o
be on terms of greater or less intimacy with, Coleridge, Wordsworth, De
Quincey, Southey, the celebrated Bishop Watson, of the See of Llandaff,
Charles Lloyd, and others,--then the _genii loci_. It may be remembered
that his admiration for Wordsworth was already of long standing, his
boyish enthusiasm having led him, when at Glasgow, to send his tribute
of praise to the author of the "Lyrical Ballads." Some fifteen to twenty
years later,--in one of the numbers of the "Noctes,"--his admiration for
the poet had temporarily cooled somewhat. Then was its aphelion, and
soon it began to return once more toward its central sun. It must have
been transient spleen which dictated such sentences as these:--

"_Tickler_. Wordsworth says that a great poet must be great in all
things.

"_North_. Wordsworth often writes like an idiot; and never more so than
when he said of Milton, 'His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart!' For
it dwelt in tumult, and mischief, and rebellion. Wordsworth is, in all
things, the reverse of Milton,--a good man, and a bad poet.

"_Tickler_. What! that Wordsworth whom Maga cries up as the Prince of
Poets?

"_North_. Be it so: I must humor the fancies of some of my friends.
But had that man been a great poet, he would have produced a deep and
lasting impression on the mind of England; whereas his verses are
becoming less and less known every day, and he is, in good truth,
already one of the illustrious obscure ...

"And yet, with his creed, what might not a great poet have done? That
the language of poetry is but the language of strong human passion! ...
And what, pray, has he made out of this true and philosophical creed?
A few ballads, (pretty, at the best,) two or three moral fables, some
natural description of scenery, and half a dozen narratives of common
distress or happiness. Not one single character has he created, not one
incident, not one tragical catastrophe. He has thrown no light on man's
estate here below; and Crabbe, with all his defects, stands immeasurably
above Wordsworth as the Poet of the Poor ... I confess that the
'Excursion' is the worst poem, of any character, in the English
language. It contains about two hundred sonorous lines, some of which
appear to be fine, even in the sense, as well as the sound. The
remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite ineffectual. Then what
labor the builder of that lofty rhyme must have undergone! It is, in its
own way, a small Tower of B