet twenty years of abuse and laughter -during which period thousands of people died without knowing his genius, who might otherwise have been refined and elevated, and more "fit" to die into a higher existence. Now, however, all these small offences are merged in a public estimation, which seems likely to endure with our literature. Wordsworth is taken into the reverence of the intellect, and Leigh Hunt into the warm recesses of the affections. The one elevates with the sense of moral dignity; the other refines with a loving spirit, and instructs in smiles. And this is their influence upon the present age. |