The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Volume 1

REVIEW OF WORDSWORTH’S POEMS,

2 VOLS. 1807.

(From ‘Monthly Literary Recreations’ for July, 1807.)

The volumes before us are by the author of Lyric Ballads, a collection which has not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause.  The characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth’s muse are simple and flowing, though occasionally inharmonious verse; strong, and sometimes irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments.  Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance, natural and unaffected, totally devoid of the tinsel embellishments and abstract hyperboles of several contemporary sonneteers.  The last sonnet in the first volume, p. 152, is perhaps the best, without any novelty in the sentiments, which we hope are common to every Briton at the present crisis; the force and expression is that of a genuine poet, feeling as he writes—­

  Another year! another deadly blow! 
  Another mighty empire overthrown! 
  And we are left, or shall be left, alone—­
  The last that dares to struggle with the foe. 
  ’Tis well!—­from this day forward we shall know
  That in ourselves our safety must be sought,
  That by our own right-hands it must be wrought;
  That we must stand unprop’d, or be laid low. 
  O dastard! whom such foretaste doth not cheer! 
  We shall exult, if they who rule the land
  Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
  Wise, upright, valiant, not a venal band,
  Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
  And honour which they do not understand.

The song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, the Seven Sisters, the Affliction of Margaret——­of——­, possess all the beauties, and few of the defects, of the writer:  the following lines from the last are in his first style:—­

  “Ah! little doth the young one dream,
  When full of play and childish cares,
  What power hath e’en his wildest scream,
  Heard by his mother unawares: 
  He knows it not, he cannot guess: 
  Years to a mother bring distress,
  But do not make her love the less.”

The pieces least worthy of the author are those entitled “Moods of my own Mind.”  We certainly wish these “Moods” had been less frequent, or not permitted to occupy a place near works which only make their deformity more obvious; when Mr. W. ceases to please, it is by “abandoning” his mind to the most commonplace ideas, at the same time clothing them in language not simple, but puerile.  What will any reader or auditor, out of the nursery, say to such namby-pamby as “Lines written at the Foot of Brother’s Bridge”?

  “The cock is crowing,
  The stream is flowing,
  The small birds twitter,
  The lake doth glitter,
  The green field sleeps in the sun;
  The oldest and youngest,
  Are at work with the strongest;
  The cattle are grazing,
  Their heads never raising,
  There are forty feeding like one. 
  Like an army defeated,
  The snow hath retreated,
  And now doth fare ill,
  On the top of the bare hill.”

“The ploughboy is whooping anon, anon,” etc., etc., is in the same exquisite measure.  This appears to us neither more nor less than an imitation of such minstrelsy as soothed our cries in the cradle, with the shrill ditty of

  “Hey de diddle,
  The cat and the fiddle: 
  The cow jump’d over the moon,
  The little dog laugh’d to see such sport,
  And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

On the whole, however, with the exception of the above, and other INNOCENT odes of the same cast, we think these volumes display a genius worthy of higher pursuits, and regret that Mr. W. confines his muse to such trifling subjects.  We trust his motto will be in future “Paulo majora canamus.”  Many, with inferior abilities, have acquired a loftier seat on Parnassus, merely by attempting strains in which Wordsworth is more qualified to excel.