Against the subtleties which would make poetry a study- not a passion- it becomes the metaphysician to reason- but the poet to protest. Yet Wordsworth and Coleridge are men in years; the one imbued in contemplating from his childhood, the other a giant in intellect and learning. The diffidence, then, with which I venture to dispute their authority would be overwhelming did I not feel, from the bottom of my heart, that learning has little to do with the imagination- intellect with the passions- or age with poetry.

Trifles, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below, are lines which have done much mischief. As regards the greater truths, men oftener err by seeking them at the bottom than at the top; Truth lies in the huge abysses where wisdom is sought- not in the palpable palaces where she is found. The ancients were not always right in hiding the goddess in a well; witness the light which Bacon has thrown upon philosophy; witness the principles of our divine faith- that moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of a man.

We see an instance of Coleridge's liability to err, in his Biographia Literaria- professedly his literary life and opinions, but, in fact, a treatise de omni scibili et quibusdam aliis. He goes wrong by reason of his very profundity, and of his error we have a natural type in the contemplation of a star. He who regards it directly and intensely sees, it is true, the star, but it is the star without a ray- while he who surveys it less inquisitively is conscious of all for which the star is useful to us below- its brilliancy and its beauty.

As to Wordsworth, I have no faith in him. That he had in youth the feelings of a poet I believe- for there are glimpses of extreme delicacy in his writings- (and delicacy is the poet's own kingdom- his El Dorado)- but they have the appearance of a better day recollected; and glimpses, at best, are little evidence of present poetic fire- we know that a few straggling flowers spring up daily in the crevices of the glacier.