piece we allude to is entitled 'Mary Queen of Scots' Lament on the Eve of a New Year.' A few stanzas are all we can afford space

for.

I.

'Smile of the moon !-for so I name
That silent greeting from above;
A gentle flash of light that came
From her whom drooping captives love;
Or art thou still of higher birth?
Thou that didst part the clouds of earth,
My torpor to reprove!

II.

'Bright boon of pitying Heaven !—alas!
I may not trust thy placid cheer!
Pondering that Time to-night will pass
The threshold of another year;
For years to me are sad and dull;
My very moments are too full
Of hopelessness and fear.

III.

'And yet, the soul-awakening gleam,
That struck perchance the farthest cone
Of Scotland's rocky wilds, did seem
To visit me, and me alone;
Me, unapproached by any friend,
Save those who to my sorrows lend
Tears due unto their own.

IV.

'To-night the church-tower bells will sing
Through these wide realms a festive peal;
To the new year a welcoming;

A tuneful offering for the weal

Of happy millions lulled in sleep;

While I am forced to watch and weep,
By wounds that may not heal.'

Y.

'Hark! the death-note of the year
Sounded by the castle-clock !
From her sunk eyes a stagnant tear
Stole forth, unsettled by the shock;
But oft the woods renewed their green,
Ere the tired head of Scotland's queen
Reposed upon the block!'

The task would be endless to comment with the same minuteness on the many others of this author's poems which form the sterling and inexhaustible treasures of his volumes. And yet each one of them deserves such comment, as it is the genuine effect of each to suggest such. More than any modern poetry we know, do

the highest thoughts of Wordsworth kindle trains of other thoughts in harmony with them, or rather as the unfolding of conceptions which his words more concisely utter, or by some secondary relations imply. So that the natural effect of each on the reader, is to engage his imagination in some such process as that which we have attempted. Nor let it be imagined that this is the result of obscurity in the poet's conceptions, or indefiniteness in his language. Far from it. His meaning is most perfectly expressed, in language beautifully transparent, natural in its construction, and unaffectedly true to the design of clearly conveying the thought. The stimulus to the after-processes of the imagination is furnished by the untold relations suggested between what is expressed and what is not expressed; glancings of allusion to some anterior ideas which the spoken meanings imply, or to some remote consequence they give hint of. It is obviously most difficult to make this element palpable or even very intelligible in mere statement. The illustrations we have already attempted of the simplest of all his pieces will have perhaps conveyed some part of our meaning. To the readers of John Foster it will be further intelligible if we compare some of Wordworth's poems, in this their awakening effect on the intellect and fancy, to that writer's best passages. Everything is perfectly defined in words, yet the whole teems with associations not spoken. In fact, many of the paragraphs of Foster's first Essay, if adjusted to metre, by very slight changes, would read like some of the noblest pages of Wordsworth. And in both, the quality which ministers to other thoughts, is not the obscurity which would necessitate it, but the comprehensiveness, the originality, the radiating gleams furtherward, which delightfully invite it.

With respect to the general character of Wordsworth's higher compositions, we have further to remark that, as they thus awaken thought, so, as must necessarily have been the fact in that case, they are the result of deep and patient thinking. They are adorned with fancy. Allusions pleasing, or tender, or sublime, are interwoven throughout. Imagination, not perhaps in its highest force, yet with much of creative effect, gives form to many, or we may say to each, of his pieces as a perfect whole. But, independent of these creative processes, they have a basis of deep thought, which gives them sequence and significance as poems. They all embody, and we speak of them with scarcely an exception, some important moral truth, either original in itself, or in the relation it occupies in the poem. Or, if the sentiment be in itself familiar, it is invested with new beauty by its connexion with outward analogies, or by the unthought of suddeness, yet not inappropriateness of its introduction. This spirit of thought, this intellectual element, this intense philosophic action of the mind, in the comprehensive, natural presentation of the moral truth, is

This is their

the fundamental excellence of his writings. conservative life. It is this which consecrates and guards his poetry, and gives it an attraction even beyond the effect of its proper imaginative investiture as poetry. Hence his poetry might be turned into prose arrangement, and it would read, still, much of it as poetry, and all of it as profound, original, and beautiful prose. In this respect his poems present compositions which, in natural and unforced development of striking conceptions, would rank, allowing for their brevity, with the most beautiful of the essays of our British moralists. Their aim is always lofty; their element generally some truth interesting at once to the imagination and the heart. And the exhibition of such truth is not in the form of some avowed counsel, or maxim, or moral. Neither does it rise as an intention aforethought in the poet's mind. In its relation to the poem, it is subordinate and all but hidden. In its suggestion it is fortuitous and unforeseen. Some trivial incident, the silence of some dell near the Lakes, the glory of some mountain summit, is all that is at first present to the poet's imagination. The moral associations which are intermingled, of deep feeling, of lofty hope, of sympathy with the happiness of others, or of awe in the contemplation of Divine power,--these flow in unsought, and lend their higher grace and sanctity to the whole design.

Further, not only have the chief of Wordsworth's poems the interest of moral truth blended with the play of fancy, but the presentation of the whole succession of thoughts in each is at once natural and philosophical, even when most incidentally introduced. His poems have the wisdom and depth of philosophy without the forms. They exhibit every thought in a relation the most simple and natural. The successions of thought are not those of reasoning, but always those of reason; by which we mean, that they are those which are in accordance with the natural workings of the human mind. Those of analogy, or those of contrast, or those of time or place; those of consequence from a cause, or inference from a foregone fact; whichever of these be the relation involved in the transition, the moment it is understood, it is felt to be, however new or profound in the discovery, perfectly natural in its sequence. It is not a torturing of ingenuity that is given, as in Cowley and Donne, and the rest of the metaphysical poets; it is not the caprice of an unregulated fancy, or a struggle to invent something startling; but his thoughts are the inspirations of Philosophy herself, sung to the lyre.

We must add that their form of statement, the language employed, and the order of the words, are wholly free from artifice. As we have stated, his poems can, with slightest changes, be rendered into the form of prose; with very little

deviation from their measure, they can be read as prose; so obvious and familiar is the order pursued, and so natural is the diction employed. Nothing is expressed, for being in a line of poetry, in language different from what a philosophical mind like Wordsworth's would use in prose. There is no peculiarity of diction, there is no inversion of structure, there is no torture of the natural sentiment. This was in conformity with his poetical theory, which demanded poetry, not in the form of utterance, but in the quality of the thought uttered. Hence he rejected any attempt to give his conceptions an apparent newness or dignity by their embodiment in unusual, or lofty, or so-called grand diction, or in words supposed peculiar to poetry. He rejected poetic diction as such. He employs the language of use, whether in describing familiar incident, or the recital of intelligent colloquy, or the exposition of philosophical reflection. If it be asked whence, then, did he fetch the poetic element? the reply is, not in dress or artifice of expression, but in the associations of the imagination, and in the grandeur of the thoughts themselves, expressed as prose would express them. Let it be imagined that, independently of any glare of expression, there is to be given in the current language of cultivated intelligence, and in the simple order of prose, the statement of some beautiful analogy, some startling yet not quaint contrast, some grand conception of danger or of vicissitude, or of space or of time; it is conceivable that these forms of thought can be effectively announced without verse, without rhyme, without any modulation of accents, and without deviation from the simplest arrangement of words employed in prose. The Scriptures are full of such poetry divested of metre. This is not saying that metre adds not to its effect. It does so unquestionably. Striking as are the examples of sublime thought which the Psalms, and portions of the prophetic writings are full of, it cannot be doubted that their effect was much more deep and perfect on the mind of a Hebrew, who heard and sung them in their original forms of metre. We receive them through the medium of translation, and in the resolved and extenuated statement of their import; but even this altered form has not extinguished their flame, has not obscured their light. They are poetry still, and that the most sublime that all literature can show.

British Quarterly Review.

THE

CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR

ART. I.-DR. CAREY.

History of Missions. By Rev. W. BROWN, M.D.
Thomas Baker. 2 vols.

Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward.
MARSHMAN. 2 vols. London: Longman & Co.
Memoir of W. Carey, D.D. By Rev. EUSTACE CAREY.

London:

By J. C.

IN the first of these enumerated works Dr. Brown, a son of the

venerable John Brown, of Hadington, has supplied a lack in Christian literature. To write the history of Protestant missionary enterprise was certainly an ambitious, yet highly laudable undertaking. We wish we could employ laudatory terms in speaking of the execution of this work. We admire his industry in collecting materials, and his manifest impartiality in using them; also his truly catholic sympathies and spirit. These volumes are full of deeply interesting facts, and all who are anxious for the progress of Christian truth, will find here narration to gladden their hearts. Yet it is not a history in any high and proper sense. It is a chronicle of events, without the fusing and transmuting power. of genius to give life, vividness, and homogenity to the work. With such a grand theme, such romantic events, such heroic, selfsacrificing, and noble characters, the soul of the true historian would have been fired, and a story of unrivalled interest would have been produced. We hope yet to see this work adequately done.

In the second enumerated work, a son of one of the "famous three of Serampore" has written a successful defence of the fathers of modern missions, Carey, Marshman, and Ward. Mr. Marshman is a man of culture, and a writer of considerable celebrity. Great as the interest of this work is, and great as is its ability, it is manifestly a vindication of his father's memory in connection with