The foregoing is one of a succession of splendid passages equally enriched with philosophy and poetry, tracing the fictions of Eastern mythology to the immediate intercourse of the imagination with Nature, and to the habitual propensity of the human mind to endow the outward forms of being with life and conscious motion. With this expansive and animating principle, Mr. Wordsworth has forcibly, but somewhat severely, contrasted the cold, narrow, lifeless spirit of modern philosophy:
‘How, shall our great discoverers obtain From sense and reason less than these obtained, Though far misled? Shall men for whom our age Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared, To explore the world without and world within, Be joyless as the blind? Ambitious souls— Whom earth at this late season hath produced To regulate the moving spheres, and weigh The planets in the hollow of their hand; And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains Have solved the elements, or analysed The thinking principle—shall they in fact Prove a degraded race? And what avails Renown, if their presumption make them such? Inquire of ancient wisdom; go, demand Of mighty nature, if ’twas ever meant That we should pry far off, yet be unraised; That we should pore, and dwindle as we pore, Viewing all objects unremittingly In disconnection dead and spiritless; And still dividing and dividing still Break down all grandeur, still unsatisfied With the perverse attempt, while littleness May yet become more little; waging thus An impious warfare with the very life Of our own souls! And if indeed there be An all-pervading spirit, upon whom Our dark foundations rest, could he design, That this magnificent effect of power, The earth we tread, the sky which we behold By day, and all the pomp which night reveals, That these—and that superior mystery, Our vital frame, so fearfully devised, And the dread soul within it—should exist Only to be examined, pondered, searched, Probed, vexed, and criticised—to be prized No more than as a mirror that reflects To proud Self-love her own intelligence?’
From the chemists and metaphysicians our author turns to the laughing sage of France, Voltaire. ‘Poor gentleman, it fares no better with him, for he’s a wit.’ We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Wordsworth that _Candide_ is _dull_. It is, if our author pleases, ‘the production of a scoffer’s pen,’ or it is any thing but dull. It may not be proper in a grave, discreet, orthodox, promising young divine, who studies his opinions in the contraction or distension of his patron’s brow, to allow any merit to a work like _Candide_; but we conceive that it would have been more manly in Mr. Wordsworth, nor do we think it would have hurt the cause he espouses, if he had blotted out the epithet, after it had peevishly escaped him. Whatsoever savours of a little, narrow, inquisitorial spirit, does not sit well on a poet and a man of genius. The prejudices of a philosopher are not natural. There is a frankness and sincerity of opinion, which is a paramount obligation in all questions of intellect, though it may not govern the decisions of the spiritual courts, who may, however, be safely left to take care of their own interests. There is a plain directness and simplicity of understanding, which is the only security against the evils of levity, on the one hand, or of hypocrisy on the other. A speculative bigot is a solecism in the intellectual world. We can assure Mr. Wordsworth, that we should not have bestowed so much serious consideration on a single voluntary perversion of language, but that our respect for his character makes us jealous of his smallest faults!