A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of Shakespeare’s principal plays, would without the name affixed scarcely fail to recognise as Shakespeare’s a quotation from any other play, though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth’s style, whenever he speaks in his own person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis personae of THE RECLUSE. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth. The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference to the persons introduced: “It seems, as I retrace the ballad line by line That but half of it is theirs, and the better half is thine.” Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion of Mr. Wordsworth’s publications, and having studied them with a full feeling of the author’s genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian the little poem on the rainbow? “The Child is father of the Man, etc.” Or in the LUCY GRAY? “No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor; The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door.” Or in the IDLE SHEPHERD-BOYS? “Along the river’s stony marge The sand-lark chants a joyous song; The thrush is busy in the wood, And carols loud and strong. A thousand lambs are on the rocks, All newly born! both earth and sky Keep jubilee, and more than all, Those boys with their green coronal; They never hear the cry, That plaintive cry! which up the hill Comes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll.” Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea-Loch in THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY. Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little ones by the fire-side as-- “Yet had he many a restless dream; Both when he heard the eagle’s scream, And when he heard the torrents roar, And heard the water beat the shore Near where their cottage stood. Beside a lake their cottage stood, Not small like our’s, a peaceful flood; But one of mighty size, and strange; That, rough or smooth, is full of change, And stirring in its bed. For to this lake, by night and day, The great Sea-water finds its way Through long, long windings of the hills, And drinks up all the pretty rills And rivers large and strong: Then hurries back the road it came Returns on errand still the same; This did it when the earth was new; And this for evermore will do, As long as earth shall last. And, with the coming of the tide, Come boats and ships that sweetly ride, Between the woods and lofty rocks; And to the shepherds with their flocks Bring tales of distant lands.” I might quote almost the whole of his RUTH, but take the following stanzas: