He cannot form a
whole. He has not the constructive faculty. He can give only the fine
tones of thought, drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the
sounds drawn from the AEolian harp by the wandering gale.--He is
totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry. His _Excursion_, taken
as a whole, notwithstanding the noble materials thrown away in it, is a
proof of this. The line labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem
stands stock-still. The reader makes no way from the first line to the
last. It is more than any thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe's
boat, which would have been an excellent good boat, and would have
carried him to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get it
out of the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I could to help
to launch it at the time, but it would not do. I am not, however, one of
those who laugh at the attempts or failures of men of genius. It is not
my way to cry "Long life to the conqueror." Success and desert are not
with me synonymous terms; and the less Mr. Wordsworth's general merits
have been understood, the more necessary is it to insist upon them. This
is not the place to repeat what I have already said on the subject. The
reader may turn to it in the Round Table. I do not think, however, there
is any thing in the larger poem equal to many of the detached pieces in
the Lyrical Ballads. As Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little known to
the public, or chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will here
give an entire poem (one that has always been a favourite with me), that
the reader may know what it is that the admirers of this author find to
be delighted with in his poetry. Those who do not feel the beauty and
the force of it, may save themselves the trouble of inquiring farther.

HART-LEAP WELL.

The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor
With the slow motion of a summer's cloud;
He turned aside towards a vassal's door,
And, "Bring another horse!" he cried aloud.

"Another horse!"--That shout the vassal heard,
And saddled his best steed, a comely gray;
Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes:
The horse and horseman are a happy pair;
But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies,
There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning