It is little to say of these sonnets that they are the most
permanent record in our literature of the Napoleonic war. For that
distinction they have few competitors. Two magnificent songs of
Campbell's, an ode of Coleridge's, a few spirited stanzas of Byron's--
strangely enough there is little besides these that lives in the
national memory, till we come to the ode which summed up the long
contest a generation later, when its great captain passed away. But
these _Sonnets to Liberty_ are worthy of comparison with the noblest
passages of patriotic verse or prose which all our history has
inspired--the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on
"this earth, this realm, this England,"--or where the dread of
national dishonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,--or where
Milton rises from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from the
partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed,
was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible
knights of old." He had not swayed senates, nor directed policies,
nor gathered into one ardent bosom all the spirit of a heroic age.
But he had deeply felt what it is that makes the greatness of nations;
in that extremity no man was more staunch than he; no man more
unwaveringly disdained unrighteous empire, or kept the might of
moral forces more steadfastly in view. Not Stein could place a
manlier reliance on "a few strong instincts and a few plain rules;"
not Fichte could invoke more convincingly the "great allies" which
work with "Man's unconquerable mind."

Here and there, indeed, throughout these sonnets are scattered
strokes of high poetic admiration or scorn which could hardly be
overmatched in AEschylus. Such is the indignant correction--

Call not the royal Swede unfortunate,