But the great work to which Wordsworth was devoting the best years of his life, was his long philosophical poem of “The Recluse,” designed to give an account of the growth of his own mind, and to develop all the peculiarities, poetical, ethical and religious, of his system of thought. A large portion of this remains unpublished, but the second part was issued in quarto, in 1814, under the title of “The Excursion,” and was immediately lighted upon by all the wit-snappers and critics of the old school, and mercilessly “probed, vexed and criticised.” Jeffrey, who began his celebrated review of it in the Edinburgh with the sentence, “This will never do,” was successful in ridiculing some of its weak points, but made the mistake of stigmatizing its sublimest passages as “unintelligible ravings.” The choice of a pedler as the hero of a philosophical poem, though it was based on facts coming within the author’s knowledge, was a violation of ideal laws, because it had not sufficient general truth to justify the selection. A pedler may be a poet, moralist and metaphysician, but such examples are for biography rather than poetry, and indicate singularity more than originality in the poet who chooses them. Allowing for this error, substracting some puerile lines, and protesting against the tendency to diffusion in the style, “The Excursion” still remains as a noble work, rich in description, in narrative, in sentiment, fancy and imagination, and replete with some of the highest and rarest attributes of poetry. To one who has been an attentive reader of it, grand and inspiring passages crowd into the memory at the mere mention of its title. It is, more perhaps than any other of Wordsworth’s works, enveloped in the atmosphere of his soul, and vital with his individual life; and in all sympathetic minds, in all minds formed to feel its solemn thoughts and holy raptures, it feeds
“The Excursion” was followed, in 1815, by the “White Doe of Rylstone,” a narrative poem, which Jeffrey said deserved the distinction of being the worst poem ever printed in a quarto volume, and which appears to us one of the very best. We do not believe the “White Doe” is much read, and its exceeding beauty, subtle grace, and profound significance, are not perceived in a hasty perusal. It is instinct with the most refined and ethereal imagination, and could have risen from the depths of no mind in which moral beauty had not been organized into moral character. Its tenderness, tempered by “thoughts whose sternness makes them sweet,” pierces into the very core of the heart. The purpose of the poem is to exhibit suffering as a purifier of character, and the ministry of sympathies,