(of course we exclude the coadjutors and disciples of his own school), could ever have fallen into such gross faults, or so long mistaken them for beauties.  His first essays we looked upon in a good degree as poetical paradoxes,—­maintained experimentally, in order to display talent, and court notoriety;—­and so maintained, with no more serious belief in their truth, than is usually generated by an ingenious and animated defence of other paradoxes.  But when we find, that he has been for twenty years exclusively employed upon articles of this very fabric, and that he has still enough of raw material on hand to keep him so employed for twenty years to come, we cannot refuse him the justice of believing that he is a sincere convert to his own system, and must ascribe the peculiarities of his composition, not to any transient affectation, or accidental caprice of imagination, but to a settled perversity of taste or understanding, which has been fostered, if not altogether created, by the circumstances to which we have already alluded.

The volume before us, if we were to describe it very shortly, we should characterize as a tissue of moral and devotional ravings, in which innumerable changes are rung upon a few very simple and familiar ideas:  —­but with such an accompaniment of long words, long sentences, and unwieldy phrases—­such a hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical sublimities, that it is often extremely difficult for the most skilful and attentive student to obtain a glimpse of the author’s meaning—­and altogether impossible for an ordinary reader to conjecture what he is about.  Moral and religious enthusiasm, though undoubtedly poetical emotions, are at the same time but dangerous inspirers of poetry; nothing being so apt to run into interminable dulness or mellifluous extravagance, without giving the unfortunate author the slightest intimation of his danger.  His laudable zeal for the efficacy of his preachments, he very naturally mistakes for the ardour of poetical inspiration;—­and, while dealing out the high words and glowing phrases which are so readily supplied by themes of this description, can scarcely avoid believing that he is eminently original and impressive:—­ All sorts of commonplace notions and expressions are sanctified in his eyes, by the sublime ends for which they are employed; and the mystical verbiage of the methodist pulpit is repeated, till the speaker entertains no doubt that he is the elected organ of divine truth and persuasion.  But if such be the common hazards of seeking inspiration from those potent fountains, it may easily be conceived what chance Mr. Wordsworth had of escaping their enchantment,—­with his natural propensities to wordiness, and his unlucky habit of debasing pathos with vulgarity.  The fact accordingly is, that in this production he is more obscure than a Pindaric poet of the seventeenth century; and more verbose “than even himself of yore”; while the wilfulness with which he