It is impossible thoroughly to understand Wordsworth's poetic strength
and limitations without a glance at his life. We discover it to have
been an unusually idyllic and comfortable one. Belonging to the
well-to-do middle class (his father was an attorney), he studied at
Cambridge and then travelled. In 1795, not long after his return from
abroad, he received a legacy of £900 from an admirer of his genius,
which, added to his share of a debt of £8500 due to his father by an
English nobleman, and paid to the family about this time, placed him
in a position to live without taking up any profession. In 1802 he
married; in 1813 he settled at Rydal Mount in the Lake district. He
held the appointment of Distributor of Stamps, which was practically a
sinecure, from 1813 to 1842, when he resigned in favour of one of his
sons. The salary of this appointment was £500. In 1843 he succeeded
Southey as Poet Laureate, and as such enjoyed a pension of £300 a year
till his death, which occurred in 1850, when he had just completed his
eightieth year. Sheltered on every side from the outward vicissitudes
of life, he regarded them from a Protestant-philosophical point of view.
A career such as this was not calculated to stir the passions; nor
is passion discoverable either in Wordsworth's life or his poetry.
In the lives of most eminent authors we find some preponderant
circumstance, one or more turning-points, one or other ostensible
source of melancholy, or of strength of character, or of productivity;
in Wordsworth's nothing of the kind is to be found. No congenital
misfortune crippled him, no implacably violent animosity goaded him
and set its mark on his spirit. The critics did not spare him with
mockery and contempt, and they continued their attacks for a long time.
From 1800 to 1820 his poetry was trodden underfoot; from 1820 to 1830
it struggled; after 1830 it received universal recognition. But the
animosity was not stupid and violent enough, the struggle was not hot
enough, the victory not brilliant enough, to give colour and lustre to
his career, or to make it a subject of song. His inmost, personal life
was never so intense that it could absorb his poetry or provide it with
subjects. On the contrary, it led him to look outwards. The wars on
the Continent, the natural surroundings of his home, and the little,
insignificant set of human beings amongst whom he lived, engrossed his
thoughts. He was not, like Byron, too much absorbed in his own affairs
to have tranquillity of mind to dwell upon the small things and the
small people whom he exhibits and describes with tender sympathy.
He undoubtedly felt himself the centre of his world. From his retired,
idyllic home there issued from time to time collections of short poems
or single long ones, provided with explanatory prefaces which, piling
example on example, demonstrated to the reader that all great poets
have been misunderstood or despised by their contemporaries; that every
author, in so far as he is great and at the same time original, is
obliged to create the taste by means of which his works can be enjoyed.
His predecessors have, no doubt, smoothed the way for all that he has
in common with them; but for what is peculiarly his own he is in the
condition of Hannibal among the Alps. (Preface of 1815.)
Wordsworth was well aware that no intellectual pioneer can expect
complete recognition from any but his younger contemporaries. But
the criticism meted out to him, which was not aggressive enough to
rouse in him a recklessly bellicose spirit like Byron's, made him
self-absorbed and arrogant. The one variety in his daily life was
provided by occasional visits from admirers who were making a tour
in the neighbourhood and had letters of introduction to him. These
strangers he received surrounded by his admiring family; he conversed
with them in a cold and dignified manner, and not unfrequently repelled
them by the egotism with which he quoted and praised his own works, the
indifference he manifested to everything else, the rigour with which
he insisted on every outward sign of respect being shown him, and the
solemnity with which he repeated even the most insignificant things
that had been said in his praise.
A number of anecdotes illustrating his egotism have been preserved.
Thomas Moore (_Memoirs_, iii. 163) tells how one day, in a large
party, Wordsworth, without anything having been previously said to
introduce the subject, called out suddenly from the top of the table to
the bottom: "Davy, do you know the reason why I published the 'White
Doe' in quarto?" "No, what was it?" "To show the world my opinion of
it." He never read any works aloud but his own. At the time when _Rob
Roy_, which has a motto taken from one of his poems, was published,
he happened to be visiting a family who received the book the day it
came out. They were all looking forward with eagerness to the new
tale. Wordsworth seized the book, and every one expected him to read
the first chapters aloud; but instead of doing this, he went to the
bookcase, took out a volume of his own poetry, and read his poem aloud
to the company.
