ABSTRACT
Nothing is more natural than that the Lake poet should select a river for the subject of his muse; but what a name and what a river for inspiring a poet’s imagination, Duddon! – And yet the sonnets Mr. Wordsworth has written on it will make the name, obscure and uncouth as it is, pretty widely known. His success in this instance, reminds us of an anecdote rather apt to the purpose. Two footpads, after a most desperate struggle, succeeded in robbing a poor Scotchman of sixpence. In retiring with their booty, one of them exclaimed to the other, ‘what a resistance the fellow made, and that too only for a sixpence. I suppose if the fellow had had eighteen pence, he would have beaten us both!’ And when we see the beautiful verses Mr. Wordsworth has written on this insignificant river, with its barbarous name, we may exclaim, – what would he not have written had the majestic Thames employed his muse. We will not quarrel with a poem on account of the name; but there is really something in it. Walter Scott, (we love to call him by the familiar name he has ennobled beyond the honours a sovereign can confer,) has been particularly happy, not only in the titles of his works, but also in the quaint and significant names he has given to his personages, ‘Marmion,’ ‘The Lady of the Lake,’ ‘the Lay of the Last Minstrel.’ How harmonious! why they are in themselves almost poetical. Mr. Wordsworth, on the contrary, has scarcely even chosen a good title for any of his works; witness his ‘Peter Bell,’ and ‘Benjamin the Waggoner.’ But he will probably say, What’s in a name?
