Or if there are any of the latter’s writings, that we can dwell upon in the same way, that is, as lasting and heart-felt sentiments, it is when laying aside his usual pomp and pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth to the common ground of a disinterested humanity.  It may be considered as characteristic of our poet’s writings, that they either make no impression on the mind at all, seem mere nonsense-verses, or that they leave a mark behind them that never wears out.  They either

  “Fall blunted from the indurated breast”—­

without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a passion.  To one class of readers he appears sublime, to another (and we fear the largest) ridiculous.  He has probably realised Milton’s wish,—­“and fit audience found, though few:”  but we suspect he is not reconciled to the alternative.  There are delightful passages in the EXCURSION, both of natural description and of inspired reflection (passages of the latter kind that in the sound of the thoughts and of the swelling language resemble heavenly symphonies, mournful requiems over the grave of human hopes); but we must add, in justice and in sincerity, that we think it impossible that this work should ever become popular, even in the same degree as the Lyrical Ballads.  It affects a system without having any intelligible clue to one; and instead of unfolding a principle in various and striking lights, repeats the same conclusions till they become flat and insipid.  Mr. Wordsworth’s mind is obtuse, except as it is the organ and the receptacle of accumulated feelings:  it is not analytic, but synthetic; it is reflecting, rather than theoretical.  The EXCURSION, we believe, fell stillborn from the press.  There was something abortive, and clumsy, and ill-judged in the attempt.  It was long and laboured.  The personages, for the most part, were low, the fare rustic:  the plan raised expectations which were not fulfilled, and the effect was like being ushered into a stately hall and invited to sit down to a splendid banquet in the company of clowns, and with nothing but successive courses of apple-dumplings served up.  It was not even toujours perdrix!

Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, with marked features, and an air somewhat stately and Quixotic.  He reminds one of some of Holbein’s heads, grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of sly humour, kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions of the person.  He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth and manliness and a rugged harmony, in the tones of his voice.  His manner of reading his own poetry is particularly imposing; and in his favourite passages his eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the meaning labours slowly up from his swelling breast.  No one who has seen him at these moments could go away with an impression that he was a “man of no mark or likelihood.”  Perhaps the comment of his face and voice is necessary to convey a full idea