CHAPTER III

THE LAKE POETS: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH[88]

[88] Composed of articles in _Tait's Magazine_ for January,

February, and April 1839, as revised and recast by De Quincey,

published, with some additions, for the second volume of the

Collective Edinburgh Edition of his writings in 1854.--M.

In 1807 it was, at the beginning of winter, that I first saw William

Wordsworth. I have already mentioned[89] that I had introduced myself

to his notice by letter as early as the spring of 1803. To this hour

it has continued, I believe, a mystery to Wordsworth why it was that

I suffered an interval of four and a half years to slip away before

availing myself of the standing invitation with which I had been

honoured to the poet's house. Very probably he accounted for this

delay by supposing that the new-born liberty of an Oxford life, with

its multiplied enjoyments, acting upon a boy just emancipated from

the restraints of a school, and, in one hour, elevated into what we

Oxonians so proudly and so exclusively denominate "a man,"[90] might

have tempted me into pursuits alien from the pure intellectual passions

which had so powerfully mastered my youthful heart some years before.

Extinguished such a passion could not be; nor could he think so, if

remembering the fervour with which I had expressed it, the sort of

"nympholepsy" which had seized upon me, and which, in some imperfect

way, I had avowed with reference to the very lakes and mountains

amongst which the scenery of this most original poetry had chiefly

grown up and moved. The very names of the ancient hills--Fairfield,

Seat Sandal, Helvellyn, Blencathara, Glaramara; the names of the

sequestered glens--such as Borrowdale, Martindale, Mardale, Wasdale,

and Ennerdale; but, above all, the shy pastoral recesses, not garishly

in the world's eye, like Windermere or Derwentwater, but lurking half

unknown to the traveller of that day--Grasmere, for instance, the

lovely abode of the poet himself, solitary, and yet sowed, as it were,

with a thin diffusion of humble dwellings--here a scattering, and there

a clustering, as in the starry heavens--sufficient to afford, at every

turn and angle, human remembrances and memorials of time-honoured

affections, or of passions (as the "Churchyard amongst the Mountains"

will amply demonstrate) not wanting even in scenic and tragical

interest: these were so many local spells upon me, equally poetic and

elevating with the Miltonic names of Valdarno and Vallombrosa.

[89] _Ante_, p. 59.--M.

[90] At the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where the town

is viewed as a mere ministerial appendage to the numerous

colleges--the civic Oxford, for instance, existing for the sake of

the academic Oxford, and not _vice versâ_--it has naturally

happened that the students honour with the name of "_a man_" him

only who wears a cap and gown.

Deep are the voices which seem to call, deep is the lesson which would

be taught, even to the most thoughtless of men,

"Could field, or grove, or any spot of earth,

Show to his eye an image of the pangs

Which it hath witnessed; render back an echo

Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod."[91]

[91] See the divine passage (in the Sixth Book of "The Excursion")

beginning--

"Ah, what a lesson to a thoughtless man," &c.

Meantime, my delay was due to anything rather than to waning interest.

On the contrary, the real cause of my delay was the too great

profundity, and the increasing profundity, of my interest in this

regeneration of our national poetry, and the increasing awe, in due

proportion to the decaying thoughtlessness of boyhood, which possessed

me for the character of its author. So far from neglecting Wordsworth,

it is a fact that twice I had undertaken a long journey expressly for

the purpose of paying my respects to Wordsworth; twice I came so far

as the little rustic inn (then the sole inn of the neighbourhood) at

Church Coniston; and on neither occasion could I summon confidence

enough to present myself before him. It was not that I had any want

of proper boldness for facing the most numerous company of a mixed or

ordinary character: reserved, indeed, I was, perhaps even shy--from

the character of my mind, so profoundly meditative, and the character

of my life, so profoundly sequestered--but still, from counteracting

causes, I was not deficient in a reasonable self-confidence towards

the world generally. But the very image of Wordsworth, as I prefigured

it to my own planet-struck eye, crushed my faculties as before Elijah

or St. Paul. Twice, as I have said, did I advance as far as the Lake

of Coniston; which is about eight miles from the church of Grasmere,

and once I absolutely went forwards from Coniston to the very gorge

of Hammerscar, from which the whole Vale of Grasmere suddenly breaks

upon the view in a style of almost theatrical surprise, with its lovely

valley stretching before the eye in the distance, the lake lying

immediately below, with its solemn ark-like island of four and a half

acres in size seemingly floating on its surface, and its exquisite

outline on the opposite shore, revealing all its little bays[92] and

wild sylvan margin, feathered to the edge with wild flowers and ferns.

In one quarter, a little wood, stretching for about half a mile towards

the outlet of the lake; more directly in opposition to the spectator, a

few green fields; and beyond them, just two bowshots from the water, a

little white cottage gleaming from the midst of trees, with a vast and

seemingly never-ending series of ascents rising above it to the height

of more than three thousand feet. That little cottage was Wordsworth's

from the time of his marriage, and earlier; in fact, from the beginning

of the century to the year 1808. Afterwards, for many a year, it was

mine. Catching one hasty glimpse of this loveliest of landscapes,

I retreated like a guilty thing, for fear I might be surprised by

Wordsworth, and then returned faintheartedly to Coniston, and so to

Oxford, _re infectâ_.

[92] All which inimitable graces of nature have, by the hands of

mechanic art, by solid masonry, by whitewashing, &c., been

exterminated, as a growth of weeds and nuisances, for thirty

years.--_August 17, 1853._

This was in 1806. And thus far, from mere excess of nervous distrust

in my own powers for sustaining a conversation with Wordsworth, I

had for nearly five years shrunk from a meeting for which, beyond

all things under heaven, I longed. In early youth I laboured under a

peculiar embarrassment and penury of words, when I sought to convey my

thoughts adequately upon interesting subjects: neither was it words

only that I wanted; but I could not unravel, I could not even make

perfectly conscious to myself, the subsidiary thoughts into which one

leading thought often radiates; or, at least, I could not do this with

anything like the rapidity requisite for conversation. I laboured

like a sibyl instinct with the burden of prophetic woe, as often as

I found myself dealing with any topic in which the understanding

combined with deep feelings to suggest mixed and tangled thoughts:

and thus partly--partly also from my invincible habit of reverie--at

that era of my life, I had a most distinguished talent "_pour le

silence_." Wordsworth, from something of the same causes, suffered

(by his own report to myself) at the same age from pretty much the

same infirmity. And yet, in more advanced years--probably about

twenty-eight or thirty--both of us acquired a remarkable fluency in the

art of unfolding our thoughts colloquially. However, at that period my

deficiencies were what I have described. And, after all, though I had

no absolute cause for anticipating contempt, I was so far right in my

fears, that since that time I have had occasion to perceive a worldly

tone of sentiment in Wordsworth, not less than in Mrs. Hannah More and

other literary people, by which they were led to set a higher value

upon a limited respect from a person high in the world's esteem than

upon the most lavish spirit of devotion from an obscure quarter. Now,

in that point, _my_ feelings are far otherwise.

Meantime, the world went on; events kept moving; and, amongst them,

in the course of 1807, occurred the event of Coleridge's return to

England from his official station in the Governor's family at Malta.

At Bridgewater, as I have already recorded, in the summer of 1807, I

was introduced to him. Several weeks after he came with his family to

the Bristol Hot-Wells, at which, by accident, I was then visiting.

On calling upon him, I found that he had been engaged by the Royal

Institution to lecture at their theatre in Albemarle Street during

the coming winter of 1807-8, and, consequently, was embarrassed about

the mode of conveying his family to Keswick. Upon this, I offered my

services to escort them in a post-chaise. This offer was cheerfully

accepted; and at the latter end of October we set forwards--Mrs.

Coleridge, viz., with her two sons--Hartley, aged nine, Derwent, about

seven--her beautiful little daughter,[93] about five, and, finally,

myself. Going by the direct route through Gloucester, Bridgenorth, &c.,

on the third day we reached Liverpool, where I took up my quarters at

a hotel, whilst Mrs. Coleridge paid a visit of a few days to a very

interesting family, who had become friends of Southey during his visit

to Portugal. These were the Misses Koster, daughters of an English

gold-merchant of celebrity, who had recently quitted Lisbon on the

approach of the French army under Junot. Mr. Koster did me the honour

to call at my quarters, and invite me to his house; an invitation

which I very readily accepted, and had thus an opportunity of becoming

acquainted with a family the most accomplished I had ever known. At

dinner there appeared only the family party--several daughters, and

one son, a fine young man of twenty, but who was _consciously_ dying

of asthma. Mr. Koster, the head of the family, was distinguished for

his good sense and practical information; but, in Liverpool, even more

so by his eccentric and obstinate denial of certain notorious events;

in particular, some two years later, he denied that any such battle as

Talavera had ever been fought, and had a large wager depending upon the

decision. His house was the resort of distinguished foreigners; and, on

the first evening of my dining there, as well as afterwards, I there

met that marvel of women, Madame Catalani. I had heard her repeatedly;

but never before been near enough to see her smile and converse--even

to be honoured with a smile myself. She and Lady Hamilton were the most

effectively brilliant women I ever saw. However, on this occasion, the

Misses Koster outshone even La Catalani; to her they talked in the most

fluent Italian; to some foreign men, in Portuguese; to one in French;

and to most of the party in English; and each, by turns, seemed to be

their native tongue. Nor did they shrink, even in the presence of the

mighty enchantress, from exhibiting their musical skill.

