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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
persists in choosing his examples of intellectual dignity and tenderness
exclusively from the lowest ranks of society, will be sufficiently
apparent, from the circumstance of his having thought fit to make his
chief prolocutor in this poetical dialogue, and chief advocate of
Providence and Virtue, _an old Scotch Pedlar_--retired indeed from
business--but still rambling about in his former haunts, and gossiping
among his old customers, without his pack on his shoulders. The other
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