interest in the heart of the retired and lonely
student of nature, which can never die. Persons of this class will still
continue to feel what he has felt: he has expressed what they might in
vain wish to express, except with glistening eye and faultering tongue!
There is a lofty philosophic tone, a thoughtful humanity, infused into his
pastoral vein. Remote from the passions and events of the great world, he
has communicated interest and dignity to the primal movements of the heart
of man, and ingrafted his own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts
of hinds and shepherds. Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery, he
has stooped to have a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked
a branch of white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind
seems imbued with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him--the
tall rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract
roars in the sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning,
the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked
Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous
scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be
almost sure that it is written in a mountainous country, from its
bareness, its simplicity, its loftiness, and its depth!

His later philosophic productions have a somewhat different character.
They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They are
classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being gaudy;
dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have been composed
not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half-inspired groves and
stately recollections of Cole-Orton. We might allude in particular, for
examples of what we mean, to the lines on a Picture by Claude Lorraine,
and to the exquisite poem, entitled _Laodamia_. The last of these
breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of antiquity--the
sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty and the languor of
death--

"Calm contemplation and majestic pains."

Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finishing, like
that of careful sculpture, not from gaudy colouring--the texture of the
thoughts has the smoothness and solidity of marble. It is a poem that
might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and
sages would gather round to listen to it! Mr. Wordsworth's philosophic
poetry,