church of England, we are conscious that the analogy is false, if not ludicrous. Many have accordingly classed him with the poets of the past, rather than with the poets of the future, and have denied his claim to rank with those who sing prophecies of a new and better era for humanity. This opinion seems now to prevail, even among those who acknowledge the vast services he has performed to literature, and the importance of the revolution in poetry which he has done so much to achieve.

In our opinion, this is a sophism, arising from a confusion of things essentially different. Wordsworth may be a politician of the past, but he is emphatically a poet of the future. We have already alluded to his lack of practical understanding, and his ignorance of the ways of men. He surveyed things through a poetical medium, and did not, therefore, see them as they are, in the strict meaning of the term. His practical deductions are accordingly incorrect, for his premises are ideal. Lord Bacon's definition of poetry comprehends the whole matter. Poetry serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And, therefore, it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind." Now, Wordsworth, whether he appears to sing of the past or the present, is, in reality, singing of the future. His England of a thousand years past is the Utopia of a thousand years to come. It is false history and true poetry. If he give objective existence to the ideals of his mind in one point of space or time rather than another, the character of the ideal still remains the same. They are ideals which, in fact, have never been realized, and which accordingly relate to some period far in advance of our own. They refer to a state of society, which the lowness of the ideals of

many who object to his conservatism incapacitates them from anticipating. If, by some perversity of vision, the poet thinks he sees his aspirations partly realized in a corrupt government or in slavish institutions, the blame is to be laid to his eye, not to his soul.

We will illustrate this by a few extracts. The sixth book of "The Excursion" begins thus :

:

"Hail to the crown, by Freedom shaped, to gird
An English sovereign's brow! and to the throne
Whereon he sits! whose deep foundations lie
In veneration and the people's love."

Now this is false history. It is true of no government in
existence. A politician, of either Whig or Tory principles,
would despise himself for saying so verdant a thing. It is,
in fact, a prophecy of the time when the state will be so
pure as to be seated in "veneration and a people's love."
The salutation which follows, to the church, is to be inter-
preted with the same eye to a better condition of the morals
and piety of the clergy.
That this is the case may be seen
from the sonnet to the memory of Milton, in 1802 :—

"Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

England hath need of thee; she is a fen

Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness."

Here, church, state, and the whole society of England are represented as "a fen of stagnant waters." Now, both representations cannot be true; and yet both were undoubtedly projected from the poet's mind, and are significant, not of the real condition of his country, but of the change in his feelings from despondency to hope. There is no poetical inconsistency between the two. The last represents disgust

at the present, arising from a comparison of the present with the ideal; the first represents the ideal projected upon the present. In both cases exaggeration is the natural

result.

To prove that Wordsworth is not a poet of the future, we must prove that he did not advance beyond the present. Now, it would be difficult to name any contemporary poet whose ideals are higher than his. Lord Byron is generally considered his superior in this respect, because he had a harsh and jarring string in his lyre, and sang of revolution, and hailed the destruction of tyrants by the sword and the axe. In this respect, we humbly think that he was a poet of the past, for nothing can be less original than this mode of disposing of the world's oppressors. The quickest, surest, most natural, and most common method of obtaining rights is to kill him who deprives you of them. This, so far, has been the opinion of the human race, and has been expressed in divers ways at divers times. But one, in whose soul abide the eternal forms of beauty, goodness, truth, and virtue, whose heart comprehends all mankind in its love, and thirsts for a period when universal benevolence will prevail upon the earth,-who would sing, "long before the blissful hour arrives," the peaceful triumph of good over evil, and right over wrong,-to such a one, the usual mode of despatching oppressors is apt to be distasteful. He may think, that, in the present condition of things, the common course has its advantages; but if he desires to impress on the hearts and imaginations of the people a model of a perfect state of society, he will, if he is a bard of the future, be likely to leave out some of the harsh and imperfect means and materials of the present. This, at least, was the feeling of Wordsworth and Shelley; and this, we humbly conceive, is the Christian feeling.

Wordsworth is considered a champion of monarchy and aristocracy. We do not know but that there may be opinions expressed in his writings which can be forced to bear a construction inimical to political liberty; still, if we consider the tendency of his whole works, we shall find them in the highest degree democratic. "The rights of man" is a phrase to which he gives a more extended application than could be given by any person of less extensive sympathies. Mercy, justice, wisdom, piety, love, freedom, in their full beauty and grandeur, are the subjects of his song; and we have yet to learn, that these can subsist with the slightest injury done to a human being. Indeed, he professes to have

and to teach the last hyperbole of toleration, that

"He who feels contempt

For any living thing hath faculties
Which he has never used."

That Wordsworth was unsuccessful in commenting on the politics of the hour, and blundered often in applying his ideal standards to the wrong objects, we willingly admit; but we think this is an objection to him as a practical politician and philosopher, and not an objection to him as a poet, "submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind."

To estimate the degree of longevity which will attach to Wordsworth's poetry might be difficult; but as he has built upon the enduring rock as well as the shifting sand, we cannot tolerate the idea that he will be swept away with things forgotten. As we pause thoughtfully before some of the majestic fabrics of his genius, they seem to wear the look of

eternity. And when we consider the vast debt of delight we owe to him, the new inspiration he poured into poetry, and his delivery of it from the bondage of a hundred and fifty years, the many teasing persecutions he has endured for humanity and literature ;-when we think of the consecrations he has shed upon our present existence, and the splendor of the vistas he has opened beyond the grave,—his desire to bring the harsh domain of the actual into closer vicinity to the sunny land of the ideal,-his kindling strains for freedom and right,-his warm sympathy with all that elevates and ennobles our being, and the sway he has displayed over its holiest and tenderest affections,--and the many images of beauty and grace with which he has brightened our daily life ;-when we consider these, his faults and errors seem to dwindle into insignificance; reverence and love leap to our lips, and warm from the heart and brain springs our benison,