[93] That most accomplished, and to Coleridge most pious daughter,

whose recent death afflicted so very many who knew her only by her

writings. She had married her cousin, Mr. Serjeant Coleridge, and

in that way retained her illustrious maiden name as a wife. At

seventeen, when last I saw her, she was the most perfect of all

pensive, nun-like, intellectual beauties that I have seen in real

breathing life. The upper parts of her face were verily divine.

See, for an artist's opinion, the Life of that admirable man

Collins, by his son.

Leaving Liverpool, after about a week's delay, we pursued our journey

northwards. We had slept on the first day at Lancaster. Consequently,

at the rate of motion which then prevailed throughout England--which,

however, was rarely equalled on that western road, where all things

were in arrear by comparison with the eastern and southern roads of the

kingdom--we found ourselves, about three o'clock in the afternoon, at

Ambleside, fourteen miles to the north-west of Kendal, and thirty-six

from Lancaster. There, for the last time, we stopped to change horses;

and about four o'clock we found ourselves on the summit of the White

Moss, a hill which rises between the second and third milestones on

the stage from Ambleside to Keswick, and which then retarded the

traveller's advance by a full fifteen minutes, but is now evaded by a

lower line of road. In ascending this hill, from weariness of moving

so slowly, I, with the two Coleridges, had alighted; and, as we all

chose to refresh ourselves by running down the hill into Grasmere,

we had left the chaise behind us, and had even lost the sound of the

wheels at times, when all at once we came, at an abrupt turn of the

road, in sight of a white cottage, with two yew-trees breaking the

glare of its white walls. A sudden shock seized me on recognising this

cottage, of which, in the previous year, I had gained a momentary

glimpse from Hammerscar, on the opposite side of the lake. I paused,

and felt my old panic returning upon me; but just then, as if to take

away all doubt upon the subject, I saw Hartley Coleridge, who had

gained upon me considerably, suddenly turn in at a garden gate; this

motion to the right at once confirmed me in my belief that here at

last we had reached our port; that this little cottage was tenanted

by that man whom, of all the men from the beginning of time, I most

fervently desired to see; that in less than a minute I should meet

Wordsworth face to face. Coleridge was of opinion that, if a man were

really and _consciously_ to see an apparition, in such circumstances

death would be the inevitable result; and, if so, the wish which we

hear so commonly expressed for such experience is as thoughtless as

that of Semele in the Grecian Mythology, so natural in a female, that

her lover should visit her _en grand costume_--presumptuous ambition,

that unexpectedly wrought its own ruinous chastisement! Judged by

Coleridge's test, my situation could not have been so terrific as _his_

who anticipates a ghost; for, certainly, I survived this meeting; but

at that instant it seemed pretty much the same to my own feelings.

Never before or since can I reproach myself with having trembled at the

approaching presence of any creature that is born of woman, excepting

only, for once or twice in my life, woman herself. Now, however, I

_did_ tremble; and I forgot, what in no other circumstances I could

have forgotten, to stop for the coming up of the chaise, that I might

be ready to hand Mrs. Coleridge out. Had Charlemagne and all his

peerage been behind me, or Cæsar and his equipage, or Death on his

pale horse, I should have forgotten them at that moment of intense

expectation, and of eyes fascinated to what lay before me, or what

might in a moment appear. Through the little gate I pressed forward;

ten steps beyond it lay the principal door of the house. To this, no

longer clearly conscious of my own feelings, I passed on rapidly; I

heard a step, a voice, and, like a flash of lightning, I saw the figure

emerge of a tallish man, who held out his hand, and saluted me with

most cordial expressions of welcome. The chaise, however, drawing up

to the gate at that moment, he (and there needed no Roman nomenclator

to tell me that this _he_ was Wordsworth) felt himself summoned to

advance and receive Mrs. Coleridge. I, therefore, stunned almost

with the actual accomplishment of a catastrophe so long anticipated

and so long postponed, mechanically went forward into the house. A

little semi-vestibule between two doors prefaced the entrance into

what might be considered the principal room of the cottage. It was

an oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, sixteen feet

long, and twelve broad; very prettily wainscoted from the floor to the

ceiling with dark polished oak, slightly embellished with carving.

One window there was--a perfect and unpretending cottage window, with

little diamond panes, embowered at almost every season of the year with

roses, and in the summer and autumn with a profusion of jasmine and

other fragrant shrubs. From the exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation

around it, and from the dark hue of the wainscoting, this window,

though tolerably large, did not furnish a very powerful light to one

who entered from the open air. However, I saw sufficiently to be aware

of two ladies just entering the room, through a doorway opening upon a

little staircase, The foremost, a tallish young woman, with the most

winning expression of benignity upon her features, advanced to me,

presenting her hand with so frank an air that all embarrassment must

have fled in a moment before the native goodness of her manner. This

was Mrs. Wordsworth, cousin of the poet, and, for the last five years

or more, his wife.[94] She was now mother of two children, a son and

a daughter; and she furnished a remarkable proof how possible it is

for a woman neither handsome nor even comely according to the rigour

of criticism--nay, generally pronounced very plain--to exercise all

the practical fascination of beauty, through the mere compensatory

charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the most entire,

womanly self-respect and purity of heart speaking through all her

looks, acts, and movements. _Words_, I was going to have added; but her

words were few. In reality, she talked so little that Mr. Slave-Trade

Clarkson used to allege against her that she could only say "_God bless

you!_" Certainly, her intellect was not of an active order; but, in

a quiescent, reposing, meditative way, she appeared always to have a

genial enjoyment from her own thoughts; and it would have been strange,

indeed, if she, who enjoyed such eminent advantages of training, from

the daily society of her husband and his sister, failed to acquire

some power of judging for herself, and putting forth some functions

of activity. But undoubtedly that was not her element: to feel and

to enjoy in a luxurious repose of mind--there was her _forte_ and

her peculiar privilege; and how much better this was adapted to her

husband's taste, how much more adapted to uphold the comfort of his

daily life, than a blue-stocking loquacity, or even a legitimate talent

for discussion, may be inferred from his verses, beginning--

"She was a phantom of delight,

When first she gleam'd upon my sight."

Once for all,[95] these exquisite lines were dedicated to Mrs.

Wordsworth; were understood to describe her--to have been prompted by

the feminine graces of her character; hers they are, and will remain

for ever. To these, therefore, I may refer the reader for an idea of

what was most important in the partner and second self of the poet.

And I will add to this abstract of her _moral_ portrait these few

concluding traits of her appearance in a physical sense. Her figure was

tolerably good. In complexion she was fair, and there was something

peculiarly pleasing even in this accident of the skin, for it was

accompanied by an animated expression of health, a blessing which, in

fact, she possessed uninterruptedly. Her eyes, the reader may already

know, were

"Like stars of twilight fair;

Like twilight, too, her dark brown hair;

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful dawn."

Yet strange it is to tell that, in these eyes of vesper gentleness,

there was a considerable obliquity of vision; and much beyond

that slight obliquity which is often supposed to be an attractive

foible in the countenance: this _ought_ to have been displeasing or

repulsive; yet, in fact, it was not. Indeed all faults, had they

been ten times more and greater, would have been neutralized by

that supreme expression of her features to the unity of which every

lineament in the fixed parts, and every undulation in the moving parts,

of her countenance, concurred, viz. a sunny benignity--a radiant

graciousness--such as in this world I never saw surpassed.

[94] Mary Hutchinson, who became Wordsworth's wife in October

1802, had been known to him since 1777, when she was his

fellow-pupil in a Dame's school at Penrith.--M.

[95] _Once for all_, I say--on recollecting that Coleridge's

verses to _Sara_ were made transferable to any Sara who reigned at

the time. At least three Saras appropriated them; all three long

since in the grave.

