"T is poetry-at least by his assertion,

And may appear so when the dog-star rages-
And he who understands it would be able
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.

V.

You-Gentlemen! by dint of long seclusion
From better company, have kept your own
At Keswick, and, through still continued fusion
Of one another's minds, at last have grown
To deem as a most logical conclusion,

That Poesy has wreaths for you alone:
There is a narrowness in such a notion,

Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for Ocean.

VI.

I would not imitate the petty thought,

Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,

For all the glory your conversion brought,

Since gold alone should not have been its price.
You have your salary; was 't for that you wrought?
And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.1
You 're shabby fellows-true-but poets still,
And duly seated on the Immortal Hill.

VII.

Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows—
Perhaps some virtuous blushes ;-let them go—

antithesis of Imagination and Fancy contained in the Preface to the collected Poems of William Wordsworth, published in 1815. In the Preface to the Excursion (1814) it is expressly stated that "it is not the author's intention formally to announce a system."]

I. Wordsworth's place may be in the Customs-it is, I think, in that or the Excise-besides another at Lord Lonsdale's table, where this poetical charlatan and political parasite licks up the crumbs with a hardened alacrity; the converted Jacobin having long subsided into the clownish sycophant [despised retainer,—MS. erased] of the worst prejudices of the aristocracy.

[Wordsworth obtained his appointment as Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland in March, 1813, through Lord Lonsdale's "patronage" (see his letter, March 6, 1813). The Excursion was dedicated to Lord Lonsdale in a sonnet dated July 29, 1814

"Oft through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer,
In youth I roamed

Now, by thy care befriended, I appear

Before thee, Lonsdale, and this Work present."

To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs-
And for the fame you would engross below,
The field is universal, and allows

Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow: Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try 'Gainst you the question with posterity.

VIII.

For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
Contend not with you on the winged steed,
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
The fame you envy, and the skill you need;
And, recollect, a poet nothing loses

In giving to his brethren their full meed
Of merit-and complaint of present days
Is not the certain path to future praise.

IX.

He that reserves his laurels for posterity

(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
Being only injured by his own assertion;

And although here and there some glorious rarity
Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
The major part of such appellants go

To-God knows where-for no one else can know.

X.

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,1
Milton appealed to the Avenger, Time,
If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
And makes the word "Miltonic

mean Sublime,"

He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,
Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son,
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

XI.

Think'st thou, could he-the blind Old Man-arise Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more

1. [Paradise Lost, vii, 25, 26.]