ath, the British bards wrote, virtually, always
songs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient keys. On the
contrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular antipathy to the
priests, and are pointed at with fear and indignation by the pietists,
of their day;--not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with
the most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan and
monk alike despised; and, in the triple chord of their song, could not
but appear to the religious persons around them as respectively and
specifically the praisers--Scott of the world, Burns of the flesh, and
Byron of the devil.

To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, having long
ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated and unscientific, and
finding its Puritan melodies sunk into faint jar and twangle from their
native trumpet-tone, had nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than
religious, verses of the school recognised as that of the English
Lakes; very creditable to them; domestic at once and refined; observing
the errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a pitying and tender
indignation, and arriving in lacustrine seclusion at many valuable
principles of philosophy, as pure as the tarns of their mountains, and
of corresponding depth.[183]

I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew Arnold's
arrangement of Wordsworth's poems; and read with sincere interest his
high estimate of them. But a great poet's work never needs arrangement
by other hands; and though it is very proper that Silver How should
clearly understand and brightly praise its fraternal Rydal Mount, we
must not forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while.

Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by himself, in a
single exclamation:--

'What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,
Mount Skiddaw?'

Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between the
great masters of the Muse's teaching, and the pleasant fingerer of his
pastoral flute among the reeds of Rydal.

Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with considerably less
shrewdness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen inherit; and no sense
of humour: but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid sense of natural
beauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far
as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life
around him. Water to parched lips may