Wordsworth was peculiarly fitted to be the successor of Byron. He had himself shared in the dark and desponding spirit of the age just so much as enabled him to understand and portray it, to assail or to alleviate. He had scanned the abyss looking down from the precipice, but his feet were well planted on the jutting rock. He threw his vision down; he stood firm himself. He drew many an inspiration from the dark gulf below; but nothing betrays that he had ever plunged into the abyss. His poetry will at all times have a genial influence, but it can never again exert the same power, or, as a consequence, excite the same enthusiastic plaudits, which it did amongst the generation who have now advanced to manhood. It then fell upon the ear of the tired pupil of doubt and discontent. It had a healing power; it was sweet music, and it was more--it was a charm that allayed a troubled spirit. Why should any poet, it may be asked, capable of moving the human heart, exert so much more power at one period than another? He has but his book to conjure with; his book is still, and always, with us. The answer is very simple, and yet may be worth recalling to mind. The book is with us, but it is only when it first comes forth that we are all reading it _at once_. When numbers are reading this same book at the same time, the poet shares in the advantages of the orator: he adresses an audience who kindle each other's passions, each one of whom contributes something to the enthusiasm of the multitude, and receives back in his bosom the gathering enthusiasm of the crowd. When novelty, or any other circumstance, directs all eyes to the same page, that page is no longer read with the same calmness, the same perspicuity and judgment, that we bring to any other composition. The enthusiasm of friends, of neighbours, of the whole country, is added to our own. And thus the genuine poet may descend somewhat in public estimation, and yet retain a lasting claim upon our admiration. It was one thing to read him when all the world were reading too, talking of him, and applauding him; and quite another when the solitary student takes down his book from the shelf and reads it in its turn, and reads it separately--he and the author alone together.