Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every Beast keep holiday ;

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy

Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel-I feel it all, Oh evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm :-
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
-But there's a Tree, of many, one,

A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows
He sees it in his joy;

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ;

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral,

And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, -

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !

Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

(From Poems, 1807.)

If this great world of joy and pain Revolve in one sure track;

If freedom, set, will rise again,

And virtue, flown, come back; Woe to the purblind crew who fill The heart with each day's care; Nor gain, from past or future, skill To bear, and to forbear!

(1833; published 1835.)

Composed upon Westminster Bridge,
September 3, 1802.

Earth has not any thing to show more fair :
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty :
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic. Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; And was the safeguard of the west: the worth Of Venice did not fall below her birth, Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. She was a maiden City, bright and free; No guile seduced, no force could violate; And, when she took unto herself a Mate, She must espouse the everlasting Sea. And what if she had seen those glories fade, Those titles vanish, and that strength decay; Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid When her long life hath reached its final day : Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great is passed away.

To Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men !
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den ;-
O miserable Chieftain ! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.

September 1802.

Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood;

And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear,
The coast of France-the coast of France how near!
Drawn almost into frightful neighbourhood.

I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood

Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,

A span of waters; yet what power is there!
What mightiness for evil and for good!
Even so doth God protect us if we be

Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters roll,
Strength to the brave, and Power, and Deity;
Yet in themselves are nothing! One decree
Spake laws to them, and said that by the soul
Only, the Nations shall be great and free.

It is not to be thought of that the Flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, with pomp of waters, unwithstood,'
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,

The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon !
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go?
Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day,
Festively she puts forth in trim array;
Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow?
What boots the inquiry?-Neither friend nor foe
She cares for; let her travel where she may
She finds familiar names, a beaten way
Ever before her, and a wind to blow.
Yet still I ask, what haven is her mark?
And, almost as it was when ships were rare,
(From time to time, like Pilgrims, here and there
Crossing the waters) doubt and something dark,
Of the old Sea some reverential fear,
Is with me at thy farewell, joyous Bark!

Burns.

(From Poems, 1807.)

In illustration of this sentiment, permit me to remind you that it is the privilege of poetic genius to catch, under certain restrictions of which perhaps at the time of its being exerted it is but dimly conscious, a spirit of pleasure wherever it can be found-in the walks of nature, and in the business of men.-The poet, trusting to primary instincts, luxuriates among the felicities of love and wine, and is enraptured while he describes the fairer aspects of war: nor does he shrink from the company of the passion of love though immoderate-from convivial pleasure though intemperate-nor from the presence of war though savage, and recognised as the hand-maid of desolation. Frequently and admirably has Burns given way to these impulses of nature; both with reference to himself and in describing the condition of others. Who, but some impenetrable dunce or narrowminded puritan in works of art, ever read without delight the picture which he has drawn of the convivial exaltation of the rustic adventurer, Tam o' Shanter? The poet fears not to tell the reader in the outset that his hero was a desperate and sottish drunkard, whose excesses were frequent as his opportunities. This reprobate sits down to his cups, while the storm is roaring, and heaven and earth are in confusion ;-the night is

driven on by song and tumultuous noise-laughter and jest thicken as the beverage improves upon the palate— conjugal fidelity archly bends to the service of general benevolence- selfishness is not absent, but wearing the mask of social cordiality-and, while these various elements of humanity are blended into one proud and happy composition of elated spirits, the anger of the tempest without doors only heightens and sets off the enjoy ment within.-I pity him who cannot perceive that, in all this, though there was no moral purpose, there is a moral effect.

'Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O'er a' the ills of life victorious.'

(From 'A letter to a friend of Robert Burns,' 1816.)

A Delusion Confuted.

But it is a belief propagated in books, and which passes currently among talking men as part of their familiar wisdom, that the hearts of the many are constitutionally weak; that they do languish, and are slow to answer to the requisitions of things. I entreat those who are in this delusion to look behind them and about them for the evidence of experience. Now this, rightly understood; not only gives no support to any such belief, but proves that the truth is in direct opposition to it. The history of all ages; tumults after tumults; wars, foreign or civil, with short or with no breathing-spaces, from generation to generation; wars-why and wherefore? yet with courage, with perseverance, with selfsacrifice, with enthusiasm-with cruelty driving forward the cruel man from its own terrible nakedness, and attracting the more benign by the accompaniment of some shadow which seems to sanctify it; the senseless weaving and interweaving of factions-vanishing and reviving and piercing each other like the Northern Lights; public commotions, and those in the bosom of the individual; the long calenture to which the Lover is subject; the blast, like the blast of the desert, which sweeps perennially through a frightful solitude of its own making in the mind of the Gamester; the slowly quickening but ever quickening descent of appetite down which the Miser is propelled; the agony and cleaving oppression of grief; the ghost-like hauntings of shame; the incubus of revenge; the life-distemper of ambition;

