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EXCURSION A MORAL HARANGUE.

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to display talent, and court notoriety; and so maintained, with no more serious belief in their truth, than is usually generated by an ingenious and animated defence of other paradoxes. But when we find that he has been for twenty years exclusively employed upon articles of this very fabric, and that he has still enough of raw material on hand to keep him so employed for twenty years to come, we cannot refuse him the justice of believing that he is a sincere convert to his own system, and must ascribe the peculiarities of his composition, not to any transient affectation, or accidental caprice of imagination, but to a settled perversity of taste or understanding, which has been fostered, if not altogether created, by the circumstances to which we have alluded.

The volume before us, if we were to describe it very shortly, we should characterise 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-and such a hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical sublimities, that it is often 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,

510 EXCURSION THE PERSONS OF HUMBLE STATION.

till the speaker entertains no doubt that he is the chosen 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 ap parent, 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 natural child-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 well be imagined;- and those which the different speakers narrate in the course of their discourses, are introduced rather to illustrate their argu ments 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

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ITS DOCTRINE SOUND AND TRITE.

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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, "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

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512 EXCURSION

FLAT AND AFFECTED HOMELINESS.

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 Pedlaror, 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 is asleep or awake, stands" some minutes' space" in silence beside him. "At length," says he, with his own delightful simplicity

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At length I hail'd him—seeing that his hat
Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim
Had newly scoop'd a running stream!

"Tis,' said I, "a burning day!

My lips are parch'd with thirst;- but you, I guess,
Have somewhere found relief.'

Upon this, the benevolent old man points him out, not a running stream, but a well in a corner, to which the author repairs; and, after minutely describing its situation, beyond a broken wall, and between two alders

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that "grew in a cold, damp nook," he thus faithfully chronicles the process of his return:

"My thirst I slak'd; and from the cheerless spot
Withdrawing, straightway to the shade return'd,
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 are 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 that 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 staves, 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 enthusiasm 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

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