ing from the conquest of India, crowned with vine-leaves, and drawn by panthers, and followed by troops of satyrs, of wild men and animals that he had tamed. You would think, in hearing him speak on this subject, that you saw Titian's picture of the meeting of Bacchus and Ariadne so classic were his conceptions, so glowing his style. Milton is his great idol, and he sometimes dares to compare himself with him. His Sonnets, indeed, have something of the same high-raised tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime favourite of his, and he has been at the pains to modernize some of the Canterbury Tales. Those persons 15 who look upon Mr. Wordworth as a merely puerile writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not think our author has any very 20 cordial sympathy with Shakspeare. How. should he? Shakspeare was the least of an egotist of any body in the world. He does not much relish the variety and scope of dramatic composition. 'He hates those 25 his mind fair play. We have known him interlocutions between Lucius and Caius.' enlarge with a noble intelligence and enYet Mr. Wordsworth himself wrote a thusiasm on Nicolas Poussin's fine landtragedy when he was young; and we have scape-compositions, pointing out the unity. heard the following energetic lines quoted of design that pervades them, the superinfrom it, as put into the mouth of a person 30 tending mind, the imaginative principle smit with remorse for some rash crime:

idea is repeated three times under the disguise of a different phraseology: it comes to this 'let observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind'; or take away 5 the first line, and the second,

'Survey mankind from China to Peru,' literally conveys the whole. Mr. Wordsworth is, we must say, a perfect Draw10 cansir as to prose writers. He complains of the dry reasoners and matter-of-fact people for their want of passion; and he is jealous of the rhetorical declaimers and rhapsodists as trenching on the province of poetry. He condemns all French writers (as well of poetry as prose) in the lump. His list in this way is indeed small. approves of Walton's Angler, Paley, and some other writers of an inoffensive modesty of pretension. He also likes books of voyages and travels, and Robinson Crusoe. In art, he greatly esteems Bewick's woodcuts, and Waterloo's sylvan etchings. But he sometimes takes a higher tone, and gives

-'Action is momentary,

The motion of a muscle this way or that;
Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite!'

35

Perhaps for want of light and shade, and
the unshackled spirit of the drama, this
performance was never brought forward.
Our critic has a great dislike to Gray, and
a fondness for Thomson and Collins. It is
mortifying to hear him speak of Pope and 40
Dryden, who, because they have been sup-
posed to have all the possible excellences of
poetry, he will allow to have none. Nothing,
however, can be fairer, or more amusing,
than the way in which he sometimes exposes
the unmeaning verbiage of modern poetry.
Thus, in the beginning of Dr. Johnson's
Vanity of Human Wishes

'Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru'.
he says there is a total want of imagina-
tion accompanying the words, the same

He

that brings all to bear on the same end; and declaring he would not give a rush for any landscape that did not express the time of day, the climate, the period of the world it was meant to illustrate, or had not this character of wholeness in it. His eye also does justice to Rembrandt's fine and masterly effects. In the way in which that artist works something out of nothing, and transforms the stump of a tree, a common figure into an ideal object, by the gorgeous light and shade thrown upon it, he perceives an analogy to his own mode of investing the minute details of nature with an 45 atmosphere of sentiment: and in pronouncing Rembrandt to be a man of genius, feels that he strengthens his own claim to the title. It has been said of Mr. Wordsworth, that 'he hates conchology, that he hates the 50 Venus of Medicis.' But these, we hope, are mere epigrams and jeux-d'esprit, as far from truth as they are free from malice; a sort of running satire or critical clenches

'Where one for sense and one for rhyme, Is quite sufficient at one time.'

meekly, and would have been a person of great bonhommie and frankness of disposition. But the sense of injustice and of undeserved ridicule sours the temper and 5 narrows the views. To have produced works of genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn, is one of the heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when they are denied by

We think, however, that if Mr. Wordsworth had been a more liberal and candid critic, he would have been a more sterling writer. If a greater number of sources of pleasure had been open to him, he would have communicated pleasure to the world more frequently. Had he been less fastidious 10 others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at

every particle of praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood over

in pronouncing sentence on the works of others, his own would have been received more favourably, and treated more leniently. The current of his feelings is deep, but narrow; the range of his understanding is 15 the undeserved slights we receive; and thus lofty and aspiring rather than discursive. The force, the originality, the absolute truth and identity with which he feels some things, makes him indifferent to so many others. The simplicity and enthusiasm of 20 and less than he ought of the award of

the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions of petulance and selfconceit. Mr. Wordsworth has thought too much of contemporary critics and criticism;

posterity, and of the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but of those who were made so by their admiration of his genius. He did not court popularity by a conformity to established models, and he ought not to have been surprised that his originality was not understood as a matter of course. He has gnawed too much on the bridle; and has often thrown out crusts

his feelings, with respect to nature, renders him bigoted and intolerant in his judgments of men and things. But it happens to him, as to others, that his strength lies in his weakness; and perhaps we have no right to 25 complain. We might get rid of the cynic and the egotist, and find in his stead a commonplace man. We should 'take the good the Gods provide us': a fine and original vein of poetry is not one of their 30 to the critics, in mere defiance or as a most contemptible gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth thinking of, except as it may be a mortification to those who expect perfection from human nature; or who have been idle enough at some period of their 35 in this respect, or that he resents censure lives, to deify men of genius as possessing claims above it. But this is a chord that jars, and we shall not dwell upon it.