Immediately behind her moved a lady, shorter, slighter, and perhaps, in

all other respects, as different from her in personal characteristics

as could have been wished for the most effective contrast. "Her

face was of Egyptian brown"; rarely, in a woman of English birth,

had I seen a more determinate gipsy tan. Her eyes were not soft,

as Mrs. Wordsworth's, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were

wild and startling, and hurried in their motion. Her manner was warm

and even ardent; her sensibility seemed constitutionally deep; and

some subtle fire of impassioned intellect apparently burned within

her, which, being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous

expression by the irrepressible instincts of her temperament, and

then immediately checked, in obedience to the decorum of her sex and

age, and her maidenly condition, gave to her whole demeanour, and to

her conversation, an air of embarrassment, and even of self-conflict,

that was almost distressing to witness. Even her very utterance and

enunciation often suffered, in point of clearness and steadiness, from

the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times, the

self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even

to stammer, and so determinately to stammer that a stranger who should

have seen her and quitted her in that state of feeling would have

certainly set her down for one plagued with that infirmity of speech

as distressingly as Charles Lamb himself. This was Miss Wordsworth,

the only sister of the poet--his "Dorothy"; who naturally owed so

much to the lifelong intercourse with her great brother in his most

solitary and sequestered years; but, on the other hand, to whom he has

acknowledged obligations of the profoundest nature; and, in particular,

this mighty one, through which we also, the admirers and the

worshippers of this great poet, are become equally her debtors--that,

whereas the intellect of Wordsworth was, by its original tendency, too

stern, too austere, too much enamoured of an ascetic harsh sublimity,

she it was--the lady who paced by his side continually through sylvan

and mountain tracks, in Highland glens, and in the dim recesses of

German charcoal-burners--that first _couched_ his eye to the sense of

beauty, humanized him by the gentler charities, and engrafted, with

her delicate female touch, those graces upon the ruder growths of

his nature which have since clothed the forest of his genius with a

foliage corresponding in loveliness and beauty to the strength of its

boughs and the massiness of its trunks. The greatest deductions from

Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which

surrounded her in right of her character, of her history, and of the

relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, were the glancing

quickness of her motions, and other circumstances in her deportment

(such as her stooping attitude when walking), which gave an ungraceful,

and even an unsexual character to her appearance when out-of-doors.

She did not cultivate the graces which preside over the person and its

carriage. But, on the other hand, she was a person of very remarkable

endowments intellectually; and, in addition to the other great services

which she rendered to her brother, this I may mention, as greater than

all the rest, and it was one which equally operated to the benefit of

every casual companion in a walk--viz. the exceeding sympathy, always

ready and always profound, by which she made all that one could tell

her, all that one could describe, all that one could quote from a

foreign author, reverberate, as it were, _à plusieurs reprises_, to

one's own feelings, by the manifest impression it made upon _hers_. The

pulses of light are not more quick or more inevitable in their flow

and undulation, than were the answering and echoing movements of her

sympathizing attention. Her knowledge of literature was irregular, and

thoroughly unsystematic. She was content to be ignorant of many things;

but what she knew and had really mastered lay where it could not be

disturbed--in the temple of her own most fervid heart.

Such were the two ladies who, with himself and two children, and

at that time one servant, composed the poet's household. They were

both, I believe, about twenty-eight years old; and, if the reader

inquires about the single point which I have left untouched in their

portraiture--viz. the style of their manners--I may say that it was, in

_some_ points, naturally of a plain household simplicity, but every way

pleasing, unaffected, and (as respects Mrs. Wordsworth) even dignified.

Few persons had seen so little as this lady of the world. She had seen

nothing of high life, for she had seen little of any. Consequently, she

was unacquainted with the conventional modes of behaviour, prescribed

in particular situations by high breeding. But, as these modes are

little more than the product of dispassionate good sense, applied to

the circumstances of the case, it is surprising how few deficiencies

are perceptible, even to the most vigilant eye--or, at least, essential

deficiencies--in the general demeanour of any unaffected young woman,

acting habitually under a sense of sexual dignity and natural courtesy.

Miss Wordsworth had seen more of life, and even of good company; for

she had lived, when quite a girl, under the protection of Dr. Cookson,

a near relative, canon of Windsor, and a personal favourite of the

Royal Family, especially of George III. Consequently, she ought to

have been the more polished of the two; and yet, from greater natural

aptitudes for refinement of manner in her sister-in-law, and partly,

perhaps, from her more quiet and subdued manner, Mrs. Wordsworth would

have been pronounced very much the more lady-like person.

From the interest which attaches to anybody so nearly connected as

these two ladies with a great poet, I have allowed myself a larger

latitude than else might have been justifiable in describing them. I

now go on with my narrative:--

I was ushered up a little flight of stairs, fourteen in all, to a

little drawing-room, or whatever the reader chooses to call it.

Wordsworth himself has described the fireplace of this room as his

"Half-kitchen and half-parlour fire."

It was not fully seven feet six inches high, and, in other respects,

pretty nearly of the same dimensions as the rustic hall below. There

was, however, in a small recess, a library of perhaps three hundred

volumes, which seemed to consecrate the room as the poet's study and

composing room; and such occasionally it was. But far oftener he both

studied, as I found, and composed, on the high road. I had not been two

minutes at the fireside, when in came Wordsworth, returning from his

friendly attentions to the travellers below, who, it seemed, had been

over-persuaded by hospitable solicitations to stay for this night in

Grasmere, and to make out the remaining thirteen miles of their road to

Keswick on the following day. Wordsworth entered. And "_what-like_"--to

use a Westmoreland as well as a Scottish expression--"_what-like_"

was Wordsworth? A reviewer in "Tait's Magazine," noticing some recent

collection of literary portraits, gives it as his opinion that Charles

Lamb's head was the finest among them.[96] This remark may have been

justified by the engraved portraits; but, certainly, the critic would

have cancelled it, had he seen the original heads--at least, had he

seen them in youth or in maturity; for Charles Lamb bore age with less

disadvantage to the intellectual expression of his appearance than

Wordsworth, in whom a sanguine complexion had, of late years, usurped

upon the original bronze-tint; and this change of hue, and change in

the quality of skin, had been made fourfold more conspicuous, and more

unfavourable in its general effect, by the harsh contrast of grizzled

hair which had displaced the original brown. No change in personal

appearance ever can have been so unfortunate; for, generally speaking,

whatever other disadvantages old age may bring along with it, one

effect, at least in male subjects, has a compensating tendency--that it

removes any tone of vigour too harsh, and mitigates the expression of

power too unsubdued. But, in Wordsworth, the effect of the change has

been to substitute an air of animal vigour, or, at least, hardiness,

as if derived from constant exposure to the wind and weather, for

the fine sombre complexion which he once wore, resembling that of a

Venetian senator or a Spanish monk.

[96] Vol. iv. p. 793 (Dec. 1837).--So De Quincey notes; but I may

add that the paper in _Tait_ referred to was a Review of Books of

the Season, one of them being "Tilt's Medallion Portraits of

Modern English Authors, with Illustrative notices by H. F.

Chorley." The reviewer's words were "The finest head, in every

way, in the series, is that of Charles Lamb."--M.

Here, however, in describing the personal appearance of Wordsworth,

I go back, of course, to the point of time at which I am speaking.

He was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. His legs were pointedly

condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs; not that they were

bad in any way which _would_ force itself upon your notice--there

was no absolute deformity about them; and undoubtedly they had been

serviceable legs beyond the average standard of human requisition; for

I calculate, upon good data, that with these identical legs Wordsworth

must have traversed a distance of 175,000 to 180,000 English miles--a

mode of exertion which, to him, stood in the stead of alcohol and

all other stimulants whatsoever to the animal spirits; to which,

indeed, he was indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we

for much of what is most excellent in his writings. But, useful as

they have proved themselves, the Wordsworthian legs were certainly

not ornamental; and it was really a pity, as I agreed with a lady in

thinking, that he had not another pair for evening dress parties--when

no boots lend their friendly aid to mask our imperfections from the

eyes of female rigorists--those _elegantes formarum spectatrices_. A

sculptor would certainly have disapproved of their contour. But the

worst part of Wordsworth's person was the bust; there was a narrowness

and a droop about the shoulders which became striking, and had an

effect of meanness, when brought into close juxtaposition with a

figure of a more statuesque build. Once on a summer evening, walking

in the Vale of Langdale with Wordsworth, his sister, and Mr. J---, a

native Westmoreland clergyman, I remember that Miss Wordsworth was

positively mortified by the peculiar illustration which settled upon

this defective conformation. Mr. J---, a fine towering figure, six feet

high, massy and columnar in his proportions, happened to be walking, a

little in advance, with Wordsworth; Miss Wordsworth and myself being in

the rear; and from the nature of the conversation which then prevailed

in our front rank, something or other about money, devises, buying and

selling, we of the rear-guard thought it requisite to preserve this

arrangement for a space of three miles or more; during which time, at

intervals, Miss Wordsworth would exclaim, in a tone of vexation, "Is it

possible,--can that be William? How very mean he looks!" And she did

not conceal a mortification that seemed really painful, until I, for my

part, could not forbear laughing outright at the serious interest which

she carried into this trifle. She was, however, right, as regarded

the mere visual judgment. Wordsworth's figure, with all its defects,

was brought into powerful relief by one which had been cast in a more

square and massy mould; and in such a case it impressed a spectator

with a sense of absolute meanness, more especially when viewed from

behind and not counteracted by his countenance; and yet Wordsworth

was of a good height (five feet ten), and not a slender man; on the

contrary, by the side of Southey, his limbs looked thick, almost in a

disproportionate degree. But the total effect of Wordsworth's person

was always worst in a state of motion. Meantime, his face--that was one

which would have made amends for greater defects of figure. Many such,

and finer, I have seen amongst the portraits of Titian, and, in a later

period, amongst those of Vandyke, from the great era of Charles I, as

also from the court of Elizabeth and of Charles II, but none which has

more impressed me in my own time.

