luckily quite beyond all the resources of tinkering open to William
Wordsworth, is--in the choice of a Pedlar as the presiding character who
connects the shifting scenes and persons in the 'Excursion.' Why should
not some man of more authentic station have been complimented with that
place, seeing that the appointment lay altogether in Wordsworth's gift?
But really now who could this have been? Garter King-at-Arms would have
been a great deal too showy for a working hero. A railway-director,
liable at any moment to abscond with the funds of the company, would
have been viewed by all readers with far too much suspicion for the
tranquillity desirable in a philosophic poem. A colonel of Horse Marines
seems quite out of the question: what his proper functions may be, is
still a question for the learned; but no man has supposed them to be
philosophic. Yet on the other hand, argues Coleridge, would not '_any_
wise and beneficent old man,' without specifying his rank, have met the
necessities of the case? Why, certainly, if it is _our_ opinion that
Coleridge wishes to have, we conceive that such an old gentleman,
advertising in the _Times_ as 'willing to make himself generally
useful,' might have had a chance of dropping a line to William
Wordsworth. But still we don't know. Beneficent old gentlemen are
sometimes great scamps. Men, who give themselves the best of characters
in morning papers, are watched occasionally in a disagreeable manner by
the police. Itinerant philosophers are absolutely not understood in
England. Intruders into private premises, even for grand missionary
purposes, are constantly served with summary notices to quit. Mrs.
Quickly gave a first-rate character to Simple; but for all _that_, Dr.
Caius with too much show of reason demanded, 'Vat shall de honest young
man do in my closet?' And we fear that Coleridge's beneficent old man,
lecturing _gratis_ upon things in general, would be regarded with
illiberal jealousy by the female servants of any establishment, if he
chose to lecture amongst the family linen. 'What shall de wise
beneficent old Monsieur do amongst our washing-tubs?' We are perfectly
confounded by the excessive blindness of Coleridge and nearly all other
critics on this matter. 'Need the rank,' says Coleridge, 'have been at
all particularized, when nothing follows which the knowledge of that
rank is to explain or illustrate?' Nothing to explain or illustrate!
Why, good heavens! it is only by the most distinct and positive
information lodged with the constable as to who and what the vagrant
was, that the leading philosopher in the 'Excursion' could possibly have
saved himself over and over again from passing the night in the village
'lock-up,' and generally speaking in handcuffs, as one having too
probably a design upon the village hen-roosts. In the sixth and seventh
books, where the scene lies in the churchyard amongst the mountains, it
is evident that the philosopher would have been arrested as a
resurrection-man, had he not been known to substantial farmers as a
pedlar 'with some money.' To be clothed therefore with an intelligible
character and a local calling was as indispensable to the free movements
of the Wanderer when out upon a philosophical spree, as a passport is to
each and every traveller in France. Dr. Franklin, who was a very
indifferent philosopher, but very great as a pedlar, and as cunning as
Niccolo Machiavelli (which means as cunning as old Nick), was quite
aware of this necessity as a tax upon travellers; and at every stage, on
halting, he used to stand upright in his stirrups, crying aloud,
'Gentlemen and Ladies, here I am at your service; Benjamin Franklin by
name; once (but _that_ was in boyhood) a devil; viz., in the service of
a printer; next a compositor and reader to the press; at present a
master-printer. My object in this journey is--to arrest a knave who will
else be off to Europe with £200 of my money in his breeches-pocket: that
is my final object: my immediate one is--dinner; which, if there is no
just reason against it, I beg that you will no longer interrupt.' Yet
still, though it is essential to the free circulation of a philosopher
that he should be known for what he is, the reader thinks that at least
the philosopher might be known advantageously as regards his social
standing. No, he could not. And we speak seriously. How _could_
Coleridge and so many other critics overlook the overruling necessities
of the situation? They argue as though Wordsworth had selected a pedlar
under some abstract regard for his office of buying and selling: in
which case undoubtedly a wholesale man would have a better chance for
doing a 'large stroke of business' in philosophy than this huckstering
retailer. Wordsworth however fixed on a pedlar--not for his commercial
relations--but in spite of them. It was not for the _essential_ of his
calling that a pedlar was promoted to the post of central philosopher in
his philosophic poem, but for an accident indirectly arising out of it.
