WORDSWORTH AND CARLYLE.

For well nigh thirty-four years the public curiosity has been excited by the knowledge that there existed in MS. an unfinished poem of very high pretensions, and extraordinary magnitude, from the pen of the late—is he to be the last?—poet-laureate of Britain. At the tidings, Lord Jeffrey made himself very merry, and sought for a powerful calculus to compute the supposed magnitude of the poem. De Quincey, on the other hand, had read it, and both in his writings and conversation, was in the habit of alluding to, quoting, and panegyrizing it as more than equal to Wordsworth's other achievements. All of it that is publishable, or shall ever be published, now lies before us; and we approach it with curiously-mingled emotions—mingled, because although a fragment, it is so vast, and in parts so finished, and because it may be regarded as at once an early production of his genius, and its latest legacy to the world. It seems a large fossil relic—imperfect and magnificent—newly dug up, and with the fresh earth and the old dim subsoil meeting and mingling around it.

The "Prelude" is the first regular versified autobiography we remember in our language. Passages, indeed, and parts of the lives of celebrated men, have been at times represented in verse, but in general a vail of fiction has been dropped over the real facts, as in the case of Don Juan; and in all the revelation made has resembled rather an escapade or a partial confession than a systematic and slowly-consolidated life. The mere circumstances, too, of life have been more regarded than the inner current of life itself. We class the 'Prelude' at once with Sartor Resartus—although the latter wants the poetic form—as the two most interesting and faithful records of the individual experience of men of genius which exist.

And yet, how different the two men, and the two sets of experience. Sartor resembles the unfilled and yawning crescent moon, Wordsworth the rounded harvest orb: Sartor's cry is, "Give, give!" Wordsworth's "I have found it, I have found it!" Sartor can not, amid a universe of work, find a task fit for him to do, and yet can much less be utterly idle; while to Wordsworth, basking in the sun, or loitering near an evening stream, is sufficient and satisfactory work. To Sartor, Nature is a divine tormentor—her works at once inspire and agonize him; Wordsworth loves her with the passion of a perpetual honeymoon. Both are intensely self-conscious; but Sartor's is the consciousness of disease, Wordsworth's of high health standing before a mirror. Both have a "demon," but Sartor's is exceedingly fierce, dwelling among the tombs—Wordsworth's a mild eremite, loving the rocks and the woods. Sartor's experience has been frightfully peculiar, and Wordsworth's peculiarly felicitous. Both have passed through the valley of the shadow of death; but the one has found it as Christian found it, dark and noisy—the other has passed it with Faithful, by daylight. Sartor is more of a representative man than Wordsworth, for many have had part at least of his sad experiences, whereas Wordsworth's soul dwells apart: his joys and sorrows, his virtues and his sins, are alike his own, and he can circulate his being as soon as them. Sartor is a brother man in fury and fever—Wordsworth seems a cherub, almost chillingly pure, and whose very warmth is borrowed from another sun than ours. We love and fear Sartor with almost equal intensity—Wordsworth we respect and wonder at with a great admiration.

Compare their different biographies. Sartor's is brief and abrupt as a confession; the author seems hurrying away from the memory of his woe—Wordsworth lingers over his past self, like a lover over the history of his courtship. Sartor is a reminiscence of Prometheus—the "Prelude" an account of the education of Pan. The agonies of Sartor are connected chiefly with his own individual history, shadowing that of innumerable individuals besides—those of Wordsworth with the fate of nations, and the world at large. Sartor craves, but can not find a creed—belief seems to flow in Wordsworth's blood; to see is to believe with him. The lives of both are fragments, but Sartor seems to shut his so abruptly, because he dare not disclose all his struggles; and Wordsworth, because he dares not reveal all his peculiar and incommunicable joys. To use Sartor's own words, applied to the poet before as, we may inscribe upon Wordsworth's grave, "Here lies a man who did what he intended;" while over Sartor's, disappointed ages may say, "Here lies a man whose intentions were noble, and his powers gigantic, but who from lack of proper correspondence between them did little or nothing, said much, but only told the world his own sad story."