Diamond.-Pendennis.-The Irish Sketch Book, 2 vols.-The Paris Sketch Book, 2 vols.-Dr. Birch, and his Young Friends.-Our Street.-Mrs. Perkins' Ball.-Comic Tales and Sketches, 2 vols.

MRS. JAMESON.

Beauties of the Court of Charles II.-Characteristics of Women.-Diary of an Ennuyée.-Lives of Female Sovereigns, 2 vols.-Visits at Home and Abroad, 3 vols.-Winter Sketches and Summer Rambles, 3 vols.—Companion to Private Picture Galleries.-Hand-book to Public Picture Galleries, 2 vols.Social Life in Germany, 2 vols.-Companion to Private Galleries of Art.-The First, or Mother's Dictionary, 7th edition.—Memoirs and Essays on Literature and Art.-Relative Position of Mothers and Governesses.-Sacred and Legendary Art, 2 vols.-Heroines of Shakspere. (Edited.)

INTRODUCTION.

WORDSWORTH, BARRY CORNWALL,

LANDOR,

LEIGH HUNT, SAMUEL ROGERS, AND

THOMAS MOORE.

Although Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Procter, Moore, Landor and Rogers, belong more properly to the last generation, and are consequently somewhat "past the bourne" of contemporary criticism, yet the fact of their physical existence renders some account of them necessary in a book which professes to treat of the living authors of England and America.

To a certain extent, they are already judged, and have received a posthumous fame which seldom belongs to writers who are still alive. In speaking of them it is difficult to realize that we are not their posterity. In walking through Westminster Abbey we feel naturally inclined to look for their monuments, and are now and then tempted to ask the verger to show us their tombs, and to express indignation that the proper authorities are so culpably slow in erecting the suitable monuments to their memory. But we must step out of the Abbey, and say what we have to say of them in the open air.

As a justification for the brief notice we shall give of them, we may as well state that Rogers is above eighty, Wordsworth, is only a year younger, Moore is but a shade more juvenile than the Poet Laureate; and Barry Cornwall and Leigh Hunt are between their sixtieth and seventieth years.

Great wants rouse the mind of man, and surely never have poets had more exciting times than this little band. Born in the old age of despotism, they have seen a great colony throw off the preposterous domination of a parent state three thousand miles away, and become the most powerful republic in the world. Shortly after, they beheld the throne of Charlemagne totter, and freedom given to the second nation in Europe. In their manhood they have watched the rise and fall of that blazing meteor, Napoleon! A giant by whose side Alexander and Julius Cæsar shrink into pigmies! They have seen him become the modern Prometheus, and die on the rock with the vulture at his heart. Strange that no Æschylus has yet arisen to make Napoleon speak to us in poetry, as he does in history. Doubtless when the proper hour comes, the man will come with it. At present, perhaps, the dust of his giant fall obscures his real dimensions-when it clears away we shall be the better able to estimate his labor and his task.

In Wordsworth's early life, he was, like his friends and companions, Coleridge and Southey, a firm approver of the progressive feeling then developing itself in the French Revolution; but the poet's heart is a reverent humanity, and when religion and life were trampled under foot, he recoiled from the brotherhood. His poetry, however, did not sufficiently include philosophy, otherwise he would have naturally accounted for this violent reaction! Tyranny and priestcraft are the parents of anarchy and blasphemy. Nor can they with justice reproach their offspring. Many of the excesses of that ferocious movement were caused, or certainly heightened by the conduct of the European powers. Forbearance and calmness would have softened the worst acts of that stormy period, while provocation drove the nation mad. Terrible volume, printed for our warning, with blood for ink, with human bones for type!

We do not mention these great excitements as detracting from the poetical claims of the poets of the revolutionary era,

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but as merely accounting for the fact of their appearance. From the time of Shakspere,-when the nation had just been roused by the overthrow of the spiritual despotism of Rome, down to the epoch of Coleridge, the world had given birth to no original poets! The destruction of temporal thraldom called into being the great men who have just past, and those who are lingering on the stage.

In like manner, the overthrow of physical impediments by the triumphant giant, Steam! is producing a race of poets; as Shakspere and his great contemporaries were the children of spiritual freedom-as Wordsworth, Coleridge and their fellow-students were the offspring of temporal liberty-so are Tennyson, Browning, Miss Barrett, Carlyle, and their brethren, the natural product of the excitements of the age we live in.

America, and other distant lands, are now brought almost together; a girdle has been thrown round the earth! The old and the new worlds have been brought face to face, and gather strange knowledge from each other's eyes; and so will it be to the end of time. If human nature seems to pause awhile, it is but to gather strength for a loftier, onward spring; she halts only to prepare herself for a longer march into the promised land of human happiness. Every victory brings forth its triumphant pæan.

Under this aspect great poets are inevitable results, and our posterity never need fear they will ever want the "real presence to sing their future glories.

This conviction seems naturally to suggest that the estimate the world will hereafter form of the poets now under consideration, must considerably diminish their present apparent stature: that Wordsworth will ever be considered a poet of the first rank, one of the archangels of song, we firmly believe; but his large bulk of verse will grow "smaller by degrees," and three-fourths of his productions sink into oblivion. All that is animated by the vitality of progression will live; whenever he turns his back on the future his

voice will naturally die away in the wilderness of the past. A great poet must throw his voice before him if he wishes to be heard in the coming time; the world marches onwards; when he indulges in regrets he speaks not to men, but to the empty space they have past over. All Wordsworth's later writings are of this class. The healthy state of a reverent appreciation, and a wise patience is turned into the disease of superstition, and a slavish passiveness. That this is the character of much of Mr. Wordsworth's writings, must be evident to a candid reader, and it will materially lessen the admiration of future ages.

We shall, however, adhere to the rule we laid down in the commencement of this chapter, and treat the poets under consideration as an exception to the rule we mean to adopt in the remainder of the volume, and shall content ourselves with a short description of Mr. Wordsworth. The biographical facts of his life are so well known that we pass them over. In person he is tall and largely framed; his eyes have a peculiarly thoughtful expression— they seem the seat of contemplation, not of observation; and being deeply set in his head, give to the whole contour of his face a physical expression admirably in keeping with his idiosyncracy. The finest likeness of him is a three-quarter portrait by one of the most gifted of modern artists, Margaret Gillies. This represents him in his parlor at Rydal Mount, with the beautiful lake scenery in the distance, seen through the window; an open book is before him. He is looking up at some one to whom he is explaining a passage in the volume, which it is almost unnecessary to add is his own poems.

In private life he is an example to all men, obliging, charitable and courteous; he is always happy to see any visiters whom the fame of his genius inclines to call on him, and shows his garden and grounds with the gusto of a connoisseur, and the affection of a parent. Every tree has a living interest in his eye, and he is on speaking terms with every natural object in the country. Hills,