This accident lay in the natural privilege which a pedlar once had
through all rural districts of common access to rich and poor, and
secondly, in the leisurely nature of his intercourse. Three conditions
there were for fulfilling that ministry of philosophic intercourse which
Wordsworth's plan supposed. First, the philosopher must be clothed with
a _real_ character, known to the actual usages of the land, and not
imaginary: else this postulate of fiction at starting would have
operated with an unrealizing effect upon all that followed. Next, it
must be a character that was naturally fitted to carry the bearer
through a large circuit of districts and villages; else the _arena_
would be too narrow for the large survey of life and conflict demanded:
lastly, the character must be one recommending itself alike to all ranks
in tracts remote from towns, and procuring an admission ready and
gracious to him who supports that character. Now this supreme advantage
belonged in a degree absolutely unique to the character of pedlar, or
(as Wordsworth euphemistically terms it) of 'wandering merchant.' In
past generations the _materfamilias_, the young ladies, and the visitors
within their gates, were as anxious for his periodic visit as the
humblest of the domestics. They received him therefore with the
condescending kindness of persons in a state of joyous expectation:
young hearts beat with the anticipation of velvets and brocades from
Genoa, lace veils from the Netherlands, jewels and jewelled trinkets;
for you are not to think that, like Autolycus, he carried only one
trinket. They were sincerely kind to him, being sincerely pleased.
Besides, it was politic to assume a gracious manner, since else the
pedlar might take out his revenge in the price of his wares; fifteen per
cent. would be the least he could reasonably clap on as a premium and
_solatium_ to himself for any extra hauteur. This gracious style of
intercourse, already favourable to a tone of conversation more liberal
and unreserved than would else have been conceded to a vagrant huckster,
was further improved by the fact that the pedlar was also the main
retailer of news. Here it was that a real advantage offered itself to
any mind having that philosophic interest in human characters,
struggles, and calamities, which is likely enough to arise amongst a
class of men contemplating long records of chance and change through
their wanderings, and so often left to their own meditations upon them
by long tracts of solitude. The gossip of the neighbouring districts,
whether tragic or comic, would have a natural interest from its
locality. And such records would lead to illustration from other cases
more remote--losing the interest of neighbourhood, but compensating that
loss by their deeper intrinsic hold upon the sensibilities. Ladies of
the highest rank would suffer their reserve to thaw in such interviews;
besides that, before unresisting humility and inferiority too apparent
even haughtiness the most intractable usually abates its fervour.
Coleridge also allows himself, for the sake of argument, not merely to
assume too hastily, but to magnify too inordinately. Daniel, the poet,
really _was_ called the 'well-languaged' (p. 83, vol. ii.), but by whom?
Not, as Hooker was called the 'judicious,' or Bede the 'venerable,' by
whole generations; but by an individual. And as to the epithet of
'prosaic,' we greatly doubt if so much as one individual ever connected
it with Daniel's name.
But the whole dispute on Poetic Diction is too deep and too broad for an
occasional or parenthetic notice. It is a dispute which renews itself in
every cultivated language;[50] and even, in its application to different
authors within the same language, as for instance, to Milton, to
Shakspeare, or to Wordsworth, it takes a special and varied aspect.
Declining this, as far too ample a theme, we wish to say one word, but
an urgent word and full of clamorous complaint, upon the other branch.
This dispute, however, is but one of two paths upon which the
Biographical Literature approaches the subject of Wordsworth: the other
lies in the direct critical examination of Wordsworth's poems. As to
this, we wish to utter one word, but a word full of clamorous complaint.
That the criticisms of Coleridge on William Wordsworth were often false,
and that they betrayed fatally the temper of one who never _had_
sympathized heartily with the most exquisite parts of the Lyrical
Ballads, might have been a record injurious only to Coleridge himself.
But unhappily these perverse criticisms have proved the occasions of
ruin to some admirable poems; and, as if that were not enough, have
memorialized a painful feature of weakness in Wordsworth's judgment. If
ever on this earth there was a man that in his prime, when saluted with
contumely from all quarters, manifested a stern deafness to
criticism--it was William Wordsworth. And we thought the better of him
by much for this haughty defiance to groundless judgments. But the
cloak, which Boreas could not tear away from the traveller's resistance,
oftentimes the too genial Phoebus has filched from his amiable spirit
of compliance. These criticisms of Coleridge, generally so wayward and
one-sided, but sometimes desperately opposed to every mode of truth,
have been the means of exposing in William Wordsworth a weakness of
resistance--almost a criminal facility in surrendering his own
rights--which else would never have been suspected. We will take one of
the worst cases. Readers acquainted with Wordsworth as a poet, are of
course acquainted with his poem (originally so fine) upon Gipseys. To a
poetic mind it is inevitable--that every spectacle, embodying any
remarkable quality in a remarkable excess, should be unusually
impressive, and should seem to justify a poetic record. For instance,
the solitary life of one[51] who should tend a lighthouse could not fail
to move a very deep sympathy with his situation. Here for instance we
read the ground of Wordsworth's 'Glen Almain.' Did he care for torpor
again, lethargic inertia? Such a spectacle as _that_ in the midst of a
nation so morbidly energetic as our own, was calculated to strike some
few chords from the harp of a poet so vigilantly keeping watch over
human life.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] Valckenaer, in his famous 'Dissertation on the Phoenissæ,' notices
such a dispute as having arisen upon the diction of Euripides. The
question is old and familiar as to the quality of the passion in
Euripides, by comparison with that in Sophocles. But there was a
separate dispute far less notorious as to the quality of the _lexis_.
