the end of his Preface,) has Mr. Wordsworth "attained his object?" Has he acted up to his theory? Has he brought back that natural style, and restored to us those healthy and natural perceptions, which he justly describes as the proper state of our poetical constitution? I think not. He has shown that he could do it, and, in some instances, he has set the example; but the popular effect of his poetry appears to me to be far otherwise; it gives us puerility for simplicity, affectation for nature; and only tends, in my mind, to go to the other extreme of what he deprecates, and substitute one set of diseased perceptions for another.

Delight or utility is the aim of the poet. Mr. Wordsworth, like one who has a true sense of the dignity of his profession, would unite both; and, indeed, for their perfect ends, they cannot be separated. He finds, then, our taste for the one vitiated, and our profit of the other destroyed, and he says to us, " Your complexion is diseased -your blood fevered; you endeavour to keep up your pleasurable sensations by stimulants too violent to last, and which must be succeeded by others of still greater violence :--this will not do: your mind wants air and exercise-fresh thoughts and natural excitements :-up, my friend; come out with me among the beauties of nature and the simplicities of life, and feel the breath of heaven about you"-No advice can be better:

we feel the call instinctively; we get up, accompany the poet into his walks, and acknowledge them to be the best and most beautiful; but what do we meet there? Idiot Boys, Mad Mothers, Wandering Jews, Visitations of Ague, and Frenzied Mariners, who are fated to accost us with tales that almost make one's faculties topple over.*-These are his refreshing thoughts, his natural excitements; and when you have finished with these, you shall have the smallest of your fugitive reflections arrested and embodied in a long lecture upon a thorn, or a story of a duffelcloak, till thorns and duffel-cloaks absolutely confound you with their importance in life; and these are his elementary feelings, his calm and counteracting simplicities.

Let the reader observe that I am not objecting to these subjects in behalf of that cowardly self love falsely called sensibility, or merely be cause they are of what is termed a distressing description, but because they are carried to an excess that defeats the poet's intention, and distresses to no purpose. Nor should I select them as exhibiting a part of the character of Mr. Wordsworth's writings, rather than pass them over as what they really are, the defects of a great poet, if the author himself had not espe→ cially invited our attention towards them as part

The last of these "idle and extravagant stories" was writ ten, it seems, by Mr. Coleridge.

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of his system of counteraction, and if these and his occasional puerilities of style, in their disadvantageous effect upon his readers, did not involve the whole character and influence of his poetry.

But how is our passion for stimulants to be allayed by the substitution of stories like Mr. Wordsworth's? He wishes to turn aside our thirst for extraordinary intelligence to more genial sources of interest, and he gives us accounts of mothers who have gone mad at the loss of their children, of others who have killed theirs in the most horrible manner, and of hardhearted masters whose imaginations have revenged upon them the curses of the poor. In like manner, he would clear up and simplify our thoughts; and he tells us tales of children that have no notion of death, of boys who would halloo to a landscape nobody knew why, and of a hundred inexpressible sensations, intended by nature, no doubt, to affect us, and even pleasurably so in the general feeling, but only calculated to perplex or sadden us in our attempts at analysis. Now it appears to me, that all the craving after intelligence, which Mr. Wordsworth imagines to be the bane of the present state of society, is a healthy appetite in comparison to these morbid abstractions: the former tends, at any rate, to fix the eyes of mankind in a lively manner upon the persons that preside over their interests, and to keep up a certain demand for knowledge and

public improvement;-the latter, under the guise of interesting us in the individuals of our species, turns our thoughts away from society and men altogether, and nourishes that eremitical vagueness of sensation-that making a business of reverie -that despair of getting to any conclusion to any purpose, which is the next step to melancholy or indifference.

It is with this persuasion—a persuasion which has not come to me through the want of acquaintance either with solitude or society, or with the cares of either-that I have ventured upon the piece of ridicule in the text. Mr. Wordsworth has beautifully told us, that to him

-the meanest flow'r that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

I have no doubt of it; and far be it from me to cast stones into the well in which they lie-to disturb those reposing waters—that freshness at the bottom of warm hearts-those thoughts which if they are too deep for tears, are, also,in their best mood, too tranquil even for smiles. Far be it also from me to hinder the communication of such thoughts to mankind, when they are not sunk beyond their proper depth, so as to make one dizzy in looking down to them. The walk of Shakspeare is full of them; but he has managed to apply them to their proper refreshing purposes; and has given us but one fond recluse

in his whole works-the melancholy Jaques. Shall we forget the attractions which this melancholy philosopher felt towards another kind of philosopher, whom he met in the forest, and who made a jest of every thing? Let us be sure, that this is one of the results of pushing our abstractions too far, and of that dangerous art which Mr. Wordsworth has claimed for his simpler piecesthe giving importance to actions and situations by our feelings, instead of adapting our feelings to the importance they possess. The consequence of this, if carried into a system, would be, that we could make any thing or nothing important, just as diseased or healthy impulses told us :-a straw might awaken in us as many profound, but certainly not as useful reflections, as the fellow creature that lay upon it; till at last, perplexed between the importance which every thing had obtained in our imaginations, and the little use of this new system of equality to the action and government of life, we might turn from elevating to depreciating-from thinking trifling things important to thinking important things trifling; and conclude our tale of extremes by closing with expedience, and becoming men of the world. I would not willingly disturb the spirit, in which these remarks are written by unpleasant allusions: but among the numerous acquaintances of Mr. Wordsworth, who have fallen in with his theories, perhaps he may be reminded of some who have exemplified what I mean. He him