these inward existences, and the visible and familiar occurrences of daily life in every town and village; the patient curiosity and contagious acclamations of the multitude in the streets of the city and within the walls of the theatre; a procession, or a rural dance; a hunting, or a horse-race; a flood, or a fire; rejoicing and ringing of bells for an unexpected gift of good fortune, or the coming of a foolish heir to his estate;these demonstrate incontestably that the passions of men (I mean, the soul of sensibility in the heart of man)-in all quarrels, in all contests, in all quests, in all delights, in all employments which are either sought by men or thrust upon them do immeasurably transcend their objects. The true sorrow of humanity consists in this ;-not that the mind of man fails, but that the course and demands of action and of life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desires: and hence that which is slow to languish is too easily turned aside and abused. But with the remembrance of what has been done, and in the face of the interminable evils which are threatened -a Spaniard can never have cause to complain of this

while a follower of the tyrant remains in arms upon the Peninsula.

(From The Convention of Cintra, 1809.)

Ossian.

All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was begotten by the smug embrace of an impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition-it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause. The Editor of the Reliques had indirectly preferred a claim to the praise of invention, by not concealing that his supplementary labours were considerable! How selfish his conduct, contrasted with that of the disinterested Gael, who, like Lear, gives his kingdom away, and is content to become a pensioner upon his own issue for a beggarly pittance !-Open this far-famed Book !—I have done so at random, and the beginning of the 'Epic Poem Temora,' in eight Books, presents itself. 'The blue waves of Ullin roll in light. The green hills are covered with day. Trees shake their dusky heals in the breeze. Grey torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills with aged oaks surround a Darrow plain. The blue course of a stream is there. On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha. His spear supports the king; the red eyes of his fear are sad. Cormac rises on his soul with all his ghastly wounds.' Precious memorandums from the pocket-book of the blind Ossian!

If it be unbecoming, as I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of time a widely spread reputation, without at the same time producing irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this occasion. Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian.

From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew

that the imagery was spurious. In Nature everything

is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse; everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,-yet nothing distinct. It will always be so when words are substituted for things. To say that the characters never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which Macpherson defied; when, with the steeps of Morven before his eyes, he could talk so familiarly of his Car-borne heroes ;-of Morven, which, if one may judge from its appearance at the distance of a few miles, contains scarcely an acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a sledge to be trailed along its surface.-Mr Malcolm Laing has ably shown that the diction of this pretended translation is a motley assemblage from all quarters; but he is so fond of making out parallel passages as to call poor Macpherson to account for his 'ands' and his 'buts'! and he has weakened his argument by conducting it as if he thought that every striking resemblance was a conscious plagiarism. It is enough that the coincidences are too remarkable for its being probable or possible that they could arise in different minds without communication between them. Now, as the Translators of the Bible, and Shakespeare,

Milton, and Pope, could not be indebted to Macpherson, it follows that he must have owed his fine feathers to them; unless we are prepared gravely to assert, with Madame de Staël, that many of the characteristic beauties of our most celebrated English Poets are derived from the ancient Fingallian; in which case the modern translator would have been but giving back to Ossian his own. It is consistent that Lucien Buonaparte, who could censure Milton for having surrounded Satan in the infernal regions with courtly and regal splendour, should pronounce the modern Ossian to be the glory of Scotland -a country that has produced a Dunbar, a Buchanan, a Thomson, and a Burns! (1815.)