We have Emerson's notes written immediately after two different visits
to Wordsworth, paid with a year's interval. After the second, he
writes: "He was nationally bitter on the French: bitter on Scotchmen
too. No Scotchman, he said, can write English.... His opinions of
French, English, Irish, and Scotch seemed rashly formalised from little
anecdotes of what had befallen himself and members of his family, in
a diligence or stage-coach." After his first visit (in 1833) Emerson
writes: "He had much to say of America, the more that it gave occasion
for his favourite topic--that society is being enlightened by a
superficial tuition, out of all proportion to its being restrained
by moral culture. Schools do no good. Tuition is not education....
He wished to impress on me and all good Americans to cultivate the
moral, the conservative, &c.... He proceeded to abuse Goethe's _Wilhelm
Meister_ heartily. It was full of all manner of fornication. It was
like the crossing of flies in the air. He had never gone farther than
the first part; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across
the room.... He cited his sonnet 'On the Feelings of a High-minded
Spaniard' which he preferred to any other (I so understood him),
and 'The Two Voices'; and quoted, with evident pleasure, the verses
addressed to the Skylark." These jottings give us an excellent idea of
what Wordsworth was in ordinary intercourse: the contemptuous verdicts
passed on all foreign races, the objection to modern civilisation (the
same which the Mohammedans in Asia and Africa prefer against it to
this day) that it is compatible with great immorality; the eulogy on
conventional morality as the society-preserving element (true morality
being the most radical element in existence), the displeasure with
Goethe (which reminds us of Novalis), and the recital of his own verses
as finale!
Emerson sums up his impressions in the following words: "His face
sometimes lighted up, but his conversation was not marked by special
force or elevation.... He honoured himself by his simple adherence to
truth, and was very willing not to shine; but he surprised by the hard
limits of his thought. To judge from a single conversation, he made the
impression of a narrow and very English mind; of one who paid for his
rare elevation by general tameness and conformity."
In 1843 Wordsworth and Dickens met for the first time. Wordsworth had
a great contempt for all young men, and the mutual friend at whose
house the meeting took place was, consequently, curious to learn his
impression of the great humorist. "After pursing up his lips in a
fashion peculiar to him, and swinging one leg over the other, the
bare flesh of his ankles appearing over his socks, Wordsworth slowly
answered, 'Why, I am not much given to turn critic on people I meet;
but, as you ask me, I will candidly avow that I thought him a very
talkative, vulgar young person--but I dare say he may be very clever.
Mind, I don't want to say a word against him, for I have never read a
line he has written." Some time after this the same querist guardedly
asked Dickens how he had liked the Poet Laureate? "Like him? Not at
all. He is a dreadful old ass."[1]
The reader will naturally refuse to subscribe to so sweeping a
judgment. But so much is certain, that in private intercourse there
must have been something extremely irritating about Wordsworth. A
contemporary declares that when he spoke he blew like a whale, and
uttered truisms in an oracular tone. The word "truism" is applicable
to more than his verbal utterances; it applies to the whole reflective
and didactic side of his poetry. In it there is no remarkable force or
passion, but a Hamlet-like dwelling upon the great questions of "to be
or not to be." "Birth, death, the future, the sufferings and misdeeds
of man in this life, and his hopes of a life to come; the littleness
of us and our whole sphere of knowledge, and the awful relations in
which we stand to a world of the supernatural--these, if any," says
Masson, "are the permanent and inevitable objects of all human, as they
were peculiarly of Wordsworth's, contemplation and solicitude."[2] But
these ideas, lying, as they do, rather at the circumference of the
sphere of our knowledge than within it, unfortunately tempt us into
certain ancient and well-worn tracks of thought that lead nowhere;
they go round in a ring, and we can follow them with a tranquil and
dignified melancholy, but without much benefit either to ourselves or
others. The fact that Wordsworth is perpetually finding his way to this
said circumference of the sphere of our knowledge, which adherents of
the so-called revealed religions regard as the natural centre of our
thoughts, has contributed more than anything else to prevent his fame,
great as it is in England, from spreading to any considerable extent in
other countries.
When Coleridge made Wordsworth's personal acquaintance, the latter
had already written enough to show plainly what was the nature of his
originality. What struck Coleridge in Wordsworth's poetry "was the
union of deep feeling with profound thought; the fine balance of truth
in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects
observed; and, above all, the original gift of spreading the tone, the
atmosphere of the ideal world around forms, incidents, and situations
of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre."
