MILTON AND WORDSWORTH.

The points of resemblance between Milton and Wordsworth are numerous—both were proud in spirit, and pure in life—both were intensely self-conscious—both essayed the loftiest things in poetry—both looked with considerable contempt on their contemporaries, and appealed to the coming age—both preferred fame to reputation—both during their life-time met with obloquy, which crushed them not—both combined intellect with imagination, in equal proportions—both were persevering and elaborate artists, as well as inspired men—both were unwieldy in their treatment of commonplace subjects. Neither possessed a particle of humor; nor much, if any, genuine wit. Both were friends of liberty and of religion—their genius was "baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire."

But there were differences and disparities as manifold. Milton was a scholar of the first magnitude; Wordsworth no more than respectable in point of learning; Milton may be called a glorious book-worm; Wordsworth an insect feeding on trees; Milton was London born and London bred; Wordsworth from the provinces; Milton had a world more sympathy with chivalry and arms—with the power and the glory of this earth—with human and female beauty—with man and with woman, than Wordsworth. Wordsworth loved inanimate nature better than Milton, or at least, he was more intimately conversant with her features; and has depicted them with more minute accuracy, and careful finish. Milton's love for liberty was a wiser and firmer passion, and underwent little change; Wordsworth's veered and fluctuated; Milton's creed was more definite and fixed than Wordsworth's, and, perhaps, lay nearer to his heart; Wordsworth shaded away into a vague mistiness, in which the Cross at times was lost; Milton had more devotion in his absence from church than Wordsworth in his presence there; Wordsworth was an "idler in the land;" Milton an incessant and heroic struggler.

As writers, while Wordsworth attains to lofty heights, with an appearance of effort; Milton is great inevitably, and inhales with pleasure the proud and rare atmosphere of the sublime; Wordsworth comes up to the great—Milton descends on it; Wordsworth has little ratiocinative, or rhetorical power; Milton discovers much of both—besides being able to grind his adversaries to powder by the hoof of invective, or to toss them into the air on the tusks of a terrible scorn; Wordsworth has produced many sublime lines, but no character approaching the sublime; Milton has reared up Satan to the sky—the most magnificent structure in the intellectual world; Wordsworth's philosophic vein is more subtle, and Milton's more masculine and strong; Wordsworth has written much in the shape of poetry that is despicably mean; mistaking it all the while for the excellent; Milton trifles seldom, and knows full well when he is trifling; Wordsworth has sometimes entangled himself with a poetic system; Milton no more than Samson will permit withes, however green, or a cart-rope, however new, to imprison his giant arms; Wordsworth has borrowed nothing, but timidly and jealously saved himself from theft by flight; Milton has maintained his originality, even while he borrows—he has dared to snatch the Urim and Thummim from the high-priest's breast, and inserted them among his own native ornaments, where they shine in keeping—unbedimming and unbedimmed; Wordsworth's prose is but a feeble counterpoise to his poetry; whereas Milton's were itself sufficient to perpetuate his name; Wordsworth's sonnets are, perhaps, equal to Milton's, some of his "Minor Poems" may approach "Lycidas," and "Il Penseroso," but where a whole like "Paradise Lost?"

Thus while Wordsworth has left a name, the memory of a character and many works, which shall illustrate the age when he lived, and exalt him, on the whole, above all Britain's bards of that period, Milton is identified with the glory, not of an age, but of all ages; with the progress of liberty in the world—with the truth and grandeur of the Christian faith and with the honor and dignity of the human species itself. Wordsworth burns like the bright star Arcturus, outshining the fainter orbs of the constellation to which it belongs. Milton is one of those solitary oceans of flame, which seem to own but a dim and far-off relationship to aught else but the Great Being, who called them into existence. So truly did the one appreciate the other when he sung