" Don

be quoted, in proof of the false and demoralising character of Poetry of the highest class. Juan" has been styled "the greatest English poem produced in the present century." Now we may readily concede that it displays, in surpassing abundance, the poetical resources of Lord Byron; but we deny that it is a great poem at all; for, in common with all the productions of his Lordship,

- who certainly had not the highest order of poetical intellect, nor was even faithful in the use of that with which he was entrusted,-it bears the character of advocacy, rather than of inspiration. As his other effusions are so many special pleadings for some particular form of vice, whether Pride, Misanthropy, or Unbelief, so this (being no exception from his rule of composition) is nothing more than a vivid ex-parte statement in behalf of Pleasure, wherein all the lassitude, disappointment, humiliation, self-reproach, danger, and destruction, incident to a selfish and voluptuous career, are altogether banished from the view, and the better judgment is overborne by a constant appeal to the sensual part of our nature; or, if this be intermitted for a moment, (on a

principle not unknown to the brute creation,) our moral sense, whose voice is a whisper needing a serious silence to be heard, is confounded by a ribald wit that is "ingenious, wonderful, and good for nothing." We cannot deny the abundant riches of the author's imagery, the ripeness of his observation, his mastery of rhyme and rhythm, his fertility of wit, and his prodigal power of sarcasm. The poem in question is also remarkable for its felicity of expression, its truthfulness of detail, and its harmony of grouping; and from it might be selected a matchless series of pictures, characters, and sketches, which must separately influence the mind in an agreeable and improving manner. But if we consider the poem as a whole, and naturally look for that moral coherence with which all great works (the heathen not excepted,) are invested by virtue of their consistent truth, must we not pronounce it an utter failure? True, it is professedly unfinished, and some allowance may be granted on the score of incompleteness: yet so loose is the structure, and so unsatisfactory the aim, that its tissue of brilliant falsehoods may as well terminate where it does as in any possible

conclusion we may conceive.

Yet the poetic

faculty is continually at work; as certain bees, which revel only in the most noxious plants, use diligently their imbibing and secreting power, although the product is poison, and not honey.

In bringing this lengthened exordium to a close, and applying the principles adduced to the works of Wordsworth, it is proper to remark that those principles appear, on the first view, to regard only the style and burden of poetry in its epic walks; and that some poetic compositions necessarily want that grand morale which arises from absolute receptiveness on the part of the poet, and perfect vraisemblance on that of his work. A lyrical effusion, for example, is not easily tested by the same appeal to nature which is suggested by narrative or dramatic composition. In the latter cases the poet comes out of himself, and marshals his fellow-men in the order they observe in life; while in the former he sings immediately from his own heart, and the profounder the depths of individual feeling from which his sentiments arise, the more welcome and delighting is his strain. And yet, upon close examination, we shall

find that the excellence of both species of poetry depends upon the observance of that æsthetic rule upon which we have so much insisted; for the impassioned lyric must be be as genuine and unargued an expression of personal (and, at the same time, universal) experience, as the narrative poem must be of human character developed in events. We have, therefore, elicited a principle common to all genuine poetry; namely, that it is authoritative and oracular, approving itself authentic by the response of our own nature, rather than by an appeal to force of argument.

II.

In his poem of The Excursion, the genius of Wordsworth is exerted in its most sustained and serious manner; and, though only the middle portion of a threefold work, entitled The Recluse, (the remainder of which has been reserved for posthumous publication,) that portion is in itself of sufficient length and completeness to enable us to estimate, with tolerable accuracy, the value of the whole, as well as the author's claim to the highest honours of poetry. In length, indeed, The Excursion is equal to Paradise Lost; nor can it be considered as unfairly treated when brought to a nearer comparison with Milton's great poem, if we take into account the magnitude of its design, and the epic tone in which its subject is announced. That announcement is made in the first book of The Recluse, an extract from which is furnished by the author as a prospectus of the design and scope of the whole Poem."

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