Wordsworth and Coleridge's first conversations turned upon what to them
appeared the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the
sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature,
and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying
colours of imagination. The sudden charm which accidents of light and
shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffuse over a known and familiar
landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both.
These are the poetry of nature, and these were to be reproduced. It was
not simply nature that was to be imitated, but the poetry of nature.
The thought suggested itself that a series of poems might be composed
of two sorts. In the one the incidents and agents were to be, in part
at least, supernatural, and the excellence aimed at was to consist
in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such
emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them
real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who,
from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself
to be under supernatural agency. The execution of this part of the
undertaking fell to Coleridge's share, and there can be no doubt
whatever that the successful accomplishment of it was due to him. Any
one at all well acquainted with European literature sees at once how
closely related this task is to those which German Romanticism set
itself and accomplished. The only thing peculiarly English is, that the
emphasis is not laid upon the supernatural and fantastic, but upon the
realistic element, so that Romanticism in this case becomes simply one
of the forms of Naturalism.
In the poems of the other sort the themes were to be chosen from real
life. But Wordsworth, to whose share this division fell, resolved to
communicate to the commonest and most natural events an unusual, new,
almost supernatural colour by awakening the mind from the slumber of
custom, and forcing it to direct its attention to the beauty and the
marvels which the natural world is constantly offering to heedless
man. He made the attempt for the first time in the _Lyrical Ballads_,
which in the preface are designated an "Experiment"--an experiment
intended to prove the possibility of making themes unsuited to ornate
representation attractive, even when presented to the reader in the
language of real life--and he repeated it in hundreds of poems of
extremely varied quality, whose heroes and heroines all belong to the
lower and lowest classes, have followed rural avocations from their
youth, and are represented on a background of rural life.
In Danish literature there is no series of poems of this description;
but the careful student of Wordsworth will every now and then be
reminded, by the form given to a poetic anecdote or by the tone of
the narrator, of (the Swedish poet) Runeberg's _Fänrik Stål_. There
is occasionally even a resemblance of rhythm and metre. It would
be interesting to know if Runeberg had any acquaintance with the
works of the English poet. Possibly the whole faint resemblance is
due to the fact that the incidents in the poems of both writers all
occur in one small district--the neighbourhood of the English, and
the neighbourhood of the Finnish Lakes. The difference is far more
striking than the resemblance. In Runeberg we have a warlike background
and mood, a fiery lyric style, patriotic ardour; in Wordsworth,
stagnant, rurally peaceful life, an epic attitude, and a purely local
patriotism--attachment to the life and history of a couple of parishes.
Runeberg's is a soldier's feeling for the army; Wordsworth's, a parish
priest's for his flock.
_Resolution and Independence_, one of Wordsworth's most characteristic,
though certainly not one of his best poems, is a good example of his
capacity and manner of casting over the most everyday incidents and
phenomena a tinge of almost supernatural colour. The poet describes his
walk on a summer morning--the glistening of the dew, the song of the
birds, the fleet racing of the hare across the moor. Then it occurs to
him that he himself has lived as thoughtlessly as the beasts of the
field and the birds of the air, and that such a life is only too likely
one day to bring its own punishment. He calls to mind how many great
poets have ended in misery, and the most prosaic fears for the future
depress him. Then suddenly, in that lonely place, he comes upon an old
man:--
"The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;
Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead,
Nor all asleep--in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life's pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth all together, if it move at all."
How clever the double simile is, and what a feeling of mystery it
produces! The old man is like the gigantic stone on the top of the
hill; and the stone in its turn resembles some sea-beast which must
have crawled up there. The impression of great age is most forcibly
produced. This old man seems the oldest man that has ever lived. If we
were in Germany or any other territory of Romanticism, we should not be
surprised to learn that we had the shoemaker of Jerusalem before us.
But we are in England, and our guide is Wordsworth; and the old man
turns out to be a most ordinary human being, by trade a leech-gatherer,
an occupation suited to the capacity of the frail old inhabitants of a
marshy district. The old man's confident, piously resigned words, his
tranquillity of mind even in extreme loneliness and poverty, allay the
young man's fears for the future; and he resolves, whenever such fears
beset him, to think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor. "This
is not ode-flight," as Ewald[3] remarks somewhere or other; but it is
a good specimen of Wordsworth's power of giving a certain imprint of
fantasy and grandeur to the most everyday, most realistic material by
his manner of treating it.