[51] 'One,' but in the Eddystone or other principal lighthouses on our
coast there are _two_ men resident. True, but these two come upon duty
by alternate watches, and generally are as profoundly separated as if
living leagues apart.
_XIII._ _WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY: AFFINITIES AND DIFFERENCES._
(_An Early Paper._)
Of late the two names of Wordsworth and Southey have been coupled
chiefly in the frantic philippics of Jacobins, out of revenge for that
sublime crusade which, among the intellectual powers of Europe, these
two eminent men were foremost (and for a time alone) in awakening
against the brutalizing tyranny of France and its chief agent, Napoleon
Bonaparte: a crusade which they, to their immortal honour, unceasingly
advocated--not (as others did) at a time when the Peninsular victories,
the Russian campaign, and the battle of Leipsic, had broken the charm by
which France fascinated the world and had made Bonaparte mean even in
the eyes of the mean--but (be it remembered!) when by far the major part
of this nation looked upon the cause of liberty as hopeless upon the
Continent, as committed for many ages to the guardianship of England, in
which (or not at all) it was to be saved as in an Ark from the universal
deluge. Painful such remembrances may be to those who are now ashamed of
their idolatry, it must not be forgotten that, from the year 1803 to
1808, Bonaparte was an idol to the greater part of this nation; at no
time, God be thanked! an idol of love, but, to most among us, an idol
of fear. The war was looked upon as essentially a _defensive_ war: many
doubted whether Bonaparte could be successfully opposed: almost all
would have treated it as lunacy to say that he could be conquered. Yet,
even at that period, these two eminent patriots constantly treated it as
a feasible project to march an English army triumphantly into Paris.
Their conversations with various friends--the dates of their own
works--and the dates of some composed under influences emanating from
them (as, for example, the unfinished work of Colonel Pasley of the
Engineers)--are all so many vouchers for this fact. We know not whether
(with the exception of some few Germans such as Arndt, for whose book
Palm was shot) there was at that time in Europe another man of any
eminence who shared in that Machiavellian sagacity which revealed to
them, as with the power and clear insight of the prophetic spirit, the
craziness of the French military despotism when to vulgar politicians it
seemed strongest. For this sagacity, and for the strength of patriotism
to which in part they owed it (for in all cases the _moral_ spirit is a
great illuminator of the _intellect_), they have reaped the most
enviable reward, in the hatred of traitors and Jacobins all over the
world: and in the expressions of that hatred we find their names
frequently coupled. There was a time, however, when these names were
coupled for other purposes: they were coupled as joint supporters of a
supposed new creed in relation to their own art. Mr. Wordsworth, it is
well known to men of letters, did advance a new theory upon two great
questions of art: in some points it might perhaps be objected that his
faith, in relation to that which he attacked, was as the Protestant
faith to the Catholic--_i.e._, not a new one, but a restoration of the
primitive one purified from its modern corruptions. Be this as it may,
however, Mr. Wordsworth's exposition of his theory is beyond all
comparison the subtlest and (not excepting even the best of the German
essays) the most finished and masterly specimen of reasoning which has
in any age or nation been called forth by any one of the fine arts. No
formal attack has yet been made upon it, except by Mr. Coleridge; of
whose arguments we need not say that they furnish so many centres (as it
were) to a great body of metaphysical acuteness; but to our judgment
they fail altogether of overthrowing Mr. Wordsworth's theory. All the
other critics have shown in their casual allusions to this theory that
they have not yet come to understand what is its drift or main thesis.
Such being the state of their acquaintance with the theory itself, we
need not be surprised to find that the accidental connection between Mr.
