betraying his own uncritical principles of composition.

"Byron seems to me deficient in feeling. Professor Wilson, I think, used to say that 'Beppo' was his best poem; because all his faults were there brought to a height. I never read the English Bards' through. His critical prognostications have, for the most part, proved erroneous."

Wordsworth relates this amusing incident: "One day I met Mr. M. T. Sadler at the late Archbishop's. Sadler did not know me; and before dinner he began to launch forth in a critical dissertation on contemporary English Poetry. Among living poets, your Grace may know there is one called Wordsworth, whose writings the world calls childish and puerile, but I think some of them wonderfully pathetic.' 'Now, Mr. Sadler,' said the Archbishop, what a scrape you are in! here is Mr. Wordsworth: but go down with him to dinner and you will find that, though a great poet, he does not belong to the genus irritabile.'"

Here is a valuable comment on the Ode. The visionariness and imaginativeness of this masterpiece must not be mistaken for belief in metempsychosis: "In my Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood,' I do

not profess to give a literal representation of the state of the affections and of the moral being in childhood. I record my feelings at that time, my absolute spirituality, my 'allsoulness,' if I may so speak. At that time I could not believe that I should lie down quietly in the grave, and that my body would moulder into dust."

Is any admirer of Wordsworth strong enough, abstract enough, in imagination to figure to himself the author of "The Excursion" as a field-marshal, at the head of embattled legions? From the subjoined passage it will be learnt that, amid the doubts and anxieties with which Wordsworth was beset as to the choice of a profession after he had left Cambridge, he had some thought of entering the army. In another conversation he remarked, good-humoredly, that "Nature had qualified him for success in three callings, those of poet, of landscape-gardener, and of critic of pictures and works of art." "After tea, in speaking of the misfortune it was when a young man did not seem more inclined to one profession than another, Wordsworth said that he had always some feeling of indulgence for men at that age, who felt such a difficulty. He had himself passed through it, and had incurred the strict

ures of his friends and relations on this subject. He said that after he had finished his college course he was in great doubt as to what his future employment should be. He did not feel himself good enough for the Church; he felt that his mind was not properly disciplined for that holy office, and that the struggle between his conscience and his impulses would have made life a torture. He also shrank from the law, although Southey often told him that he was well fitted for the higher parts of the profession. He had studied military history with great interest, and the strategy of war; and he always fancied that he had talents for command; and he had at one time thought of a military life; but then he was without connections, and he felt if he were ordered to the West Indies, his talents would not save him from the yellow fever, and he gave that up. At this time he had only a hundred a year. Upon this he lived, and traveled, and married, for it was not until the late Lord Lonsdale came into possession that the money which was due to them was restored. He mentioned this to show how difficult it often was to judge of what was passing in a young man's mind; but he thought that for the generality of men it was much better that they

should be early led to the exercise of a profession of their own choice."

This chapter cannot be more fitly concluded than with a portion of Mrs. Hemans' reminiscence of a visit to Rydal in 1830. . . . . “Mr. Wordsworth's kindness has inspired me with a feeling of confidence, which it is delightful to associate with those of admiration and respect, before excited by his writings, and he has treated me with so much consideration, and gentleness, and care! they have been like balm to my spirit. ... I wish I had time to tell you of mornings which he has passed in reading to me, and of evenings when he has walked beside me, whilst I rode through the lovely vales of Grasmere and Rydal; and of his beautiful, sometimes half-unconscious recitation, in a voice so deep and solemn that it has often brought tears into my eyes. His voice has something quite breeze-like in the soft gradations of its swells and falls. . . . We had been listening, during one of these evening rides, to various sounds and notes of birds which broke upon the stillness; and at last I said, 'Perhaps there may be still deeper and richer music pervading all nature than we are permitted, in this state, to hear.' He answered by reciting those glorious lines of Milton's :

:

'Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep,' etc.; and this in tones that seemed rising from such depths of veneration! His tones of solemn earnestness, sinking, almost dying away into a murmur of veneration, as if the passage were breathed forth from the heart, I shall never forget."