party spleen are carried, even by men of eminence and virtue. I had no suspicion, that such a man as Mr Jeffrey, or even as Mr Murray, would have dared to shew, almost to confess himself, incapable of overlooking the petty discrepancies of political opinion, in forming his estimate of a great English poet's character. It is not thus that a man can hope to anticipate the judgment of posterity, or to exert a permanent sway over that of his contemporaries. In regard to Mr Jeffrey, above all, I confess I was grieved to detect so much littleness, where I had been willing to look for very different things. I was grieved, indeed, to discover that he also, even out of his Review, is in a great measure one that

narrows his mind,

And to party gives up what was meant for mankind.”

That Mr Jeffrey had found reason to change some of the opinions he had once expressed concerning Robert Burns, was, in part at least, admitted by himself, in one of the speeches he delivered on this very occasion. Nay, had it not been so, I am inclined to think it might have been better for him to have kept altogether

away from the assembly. Having laid aside the worst of his prejudices against poor Burns, why should he not have been proud and joyful in finding and employing such an opportunity for doing justice to a great poet, who,-himself the purest of men, and leading and having ever led the holiest and most dignified of lives,-had not disdained to come forward at an earlier and

a less triumphant period, as the defender and guardian of the reputation of his frailer brother? What had parties and systems, and schools, and nicknames, to do with such a matter as this? Are there no healing moments in which men can afford to be free from the fetters of their petty self-love? Is the hour of genial and cordial tenderness, when man meets man to celebrate the memory of one who has conferred honour on their common nature-is even that sacred hour to be polluted and profaned by any poisonous sprinklings of the week-day paltriness of life?-My displeasure, in regard to this affair, has very little to do with my displeasure in regard to the general treatment of Mr Wordsworth in the Edinburgh Review. That the poems of this man should be little read and little admired by the majority of those who claim for them

selves the character of taste and intelligence— that they should furnish little, except subjects of mirth and scorn, to those who, by their own writings, would direct the judgment of othersthese are things which affect some of his admirers with astonishment-they affect me with no sentiments but those of humility and grief. The delight which is conferred by vivid descriptions of stranger events and stronger impulses than we ourselves experience, is adapted for all men, and is an universal delight. That part of our nature, to which they address themselves, not only exists in every man originally, but has its existence fostered and cherished by the incidents of every life. To find a man who has no relish for the poetry of Love or of War, is almost as impossible, as to find one that does not enjoy the brightness of the sun, or the softness of moonlight. The poetry of ambition, hatred, revenge, pleases masculine minds in the same manner as the flashing of lightnings and the roaring of cataracts. But there are other things in man and in nature, besides tumultuous passions and tempestuous scenes ;—and he that is a very great poet, may be by no means a very popular one.

The critics who ridicule Mr Wordsworth, for

choosing the themes of his poetry among a set of objects new and uninteresting to their minds, would have seen, had they been sufficiently acute, or would have confessed, had they been sufficiently candid, that, had he so willed it, he might have been among the best and most powerful masters in other branches of his art, more adapted for the generality of mankind and for themselves. The martial music in the hall of Clifford was neglected by the Shepherd Lord, for the same reasons which have rendered the poet that celebrates him such a poet as he is.

"Love had he seen in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills;

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

Before a man can understand and relish his poems, his mind must, in some measure, pass through the same sober discipline—a discipline that calms, but does not weaken the spirit—that blends together the understanding and the affections, and improves both by the mixture. The busy life of cities, the ordinary collisions of sarcasm and indifference, steel the mind against the emotions that are bred and nourished among

those quiet vallies, so dear to the Shepherd Lord and his poet. What we cannot understand, it is a very common, and indeed a very natural thing, for us to undervalue; and it may be suspected, that some of the merriest witticisms which have been uttered against Mr Wordsworth, have had their origin in the pettishness and dissatisfaction of minds, unaccustomed and unwilling to make, either to others or to themselves, any confessions of incapacity.

But I am wandering sadly from him, who, as Wordsworth has beautifully expressed it,

-“walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough along the mountain's side."

-However, I shall come back to him in my

next.

P. M.