ABSTRACT
It is not with any view of bringing our two greatest living poets into direct comparison with each other, that we have coupled a publication of Mr. Wordsworth’s with that of his friend. It is interesting, however, to observe the characteristic difference between the two authors. Mr. Wordsworth, always metaphysical, loses himself perpetually in the depths of abstraction on the simplest subject; and frequently employing words as the arbitrary signs of recondite and mystical meanings, exhibits a singular inequality of style, varying from Miltonic majesty of thought and diction, to apparent poverty and meanness. It is only at intervals that he comes within reach of the sympathy of ordinary readers. We never think of claiming kindred with Mr. Wordsworth as a man of the same nerve and texture and heart’s blood with ourselves. He looks on nature with other than human senses. He appears to regard God and man through the medium of a philosophy taught in no secular and in no sacred schools. Mr. Southey, on the contrary, is never to be mistaken for any other than a husband, a father, a friend; – a man whose sympathies all link him to his country and his fellow-men; whose errors whether poetical or political, proceed from the warmth of feeling or the force of prejudice, and are never the deliberate sins of a perverse intellect, or the
indications of dubious principles. Moral objects seem in his mind to hold the place of metaphysical ones, and he takes too much interest in the passing scenes of the real world, to cultivate the habit of severe abstraction. Whatever he writes, is at least interesting. It bears the stamp of character, – of the man and of the poet. Wordsworth can interest. He has written some whole poems, and there are passages in all his poems, that are fitted with exquisite skill to find their way to the heart. But in much of his loftiest poetry he is any thing but interesting. When he aims to teach, he fails to please. He aspires to sit in Milton’s chair; but the spirit whose nightly visitation Milton enjoyed, was not the spirit of mere poetry. The spirit of Milton has not rested upon Mr. Wordsworth, unless it be in some of his noble sonnets, in which he more than rivals the great puritan champion of liberty. Southey and Wordsworth have some obvious peculiarities of diction in common, but the resemblance is very superficial. Wordsworth’s affectation lies more in the thoughts than in the manner. If Southey be at any time chargeable with a fault of this kind, it will be found confined to the expression; his thoughts are always natural. The poems of the one are altogether so different from those of the other, that it is not conceivable that Wordsworth could have written Madoc or Roderick, or Southey, the Excursion. Wordsworth displays at times an intellectual grandeur and a depth of pathos, peculiarly his own. Southey excels in force of dramatic conception, in the development of character, and in the expression of the tender affections. Wordsworth’s poetry, if we may be allowed so trite a comparison, reminds us of a mountain torrent issuing from some unknown solitude, and rolling its rarely navigable waters through barren and uninhabited regions, over rocks and shallows, now lingering round some green and sunny islet, now thundering in precipitous grandeur, now tamely diffusing its waters over a wide spread channel. Southey’s is the mighty stream, eccentric, but clear, rapid, and beautiful, that loves the imaged heavens on its surface, and the racy verdure of the earth, and flows and murmurs for man.
