WORDSWORTH AND MILTON.

39

Carmel. Both Milton and Wordsworth carried perpetually the sense of their own consciousness,-in the consciousness of Wordsworth we only behold the eclectic sympathy of Plato, but in Milton the savage grandeur of the prophet to whom "the word of the Lord came in a dream" in the caves of Horeb. Wordsworth would never believe in divine commissions, and supernatural communications; we have no hint of the word lying like a burning coal on the heart, waiting for utterance, and impatient and consumed until it be spoken; but in Milton we have frequent intimations of the spirit that in its unrest, believed in the possibility of being raised up to execute the Heaven-sent command. Like the Greeks of old, Wordsworth does not appear to have had any very clear idea that the world contained any absolute evil;-as is the modern faith, so we could conceive his to be, that evil was a necessity of our being, scarcely to be deplored. But Milton on the contrary held the objective character of all evil; with him it was the thing "the Lord hateth," and he fought against it like his own Abdiel, or Ithuriel. Wordsworth did not seek to elevate his ideas above the world around him when he sought to enter spiritual regions. Spiritual! the world was all spiritual-all holy-all beautiful-the floor of the temple lay everywhere-the lamp was in the eye, in the soul to illuminate every spot with the charm of beauty. Milton found in the most lovely or glorious things around him the likenesses of "things not seen;" to him the legend was real that by and by, the trampling footsteps of the thunder would crush the

Pix lewe creation, and that out of it only du would geng the forms of eternal beauty and **R, TE ZU, the ancient Eros. In a word, Wordswered & our modern Plato, and Milton our English

Nis do this side of his character and genius that dance exercised by Wordsworth over the mind of his age has been to many persons diseasing and misedievous Milton and Dante materialised too muchWordswerch abstracted and spiritualised too much, esply in his aury philosophy; and it becomes the aley of those who guide young minds to the pages of B), and anger with admiration over their

ten readers against that dangerous eni avarte a-ment of mere being that dancing reve adeq kening over the literary firmament of

9h -hế -le we short and sensuous poems are Velg wild dads wat die they act against end is regne àvem s men of the merely

a mer per de sad to belong to any

nie wda perinde gie z ze ere what he petqı aşı vipi mi by Max, or Sermon, or Oravios kumoava ghar me meat suge of it. This is the test koop best argot no sil Poucherstio ideas, they are not

podat hy this is the test you may apply to of pho wich dely megrims of mystics-paint their

porno focate the thing is unreal that you canHUP IN OH Way or other realise; hence great poetry a found in great images, from the chamber of the soul ad the pot wis thrown out the vast forms which answer

OBLIGATIONS CONFESSED TO NATURE.

41

to his vast perceptions, for it is not merely necessary that the poet should have impulses, emotions, and passions, he must also have a presence and a shape rising perpetually before him, and compelling his pen to a delighted sketching of the beautiful, the beloved, or the terror-inspiring form.

We must not be understood as implying that Wordsworth was merely and only a subjective Pantheist even at this early stage of his history; he was never only that; -we speak rather of doctrines deduced from this early stage of his history and writings, and repeat that many in our day are content to take his childhood, as their old age; we need scarcely say, that in a great measure our poet passed through this dreary and monotonously beautiful stage of moral history, and rose into a higher faith ; yet even then we find him speaking thus:

"If this be error, and another faith
Find easier access to the pious mind,
Yet were I grossly destitute of all

Those human sentiments that make this earth
So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice
To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes
And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds
That dwell among the hills where I was born.
If in my youth I have been pure in heart,
If, mingling with the world, I am content
With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
With God and Nature communing, removed
From little enmities and low desires,

The gift is your's; if in these times of fear,
This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown,
If, 'mid indifference and apathy,

www.chetion when good men
Aan mykay volia qui off, we know not how,
#y shine, Giaquiad in gentle names
pawan mud quiet and domestic love,
Yuk mingled mat unwillingly with sneers
u visimary minde, if, in this time
At deacion and dismay, I yet
to-pole and of om nature, but retain
A munk Man Boman confidence, a faith
4 luk falla med, in all sorrow my support,
Flo blasting of my life, the gift is yours,
Teutonda and amunding cataracts! 'tis yours,
Is mountaina 1 thin, O Nature! thou hast fed
My butty moculations, and in thee,

İrup Hida uusway hourt of ours, I find
A vid fulling principle of joy
And pours at pasaloi '

An illustration of the spiritual, the mystical charm of Wordsworth's pooms is seen in the wonderful information and pow or of his Nouse of Hearing; in this he excels all other posts; not in Shakspeare himself are the alluatona to every variety and combination of Sound so varied and intensified. It is worthy of notice that it is by Sound rather than by sight that we become acquainted with the spiritual world; sound is the most spiritual conductor; language is not so mere a symbol as vision, and the impressions derived from sight: all our abstractions are derived by us through sound; the spirit sealed from sound is closed up to more utter desolation than the spirit sealed from sight; the blind have many brethren gifted beyond any of their race, the deaf have few,

• Prelude.

COMBINATION OF POETIC SOUND.

43

perhaps none. The impression of sound too, is more powerful and permanent than sight; thunder is more terrific than lightning;-is any thing added to the beauty and the majesty of the roaring waterfall by the rainbow arching over it? Eargate seems to be a more important avenue of communication than Eyegate.

"Where the Ear never hearkens the Eye never sees.'

And if space admitted it would be a most curious and profitable matter for speculation how far, for the major portion of our ideas we are indebted to the one or the other; certainly if light brings us into most intimate acquaintance with the scenery of nature, yet sound to higher natures is suggestive of more profound emotion; it is only by such natures that the majesty of " expressive silence" is perceived; what human breast has not again and again been shaken by all the varied thrillings and sensations produced by sound; for if we will reflect upon it, all sound is electrical—is spiritual; language however meagre, is sound made material and intelligible. Wordsworth in his ode to sound has summoned all the voices of nature to his inspiration, Sighs, Shrieks, and Hosannas, "Voices and shadows, and images of voice," "the Nun's faint Throb of holy fear,"

"The sailor's Prayer breathed from a darkening sea.

The cottage widow's Lullaby;"

the Shout of the Cuckoo from the hill; the Toll or Striking of the old church Bell, or minster Clock; the