The same, or similar, remarks would apply to Mr. Wordsworth’s hankering after the drama. We understand, that, like Mr. Godwin, the author of the Lyric Ballads formerly made the attempt, and did not receive encouragement to proceed. We cannot say positively: but we much suspect that the writer would be for having all the talk to himself. His moody sensibility would eat into the plot like a cancer, and bespeak both sides of the dialogue for its own share. Mr. Wordsworth (we are satisfied with him, be it remembered, as he is), is not a man to go out of himself into the feelings of any one else; much less, to act the part of a variety of characters. He is not, like Bottom, ready to play the lady, the lover, and the lion. His poetry is a virtual proscription passed upon the promiscuous nature of the drama. He sees nothing but himself in the universe: or if he leans with a kindly feeling to any thing else, he would impart to the most uninteresting things the fulness of his own sentiments, and elevate the most insignificant characters into the foremost rank,—before kings, or heroes, or lords, or wits,—because they do not interfere with his own sense of self-importance. He has none of the bye-play, the varying points of view, the venturous magnanimity of dramatic fiction. He thinks the opening of the leaves of a daisy, or the perfume of a hedge (not of a garden) rose, matters of consequence enough for him to notice them; but he thinks the ‘daily intercourse of all this unintelligible world,’ its cares, its crimes, its noise, love, war, ambition, (what else?) mere vanity and vexation of spirit, with which a great poet cannot condescend to disturb the bright, serene, and solemn current of his thoughts. This lofty indifference and contempt for his dramatis personæ would not be the most likely means to make them interesting to the audience. We fear Mr. Wordsworth’s poetical egotism would prevent his writing a tragedy. Yet we have above made the dissipation and rarefaction of this spirit in society, the bar to dramatic excellence. Egotism is of different sorts; and he would not compliment the literary and artificial state of manners so much, as to suppose it quite free from this principle. But it is not allied at present to imagination or passion. It is sordid, servile, inert, a compound of dulness, vanity, and interest. That which is the source of dramatic excellence, is like a mountain spring, full of life and impetuosity, sparkling with light, thundering down precipices, winding along narrow defiles; or
‘Like a wild overflow, that sweeps before him
A golden stack, and with it shakes down bridges,
Cracks the strong hearts of pines, whose cable roots
Held out a thousand storms, a thousand thunders,
And so, made mightier, takes whole villages
Upon his back, and, in that heat of pride,
Charges strong towns, towers, castles, palaces,
And lays them desolate.’
The other sort is a stagnant, gilded puddle. Mr. Wordsworth has measured it from side to side. ‘’Tis three feet long and two feet wide.’—Lord Byron’s patrician haughtiness and monastic seclusion are, we think, no less hostile than the levelling spirit of Mr. Wordsworth’s Muse, to the endless gradations, variety, and complicated ideas or mixed modes of this sort of composition. Yet we have read Manfred.