Princes protecting sciences and art I've often seen, in copper-plate and print; I never saw them elsewhere, for my part, And therefore I conclude there's nothing in't; But everybody knows the Regent's heart; I trust he won't reject a well-meant hint; Each board to have twelve members, with a seat To bring them in per ann. five hundred neat :— From princes I descend to the nobility: In former times all persons of high stations, Lords, baronets, and persons of gentility, Paid twenty guineas for the dedications: This practice was attended with utility; The patrons lived to future generations, The poets lived by their industrious earning,So men alive and dead could live by learning. Then, twenty guineas was a little fortune; [mend: Now, we must starve unless the times should Our poets now-a-days are deem'd importune If their addresses are diffusely penn'd; Most fashionable authors make a short one To their own wife, or child, or private friend, Dear people! if you think my verses clever, And then these lines of mine may last for ever; (Whether they go to meeting or to church) Should study to promote their country's glory With patriotic, diligent research; That children yet unborn may learn the story, With grammars, dictionaries, canes, and birch: It stands to reason-This was Homer's plan, And we must do-like him-the best we can. Madoc and Marmion, and many more, Are out in print, and most of them are sold; Perhaps together they may make a score; Richard the First has had his story told, But there were lords and princes long before, That had behaved themselves like warriors bold; Among the rest there was the great King Arthur, What hero's fame was ever carried farther? King Arthur, and the Knights of his Round Table, To paint their famous actions by my words: It grieves me much, that names that were respected Why then (as poets say) I'll string my lyre; And then I'll light a great poetic fire; I'll air them all, and rub down the Round Table, And wash the canvas clean, and scour the frames, And put a coat of varnish on the fable, And try to puzzle out the dates and names; Then (as I said before) I'll heave my cable, And take a pilot, and drop down the Thames-These first eleven stanzas make a proem, And now I must sit down and write my poem. SIR GAWAIN. SIR Gawain may be painted in a word— His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit, Were deem'd the very touchstone and the test Of what was proper, graceful, just, and fit; A word from him set every thing at rest His short decisions never fail'd to hit; His silence, his reserve, his inattention, Were felt as the severest reprehension: His memory was the magazine and hoard, Where claims and grievances, from year to year, And confidences and complaints were stored, [peer: From dame and knight, from damsel, boor, and Loved by his friends, and trusted by his lord, A generous courtier, secret and sincere, Adviser-general to the whole community, He served his friend, but watch'd his opportunity. One riddle I could never understand But his success in war was strangely various; In executing schemes that others plann'd, He seem'd a very Cæsar or a Marius ; Take his own plans, and place him in command, Your prospect of success became precarious: His plans were good, but Launcelot succeeded And realized them better far than he did. His discipline was steadfast and austere, Unalterably fix'd, but calm and kind; Founded on admiration, more than fear, It seem'd an emanation from his mind; The coarsest natures that approach'd him near Grew courteous for the moment and refined; Beneath his eye the poorest, weakest wight Felt full of point of honour, like a knight. In battle he was fearless to a fault, The foremost in the thickest of the field; His eager valour knew no pause nor halt, And the red rampant lion in his shield Scaled towns and towers, the foremost in assault, With ready succour where the battle reel'd: At random like a thunderbolt he ran, And bore down shields, and pikes, and horse, and [man. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the seventh of April, 1770. With his brother, (the Rev. Dr. | WORDSWORTH, author of Greece, Historical and Picturesque,) he was sent at an early age to the Hawkshead grammar school, in Lancashire, whence, in his seventeenth year, he was removed to St. John's College, Cambridge. On leaving the university, he made the pedestrian tour through France, Switzerland and Italy, commemorated in his Descriptive Sketches in Verse, which, with an Epistle to a Young Lady from the Lakes in the North of England, were published in 1793. He was in Paris at the commencement of the French Revolution, lodging in the same house with BRISSOT, but was driven from the city by the Reign of Terror. Returned to England, he passed a considerable time at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, where he became intimately acquainted with COLERIDGE. It was during his residence here that he completed the first volume of his Lyrical Ballads, which was published in 1798. He soon after made a tour through a part of Germany, where he was joined by COLERIDGE, with whom, at the end of thirty years, he revisited that country. In 1803 he married MARY HUTCHINSON, and settled at Grassmere, a home subsequently exchanged for his present beautiful residence at Rydal, in Westmoreland. In 1807 he published a second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, and in 1809 a prose work On the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal to each other. In 1814 appeared The Excursion, "being a portion of The Recluse, a poem,” which was followed, in 1815, by The White Doe of Rylstone; in 1819 by Peter Bell the Waggoner; in 1820 by The River Duddon, a series of sonnets, Vaudracour and Julia and other pieces, and Ecclesiastical Sketches; in 1822 by Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, and A Description of the Lakes in the North of England; in 1835 by Yarrow Revisited and other Poems; and in 1842 by his last volume, Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years, including The Borderers, a Tragedy, written in 1785. Sir ISAAC NEWTON is reported to have said that any man of good ability who could have paid the same long and undivided attention to mathematical pursuits that he had, would have wrought out the same results. Probably almost any thoughtful and well-educated person, devoting a long and quiet life to the cultivation of poetry, would sometimes produce passages of sublimity and beauty. Mr. WORDSWORTH has produced very many such; but he has written