f there had been no other being in the universe, Mr.
Wordsworth's poetry would have been just what it is. If there had been
neither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor pleasure nor business
in the World, the author of the _Lyrical Ballads_ need not have been
greatly changed from what he is--might still have 'kept the noiseless
tenour of his way,' retired in the sanctuary of his own heart, hallowing
the Sabbath of his own thoughts. With the passions, the pursuits, and
imaginations of other men he does not profess to sympathise, but 'finds
tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in everything.' With a mind averse from outward objects, but
ever intent upon its own workings, he hangs a weight of thought and
feeling upon every trifling circumstance connected with his past
history. The note of the cuckoo sounds in his ear like the voice of
other years; the daisy spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish delight
that stream from his thoughtful eyes; the rainbow lifts its proud arch
in heaven but to mark his progress from infancy to manhood; an old thorn
is buried, bowed down under the mass of associations he has wound about
it; and to him, as he himself beautifully says,

The meanest flow'r that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring the interest
of our conscious existence to whatever gently solicits attention, and
is a link in the chain of association without rousing our passions or
hurting our pride, that is the striking feature in Mr. Wordsworth's mind
and poetry. Others have left and shown this power before, as Wither,
Burns, etc., but none have felt it so intensely and absolutely as to
lend to it the voice of inspiration, as to make it the foundation of a
new style and school in poetry. His strength, as it so often happens,
arises from the excess of his weakness. But he has opened a new avenue
to the human heart, has explored another secret haunt and nook of
nature, 'sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting fame.' Compared with
his lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but exaggerated common-place, and
Walter Scott's poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables.(2) There is no
one in whom I have been more disappointed than in the writer here spoken
of, nor with whom I am more disposed on certain points to quarrel; but
the love of truth and justice which obliges me to do this, will not
suffer me to blench