name as that which is given to it in the almanac.

So far the prefaces did their work; but hardly was it accomplished, when there sprang up a new growth of abuses; and whilst some of these bore a very close resemblance to their predecessors, others, though having their root in the same soil, tended more dangerously to the corruption of style, inasmuch as they were of a more covert and surreptitious nature. A bald misnomer like that of Philomel' or

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'Bulbul,' 'Albion' or 'Erin,' is sure to be shortly weeded out of the language to which it does not belong; but there are ways at the present time of falsifying genuine English words for purposes supposed to be poetical, which are more insidious, inasmuch as they carry with them not merely a confusion of tongues, but a confusion of ideas; and often also, by really conveying a sentiment, give some colour to their pretext of conveying a

sense.

If we look through some volume of current poetry for one of those words which seem to

be considered eminently poetical at the present day-the adjective 'wild' for example-and consider it closely in the many situations in which it will be found to recur, we shall in general find it to be used, not for the sake of any meaning, definite or indefinite, which it can be supposed legitimately to bear, but-in a manner which Mr. Wordsworth's prefaces will be found to explain-for the sake of conjuring up certain associations somewhat casually connected with it. It has been originally, perhaps, employed with propriety and with distinguished success, in some passages conceived in the same mood of mind and pointed to the same effects which are aimed at by its subsequent employers; the word takes, as it were, the colour of these original passages; becomes a stock-word with those who have more of the feeling of poetry than of discrimination in the use of language, and is employed thenceforward with a progressively diminishing concern for its intrinsic significancy, or for the propriety of the applications which are made of it. The adjectives

bright, dark, lonely, the nouns light, dream, halo, and fifty other words, might be instanced, which are scattered almost at random through our fugitive poetry, with a sort of feeling senselessness, and convey to the congenial reader the sentiment of which they are understood to be the symbols, without either suggesting to him any meaning, or awakening him to the want of it. In some instances it does not seem to be necessary that the word should be otherwise than misplaced, even in the passage which may have first given the impulse which led to the indiscriminate use of it. 'The mind, the music breathing from her face,' is suggestive of as much false metaphor as could well be concentrated in a single line; but it conveyed some vague impressions of beauty and fervour, and was associated with the feelings with which Lord Byron's writings were usually read; and to breathe' became thenceforth, amongst the followers of Lord Byron, a verb poetical which meant anything but respiration. Indeed the abuse seems to have spread to a circle which might be

supposed to be remote from Lord Byron's influence; for a book was published two or three

years ago with the title of Holy Breathings.' These errors, when they shall have become old and tiresome, will probably give way, like those which preceded them, on the one hand to more fresh and fashionable faults, and on the other to a renewed application of Mr. Wordsworth's principles of poetic diction. Natural good sense and good taste will always conquer at last, though they will never be in want of new worlds of error to oppugn; and upon the sense and taste of the natural human understanding Mr. Wordsworth's principles will be found to rest, if they be accepted with the modifications which may be considered to have fairly resulted from the discussion that they have undergone. So accepted, they would teach the poet, not to draw his language exclusively from that of common life, nor indeed to reject, from some kinds of poetry, language of a highly scholastic and composite structure; but in general to use the same language which is employed in the writings and conversations

of other men when they write and discourse their best to avoid any words which are not admissible in good prose or unaffected conversation, whether erudite or ordinary-and especially to avoid the employment of any words in a sense which is not their legitimate prosaic sense. The more these rules are observed, the more benefit will accrue to the writers and readers of poems: at least to those writers who can afford to deal in clear ideas, and to those readers who have so far exercised their faculties as to be desirous to understand a meaning in poetry.

If the influence of Mr. Wordsworth's works has (as we believe it has) added largely to the number of those who cultivate poetry with this aim, it is saying nothing in derogation of what he has done for his art-more than must be said of the greatest artists that ever existed -to acknowledge that the generation of false tastes and foolish phraseologies proceeds pari passu with their destruction, and that Mr. Wordsworth has not, any more than any poet ever did before, cut off the succession of