part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that had made life dear to them.  In all this, Shakespeare has but followed nature, which existed in his time, as well as now.  The modern philosophy, which reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions, and leaves the natural impulses of passion and imagination out of the account, had not then been discovered; or if it had, would have been little calculated for the uses of poetry.

It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr. Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism in his Ode on the Progress of Life.  He has very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how ’they fade by degrees into the light of common day’, and he ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts were nearer heaven, reflections of former trails of glory, shadows of our past being.  This is idle.  It is not from the knowledge of the past that the first impressions of things derive their gloss and splendour, but from our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to come with the warmth of our desires, with our gayest hopes, and brightest fancies.  It is the obscurity spread before it that colours the prospect of life with hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow.  There is no occasion to resort to any mystical union and transmission of feeling through different states of being to account for the romantic enthusiasm of youth; nor to plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from the skies.  Its root is in the heart of man:  it lifts its head above the stars.  Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast.  The heaven ‘that lies about us in our infancy’ is only a new world, of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish.  In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and of fancy:  it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality.  What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star?  That makes the daisy look so bright?  That perfumes the hyacinth?  That embalms the first kiss of love?  It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that we fondly believe is still in store for us.  The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts, and is unable to sustain the weight of hope and love that presses upon it.—­The effects of the passion of love alone might have dissipated Mr. Wordsworth’s theory, if he means anything more by it than an ingenious and poetical allegory.  That at least is not a link in the chain let down from other worlds; ‘the purple light of love’ is not a dim reflection of the smiles of celestial bliss.  It does not appear till the middle of life, and then seems like ‘another morn risen on midday’.  In this respect the soul comes into the world ‘in utter nakedness’.  Love waits for the ripening of the youthful blood.  The sense of pleasure precedes the love of pleasure, but with the sense of pleasure, as soon as it is felt, come thronging infinite desires and hopes of pleasure, and love is mature as soon as born.  It withers and it dies almost as soon!