The chief editions of Wordsworth's poetry are the author's editions published by Moxon (1836-37, 1845, and 1849-50), the library edition by Professor Knight (1882-86), that by Mr John Morley (1888), the Aldine edition by Professor Dowden (1893), and the complete edition, with prose works, life, and Dorothy's journals and letters, by Professor Knight (16 vols. 1896-97). The text of the Lyrical Ballads (1798) has been reprinted with notes by Professor E. Dowden (1890) and Mr T. Hutchinson (1898); and the Poems of 1807 have been also edited by Mr Hutchinson (2 vols. 1897). There are selections by Palgrave (1865), Matthew Arnold (1879), and Knight (1888). The prose works were collected by Grosart (3 vols. 1876). There are Lives by his nephew, [Bishop] Christopher Wordsworth (1851); F. W. H. Myers (1880); J. M. Sutherland (1887); Elizabeth Wordsworth (1891); and Professor Knight (1889). The most important criticisms are those of Coleridge, M. Arnold, Pater, Swinburne, and W. Raleigh (Wordsworth, 1903). See also De Quincey's Recollections of the Lake Poets; J. S. Cottle's Early Recollections of Coleridge (1837); Memorials of Coleorton (1887); H. Crabb Robinson's Diary (1869); Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, edited by Principal Shairp (1874); the Wordsworth Society's Proceedings (1880-89); and La Jeunesse de William Wordsworth, by Emile Legouis (1895; trans. 1897).

W. P. KER.

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), only sister of the poet, set up housekeeping with her brother in 1795 at Racedown Lodge in Dorsetshire. In 1832 she had an attack of brain-fever from which she never entirely recovered. Her

Journals kept at Alfoxden and Grasmere, and the

records of her journeys in Scotland, the Isle of Man, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy, reveal a mind as subtly sensitive to nature as the poet's own, and an exquisiteness of expression which he hardly surpassed. 'She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,' said her brother; and, as Professor Shairp pointed out, his poems are sometimes little more than poetic versions of her descriptions of the objects which she had seen, and which he treated as if seen by himself.' Compare these sentences from her journal with Wordsworth's poem quoted above (page 20):

Daffodils.

When we were in the woods below Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close by the water-side. As we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw there were a long belt of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about them. Some rested their heads on the stones, as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and glancing.

Dorothy Wordsworth's Tour in Scotland was edited by Principal Shairp in 1874; her Journals were edited by Professor Knight in 1897.

take care of him.

'The local information, which I conceive had some share in forming my future taste and pursuits, I derived from the

old songs and tales which then formed the amusement of a retired country family. My grandmother, in whose youth the old Border depredations were matter of recent tradition, used to tell me many a tale of Wat of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie

Telfer of the fair

His lameness as he grew older ceased to interfere with his activity and enjoyment. At the High School of Edinburgh, to which he went in 1778, he was not prevented from taking part in the common amusements; he climbed 'the kittle nine steps' of the Castle Rock, like Darsie Latimer, and shared in the battles of the Crosscauseway and the Potterrow. The episode of Greenbreeks gave him an example of what is meant by chivalry; the story, as he tells it, is as good as Richard and Saladin. From the High School he went to the College of Edinburgh. By this time books had come to be more ...important; he took sides with the Moderns against the Ancients in that old controversy, and learned Italian for himself,

but no Greek from his professor. Then he began inventing stories. He and his friend John Irving used to go every Saturday to Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat, or Black

ford Hill, climb up into some difficult corner of the rocks, and read. Then they thought of inventing romances for themselves. The stories we told were interminable, for we were unwilling to have any of our favourite knights killed. . . He began early to collect old ballads,' says John Irving.

Dodhead, and other heroes-merry men all of the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood and Little John.' Scott in his later life, when the younger generation was writing new romances, looked on comfortably at their historical studies and their industry after 'local colour.' He himself had taken in his knowledge in a different way, beginning at Sandyknowe. As he told Miss Seward, he had a regiment of horse exercising through his head ever since he was five years old. Whatever may be due to his ancestry for this bent of mind, at any rate it was helped in the most natural and old-fashioned way by his upbringing. He learned the history of his country as history was learned by Homer, not out of books, to begin with. The Bride of Lammermoor, for example, is a story that came to Scott's knowledge by oral tradition, like the stories of the heroic ages.

In 1786 Scott was apprenticed to his father; in the next year he saw Burns at Professor Ferguson's, and was thanked by him for giving the author of a quotation which no one else in the company knew (see Vol. II. p. 521). In 1792 he was called to the Bar; this was the year of his first raid into Liddesdale to look for ballads, along with Mr Shortrede, the Sheriff-Substitute of Roxburgh, who accompanied him in all these expeditions for seven years. He was makin' himsell a' the time,' said Mr Shortrede, but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed; at first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun.' In 1793 he saw the