nd the household dog--
In his capacious mind he loved them all."

True, that our love of

"The mute fish that glances in the stream,"

is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or
with the pleasure of "filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have
reason to know, was like his poet and ourselves, in that art a
craftsman, and for love beat the mole-catcher at busking a batch of
May-flies. We question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a
green dragon. "The harmless reptile coiling in the sun" we are not so
sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom in our simplicity we
mistook for a slow-worm--the very day, by the by, on which we were
poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for
mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as
the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin
between finger and thumb to compress their mealy wings. The household
dog we do indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicions we
prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic
fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing
them at their _walks_

"Among the rural villages and farms;"

and though game to the back-bone, they are allowed to wear the spurs
nature gave them--to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is
the sward, like the _sod_, ever reddened with their heroic blood, for
hateful to our ears the war-song,

"Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!"

'Tis our way, you know, to pass from gay to grave matter, and often from
a jocular to a serious view of the same subject--it being natural to
us--and having become habitual too, from our writing occasionally in
_Blackwood's Magazine_. All the world knows our admiration of
Wordsworth, and admits that we have done almost as much as Jeffrey or
Taylor to make his poetry popular among the "educated circles." But we
are not a nation of idolaters, and worship neither graven image nor man
that is born of a woman. We may seem to have treated the Pedlar with
insufficient respect in that playful parallel between him and Ourselves;
but there you are wrong again, for we desire thereby to do him honour.
We wish now to say a few words on the wisdom of making such a personage
the chief character in a Philosophical Poem.

He is described as endowed by nature with a great intellect, a noble
imagination, a profou