II.--In Praise of Southey
Reflect on the variety and extent of his acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as a historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist I look in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with as many just and original reflections, in a style so lively yet so uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy.
Still more striking to those who are familiar with the general habits of genius will appear the poet's matchless industry and perseverance in his pursuits, the worthiness and dignity of those pursuits, his generous submission to tasks of transitory interest. But as Southey possesses, and is not possessed by, his genius, even so is he the master even of his virtues. The regular and methodical tenor of his daily labours, which might be envied by the mere man of business, lose all semblance of formality in the dignified simplicity of his manners, in the spring and healthful cheerfulness of his spirit. Always employed, his friends find him always at leisure.
No less punctual in trifles than steadfast in the performance of highest duties, he inflicts none of those small pains and discomforts which irregular men scatter about them, and which in the aggregate so often become formidable obstacles both to happiness and utility. He bestows all the pleasures, and inspires all that ease of mind on those around him, which perfect consistency and absolute reliability cannot but bestow. I know few men who so well deserve the character which an ancient attributes to Marcus Cato--namely, that he was likest virtue, inasmuch as he seemed to act aright, not in obedience to any law or outward motive, but by the necessity of a happy nature which could not act otherwise.
As a son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence and of national illumination.
When future critics shall weigh out his guerdon of praise and censure, it will be Southey the poet only that will supply them with the scanty materials for the latter. They will not fail to record that as no man was ever a more constant friend, never had poet more friends and honourers among the good of all parties, and that quacks in education, quacks in politics, and quacks in criticism, were his only enemies.
III.--Wordsworth's Early Poems
During the last year of my residence at Cambridge I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled "Descriptive Sketches," and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the whole poem there is a harshness and acerbity, combined with words and images all aglow, which might recall gorgeous blossoms rising out of a hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit was elaborating. The language was not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength. It not seldom, therefore, justified the complaint of obscurity.
I was in my twenty-fourth year when I had the happiness of knowing Mr. Wordsworth personally, and by that time the occasional obscurities which had arisen from an imperfect control over the resources of his native language had almost wholly disappeared, together with that worse defect of arbitrary and illogical phrases, at once arbitrary and fantastic, which alloy the earlier poems of the truest genius. There was only evident the union of deep feeling with profound thought; and the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world, around forms, incidents, and situations of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dewdrops.
To find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all His works With feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar--this is the character and privilege of genius. And it is the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence.