The Genius of Wordsworth Author:John Wright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing; " but, seeing as " through a glass darkly," his images were confused, and, like the chan... more »ging cloud, they rarely sustained an appreciable aspect. Hence the frequent recurrence of such passages as the following: — " Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead, Nor all asleep—in his extreme old age :" " And to myself I seem to muse on One By sorrow laid asleep ; or borne away, A human being destined to awake To human life, or something very near To human life"— " Calm did he sit under the wide-spread tree Of his old age ; and yet less calm and meek, Winningly meek or venerably calm, Than slow and torpid ;" Intent, at all times, on the maintenance of his right to the first seat in the Temple of the Muses, the Laureate would remind his readers, as occasion should serve, of the deference due to him as the Poet; but especially did he claim preeminence as the Poet of Nature. In this capacity I find him " haunting" the " green shade" of " Rydalian Laurels" through all seasons in search of " ground-flowers ; " — and it may not be uninteresting to inquire with what bountifulness Nature lavished instruction upon him in such rambles. While thus engaged, it is satisfactory as well to learn that, whether following him in the neighbourhood of Rydal, or on a delicate expedition, when his " horse moved on ; hoof after hoof He raised, and never stopped," the charge of unfairness cannot properly te imputed to me: for, in the Poefs dedication of "Peter Bell" to Southey, he says " pains have been taken at different times to make the production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or, rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the literature of our country. This has, indeed,...« less