ABSTRACT
It must be avowed, that this poem is as a ‘sealed book’ to no inconsiderable number of readers. To those whose imaginations have been kept continually on the stretch, and whose curiosity has been perpetually stimulated, by wonders of romance; by tales of Gothic chivalry; by donjon, and keep, and battlement, and banner; or by wild mythologies and exotic manners, American, or Indian, or Turkish; the quiet simplicity, the mere mental elevation of ‘the Recluse,’ offer little attraction: to those, also, who have habituated themselves to consider an uniformly raised and artificial diction, sparkling sentiment, and traditionary popular verse, as the essentials of poetry, and who have been familiar in poetical
description with such scenes and persons as daily life presents in the crowded town, or the civilized and busy village, the deep reasonings and moral disquisitions of this poem will appear only like metaphysical homilies; the simple dignity of style, and Miltonic rhythm, like the nakedness of prose; the characters unnatural and visionary. For those who are hackneyed in the ways of men, who have engaged in the bustling agitation of political interests, with all their heart-burnings and virulent jealousies, and sleepless tossings of feverish ambition, this poem is composed in far too unworldly a spirit. For those who see nothing in the nature of men and things but a blind mechanism of matter, dabblers in a cold sceptical philosophy, doubters of all truth which they cannot touch and dissect, and bring close under their own mole-sighted optics; whose conception of an immaterial universe resembles that which the blind possess of colours, and the deaf of musical sounds; whose sense of ridicule is their test of truth; who see nothing in the preternatural creations of a Shakspeare, but the walking ghosts of an old woman’s fire-side tale; and amidst the daring grandeur of character and imagery which blazes in the Paradise Lost, can dwell only on the substance of devils cut in twain and re-united, or the burlesque of cannon in heaven; the spots of human frailty; the sinkings of towering genius, to which faultless mediocrity never falls; for those, lastly, who can see nothing venerable, or interesting, or awful, or touching; nothing of moral wisdom, nothing of pathos, nothing of poetry, in the page of sacred writ, the oracle of revolving ages, the comfort of affliction; the sole anchor and resting-place for the hope of after-existence, blissful and incorruptible: for all such the poem of ‘The Recluse’ is a sealed volume. To this poem it is necessary that the reader should bring a portion of the same meditative disposition, innocent tastes, calm affections, reverential feelings, philosophic habits, which characterize the poet himself; for readers of another kind we greatly fear, (and we deeply sympathize in the author’s shame and mortification,) that this poem ‘will never do.’*
We have usually observed, that they who were most pleased with the ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ were men with strong minds, and with a propensity to metaphysical studies; a presumption this, that the simplicity of these ballads was not quite so infantile as has been often asserted; and we have remarked, that such men have been more particularly pleased with those very pieces, which have been quoted in companies as subjects of merriment, and have been shouted down with arrogant scorn by supercilious
pretenders to criticism. Touches of nature and philosophy stole, however, into the public mind, in spite of the scoffs, the warnings, and anathemas of these guardians of taste; and as, perhaps, no publication ever produced so great a stirring of the general feeling, such a bristling up of alarmed prejudices, and such a perplexed consciousness of inexplicable delight, none, perhaps, ever made in so short a period so deep and affecting an impression. But the alleged infantilities of style and subject were insisted upon with such perserving acrimony, as to frighten effectually away the timid and self-wondering approbation of a portion of the public. They who had been secretly affected with pleasure grew ashamed of their feelings, and were eager to recant their applause, and to join the safe side of the laughers.
