so blinded by his
determination to see everything in but one light, and that a most
mistaken one, that he is insensible to the conclusion to which it all
leads, or rather, which is involved in it. Why, according to him, _even
now_, when people have not only learned the "art of seeing"--a blessing
for which they can never be too thankful--but when descriptive poetry
has long flourished far beyond its palmiest state in any other era of
our literature, still are we poor common mortals who admire "The
Seasons," just as deaf and blind now, or nearly so, to their real
merits--allowed to be transcendent--as our unhappy forefathers were when
that poem first appeared, "a glorious apparition." The Rhapsody on Love,
and Damon and Musidora, are still, according to him, its chief
attraction--its false ornaments--and its sentimental commonplaces--such
as those, we presume, on the benefits of early rising, and,

"Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!"

What a nest of ninnies must people in general be in Mr Wordsworth's
eyes! And is "The Excursion" not to be placed by the side of "Paradise
Lost," till the Millennium?

Such is the _reasoning (!)_ of one of the first of our English poets,
against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentence
there is which we had forgotten--but now remember--which is to help us
to distinguish, in the case of the reception "The Seasons" met with,
between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work is
the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of
the year; _and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself
to treat his subject as became a poet_!" How original and profound!
Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public,
returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what is
the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the
people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to
regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of
ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All
poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are
wretchedly prosaic--die and are buried, or what is worse, protract a
miserable existence, in spite of their sentimental commonplaces, false
ornaments, and a vicious style. But Thomson, in spite of all these,
leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still more glorious
immortality.