ortrayed the
character of the person from whom the words of the poem are supposed
to proceed: a superstitious man moderately imaginative, of slow
faculties and deep feelings, 'a captain of a small trading vessel, for
example, who, being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an
annuity, or small independent income, to some village or country town
of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed
to live. Such men having nothing to do become credulous and talkative
from indolence'. But in a poem, still more in a lyric poem--and the
Nurse in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ alone prevents me from
extending the remark even to dramatic poetry, if indeed even the Nurse
itself can be deemed altogether a case in point--it is not possible to
imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourser, without repeating the
effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I dare assert,
that the parts--(and these form the far larger portion of the
whole)--which might as well or still better have proceeded from the
poet's own imagination, and have been spoken in his own character, are
those which have given, and which will continue to give, universal
delight; and that the passages exclusively appropriate to the supposed
narrator, such as the last couplet of the third stanza;[3] the seven
last lines of the tenth;[4] and the five following stanzas, with the
exception of the four admirable lines at the commencement of the
fourteenth, are felt by many unprejudiced and unsophisticated hearts,
as sudden and unpleasant sinkings from the height to which the poet
had previously lifted them, and to which he again re-elevates both
himself and his reader.

[3]

I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.

[4]

Nay, rack your brain--'tis all in vain,
I'll tell you every thing I know;
But to the Thorn, and to the Pond
Which is a little step beyond,
I wish that you would go:
Perhaps, when you are at the place,
You something of her tale may trace.

I'll give you the best help I can:
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I'll tell you all I know.
'Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden's true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,