no single great poem, harmonious and sustained, unless exceptions be found in two or three of his shorter pieces. In the beginning of his career, acting upon the belief that a man of genius must "shape his own road," he affected an originality of style. He determined to be simple, and became puerile; he disdained to owe anything to the dignity of his subjects, and often selected such as were contemptible. He complained that poetry had been written in an inflated and unnatural diction, compounded of a "certain class of ideas and expressions," to the exclusion of all others, and vaunted of his courage in setting these aside. But the complaint was ill-grounded; there was mannerism enough, inflation enough, in the beginning of this century, but there was also genuine simplicity and tenderness, and independence of feeling and expression. CHAUCER and SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE and MILTON, were studied as well as POPE; and CowPER and THOMSON and BURNS had as truly as himself written "the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation." The principles he ostentatiously avowed were a mere repetition of what nearly every poet whose works retain a place in English literature had practically acknowledged. Sportsmen have a phrase, "running the thing into the ground," which has been applied to the racing of asses; and Mr. WORDSWORTH, in the White Doe of Rylstone, Peter Bell, and other pieces, has merely applied the art to simplicity of diction. In him mannerism, an obstinate adherence to a theory, well nigh ruined a great poet; for such he has shown himself to be when the divine afflatus has obtained a mastery over the rules by which he has chosen to be fettered. The general scope of his poetry is shown in the following extract from the conclusion of the first book of The Recluse, introduced into the preface to The Excursion : Ox man, on nature, and on human life, Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mix'd; And dear remembrances, whose presence soothes Of the individual mind that keeps her own I sing:-"fit audience let me find, though few!" The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy-scoop'd out Which speak of nothing more than what we are, Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft Brooding above the fierce confederate storm Within the walls of cities; may these sounds Of mighty poets; upon me bestow Of those mutations that extend their sway It was for a long time the custom to treat WORDSWORTH With unmerited contempt. His faults were so conspicuous as to blind men to his merits. The fashion is changed, and he is now as much overpraised. The stone which the builders rejected, has by a few been placed at the head of the corner, but it cannot remain there. He has written poetry worthy of the greatest bards of all the ages, and as wretched verbiage and inanity as any with which paper was ever assoiled. Mr. WORDSWORTH has been an eminently happy man in his circumstances. Depressed by no poverty, worn out with no over-exertion, and successful in his few efforts of a private nature, nothing has disturbed the tranquillity of his life. He has realized the vision of literary ease and retirement which has mocked the ambition of so many men of genius. All other poets of high reputation have passed considerable portions at least of their lives in the current of society, but his days have been spent in the beautiful region of his home, and the quiet meditation of his works. Few men have been more beloved than Mr. WORDSWORTH in private life. Among his intimate friends have been COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, and many of the other eminent men of his time. On the death of SOUTHEY he was ap pointed Poet Laureate, and, at seventy-five, he promises to live yet many years to enjoy his fame and the honours of his station. The selections from WORDSWORTH in this volume are in but few instances complete poems. I have chosen rather to give in detached passages some of his most beautiful and sublime thoughts, with enough of the characteristic to enable the reader to perceive the peculiarities of his style. No one but the author of the Lyrical Ballads would have written "We are Seven." A complete edition of the works of Mr. WORDSWORTH has been published in Philadelphia, under the superintendence of Professor HENRY REED, of the University of Pennsylvania, a gentleman to whom he owes much of his reputation in America; and another edition was published several years ago in New Haven. INSCRIPTION FOR A SEAT IN THE GROVES OF COLEORTON. BENEATH yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound, Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground, Stand yet-but, stranger! hidden from thy viewThe ivied ruins of forlorn Grace Dieu; Erst a religious house, which day and night With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite: And when those rites had ceased, the spot gave birth To honourable men of various worth: There, on the margin of a streamlet wild, Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child; There, under shadow of the neighbouring rocks, Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks; Unconscious prelude to heroic themes, Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage, With which his genius shook the buskin'd stage. Communities are lost, and empires die, And things of holy use unhallow'd lie; They perish;-but the intellect can raise, From airy words alone, a pile that ne'er decays. A YOUTHFUL POET CONTEMPLATING NATURE. For the growing youth, In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touch'd, What wonder if his being thus became EVENING IN THE MOUNTAINS. Has not the soul, the being of your life, To glorify the Eternal! What if these SKATING. NOT seldom from the uproar I retired Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng, Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes When we had given our bodies to the wind, ON REVISITING THE WYE. THESE beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me Is lighten'd:-that serene and blessed mood, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power All thinking things, all objects and all thought, CLOUDS AFTER A STORM. -A SINGLE Step which freed me from the skirts Of the blind vapour, open'd to my view Glory beyond all glory ever seen By waking sense or by the dreaming soulThe appearance instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city-boldly say [turf, A wilderness of building, sinking far But vast in size, in substance glorified ; |