Haydon, in his great picture of "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem," has

introduced Wordsworth in the character of a disciple attending his

Divine Master, and Voltaire in the character of a sneering Jewish

elder. This fact is well known; and, as the picture itself is tolerably

well known to the public eye, there are multitudes now living who will

have seen a very impressive likeness of Wordsworth--some consciously,

some not suspecting it. There will, however, always be many who have

_not_ seen any portrait at all of Wordsworth; and therefore I will

describe its general outline and effect. It was a face of the long

order, often falsely classed as oval: but a greater mistake is made by

many people in supposing the long face which prevailed so remarkably in

the Elizabethan and Carolinian periods to have become extinct in our

own. Miss Ferrier, in one of her novels ("Marriage," I think), makes a

Highland girl protest that "no Englishman _with his round face_" shall

ever wean her heart from her own country; but England is not the land

of round faces; and those have observed little, indeed, who think so:

France it is that grows the round face, and in so large a majority of

her provinces that it has become one of the national characteristics.

And the remarkable impression which an Englishman receives from the

eternal recurrence of the orbicular countenance proves of itself,

without any _conscious_ testimony, how the fact stands; in the blind

sense of a monotony, not felt elsewhere, lies involved an argument

that cannot be gainsaid. Besides, even upon an _a priori_ argument,

how is it possible that the long face so prevalent in England, by all

confession, in certain splendid eras of our history, should have had

time, in some five or six generations, to grow extinct? Again, the

character of face varies essentially in different provinces. Wales has

no connexion in this respect with Devonshire, nor Kent with Yorkshire,

nor either with Westmoreland. England, it is true, tends, beyond all

known examples, to a general amalgamation of differences, by means

of its unrivalled freedom of intercourse. Yet, even in England, law

and necessity have opposed as yet such and so many obstacles to the

free diffusion of labour that every generation occupies, by at least

five-sixths of its numbers, the ground of its ancestors.

The movable part of a population is chiefly the higher part; and it

is the lower classes that, in every nation, compose the _fundus_, in

which lies latent the national face, as well as the national character.

Each exists here in racy purity and integrity, not disturbed in the

one by alien intermarriages, nor in the other by novelties of opinion,

or other casual effects, derived from education and reading. Now, look

into this _fundus_, and you will find, in many districts, no such

prevalence of the round orbicular face as some people erroneously

suppose; and in Westmoreland, especially, the ancient long face of

the Elizabethan period, powerfully resembling in all its lineaments

the ancient Roman face, and often (though not so uniformly) the face

of northern Italy in modern times. The face of Sir Walter Scott, as

Irving, the pulpit orator, once remarked to me, was the indigenous

face of the Border: the mouth, which was bad, and the entire lower

part of the face, are seen repeated in thousands of working-men;

or, as Irving chose to illustrate his position, "in thousands of

Border horse-jockeys." In like manner, Wordsworth's face was, if not

absolutely the indigenous face of the Lake district, at any rate a

variety of that face, a modification of that original type. The head

was well filled out; and there, to begin with, was a great advantage

over the head of Charles Lamb, which was absolutely truncated in

the posterior region--sawn off, as it were, by no timid sawyer. The

forehead was not remarkably lofty--and, by the way, some artists, in

their ardour for realizing their phrenological preconceptions, not

suffering nature to surrender quietly and by slow degrees her real

alphabet of signs and hieroglyphic characters, but forcing her language

prematurely into conformity with their own crude speculations, have

given to Sir Walter Scott a pile of forehead which is unpleasing

and cataphysical, in fact, a caricature of anything that is ever

seen in nature, and would (if real) be esteemed a deformity; in one

instance--that which was introduced in some annual or other--the

forehead makes about two-thirds of the entire face. Wordsworth's

forehead is also liable to caricature misrepresentations in these days

of phrenology: but, whatever it may appear to be in any man's fanciful

portrait, the real living forehead, as I have been in the habit of

seeing it for more than five-and-twenty years, is not remarkable

for its height; but it is, perhaps, remarkable for its breadth and

expansive development. Neither are the eyes of Wordsworth "large,"

as is erroneously stated somewhere in "Peter's Letters"[97]; on

the contrary, they are (I think) rather small; but _that_ does not

interfere with their effect, which at times is fine, and suitable to

his intellectual character. At times, I say, for the depth and subtlety

of eyes, even their colouring (as to condensation or dilation), varies

exceedingly with the state of the stomach; and, if young ladies were

aware of the magical transformations which can be wrought in the depth

and sweetness of the eye by a few weeks' walking exercise, I fancy we

should see their habits in this point altered greatly for the better.

I have seen Wordsworth's eyes oftentimes affected powerfully in this

respect; his eyes are not, under any circumstances, bright, lustrous,

or piercing; but, after a long day's toil in walking, I have seen

them assume an appearance the most solemn and spiritual that it is

possible for the human eye to wear. The light which resides in them

is at no time a superficial light; but, under favourable accidents,

it is a light which seems to come from unfathomed depths: in fact, it

is more truly entitled to be held "the light that never was on land

or sea," a light radiating from some far spiritual world, than any

the most idealizing that ever yet a painter's hand created. The nose,

a little arched, is large; which, by the way (according to a natural

phrenology, existing centuries ago amongst some of the lowest amongst

the human species), has always been accounted an unequivocal expression

of animal appetites organically strong. And that expressed the simple

truth: Wordsworth's intellectual passions were fervent and strong: but

they rested upon a basis of preternatural animal sensibility diffused

through _all_ the animal passions (or appetites); and something

of that will be found to hold of all poets who have been great by

original force and power, not (as Virgil) by means of fine management

and exquisite artifice of composition applied to their conceptions.

The mouth, and the whole circumjacencies of the mouth, composed the

strongest feature in Wordsworth's face; there was nothing specially

to be noticed that I know of in the mere outline of the lips; but the

swell and protrusion of the parts above and around the mouth are both

noticeable in themselves, and also because they remind me of a very

interesting fact which I discovered about three years after this my

first visit to Wordsworth.

[97] Lockhart's famous publication of 1819 under the name of

_Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk_.--M.

Being a great collector of everything relating to Milton, I had

naturally possessed myself, whilst yet very young, of Richardson the

painter's thick octavo volume of notes on the "Paradise Lost."[98] It

happened, however, that my copy, in consequence of that mania for

portrait collecting which has stripped so many English classics of

their engraved portraits, wanted the portrait of Milton. Subsequently

I ascertained that it ought to have had a very good likeness of the

great poet; and I never rested until I procured a copy of the book

which had not suffered in this respect by the fatal admiration of the

amateur. The particular copy offered to me was one which had been

priced unusually high, on account of the unusually fine specimen which

it contained of the engraved portrait. This, for a particular reason,

I was exceedingly anxious to see; and the reason was--that, according

to an anecdote reported by Richardson himself, this portrait, of all

that were shown to her, was the only one acknowledged by Milton's last

surviving daughter to be a strong likeness of her father. And her

involuntary gestures concurred with her deliberate words:--for, on

seeing all the rest, she was silent and inanimate; but the very instant

she beheld that crayon drawing from which is derived the engraved

head in Richardson's book, she burst out into a rapture of passionate

recognition; exclaiming--"That is my father! that is my dear father!"

Naturally, therefore, after such a testimony, so much stronger than any

other person in the world could offer to the authentic value of this

portrait, I was eager to see it.[99]

[98] Jonathan Richardson (born about 1665, died 1745) published in

1734 a volume of Explanatory Notes and Remarks on _Paradise Lost_,

with a Life of Milton, containing particulars which Richardson had

collected about Milton personally.--M.

