It is useless to question and criticise in our foolish manner the new bard of God, whoever he may be, or under what circumstances soever he may appear among us. _He_ does not live by questionings and logical inductions, but by faith and inspiration. Entranced in the miracle of his own existence, with all these vast orbs of immensity pressing upon his brain, and the silent creatures of the fair earth stealing like noiseless musical shadows into the temple of his soul, he has no time to consult the critics whether this or that mode of reproducing them is the orthodox one. He will speak in any way he can; and if the old grey-beard world _will_ be startled or shocked at his speech, he has no other answer for it but this: “My utterance is the birth-cry of my thoughts.” Every new poet--every genius indeed that is divine--is a notification to us that the world of things is about to be classified anew, and to assume a deeper meaning. And certainly one would think that so great an announcement might gladden the hearts of men, instead of making them savage and ferocious at it. For of all men the poet is highest and noblest. He is the awful Seer, who unveils the spirit of Nature and looks with solemn and unscathed eyes upon her naked loveliness and terror. The Beloved of God, he is admitted into the very presence of the Invisible, and reports, in such wild and strange words as he can find, the sights he has beheld there. He is the renovator of man and Nature. He lifts the human soul upon his daring wings, and carries it into light and immortality. In his words we behold the re-creation of the universe. We see Orion, like the starry skeleton of a mighty giant, go forth into the solitudes of unfathomable space; we witness the planting of the solar stars, and hear the everlasting roar of the vast sun, as it wheels, seething from God’s hands, upon its fiery axis; and these unspeakable sights are heightened in their magnificence and terrific grandeur by the poet, who holds us fast to their symbolical meaning, and chains them to the being of God, as the expressions in appearance of His thoughts and will. By virtue, therefore, of his mission, the poet is Antinomian. He is master of all law, and no critic can trammel him. Let him try that, and the poet, like the war-horse who snuffs the far-off battle, will say to the little man--“Ha! ha!” It is necessary that we here make a few extracts from Wordsworth’s defence, if we may call it so, of his manner of writing, in order that the reader may be prepared for a right appreciation of his poetry. In speaking of his poems as a whole, he says:--