The attempt to exercise this capacity has, in not a few of Wordsworth's
poems, resulted in caricature. It has always done so when he has tried
to produce a mystically religious or terrifying effect by endowing
some simply painful or odd incident with the so-called supernatural
quality. We can call it nothing but childish when, in the poem entitled
_The Thorn_, the narrator (whose position in life is not indicated,
but whom Wordsworth himself told Coleridge he had imagined as an old
ship captain, almost in his dotage) tells in the strain of horror with
which one relates a ghost story, the tale of the poor mad woman who
sits at night in a scarlet cloak, weeping and wailing, under the thorn
tree. And _Peter Bell_, the poem which Wordsworth presented to the
public with such a flourish of trumpets, but which, had it not been for
Shelley's satire of the same name, would have been forgotten by this
time, produces the effect of a parody. It tells of the terror induced
in a coarse, cruel man by the supernatural fortitude with which a poor
ass bears the most terrible blows rather than move--a terror which, in
combination with the excited imaginings due to the darkness, brings
about a complete change in the man. Time showed the reason of the ass's
fortitude to have been its desire to draw attention to the fact that
its master had fallen into the river at the spot where it was standing.
We have here a striking contrast--the moral greatness of the brute and
the brutish stupidity of the man--and Wordsworth, who had no sense of
the comic, did not fail to enlarge on the subject.
And that he does so is not a mere accident, but a characteristic
trait. The new school, with its dislike of the brilliant and its love
of the simple and plain, felt a real attraction towards asses, these
obstinate, patient, and peculiarly misunderstood children of nature,
which are always outshone by less contented animals. Coleridge,
in his poem, _To a Young Ass--its mother being tethered near it_,
allowed himself to be carried away by his enthusiasm to the extent
of exclaiming: "I hail thee Brother!" and declaring that if it were
granted him in a better and more equitably ordered state of society to
provide peaceful pasture for this ass, its joyful bray would sound more
melodious in his ears than the sweetest music. It is not surprising
that the scoffer Byron promptly made merry over this fraternal greeting
in his first satire, _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. But in
Coleridge this extreme Naturalism did not go deep; he himself was the
first to denounce his own excesses. Wordsworth, on the contrary, who
was by nature consistent, not to say obstinate, carried purely literary
Naturalism to its final and extreme conclusions.
He almost always chose his themes from humble and rustic life; and this
he did, not for the same reason as the French writers of the previous
century, who, themselves elegant and cultivated, enjoyed inelegance and
uncultivatedness with a feeling of superiority, but because he believed
that in that condition of life the essential passions of the heart find
a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under
restraint, and speak a plainer language. He was of opinion that in
that condition our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater
simplicity, and consequently may be more accurately contemplated than
in town life; and he was also persuaded that constant association with
the beautiful and permanent forms of nature, in combination with the
necessary and unchanging character of rural occupations, must make all
feelings more durable and strong.
Here, at the moment of the century's birth, we find the germs of
the æsthetic movement, which, spreading from country to country,
continued for more than fifty years to produce, in Germany, France, and
Scandinavia, peasant poetry and peasant tales, and in several countries
a cult of the peasant dialect. By dissecting these germs in the manner
of the botanist, we shall learn the complete natural history of the
plant.
Wordsworth's point of departure is purely _topographical_. There is
more topography, taking the word in its widest sense, in his works
than even in Scott's. His life-task was to describe English nature and
English natures as he saw them, face to face. He would never describe
anything with which he was not perfectly familiar, and he finally
evolved the theory that it was necessary for every poet to associate
himself closely with some one particular spot. He associated himself
with the English Lake district, which provided him with backgrounds for
most of his poems. He went so far as to assert that the birthplace of
the individual is the place best suited to be the scene of the activity
of his whole life.
Thus it was that he became the painter specially of English nature, and
that his descriptions have an essentially local interest. Ruskin was
right when he called Wordsworth the great poetical landscape painter of
the period. Whilst Byron time after time escaped from his own country
to paint the nature of Greece and the East in glowing foreign colours;
whilst Shelley shrank from the climate of England as death to a man of
his delicate constitution, and never wearied of extolling the coast and
rivers of Italy; whilst Scott sang the praises of Scotland, and Moore
tirelessly proclaimed the beauty of green Erin, Wordsworth stood alone
as the pure-bred Englishman, deep-rooted in his native soil as some old
spreading oak. His ambition was to be a true English descriptive poet.