[99] It was between 1721 and 1725, when Mrs. Deborah Clarke,

Milton's youngest and only surviving daughter, was living in old

age and in very humble circumstances in Moorfields, London, that

the engraver Vertue and others went to see her for the special

purpose of consulting her about portraits of her father. Some that

were shown her she rejected at once; but one "crayon drawing"

moved her in the manner which De Quincey reports. This is the

portrait which came into Richardson's possession; and after

Richardson's death in 1745 it was acquired by Jacob Tonson

tertius, of the Tonson publishing family. There seems to be little

doubt that it was a drawing of Milton from the life by Faithorne

about 1670, when Milton's _History of Britain_ appeared with that

portrait of him by Faithorne which is the only authentic print of

him in later life, and worth all the other current portraits put

together. Faithorne seems to have made two drawings, closely

resembling each other, of Milton,--that (now lost) from which the

engraving was made for the _History of Britain_, and this other

"crayon drawing" which Richardson possessed. Richardson's

reproduction of it in his book is spoilt by a laureate wreath and

other flummery about the head; and the only genuine copy of it

known to me is a beautiful one prefixed to Mr. Leigh Sotheby's

sumptuous volume entitled _Ramblings in Elucidation of the

Autograph of Milton_, published in 1871. The face there is

identically the same in essentials as that in the Faithorne

engraving of 1670, though somewhat less sad in expression; and the

two drawings must have been by the same hand.--M.

Judge of my astonishment when, in this portrait of Milton, I saw a

likeness nearly perfect of Wordsworth, better by much than any which I

have since seen of those expressly painted for himself. The likeness

is tolerably preserved in that by Carruthers, in which one of the

little Rydal waterfalls, &c., composes a background; yet this is much

inferior, as a mere portrait of Wordsworth, to the Richardson head of

Milton; and this, I believe, is the last which represents Wordsworth

in the vigour of his power. The rest, which I have not seen, may be

better as works of art (for anything I know to the contrary), but they

must labour under the great disadvantage of presenting the features

when "defeatured," in the degree and the way I have described, by

the peculiar ravages of old age, as it affects this family; for it

is noticed of the Wordsworths, by those who are familiar with their

peculiarities, that in their very blood and constitutional differences

lie hidden causes that are able, in some mysterious way,

"Those shocks of passion to prepare

That kill the bloom before its time,

And blanch, without the owner's crime,

The most resplendent hair."

Some people, it is notorious, live faster by much than others, the

oil is burned out sooner in one constitution than another: and the

cause of this may be various; but in the Wordsworths one part of the

cause is, no doubt, the secret fire of a temperament too fervid; the

self-consuming energies of the brain, that gnaw at the heart and

life-strings for ever. In that account which "The Excursion" presents

to us of an imaginary Scotsman who, to still the tumult of his heart,

when visiting the cataracts of a mountainous region, obliges himself

to study the laws of light and colour as they affect the rainbow of

the stormy waters, vainly attempting to mitigate the fever which

consumed him by entangling his mind in profound speculations; raising

a cross-fire of artillery from the subtilizing intellect, under the

vain conceit that in this way he could silence the mighty battery of

his impassioned heart: there we read a picture of Wordsworth and his

own youth. In Miss Wordsworth every thoughtful observer might read the

same self-consuming style of thought. And the effect upon each was so

powerful for the promotion of a premature old age, and of a premature

expression of old age, that strangers invariably supposed them fifteen

to twenty years older than they were. And I remember Wordsworth once

laughingly reporting to me, on returning from a short journey in 1809,

a little personal anecdote, which sufficiently showed what was the

spontaneous impression upon that subject of casual strangers, whose

feelings were not confused by previous knowledge of the truth. He

was travelling by a stage-coach, and seated outside, amongst a good

half-dozen of fellow-passengers. One of these, an elderly man, who

confessed to having passed the grand climacterical year (9 multiplied

into 7) of 63, though he did not say precisely by how many years, said

to Wordsworth, upon some anticipations which they had been mutually

discussing of changes likely to result from enclosures, &c., then going

on or projecting--"Ay, ay, another dozen of years will show us strange

sights; but you and I can hardly expect to see them."--"How so?" said

Wordsworth. "How so, my friend? How old do you take me to be?"--"Oh, I

beg pardon," said the other; "I meant no offence--but what?" looking

at Wordsworth more attentively--"you'll never see threescore, I'm of

opinion"; meaning to say that Wordsworth _had_ seen it already. And, to

show that he was not singular in so thinking, he appealed to all the

other passengers; and the motion passed (_nem. con._) that Wordsworth

was rather over than under sixty. Upon this he told them the literal

truth--that he had not yet accomplished his thirty-ninth year. "God

bless me!" said the climacterical man; "so then, after all, you'll have

a chance to see your childer get up like, and get settled! Only to

think of that!" And so closed the conversation, leaving to Wordsworth

an undeniable record of his own prematurely expressed old age in this

unaffected astonishment, amongst a whole party of plain men, that he

could really belong to a generation of the forward-looking, who live

by hope; and might reasonably expect to see a child of seven years

old matured into a man. And yet, as Wordsworth lived into his 82d

year,[100] it is plain that the premature expression of decay does not

argue any real decay.

[100] Into his 81st only.--M.

Returning to the question of portraits, I would observe that this

Richardson engraving of Milton has the advantage of presenting, not

only by far the best likeness of Wordsworth, but of Wordsworth in the

prime of his powers--a point essential in the case of one so liable to

premature decay. It may be supposed that I took an early opportunity

of carrying the book down to Grasmere, and calling for the opinions

of Wordsworth's family upon this most remarkable coincidence. Not one

member of that family but was as much impressed as myself with the

accuracy of the likeness. All the peculiarities even were retained--a

drooping appearance of the eyelids, that remarkable swell which I

have noticed about the mouth, the way in which the hair lay upon the

forehead. In two points only there was a deviation from the rigorous

truth of Wordsworth's features--the face was a little too short and

too broad, and the eyes were too large. There was also a wreath of

laurel about the head, which (as Wordsworth remarked) disturbed the

natural expression of the whole picture[101]; else, and with these few

allowances, he also admitted that the resemblance was, _for that period

of his life_, perfect, or as nearly so as art could accomplish.

[101] See footnote (99), p. 247.--M.

I have gone into so large and circumstantial a review of my

recollections on this point as would have been trifling and tedious

in excess, had these recollections related to a less important man;

but I have a certain knowledge that the least of them will possess a

lasting and a growing interest in connexion with William Wordsworth.

How peculiar, how different from the interest which we grant to the

ideas of a great philosopher, a great mathematician, or a great

reformer, is that burning interest which settles on the great poets

who have made themselves necessary to the human heart; who have first

brought into consciousness, and have clothed in words, those grand

catholic feelings that belong to the grand catholic situations of life

through all its stages; who have clothed them in such words that human

wit despairs of bettering them! Mighty were the powers, solemn and

serene is the memory, of Archimedes; and Apollonius shines like "the

starry Galileo" in the firmament of human genius; yet how frosty is

the feeling associated with these names by comparison with that which,

upon every sunny lawn, by the side of every ancient forest, even in the

farthest depths of Canada, many a young innocent girl, perhaps at this

very moment--looking now with fear to the dark recesses of the infinite

forest, and now with love to the pages of the infinite poet, until the

fear is absorbed and forgotten in the love--cherishes in her heart for

the name and person of Shakspere!

The English language is travelling fast towards the fulfilment of

its destiny. Through the influence of the dreadful Republic[102]

that within the thirty last years has run through all the stages of

infancy into the first stage of maturity, and through the English

colonies--African, Canadian, Indian, Australian--the English language

(and, therefore, the English literature) is running forward towards its

ultimate mission of eating up, like Aaron's rod, all other languages.

Even the German and the Spanish will inevitably sink before it; perhaps

within 100 or 150 years. In the recesses of California, in the vast

solitudes of Australia, _The Churchyard amongst the Mountains_, from

Wordsworth's "Excursion," and many a scene of his shorter poems, will

be read, even as now Shakspere is read amongst the forests of Canada.

All which relates to the writer of these poems will then bear a value

of the same kind as that which attaches to our personal memorials

(unhappily so slender) of Shakspere.

[102] Not many months ago, the blind hostility of the Irish

newspaper editors in America forged a ludicrous estimate of the

Irish numerical preponderance in the United States, from which it

was inferred, as at least a possibility, that the Irish Celtic

language might come to dispute the pre-eminence with the English.

Others anticipated the same destiny for the German. But, in the

meantime, the unresting career of the law-courts, of commerce, and

of the national senate, that cannot suspend themselves for an

hour, reduce the case to this dilemma: If the Irish and the

Germans in the United States adapt their general schemes of

education to the service of their public ambition, they must

begin by training themselves to the use of the language now

prevailing on all the available stages of ambition. On the other

hand, by refusing to do this, they lose in the very outset every

point of advantage. In other words, adopting the English, they

renounce the contest--_not_ adopting it, they disqualify

themselves for the contest.

Let me now attempt to trace, in a brief outline, the chief incidents

in the life of William Wordsworth, which are interesting, not only in

virtue of their illustrious subject, but also as exhibiting a most

remarkable (almost a providential) arrangement of circumstances, all

tending to one result--that of insulating from worldly cares, and

carrying onward from childhood to the grave, in a state of serene

happiness, one who was unfitted for daily toil, and, at all events,

who could not, under such demands upon his time and anxieties, have

prosecuted those genial labours in which all mankind have an interest.

