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THE

BRITISH CRITIC,

FOR MAY, 1815.

ART. I. The Excursion; being Part of the Recluse, Poem. By William Wordsworth. 4to. 447. pp. 21. 2s. Longman and Co. 1814.

THE name of metaphysical, by which Johnson has distinguished the poetry of Donne, Cowley, and their imitators, might perhaps as justly, though somewhat in a different sense, be applied, in our own days, to that class of writers, in which Mr. Wordsworth holds so distinguished a place. It is not meant that there exists any striking resemblance in their modes of thinking and writing, any farther than as they are both careless how far they wander from common associations of thought and language. Not content, as most imitators of nature have been, with embodying the brighter hues which play on the surfaces of things, both these schools have searched deeply into their hidden workings and mutual attractions: but as their objects were very different, so they did not collect the same materials, nor make the same use of them. The metaphysical poets of the se venteenth century, seem to have sought out for nothing but remote resemblances in things apparently the most unlike they assemble at will brilliant images from all quarters, and their delight is to shew what rapid, dexterous, and manifold permutations and combinations may be made of them: we are thus perpetually amused by the spirit and luxuriance of the author, but are ready enough to lay down the book for any other gaudy or glittering amusement. For what reason, except that in all this there is nothing to melt or ennoble or calm the spirit? nothing which can be brought to our minds by our daily and hourly occupations and feelings, which comes home" to our business" and bosom," mixing itself with our goings out and our comings in, our fireside talk and our nightly reveries? The defect will be more distinctly felt, if we look to the result of a different sort of metaphysical

A

Gg

VOL. III. MAY, 1815.

physical observation, as exemplified in the writings of our author and of others his partners in friendship and in fame. These also are metaphysicians, but they have analysed mind and matter, not with a purpose of cold and barren speculation, nor of glittering and useless comparison, like their predecessors just mentioned but considering that the end of poetry is to instruct through the imagination and the passions, they have regarded every thing naturally felt or imagined by man as being, so far, a proper subject for them; and they have used their abstract knowledge, not to provide playthings for the fancy, but to furnish a clue to the windings of the heart. The consequence is, that their poetry is every where deeply and highly tinctured with feeling it may be often obscure, sometimes trivial, but it can never be unimpassioned. Peculiar as it seems in its principles, and refined in its operations, we must not expect that it should ever be universally popular, but it will meet with few moderate partizans: where it is admired, it will be beloved and idolized.

:

Of Mr. Wordsworth this is more especially true, because he has deviated farthest and most avowedly from the ordinary track, and is constantly professing and enforcing his peculiar notions; which, if they be not truely poetical, and such as to furnish not thought only, but materials for thinking, impressions deep and lasting as well as strong impulses, they cannot but afford more disgust than the common frailties of authors, inasmuch as they are more obvious and obtrusive. He owes it therefore to his own fair fame distinctly to set forth the principles, on which rests a practice so repugnant in many instances to his readers' habits of judging. Since his poetry is the shadow of his phi losophy, the result of intense reflection and a peculiar way of combining and abstracting, its interest depends in a great measure on a right understanding of the process which formed it. But there are few who have music enough in their souls to unravel for themselves his abstruser harmonies: only let him sound the key-note, and the apparent confusion will vanish: let him make his tones well understood, and they will be to every ear delightful, to every soul elevating: till then they can delight and improve those only, who have fancy enough to transport themselves into the poet's circumstances and mood of mind, and leisure enough to work out with him the speculations and feelings consequent thereupon. In default, however, of time or inclination on his own part, may it be allowed to us, who admire him on principle, to state, more fully than under common circumstances, that conception of his writings, whether rightly or wrongly formed, on which we ground our admiration: discharging thereby, as far as in us lies, our debt of gratitude to the poet, and shewing, perhaps, to some who have paid less at

tention