Wordsworth and the Laureate arising out of friendship and neighbourhood
should have led these blundering critics into the belief that the two
poets were joint supporters of the same theory: the fact being meanwhile
that in all which is peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth's theory, Mr. Southey
dissents perhaps as widely and as determinately as Mr. Coleridge;
dissents, that is to say, not as the numerous blockheads among the male
blue-stockings who dignify their ignorance with the name of dissent--but
as one man of illustrious powers dissents from what he deems after long
examination the errors of another; as Leibnitz on some occasions
dissented from Plato, or as the great modern philosopher of Germany
occasionally dissents from Leibnitz. That which Mr. Wordsworth has in
common with all great poets, Mr. Southey cannot but reverence: he has
told us that he does: and, if he had not, his own originality and
splendour of genius would be sufficient pledges that he did. That which
is peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth's theory, Mr. Southey may disapprove: he
may think that it narrows the province of the poet too much in one
part--that, in another part, it impairs the instrument with which he is
to work. Thus far he may disapprove; and, after all, deduct no more from
the merits of Mr. Wordsworth, than he will perhaps deduct from those of
Milton, for having too often allowed a Latin or Hebraic structure of
language to injure the purity of his diction. To whatsoever extent,
however, the disapprobation of Mr. Southey goes, certain it is (for his
own practice shows it) that he does disapprove the _innovations_ of Mr.
Wordsworth's theory--very laughably illustrates the sagacity of modern
English critics: they were told that Mr. Southey held and practised a
certain system of innovations: so far their error was an error of
misinformation: but next they turn to Mr. Southey's works, and there
they fancy that they find in every line an illustration of the erroneous
tenets which their misinformation had led them to expect that they
should find. A more unfortunate blunder, one more confounding to the
most adventurous presumption, can hardly be imagined. A system, which no
man could act upon unless deliberately and with great effort and labour
of composition, is supposed to be exemplified in the works of a poet who
uniformly rejects it: and this ludicrous blunder arises not from any
over-refinements in criticism (such, for instance, as led Warburton to
find in Shakspeare what the poet himself never dreamt of), but from no
more creditable cause than a misreport of some blue-stocking miss either
maliciously or ignorantly palmed upon a critic whose understanding
passively surrendered itself to anything however gross.
Such are the two modes in which the names of these two eminent men have
been coupled. As true patriots they are deservedly coupled: as poets
their names cannot be justly connected by any stricter bond than that
which connects all men of high creative genius. This distinction, as to
the main grounds of affinity and difference between the two writers, was
open and clear to any unprejudiced mind prepared for such
investigations, and we should at any rate have pointed it out at one
time or other for the sake of exposing the hollowness of those
impostures which offer themselves in our days as criticisms.
_XIV. PRONUNCIATION._
To _write_ his own language with propriety is the ambition of here and
there an individual; to speak it with propriety is the ambition of
multitudes. Amongst the qualifications for a public writer--the
preliminary one of _leisure_ is granted to about one man in three
thousand; and, this being indispensable, there at once, for most men,
mercifully dies in the very instant of birth the most uneasy and
bewildering of temptations. But _speak_ a man must. Leisure or no
leisure, to _talk_ he is obliged by the necessities of life, or at least
he thinks so; though my own private belief is, that the wisest rule upon
which a man could act in this world (alas! I did not myself act upon it)
would be to seal up his mouth from earliest youth, to simulate the
infirmity of dumbness, and to answer only by signs. This would soon put
an end to the impertinence of questions, to the intolerable labour of
framing and uttering replies through a whole life, and, above all (oh,
foretaste of Paradise!), to the hideous affliction of sustaining these
replies and undertaking for all their possible consequences. That notion
of the negroes in Senegal about monkeys, viz., that they _can_ talk if
they choose, and perhaps with classical elegance, but wisely dissemble
their talent under the fear that the unjust whites would else make them
work in Printing Houses, for instance, as 'readers' and correctors of
the press, this idea, which I dare say is true, shows how much wiser, in
his generation, is a monkey than a man. For, besides the wear and tear
to a man's temper by the irritation of talking, and the corrosion of
one's happiness by the disputes which talking entails, it is really
frightful to think of the mischief caused, if one measures it only by
the fruitless expense of words. Eleven hundred days make up about three
years; consequently, eleven thousand days make up thirty years. But that
day must be a very sulky one, and probably raining cats and dogs, on
which a man throws away so few as two thousand words, not reckoning what
he loses in sleep. A hundred and twenty-five words for every one of
sixteen hours cannot be thought excessive. The result, therefore, is,
that, in one generation of thirty years, he wastes irretrievably upon
the impertinence of answering--of wrangling, and of prosing, not less
than twice eleven thousand times a thousand words; the upshot of which
comes to a matter of twenty-two million words. So that, if the English
language contains (as some curious people say it does) forty thousand
words, he will have used it up not less than five hundred and fifty
times. Poor old battered language! One really pities it. Think of any
language in its old age being forced to work at that rate; kneaded, as
if it were so much dough, every hour of the day into millions of
fantastic shapes by millions of capricious bakers! Being old, however,
and superannuated, you will say that our English language must have got
used to it: as the sea, that once (according to Camoens) was indignant
at having his surface scratched, and his feelings harrowed, by keels, is
now wrinkled and smiling.