, and
danced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less
giddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and of
idleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper.
Different also themselves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord,
and adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in this
main point--that while the _Ca ira_ and Marseillaise were essentially
songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, virtually, always
songs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient keys. On the
contrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular antipathy to the
priests, and are pointed at with fear and indignation by the pietists,
of their day;--not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with
the most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan and
monk alike despised; and, in the triple chord of their song, could not
but appear to the religious persons around them as respectively and
specifically the praisers--Scott of the world, Burns of the flesh, and
Byron of the devil.

To contend with this carnal orchestra, the religious world, having long
ago rejected its Catholic Psalms as antiquated and unscientific, and
finding its Puritan melodies sunk into faint jar and twangle from their
native trumpet-tone, had nothing to oppose but the innocent, rather than
religious, verses of the school recognized as that of the English Lakes;
very creditable to them; domestic at once and refined; observing the
errors of the world outside of the Lakes with a pitying and tender
indignation, and arriving in lacustrine seclusion at many valuable
principles of philosophy, as pure as the tarns of their mountains, and
of corresponding depth.[72]

50. I have lately seen, and with extreme pleasure, Mr. Matthew Arnold's
arrangement of Wordsworth's poems; and read with sincere interest his
high estimate of them. But a great poet's work never needs arrangement
by other hands; and though it is very proper that Silver How should
clearly understand and brightly praise its fraternal Rydal Mount, we
must not forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while.

Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by himself, in a
single exclamation:

"What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,
Mount Skiddaw?"

Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between the
great masters of the Muse's teaching and the pleasant fingerer of his