* * * * *

William Wordsworth was born[103] at Cockermouth, a small town of

Cumberland, lying about a dozen miles to the north-west of Keswick,

on the high road from that town to Whitehaven. His father was a

solicitor, and acted as an agent for that Lord Lonsdale, the immediate

predecessor of the present,[104] who is not unfrequently described by

those who still remember him, as "the bad Lord Lonsdale." In what was

he bad? Chiefly, I believe, in this--that, being a man of great local

power, founded on his rank, on his official station of Lord-Lieutenant

over two counties, and on a very large estate, he used his power at

times in a most oppressive way. I have heard it said that he was mad;

and, at any rate, he was inordinately capricious--capricious even to

eccentricity. But, perhaps, his madness was nothing more than the

intemperance of a haughty and a headstrong will, encouraged by the

consciousness of power, and tempted to abuses of it by the abject

servility which poverty and dependence presented in one direction,

embittering the contrast of that defiance which inevitably faced him in

another, throughout a land of freedom and amongst spirits as haughty

as his own. He was a true feudal chieftain; and, in the very approaches

to his mansion, in the style of his equipage, or whatever else was

likely to meet the public eye, he delighted to express his disdain of

modern refinements, and the haughty carelessness of his magnificence.

The coach in which he used to visit Penrith, the nearest town to his

principal house of Lowther, was old and neglected; his horses fine, but

untrimmed; and such was the impression diffused about him by his gloomy

temper and his habits of oppression, that the streets were silent as

he traversed them, and an awe sat upon many faces (so, at least, I

have heard a Penrith contemporary of the old despot declare), pretty

much like that which may be supposed to attend the entry into a guilty

town of some royal commission for trying state criminals. In his park

you saw some of the most magnificent timber in the kingdom--trees that

were coeval with the feuds of York and Lancaster, yews that possibly

had furnished bows to Coeur de Lion, and oaks that might have built

a navy. All was savage grandeur about these native forests: their

sweeping lawns and glades had been unapproached, for centuries it might

be, by the hand of art; and amongst them roamed--not the timid fallow

deer--but thundering droves of wild horses.

[103] 7th April 1770.--M.

[104] "_The present_":--This was written about 1835, when the

present Earl of Lonsdale meant the late Earl.

Lord Lonsdale went to London less frequently than else he might have

done, because at home he was allowed to forget that in this world

there was any greater man than himself. Even in London, however, his

haughty injustice found occasions for making itself known. On a court

day (I revive an anecdote once familiarly known), St. James's Street

was lined by cavalry, and the orders were peremptory that no carriages

should be allowed to pass, except those which were carrying parties

to court. Whether it were by accident or by way of wilfully provoking

such a collision, Lord Lonsdale's carriage advanced; and the coachman,

in obedience to orders shouted out from the window, was turning down

the forbidden route, when a trooper rode up to the horses' heads,

and stopped them; the thundering menaces of Lord Lonsdale perplexed

the soldier, who did not know but he might be bringing himself into

a scrape by persisting in his opposition; but the officer on duty,

observing the scene, rode up, and, in a determined tone, enforced the

order, causing two of his men to turn the horses' heads round into

Piccadilly. Lord Lonsdale threw his card to the officer, and a duel

followed; in which, however, the outrageous injustice of his lordship

met with a pointed rebuke; for the first person whom he summoned to

his aid, in the quality of second, though a friend, and, I believe,

a relative of his own, declined to sanction by any interference so

scandalous a quarrel with an officer for simply executing an official

duty. In this dilemma (for probably he was aware that few military men

would fail to take the same disapproving view of the affair) he applied

to the present[105] Earl of Lonsdale, then Sir William Lowther. Either

there must have been some needless discourtesy in the officer's mode

of fulfilling his duty, or else Sir William thought the necessity of

the case, however wantonly provoked, a sufficient justification for

a relative giving his assistance, even under circumstances of such

egregious injustice. At any rate, it is due to Sir William, in mere

candour, to suppose that he did nothing in this instance but what his

conscience approved; seeing that in all others his conduct has been

such as to win him the universal respect of the two counties in which

he is best known. He it was that acted as second; and, by a will which

is said to have been dated the same day, he became eventually possessed

of a large property, which did not necessarily accompany the title.

[105] Who must now (1854) be classed as the _late_ Earl.

Another anecdote is told of the same Lord Lonsdale which expresses,

in a more eccentric way, and a way that to many people will be

affecting--to some shocking--the moody energy of his passions.

He loved, with passionate fervour, a fine young woman, of humble

parentage, in a Cumberland farmhouse. Her he had persuaded to leave

her father, and put herself under his protection. Whilst yet young and

beautiful, she died: Lord Lonsdale's sorrow was profound; he could not

bear the thought of a final parting from that face which had become so

familiar to his heart: he caused her to be embalmed; a glass was placed

over her features; and at intervals, when his thoughts reverted to her

memory, he found a consolation (or perhaps a luxurious irritation) of

his sorrow in visiting this sad memorial of his former happiness.

This story, which I have often heard repeated by the country-people

of Cumberland, strengthened the general feeling of this eccentric

nobleman's self-willed character, though in this instance complicated

with a trait of character that argued nobler capacities. By what rules

he guided himself in dealing with the various lawyers, agents, or

stewards whom his extensive estates brought into a dependency upon

his justice or his moderation--whether, in fact, he had no rule, but

left all to accident or caprice--I have never learned. Generally, I

have heard it said that in some years of his life he resisted the

payment of all bills indiscriminately which he had any colourable plea

for supposing to contain overcharges; some fared ill, because they

were neighbours, and his lordship could say that "he knew them to be

knaves"; others fared worse, because they were so remote that "how

could his lordship know what they were?" Of this number, and possibly

for this reason left unpaid, was Wordsworth's father. He died whilst

his four sons and one daughter were yet helpless children, leaving

to them respectable fortunes, but which, as yet, were unrealized and

tolerably hypothetic, as they happened to depend upon so shadowy a

basis as the justice of Lord Lonsdale. The executors of the will,

and trustees of the children's interests, in one point acted wisely:

foreseeing the result of a legal contest with so potent a defendant

as this leviathan of two counties, and that, under any nominal award,

the whole estate of the orphans might be swallowed up in the costs

of any suit that should be carried into Chancery, they prudently

withdrew from all active measures of opposition, confiding the event

to Lord Lonsdale's returning sense of justice. Unfortunately for that

nobleman's reputation, and also, as was thought, for the children's

prosperity, before this somewhat rusty quality of justice could have

time to operate, his lordship died.

However, for once the world was wrong in its malicious anticipations:

the successor to Lord Lonsdale's titles and Cumberland estates was

made aware of the entire case, in all its circumstances; and he very

honourably gave directions for full restitution being made. This

was done; and in one respect the result was more fortunate for the

children than if they had been trained from youth to rely upon their

expectations: for, by the time this repayment was made, three out of

the five children were already settled in life, with the very amplest

prospects opening before them--_so_ ample as to make their private

patrimonial fortunes of inconsiderable importance in their eyes; and

very probably the withholding of their inheritance it was, however

unjust, and however little contemplated as an occasion of any such

effect, that urged these three persons to the exertions requisite

for their present success. Two only of the children remained to whom

the restoration of their patrimony was a matter of grave importance;

but it was precisely those two whom no circumstances could have made

independent of their hereditary means by personal exertions--viz.

William Wordsworth, the poet, and Dorothy, the sole daughter of the

house. The three others were:--Richard, the eldest: he had become a

thriving solicitor, at one of the inns of court in London; and, if

he died only moderately rich, and much below the expectations of his

acquaintance, in the final result of his laborious life, it was because

he was moderate in his desires, and, in his later years, reverting

to the pastoral region of his infancy and boyhood, chose rather to

sit down by a hearth of his own amongst the Cumberland mountains, and

wisely to woo the deities of domestic pleasures and health, than to

follow the chase after wealth in the feverish crowds of the capital.

The third son (I believe) was Christopher (Dr. Wordsworth), who, at an

early age, became a man of importance in the English Church, being made

one of the chaplains and librarians of the Archbishop of Canterbury

(Dr. Manners Sutton, father of the late Speaker, Lord Canterbury). He

has since risen to the important and dignified station--once held by

Barrow, and afterwards by Bentley--of Master of Trinity in Cambridge.

Trinity in Oxford is not a first-rate college; but Trinity, Cambridge,

answers in rank and authority to Christ Church in Oxford; and to be the

head of that college is rightly considered a very splendid distinction.

Dr. Wordsworth has distinguished himself as an author by a very useful

republication, entitled, "Ecclesiastical Biography," which he has

enriched with valuable notes. And in his own person, besides other

works more professional, he is the author of one very interesting

work of historical research upon the difficult question of "Who wrote

the 'Eicon Basilike'?" a question still unsettled, but much nearer

to a settlement, in consequence of the strong presumptions which Dr.

