of
hill and valley in this poem have a lightness, and spirit--an Allegro
touch--distinguishing them from the grave and elevated splendour which
characterises Mr. Wordsworth's representations of Nature in general,
and from the passive tenderness of those in 'The White Doe', while it
harmonises well with the human interest of the piece; indeed it is the
harmonious sweetness of the composition which is most dwelt upon by
its special admirers. In its course it describes, with bold brief
touches, the striking mountain tract from Grasmere to Keswick; it
commences with an evening storm among the mountains, presents a lively
interior of a country inn during midnight, and concludes after
bringing us in sight of St. John's Vale and the Vale of Keswick seen
by day-break--'Skiddaw touched with rosy light,' and the prospect from
Nathdale Fell 'hoar with the frost-like dews of dawn:' thus giving a
beautiful and well-contrasted Panorama, produced by the most delicate
and masterly strokes of the pencil. Well may Mr. Ruskin, a fine
observer and eloquent describer of various classes of natural
appearances, speak of Mr. Wordsworth as the great poetic landscape
painter of the age. But Mr. Ruskin has found how seldom the great
landscape painters are powerful in expressing human passions and
affections on canvas, or even successful in the introduction of human
figures into their foregrounds; whereas in the poetic paintings of Mr.
Wordsworth the landscape is always subordinate to a higher interest;
certainly, in 'The Waggoner', the little sketch of human nature which
occupies, as it were, the front of that encircling background, the
picture of Benjamin and his temptations, his humble friends and the
mute companions of his way, has a character of its own, combining with
sportiveness a homely pathos, which must ever be delightful to some of
those who are thoroughly conversant with the spirit of Mr.
Wordsworth's poetry. It may be compared with the ale-house scene in
'Tam o'Shanter', parts of Voss's Luise, or Ovid's Baucis and Philemon;
though it differs from each of them as much as they differ from each
other. The Epilogue carries on the feeling of the piece very
beautifully."

The editor of Southey's 'Life and Correspondence'--his son, the Rev.
Charles Cuthbert Southey--tells us, in a note to a letter from S.T.
Coleridge to his father, that the Waggoner's name was Jackson; and t