He had the most intimate, circumstantial acquaintance with the life of
the lower classes, and the rural life generally, of the district in
which he had his home, walked, sailed, went to church, and received
visits from his admirers. He has the same eye for it as a worthy and
benevolent parish priest of the type he describes in _The Excursion_.
To his special province belong all the events and calamities of common
occurrence in an English country parish--the return of a totally
forgotten son of the place, to find his home gone and the names of
those dear to him carved on gravestones (_The Brothers_); the fate of a
deceived and deserted girl (_Ruth_); an idiot boy's night ride for the
doctor, with its mischances (_The Idiot Boy_); the strange adventure of
a blind Highland boy, with its fortunate ending (_The Blind Highland
Boy_); the sorrow caused to an excellent father by the degeneracy of
his son (_Michael_); the unfortunate carouse of a carrier beloved
by the whole district, and his consequent dismissal from his post
(described in four cantos under the title _The Waggoner_).
The only thing un-English about the manner in which these events, even
the more cheerful and amusing ones, are communicated to us, is the
complete absence of humour. In the place of humour Wordsworth has,
as Masson aptly puts it, "a hard, benevolent smile." But the pathos
with which he relates the tragic or serious among these simple local
stories is pure and heartfelt. It has neither the Pythian tremor nor
modern fervour, but its effect is all the more powerful in the case
of the great majority of readers, who prefer that the poet should not
rise too high above their level, and are conscious of the helpful,
healing quality in the compassion which is the source of the pathos--a
compassion which resembles that of the clergyman or the doctor, and
which, though less spontaneous than professional, moves us by the
perfection of its expression.
Nowhere more beautiful is this expression than in such poems as _Simon
Lee_ and _The Old Cumberland Beggar_. The former tells of an old
huntsman who in his youth had surpassed all others in his skill with
hounds and horn, his fleetness on foot and on horseback, but who has
become so feeble that when the poet meets him one day he is struggling
in vain to unearth the rotten root of an old tree.
"You're overtasked, good Simon Lee,
Give me your tool," to him I said;
And at the word right gladly he
Received my proffered aid.
I struck, and with a single blow
The tangled root I severed,
At which the poor old man so long
And vainly had endeavoured.
The tears into his eyes were brought,
And thanks and praises seemed to run
So fast out of his heart, I thought
They never would have done.
I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning."
Few poets have shown such beautiful reverence as Wordsworth for those
humble ancients of the human race who, from no fault of their own, are
helpless and useless. Of this _The Old Cumberland Beggar_ is the best
example. The poet tells how this man, whom every one knows, goes round
the neighbourhood calling at every house.
"Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now:
He travels on, a solitary man,
So helpless in appearance, that for him
The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops,--that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old man's hat; nor quits him so,
But still, when he has given his horse the rein,
Watches the aged beggar with a look
Sidelong--and half-reverted. She who tends
The toll-gate, when in summer at her door
She turns her wheel, if on the road she sees
The aged beggar coming, quits her work,
And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.
The post-boy, when his rattling wheels o'ertake
The aged beggar in the woody lane,
Shouts to him from behind; and, if thus warned
The old man does not change his course, the boy
Turns with less noisy wheels to the road-side,
And passes gently by--without a curse
Upon his lips or anger in his heart.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
But deem not this man useless.--Statesmen! Ye
Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye
Who have a broom still ready in your hands
To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud,
Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate
Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not
A burthen of the earth! Tis nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Of forms created the most vile and brute,
The dullest or most noxious, should exist
Divorced from good--a spirit and pulse of good,
A life and soul; to every mode of being
Inseparably linked.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Where'er the aged beggar takes his rounds,
The mild necessity of use compels
To acts of love; and habit does the work
Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy
Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul,
By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
Doth find itself insensibly disposed
To virtue and true goodness. . . .
. . . . . . . . . The easy man
Who sits at his own door,--and, like the pear
That overhangs his head from the green wall,
Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young,
The prosperous and unthinking, they who live
Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove
Of their own kindred;--all behold in him
A silent monitor, which on their minds
Must needs impress a transitory thought
Of self-congratulation."