Wordsworth has adduced on behalf of the King's claim.[106]

[106] "_Eicon Basilike_":--By the way, in the lamented Eliot

Warburton's "Prince Rupert," this book, by a very excusable

mistake, is always cited as the "Eicon Basili_con_": he was

thinking of the "Doron Basilicon," written by Charles's father:

each of the nouns _Eicon_ and _Doron_, having the same terminal

syllable--_on_--it was most excusable to forget that the first

belonged to an imparisyllabic declension, so as to be feminine,

the second not so; which made it neuter. With respect to the great

standing question as to the authorship of the work, I have myself

always held that the natural freedom of judgment in this case has

been intercepted by one strong prepossession (entirely false) from

the very beginning. The minds of all people have been pre-occupied

with the notion that Dr. Gauden, the reputed author, obtained his

bishopric confessedly on the credit of that service. Lord

Clarendon, it is said, who hated the Doctor, nevertheless gave him

a bishopric, on the sole ground of his having written the "Eicon."

The inference therefore is that the Prime Minister, who gave so

reluctantly, must have given under an irresistible weight of proof

that the Doctor really had done the work for which so unwillingly

he paid him. Any shade of doubt, such as could have justified Lord

Clarendon in suspending this gift, would have been eagerly

snatched at. Such a shade, therefore, there was not. Meantime the

whole of this reasoning rests upon a false assumption: Dr. Gauden

did _not_ owe his bishopric to a belief (true or false) that he

had written the "Eicon." The bishopric was given on another

account: consequently it cannot, in any way of using the fact, at

all affect the presumptions, small or great, which may exist

separately for or against the Doctor's claim on that head.--[So

far De Quincey; but let not the reader trust to him too much in

this matter. The evidence is overwhelming that Clarendon gave

Gauden his bishopric after the Restoration because he believed

Gauden to have been the author of the _Eikon Basilike_ and dared

not face Gauden's threats of revelations on the subject if

promotion were refused him; and the evidence is conclusive, all

Dr. Wordsworth's arguments notwithstanding, that Gauden _was_ the

real author of the book.--M.]

The fourth and youngest son, John, was in the service of the East India

Company, and perished most unhappily, at the very outset of the voyage

which he had meant to be his last, off the coast of Dorsetshire, in the

Company's ship _Abergavenny_. A calumny was current in some quarters,

that Captain Wordsworth was in a state of intoxication at the time

of the calamity. But the printed report of the affair, revised by

survivors, entirely disproves this calumny; which, besides, was in

itself incredible to all who were acquainted with Captain Wordsworth's

most temperate and even philosophic habits of life. So peculiarly,

indeed, was Captain Wordsworth's temperament, and the whole system of

his life, coloured by a grave and meditative turn of thought, that

amongst his brother officers in the Company's service he bore the

surname of "The Philosopher." And William Wordsworth, the poet, not

only always spoke of him with a sort of respect that argued him to have

been no ordinary man, but he has frequently assured me of one fact

which, as implying some want of sincerity in himself, gave me pain

to hear--viz. that in the fine lines entitled "The Happy Warrior,"

reciting the main elements which enter into the composition of a hero,

he had in view chiefly his brother John's character. That was true, I

daresay, but it was inconsistent in some measure with the note attached

to the lines, by which the reader learns that it was out of reverence

for Lord Nelson, as one who transcended the estimate here made, that

the poem had not been openly connected with his name, as the real

suggester of the thoughts. Now, privately, though still professing a

lively admiration for the mighty Admiral, as one of the few men who

carried into his professional labours a real and vivid genius (and thus

far Wordsworth often testified a deep admiration for Lord Nelson), yet,

in reference to these particular lines, he uniformly declared that Lord

Nelson was much below the ideal there contemplated, and that, in fact,

it had been suggested by the recollection of his brother. But, if so,

why should it have been dissembled? And surely, in some of the finest

passages, this cannot be so; for example, when he makes it one trait of

the heaven-born hero that he, if called upon to face some mighty day of

trial--

"To which Heaven has joined

Great issues, good or bad, for human kind--

Is happy as a lover, and attired

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired"--

then, at least, he must have had Lord Nelson's idea predominating in

his thoughts; for Captain Wordsworth was scarcely tried in such a

situation. There can be no doubt, however, that he merited the praises

of his brother; and it was indeed an idle tale that he should first of

all deviate from this philosophic temperance upon an occasion where

his utmost energies and the fullest self-possession were all likely

to prove little enough. In reality it was the pilot, the incompetent

pilot, who caused the fatal catastrophe;--"O pilot, you have ruined

me!" were amongst the last words that Captain Wordsworth was heard to

utter--pathetic words, and fit for him, "a meek man and a brave," to

use in addressing a last reproach to one who, not through misfortune

or overruling will of Providence, but through miserable conceit and

unprincipled levity, had brought total ruin upon so many gallant

countrymen. Captain Wordsworth might have saved his own life; but the

perfect loyalty of his nature to the claims upon him, that sublime

fidelity to duty which is so often found amongst men of his profession,

kept him to the last upon the wreck; and, after _that_, it is probable

that the almost total wreck of his own fortunes (which, but for this

overthrow, would have amounted to twenty thousand pounds, upon the

successful termination of this one voyage), but still more the total

ruin of the new and splendid Indiaman confided to his care, had so much

dejected his spirits that he was not in a condition for making such

efforts as, under a more hopeful prospect, he might have been able to

make. Six weeks his body lay unrecovered; at the end of that time,

it was found, and carried to the Isle of Wight, and buried in close

neighbourhood to the quiet fields which he had so recently described

in letters to his sister at Grasmere as a Paradise of English peace,

to which his mind would be likely oftentimes to revert amidst the

agitations of the sea.

Such were the modes of life pursued by three of the orphan children:

such the termination of life to the youngest. Meantime, the one

daughter of the house was reared liberally, in the family of a relative

at Windsor; and she might have pursued a quiet and decorous career, of

a character, perhaps, somewhat tame, under the same dignified auspices;

but, at an early age, her good angel threw open to her a vista of

nobler prospects, in the opportunity which then arose, and which she

did not hesitate to seize, of becoming the companion, through a life

of delightful wanderings--of what, to her more elevated friends, seemed

little short of vagrancy--the companion and confidential friend, and,

with a view to the enlargement of her own intellect, the pupil, of a

brother, the most original and most meditative man of his own age.

William had passed his infancy on the very margin of the Lake district,

just six miles, in fact, beyond the rocky screen of Whinlatter, and

within one hour's ride of Bassenthwaite Water. To those who live in the

tame scenery of Cockermouth, the blue mountains in the distance, the

sublime peaks of Borrowdale and of Buttermere, raise aloft a signal,

as it were, of a new country, a country of romance and mystery, to

which the thoughts are habitually turning. Children are fascinated and

haunted with vague temptations, when standing on the frontiers of such

a foreign land; and so was Wordsworth fascinated, so haunted. Fortunate

for Wordsworth that, at an early age, he was transferred to a quiet

nook of this lovely district. At the little town of Hawkshead, seated

on the north-west angle of Esthwaite Water, a grammar-school (which, in

English usage, means a school for classical literature) was founded, in

Queen Elizabeth's reign, by Archbishop Sandys, who belonged to the very

ancient family of that name still seated in the neighbourhood. Hither

were sent all the four brothers; and here it was that Wordsworth passed

his life, from the age of nine until the time arrived for his removal

to college. Taking into consideration the peculiar tastes of the

person, and the peculiar advantages of the place, I conceive that no

pupil of a public school can ever have passed a more luxurious boyhood

than Wordsworth. The school discipline was not by many evidences very

strict; the mode of living out of school very much resembled that of

Eton for Oppidans; less elegant, no doubt, and less costly in its

provisions for accommodation, but not less comfortable, and, in that

part of the arrangements which was chiefly Etonian, even more so; for

in both places the boys, instead of being gathered into one fold, and

at night into one or two huge dormitories, were distributed amongst

motherly old "dames," technically so called at Eton, but not at

Hawkshead. In the latter place, agreeably to the inferior scale of the

whole establishment, the houses were smaller, and more cottage-like,

consequently more like private households: and the old lady of the

_ménage_ was more constantly amongst them, providing, with maternal

tenderness and with a professional pride, for the comfort of her young

flock, and protecting the weak from oppression. The humble cares to

which these poor matrons dedicated themselves may be collected from

several allusions scattered through the poems of Wordsworth; that

entitled "Nutting," for instance, in which his own early Spinosistic

feeling is introduced, of a mysterious presence diffused through the

solitudes of woods, a presence that was disturbed by the intrusion of

careless and noisy outrage, and which is brought into a strong relief

by the previous homely picture of the old housewife equipping her young

charge with beggar's weeds, in order to prepare him for a struggle

with thorns and brambles. Indeed, not only the moderate rank of the

boys, and the peculiar kind of relation assumed by these matrons,

equally suggested this humble class of motherly attentions, but the

whole spirit of the place and neighbourhood was favourable to an old

English homeliness of domestic and personal economy. Hawkshead, most

fortunately for its own manners and the primitive style of its habits

even to this day, stands about six miles out of the fashionable line

for the "Lakers."

