"Perceive great truths,

Than touch and handle little ones;"

like Wordsworth, his mind was a mountain chapel; he had none of the poet's advantages, he had not the advantage of a beautiful realm of nature through whose domain he could walk; he had no fame, no wealth, no honours were heaped on him; they were both secluded Hermits, with this difference, that the Hermit of the Lakes was frequently called to enter the most lofty and polished society; sometimes to enter Palaces; to be crowned in Universities, while his cell was visited by the Scholars of the age for instruction, and Knights, who sometimes reined in their horse to turn aside to look upon the recluse of Rydal Mount, but no such messages; no such visitants, diverted the attention of the Hermit of Frenchay; to him it was one life-long self-communion save when some dissenting brother less starched than most, turned aside for a brief hour's conversation. The aesthetic life of Foster was very remarkable; a desultory and vague dream, those deep sunk, melancholy eyes looked through all things, but looked into all things with a gloom born from a life passed, we must think with scarcely any kindred sympathy. And thus this great life passed away musing and poring over all things, it may be with too microscopic an eye, reflecting on all things too much the colour of a mind deeply self-conscious, and compelled partially by an organic temperament, and partially by a stern and moody theology to take a dismal view of things, and events, and destinies, until even the most

innocent and lovely objects in nature became the ministers of dread to the spirit. We have dwelt somewhat too long on this great man for episode in our biography, but he illustrates more than any other writer with whom we are acquainted, ancient or modern, that mysterious haunting of the soul by its shadow, which is the distinctive fact of Wordsworth's mind-the difference being that to Wordsworth the shadow is the reflection of nature and the sun, while in Foster we are startled by a shape walking by his side, when there is no sun in the heavens, even as sometimes in our daily rambles our own shadow is reflected, not from the sun immediately, but from a moody cloud, concealing the sun from our eyes.

And as the Poems themselves result from an entire individuality of feeling, a perfect and utter absorption in the subject, so an individuality almost as entire is needed for the perusal of them; and this immediately lets us into the secret of their unpopularity, and suggests to us that they never can be popular extensively; most persons find an interest in excitement, and that Poetry pleases most which most rapidly conveys them from place to place, and thought to thought-the mind does not need a resting place-nay, it is perhaps quite indisposed for a resting place, it is thankful for those objects, not which arrest the attention, but which divide it; it does not seize one image, one thought, one subject, and follow it forth intensely, but it loses itself in a perfect garden, a wilderness it may be, of indefinite forms.

how pretty, how beautiful, how fine, have no clear idea what it is on which they are pronouncing their favourable judgment; it is a general impression, it may be a music in the sound, possibly the very confusion and variety of objects may please. But to read Wordsworth's Poetry is not only a pleasure dim and shadowy, it is a mental exercise, to enjoy it you must abandon yourself to it, it demands abstraction as the price of pleasure; it is not that order of Poetry with which you may kill time, there is a mighty charm in it, but the charm only works when it has imposed silence on the spirit and washed the eyes in the euphrasy and rue of tranquil meditation.

In

And here we remark in illustration, our observations, that Books had but little power over Wordsworth. a review of the aesthetic life of a man, Books may be expected to have some considerable place, and one canto of "The Prelude" is devoted to books, but it is written from such a view as to assure us, if we did not know it before, that Wordsworth was no Bookman, in the ordinary sense of that word,-no greedy and voracious devourer of pyramids of volumes. The man who is fond of conversing with his own volitions, and of investing nature with the drapery of his own imagination, rarely is a great reader. Milton may perhaps seem an exception, but we suspect that his reading was great, much more in the dignity and worth, than the surface and extent of it. Wordsworth was no such reader as Milton, his knowledge of books was meagre, his knowledge of nature was most extensive, he had little regard

ABSENCE OF BOOKS.

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even for the wealthy pages of history, he assures us that the stories of villagers, and the cottage fireside tales interested him more, and sometimes suggested to him greater emotions; and this would certainly be the case with the modern style of history in which the narrative is degraded to a mere fact, and the moral is found mostly in the date; so of philosophy, the springs of his action and research were not intensified or directed by mere book lore, they were from within; with modern philosophy he had but little sympathy, for he could not see the greatness of submitting the universe to the pin of the microscope; he was an inductive philosopher, but his inductions were founded, as a Poet's reasoning will be founded, on a broader survey of facts, and widening into a more extensive generalization.

Meantime we have no account of any Book that especially affected the course of his thought, and his opinion. And again, perhaps we ought to say that strongest minds will not allow themselves to be materially influenced by a book. Minds pent up from opportunities of study and self-communion will sometimes date their whole mental history from the day, when a certain book crossed their path like a flash of lightning, it revealed the whole road, and their relation to it. But it very frequently happens that it is at the expense of the whole life-long moral health; the stroke was too severe. No such event happened in Wordsworth's history, his earlier readings had been confined to works of fiction, and these he is most lavish in commending,

his scholarship was respectable, but not remarkable, he felt of course the fire darting words of Homer, the graceful flow of Virgil, the moral grandeur of Eschylus and Sophocles, and the philosophic grace and ease of Horace, but he had no acquaintance with the stream of the world's Literature; and modern books, excepting books of travel, it would seem he was all but entirely ignorant of. He seems to have stood affected by even. the evanescence of books, as compared with what, by a bold figure of speech, may almost be called the eternity of Nature. He felt her power, untouched by change that he could observe, or that man could record. She sufficed for him, and in her presence he felt a higher repose and consolation.

Thus in illustration of our author's regardlessness of books, we have the following almost curious extracts: both from letters to Archdeacon Wrangham. "You astonish me with the account of your books; and I should have been still more astonished if you had told me you had read a third (shall I say a tenth part?) of them. My reading powers were never very good, and now they are much diminished, especially by candle light; and as to buying books, I can affirm that in new books I have not spent five shillings for the last five years, i.e. in Reviews, Magazines, Pamphlets, &c. &c. ; so that there would be an end of Mr. Longman, and Mr. Cadell, &c. &c., if nobody had more power, or inclination to buy than myself. And as to old books, my dealings in that way, for want of means, have been very trifling. Nevertheless, small and paltry as my