Though it must be confessed that this is a sermon, it is a sermon
in the very best style. In that same Naturalism which in due time
consistently developed into pure humanism and revolt against
convention, there was at first an inclination to admonition and to
evangelic piety. It sought out the simple-hearted, the poor, the
mean in the eyes of the world--for this was Gospel morality. It
rejected the highly cultured, and chose as its heroes fishermen and
peasants--in this also following Gospel example. Hence it is that we
have in Wordsworth perfectly consistent worship of nature along with
the exhortatory and evangelically homiletic element which finds such
favour in England. And even his purely didactic poems are not to be
indiscriminately rejected. There is often a peculiar grandeur in the
manner in which the simple lesson is enforced. There is, for instance,
real sublimity in the passage in _Laodamia_ in which it is impressed
upon the sorrowing wife that, instead of craving for the return of her
husband, she ought to renounce her desire, and purify herself through
her love to enjoy another, nobler, more spiritual life:--
"Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend
Towards a higher object.--Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end:
For this the passion to excess was driven--
That self might be annulled."
Even the abstract _Ode to Duty_, which is inspired by an enthusiasm of
the nature of Kant's, contains a couple of magnificent lines which are
as contrary to reason as one of the sublime paradoxes of the Fathers of
the Church. It is to Duty that the poet cries:
"Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong."
From all the poems of this species, however, the reader will quickly
turn again to Wordsworth's specialty, his idylls.
Let us cast another glance at these, and at the theory which their
author intended them to illustrate. It is quite certain that Wordsworth
attributed more poetical importance to the representation of rural
life than is really its due. His surroundings were calculated to
produce this theoretical overvaluation. The possibility of making
heroes of the shepherd-farmers of Cumberland and Westmoreland was due
to the fact that these men (who, though they were independent enough
not to be compelled to work for others, were nevertheless obliged to
lead an industrious, frugally simple life) possessed real poetical
qualifications. The theory that rural life in itself improves and
ennobles, is a superstition; it is quite as apt to dull and blunt.
Coleridge has, for example, pointed out that when the manner in which
the poor-laws were administered in Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol,
was compared with the manner in which relief was distributed in the
country, the result was distinctly in favour of the towns.
Wordsworth has, further, over-estimated the importance of the part
which the representation of rural occupations plays in his own poetry.
Not only do we observe that many of the principal personages in his
best poems (such as _Ruth, Michael, The Brothers_) are not expressly
peasants or dwellers in the country; but we are also conscious that
his passion for Naturalism and, in close connection with this, his
inclination to try to edify by glorification of the lower classes,
have often led him to attribute to a man or woman of low position,
qualities and powers which there is little probability of his or her
possessing. A paradox which he enounces with evident satisfaction in
_The Excursion_ is, that many a gifted poet exists, unsuspected, among
the lower classes.[4] It is satisfactory to a man with Wordsworth's
religious tendencies to believe that talent is independent of wealth
and outward position. But even allowing this to be true, would it
not still be absurd to make the poet-hero of a poem a chimney-sweep
by profession, and then explain in a carefully invented biography
how it came to pass that he was, at one and the same time, poet,
philosopher, and sweep? Only in real biography are such phenomena
permissible; in fiction, Naturalism carried to such an extreme repels
by its unlikeliness. And what difference is there between this and
the many cases in which Wordsworth puts into the mouth of a pedlar, a
leech-gatherer, a labourer, words which we cannot but be astonished
to hear from such lips? Hence, to justify and explain his characters,
he is obliged to introduce numbers of accidental, subordinate details
of the kind required to prove the possibility of a fact in real life,
but of the kind which we willingly forgo in poetry. The excessive
attention paid to probability, the petty anxiety to explain the
reason of everything, have a fatiguing effect--especially in the long
introductions and descriptions in _The Excursion_, which Byron wittily
calls Wordsworth's "eternal: Here we go up, up, and up, and here we go
down, down, and here round about, round about!"
