nimals that he had tamed. You would think, in
hearing him speak on this subject, that you saw Titian's picture of the
meeting of _Bacchus_ and _Ariadne_--so classic were his conceptions, so
glowing his style. Milton is his great idol, and he sometimes dares to
compare himself with him. His Sonnets, indeed, have something of the same
high-raised tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime favourite
of his, and he has been at the pains to modernize some of the Canterbury
Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely puerile
writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection
for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not think our author
has any very cordial sympathy with Shakspeare. How should he? Shakspeare
was the least of an egotist of anybody in the world. He does not much
relish the variety and scope of dramatic composition. "He hates those
interlocutions between Lucius and Caius." Yet Mr. Wordsworth himself wrote
a tragedy when he was young; and we have heard the following energetic
lines quoted from it, as put into the mouth of a person smit with remorse
for some rash crime:

"Action is momentary,
The motion of a muscle this way or that;
Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite!"

Perhaps for want of light and shade, and the unshackled spirit of the
drama, this performance was never brought forward. Our critic has a great
dislike to Gray, and a fondness for Thomson and Collins. It is mortifying
to hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom, because they have been
supposed to have all the possible excellences of poetry, he will allow to
have none. Nothing, however, can be fairer, or more amusing, than the way
in which he sometimes exposes the unmeaning verbiage of modern poetry.
Thus, in the beginning of Dr. Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_--

"Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind from China to Peru"--

he says there is a total want of imagination accompanying the words, the
same idea is repeated three times under the disguise of a different
phraseology: it comes to this--"let _observation_, with extensive
_observation_, _observe_ mankind;" or take away the first line, and the
second,

"Survey mankind from China to Peru,"

literally conveys the whole. Mr. Wordsworth is, we must say, a perfect
Drawcansir as to prose writers. He complains of the dry reasoners and
matter-of-fact people for their want of _passion_; and h