Esthwaite, though a lovely scene in its summer garniture of woods,

has no features of permanent grandeur to rely upon. A wet or gloomy

day, even in summer, reduces it to little more than a wildish pond,

surrounded by miniature hills: and the sole circumstances which restore

the sense of a romantic region and an Alpine character are the towering

groups of Langdale and Grasmere fells, which look over the little

pastoral barriers of Esthwaite, from distances of eight, ten, and

fourteen miles. Esthwaite, therefore, being no object for itself, and

the sublime head of Coniston being accessible by a road which evades

Hawkshead, few tourists ever trouble the repose of this little village

town. And in the days of which I am speaking (1778-1787) tourists were

as yet few and infrequent to _any_ parts of the country. Mrs. Radcliffe

had not begun to cultivate the sense of the picturesque in her popular

romances; guide-books, with the sole exception of "Gray's Posthumous

Letters," had not arisen to direct public attention to this domestic

Calabria; roads were rude, and, in many instances, not wide enough to

admit post-chaises; but, above all, the whole system of travelling

accommodations was barbarous and antediluvian for the requisitions of

the pampered south. As yet the land had rest; the annual fever did

not shake the very hills; and (which was the happiest immunity of

the whole) false taste, the pseudo-romantic rage, had not violated

the most awful solitudes amongst the ancient hills by opera-house

decorations. Wordsworth, therefore, enjoyed this labyrinth of valleys

in a perfection that no one can have experienced since the opening

of the present century. The whole was one paradise of virgin beauty;

the rare works of man, all over the land, were hoar with the grey

tints of an antique picturesque; nothing was new, nothing was raw and

uncicatrized. Hawkshead, in particular, though tamely seated in itself

and its immediate purlieus, has a most fortunate and central locality,

as regards the best (at least the most interesting) scenes for a

pedestrian rambler. The gorgeous scenery of Borrowdale, the austere

sublimities of Wastdalehead, of Langdalehead, or Mardale--these are too

oppressive, in their colossal proportions and their utter solitudes,

for encouraging a perfectly human interest. Now, taking Hawkshead

as a centre, with a radius of about eight miles, one might describe

a little circular tract which embosoms a perfect network of little

valleys--separate wards or cells, as it were, of one larger valley,

walled in by the great leading mountains of the region. Grasmere,

Easedale, Great and Little Langdale, Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, Elter

Water, Loughrigg Tarn, Skelwith, and many other little quiet nooks, lie

within a single division of this labyrinthine district. All these are

within one summer afternoon's ramble. And amongst these, for the years

of his boyhood, lay the daily excursions of Wordsworth.

I do not conceive that Wordsworth _could_ have been an amiable boy;

he was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits;

not generous; and not self-denying. I am pretty certain that no

consideration would ever have induced Wordsworth to burden himself

with a lady's reticule, parasol, shawl, or anything exacting trouble

and attention. Mighty must be the danger which would induce him to

lead her horse by the bridle. Nor would he, without some demur, stop

to offer her his hand over a stile. Freedom--unlimited, careless,

insolent freedom--unoccupied possession of his own arms--absolute

control over his own legs and motions--these have always been so

essential to his comfort, that, in any case where they were likely to

become questionable, he would have declined to make one of the party.

Meantime, we are not to suppose that Wordsworth the boy expressly

sought for solitary scenes of nature amongst woods and mountains with

a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative pleasure, and loving

them with a pure, disinterested love, on their own separate account.

These are feelings beyond boyish nature, or, at all events, beyond

boyish nature trained amidst the selfishness of social intercourse.

Wordsworth, like his companions, haunted the hills and the vales

for the sake of angling, snaring birds, swimming, and sometimes of

hunting, according to the Westmoreland fashion (or the Irish fashion

in Galway), on foot; for riding to the chase is quite impossible,

from the precipitous nature of the ground. It was in the course of

these pursuits, by an indirect effect growing gradually upon him, that

Wordsworth became a passionate lover of nature, at the time when the

growth of his intellectual faculties made it possible that he should

combine those thoughtful passions with the experience of the eye and

the ear.

One of the most interesting among the winter amusements of the

Hawkshead boys was that of skating on the adjacent lake. Esthwaite

Water is not one of the deep lakes, as its neighbours of Windermere,

Coniston, and Grasmere are; consequently, a very slight duration

of frost is sufficient to freeze it into a bearing strength. In

this respect Wordsworth found the same advantages in his boyhood as

afterwards at the University; for the county of Cambridge is generally

liable to shallow waters; and that University breeds more good skaters

than all the rest of England. About the year 1810, by way of expressing

an interest in "The Friend," which was just at that time appearing in

weekly numbers, Wordsworth allowed Coleridge to print an extract from

the poem on his own life, descriptive of the games celebrated upon

the ice of Esthwaite by all who were able to skate: the mimic chases

of hare and hounds, pursued long after the last orange gleam of light

had died away from the western horizon--oftentimes far into the night;

a circumstance which does not speak much for the discipline of the

schools, or rather, perhaps, _does_ speak much for the advantages of a

situation so pure, and free from the usual perils of a town, as could

allow of a discipline so lax. Wordsworth, in this fine descriptive

passage--which I wish that I had at this moment the means of citing,

in order to amplify my account of his earliest tyrocinium--speaks of

himself as frequently wheeling aside from his joyous companions to

cut across the image of a star; and thus, already in the midst of

sportiveness, and by a movement of sportiveness, half unconsciously to

himself expressing the growing necessity of retirement to his habits

of thought.[107] At another period of the year, when the golden summer

allowed the students a long season of early play before the studies of

the day began, he describes himself as roaming, hand-in-hand, with

one companion, along the banks of Esthwaite Water, chanting, with one

voice, the verses of Goldsmith and of Gray--verses which, at the time

of recording the fact, he had come to look upon as either in parts

false in the principles of their composition, or, at any rate, as far

below the tone of high poetic passion; but which, at that time of life,

when the profounder feelings were as yet only germinating, filled them

with an enthusiasm

"More bright than madness and the dreams of wine."

Meanwhile, how prospered the classical studies which formed the main

business of Wordsworth at Hawkshead? Not, in all probability, very

well; for, though Wordsworth finally became a very sufficient master

of the Latin language, and read certain favourite authors, especially

Horace, with a critical nicety, and with a feeling for the felicities

of his composition, I have reason to think that little of this skill

had been obtained at Hawkshead. As to Greek, that is a language which

Wordsworth never had energy enough to cultivate with effect.

[107] The following is the passage to which De Quincey refers, as

it now stands in Wordsworth's autobiographical poem _The Prelude_;

which, though begun in 1799 and completed in 1805, was not

published till 1850:--

"All shod with steel,

We hissed along the polished ice in games

Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures,--the resounding horn,

The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.

So through the darkness and the cold we flew,

And not a voice was idle; with the din

Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;

The leafless trees and every icy crag

Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills

Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars

Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west

The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired

Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,

To cut across the reflex of a star

That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed

Upon the glassy plain."

M.

From Hawkshead, and, I believe, after he had entered his eighteenth

year (a time which is tolerably early on the English plan), probably

at the latter end of the year 1787, Wordsworth entered at St.

John's College, Cambridge. St. John's ranks as the second college

in Cambridge--the second as to numbers, and influence, and general

consideration; in the estimation of the Johnians as the first, or

at least as co-equal in all things with Trinity; from which, at any

rate, the general reader will collect that no such absolute supremacy

is accorded to any society in Cambridge as in Oxford is accorded

necessarily to Christ Church. The advantages of a large college are

considerable, both to the idle man, who wishes to lurk unnoticed in the

crowd, and to the brilliant man, whose vanity could not be gratified

by pre-eminence amongst a few. Wordsworth, though not idle as regarded

his own pursuits, was so as regarded the pursuits of the place. With

respect to them he felt--to use his own words--that his hour was not

come; and that his doom for the present was a happy obscurity, which

left him, unvexed by the torments of competition, to the genial

enjoyment of life in its most genial hours.

It will excite some astonishment when I mention that, on coming to

Cambridge, Wordsworth actually assumed the beau, or, in modern slang,

the "dandy." He dressed in silk stockings, had his hair powdered, and

in all things plumed himself on his gentlemanly habits. To those who

remember the slovenly dress of his middle and philosophic life, this

will furnish matter for a smile.