Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ... ESSAYS." I. t WOBDSWOJRTH.1 Another great spirit has recently gone from the midst of us. It is now three months sinee the nation heard, with a deep though quiet sadness, that an aged man of venerable mien, who for fifty years had borne worthily the name of English poet, had at length disappeared from those scenes of lake and mountain where, in stately care of his own worth, he had fixed his recluse abode, and passed forward, one star the more, into the still unfeatured future, whither all that lives is rolling, and whither, as he well knew and believed, the Shakespeares and Miltons, whom men count dead, had but as yesterday transferred their kindred radiance When the news spread, it seemed as if our island were 1 North British Review, August 1850.--" The Poetical "Works of William Wordsworth, D.C.L., Poet Laureate, &c." London, 1849. suddenly a man the poorer, as if some pillar or other notable object, long conspicuous on its broad surface, had suddenly fallen down. It is right, then, that we should detain our thoughts for a little in the vicinity .of this event;- that, the worldly course of such a man 'Saving'haw' been ended, we should stand for a little -"tijobiid'Hi gtacve, and think solemnly of what he was. Neither few nor unimportant, we may be sure, are the reflections that should suggest themselves over the grave of William Wordsworth. Of the various mysteries that the human mind can contemplate none is more baffling, and at the same time more charming to the understanding, than the nature of that law which determines the differences of power and mental manifestation between age and age. That all history is an evolution, that each generation inherits all that had been accumulated by its predecessor, and bequeathes in tur
