from its congeniality to his own feelings: his mind grappled
with that which afforded the best exercise to its master-powers: he
was bold in act, because he was urged on by a strong native impulse.
Originality is then nothing but nature and feeling working in the mind.
A man does not affect to be original: he is so, because he cannot help
it, and often without knowing it. This extraordinary artist indeed might
be said to have had a particular organ for colour. His eye seemed to
come in contact with it as a feeling, to lay hold of it as a substance,
rather than to contemplate it as a visual object. The texture of his
landscapes is 'of the earth, earthy'--his clouds are humid, heavy, slow;
his shadows are 'darkness that may be felt,' a 'palpable obscure'; his
lights are lumps of liquid splendour! There is something more in this
than can be accounted for from design or accident: Rembrandt was not a
man made up of two or three rules and directions for acquiring genius.

I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a character of Mr.
Wordsworth, though he too, like Rembrandt, has a faculty of making
something out of nothing, that is, out of himself, by the medium through
which he sees and with which he clothes the barrenest subject. Mr.
Wordsworth is the last man to 'look abroad into universality,' if that
alone constituted genius: he looks at home into himself, and is 'content
with riches fineless.' He would in the other case be 'poor as winter,'
if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the greatest,
that is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he is
the greatest egotist. He is 'self-involved, not dark.' He sits in the
centre of his own being, and there 'enjoys bright day.' He does not
waste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate exclusively
and wholly to himself is foreign to his views. He contemplates a
whole-length figure of himself, he looks along the unbroken line of
his personal identity. He thrusts aside all other objects, all other
interests, with scorn and impatience, that he may repose on his own
being, that he may dig out the treasures of thought contained in it,
that he may unfold the precious stores of a mind for ever brooding over
itself. His genius is the effect of his individual character. He stamps
that character, that deep individual interest, on whatever he meets. The
object is nothing but as it furnishes food for internal meditation, for
old associations. I