ABSTRACT

A sacredness belongs to poetry, as we have always thought, which ill adapts it to the bustle and business of contemporary transactions. Whether the feeling of dislike which we own that we entertain for ‘Odes written on the Occasion of Recent Public Events,’ and for all such every-day effusions, arises from their number and from their general

mediocrity; or whether some suspicion of adulation always attaches to the poetry which celebrates living merit; or, lastly, and perhaps most efficiently, whether the perusal of the high-flown descriptions in prose which the newspapers of the new æra contain, on every opportunity of rejoicing for a victory, pre-occupies our minds, and indisposes us to the repetition of the same images and ideas in the pages of their poetical brethren; whether, we say, either or all of these causes may be said to influence our taste, we cannot with cordial pleasure enjoy the very best of these gazettes in verse. Mr. Wordsworth, indeed, has written a little Thanksgiving of his own; and so peculiarly his own, that we do not see to what human being, place, circumstance, or time, saving Mr. W. W. in good spirits on a fine Sunday morning, among the Lakes, it has more than a general reference. It is composed in all that composing placidity of style which is so characteristic of this rural and romantic personage; and it is very pious, and so far so good: but it is also very quaint, and very prosaic. The thoughts are sometimes poetical: but the expressions, according to the author’s happy theory of familiarity in the language of verse, are often of the most conversational cast; and the whole effect of the poem is very much that of a moderate dose of magnesia, inspirited with a small quantity of lemon-juice. We shall offer our readers a teaspoon full or two of this harmless mixture . . .