“of the earth, earthy”—his clouds are humid, heavy, slow; his shadows are “darkness that may be felt,” a “palpable obscure;” his lights are lumps of liquid splendour! There is something more in this than can be accounted for from design or accident: Rembrandt was not a man made up of two or three rules and directions for acquiring genius.
I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a character of Mr. Wordsworth, though he, too, like Rembrandt, has a faculty of making something out of nothing, that is, out of himself, by the medium through which he sees and with which he clothes the barrenest subject. Mr. Wordsworth is the last man to “look abroad into universality,” if that alone constituted genius: he looks at home into himself, and is “content with riches fineless.” He would in the other case be “poor as winter,” if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the greatest, that is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he is the greatest egotist. He is “self-involved, not dark.” He sits in the centre of his own being, and there “enjoys bright day.” He does not waste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate exclusively and wholly to himself, is foreign to his views. He contemplates a whole-length