Lord Byron we have called, according to the old proverb, 'the spoiled child of 40 fortune': Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some peculiarities, that he is 'the spoiled child of disappointment.' We are convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his honours 45

point of honour when he was challenged, which otherwise his own good sense would have withheld. We suspect that Mr. Wordsworth's feelings are a little morbid

more than he is gratified by praise. Otherwise, the tide has turned much in his favour of late years he has a large body of determined partisans and is at present sufficiently in request with the public to save or relieve him from the last necessity to which a man of genius can be reduced that of becoming the God of his Own idolatry!

1825

Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERIE

ESSAYS

Children love to listen to stories about

the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, 'that would be foolish indeed.' And then I told how, when

by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a

that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful

was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer, (here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted,) the

their elders, when they were children; to [5 she came to die, her funeral was attended stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or grandame whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their 10 good and religious woman; so good indeed great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk, (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived,) which had been the scene (so at least it was generally believed in that part 15 person their great-grandmother Field once of the country) of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be 20 best dancer, I was saying, in the county; till seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, 25 with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say how religious and how good their greatgrandmother Field was, how beloved and 30 ing up and down the great staircase near respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived

a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight glid

where she slept, but she said 'those innocents would do her no harm'; and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, 35 because I was never half so good or religious as she; and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grand

in the holidays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Cæsars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the

in it in a manner as if it had been her own, 40 children, having us to the great house and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other 45 old marble heads would seem to live again, house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at

or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast

empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out; sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me; and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they

great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy, (for he was a good bit older than I,) many a mile when I 5 could not walk for pain; and how in afterlife he became lame-footed too, and I did not always, I fear, make allowances enough. for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how con

were forbidden fruit, unless now and then; 10 siderate he had been to me when I was

and because I had more pleasure in strolling lame-footed; and how when he died, about among the old melancholy-looking though he had not been dead an hour, it yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the seemed as if he had died a great while ago, red berries, and the fir-apples, which were such a distance there is betwixt life and good for nothing but to look at - or in 15 death; and how I bore his death as I thought lying about upon the fresh grass with all pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted the fine garden smells around me ---- or and haunted me; and though I did not cry basking in the orangery, till I could almost or take it to heart as some do, and as I think fancy myself ripening too along with the he would have done if I had died, yet I oranges and the limes in that grateful 20 missed him all day long, and knew not till warmth or in watching the dace that then how much I had loved him. I missed darted to and fro in the fishpond at the his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and bottom of the garden, with here and there wished him to be alive again, to be quara great sulky pike hanging midway down the reling with him, (for we quarreled somewater in silent state, as if it mocked at their 25 times,) rather than not have him again, and impertinent friskings, I had more pleasure was as uneasy without him, as he, their in these busy-idle diversions than in all the poor uncle, must have been when the doctor sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, took off his limb. Here the children fell a oranges, and such-like common baits for crying, and asked if their little mourning children. Here John slyly deposited back 30 which they had on was not for Uncle John, upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more heightened 35 hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet

tone, I told how, though their great-grand-
mother Field loved all her grandchildren,
yet in an especial manner she might be said
to love their uncle, John L, because he
was so handsome and spirited a youth, and 40
a king to the rest of us; and, instead of
moping about in solitary corners, like some
of us, he would mount the most mettlesome
horse he could get, when but an imp no

and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in

persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W-n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens -- when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose

gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance,

bigger than themselves, and make it carry 45 that bright hair was; and while I stood him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out; (and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries;) 50 which, without speech, strangely impressed and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of every body, but of their

upon me the effects of speech: 'We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum fa

ther. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name'and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side; but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever. 10 first accident of the kind which had oc

the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour 5 assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from? Not from the burnt cottage: he had smelt that smell before; indeed this was by no means the

A DISSERTATION UPON
ROAST PIG

1822

curred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at 15 the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life, (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it,) he tasted

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M— was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living ani- 20 mal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term 25 crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd 30 and the pig that tasted so delicious; and

pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so,

surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower regions had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters.

Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, 35 as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. To- 40 gether with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it,) what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. 45 His father might lay on, but he could China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his 50 father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two at any time, as for the loss of

not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued:

'You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you!