Wordsworth's choice of themes leads him, moreover, to a singularity
in the matter of language which may be termed the extreme literary
issue of this Naturalism. It was his theory that the language spoken
by the class which he described was, when purified from its defects,
the best of all, "because such men hourly communicate with the best
objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and
because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle
of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity,
they convey their feelings and emotions in simple and unelaborated
expressions." It is, consequently, his opinion, that it is impossible
for any author to find a better manner of expression, no matter
whether he is writing in prose or in verse. And this leads him to the
enunciation of his famous and interesting paradox: _that there neither
is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose
and metrical composition_. If this only meant disapprobation of all the
tiresome and foolish distortions of language, to which the scarcity of
rhymes and the lack of the gift of rhythm have driven so many of even
the most eminent poets, we should heartily agree with him. Théodore de
Banville has, with reason on his side--though it is the severe reason
which demands the impossible--given as contents to the chapter in
his _Petit Traité de Poésie française_ entitled _Licentia poetica_,
simply the words: "Il n'y en a pas." But it is an entirely different
meaning which Wordsworth intends his maxim to convey. He maintains
not only that the language of a large portion of every good poem must
necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect differ
from that of good prose, but likewise that some of the most interesting
parts of the very best poems will be found to be strictly the language
of prose. For, however lively and truthful the poet's language may be,
there cannot be a doubt, says Wordsworth, that it must, in liveliness
and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in real life;
in other words--it can never surpass, and only at its best approach,
the prose of reality. This theory he defended with genuine English
obstinacy against the attacks made upon it from every direction. He
quotes, as a specimen of the parodies of poetry in which the language
closely resembles that of life and nature, Dr. Johnson's stanza:
"I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man,
Whose hat was in his hand."
This is not poetry, says the public. Granted! says Wordsworth. But
the proper thing to be said is not: This is not poetry; but: This is
wanting in meaning; it is neither interesting in itself, nor can it
lead to anything interesting; consequently it cannot excite thought
or feeling in the reader. "Why take pains to prove that an ape is not
a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a man?" The accepted
idea is, according to Wordsworth, that an author, by the act of writing
in verse, makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known
habits of association, that certain classes of idea and expression will
be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. This
doctrine Wordsworth opposes with the declaration of his conviction of
the similarity of good poetry and good prose, a conviction which was
founded on dislike of poetic affectation, but which led him in his own
poetry, now to the narrowest limitation, now to the utmost possible
flattening out of his own in many respects masterly and model style.
There is more than one argument against the extremely high estimation
of the language of the rural population which forms Wordsworth's
starting-point, and which is not without its resemblance to the cult of
the peasant language initiated in Denmark by Grundtvig and in Norway
by the "Maalstrævere" (agitators for the universal employment of a
Norwegian based on the peasant dialects). The principal one is, that
the language of the peasant, purified, as Wordsworth demands, from
provincial expressions and subjected to the rules of grammar, is not
different from that of any other sensible man, except in this, that the
peasant's ideas are fewer and vaguer. By reason of its inferior degree
of development, his mind dwells only upon single, isolated facts, drawn
from his own narrow experience, or from the records of traditional
belief, whereas the educated man sees the connection between things,
and seeks for universal laws. Wordsworth is of opinion that the
_best_ part of language is derived from the objects which surround
and occupy the peasant. But the ideas connected with food, shelter,
safety, comfort, are surely not those which provide the best part of
language. Nor can we agree with him when he asserts that nothing but
the infusion of a certain degree of passion into this language is
required to entitle it to be called poetic; for passion neither creates
new thoughts nor new provision of words; it only increases the force of
those already in existence; it cannot be expected to make the language
of daily intercourse poetry, when it is hardly capable of making it
prose.
What strikes us from the very first in Wordsworth's vindication of
Naturalism is his confounding of two things--prose, and what he calls
"ordinary language" terms which he applies indiscriminately. Good prose
is language which has been purified from the vain and meaningless
repetitions and the uncertain, halting phraseology which are the
inevitable outcome of the confusion due to insufficient education.
Wordsworth has too frequently neglected this purifying process,
when introducing dramatic dialogue into his own poems. It is this
unfortunate passion for the most grovellingly exact imitation, which
produces the sudden and disagreeable transitions from passages in a
noble, elevated style, to passages with no style at all. See, for
example, _The Blind Highland Boy_.
"Poetry," says Wordsworth, "takes its origin from emotion recollected
in tranquillity." The aim of the poet is the truthful imitation of
nature, with the one restriction, that of the necessity of giving
pleasure--not merely the straightforward, direct truth; therefore he
employs the metrical form of composition, which provides the reader
with small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable surprise.
Metre produces its effect by continually arousing and satisfying
curiosity, but in such a simple manner that it does not draw any
separate attention to itself. It acts powerfully but unobservedly upon
the mind, like artificially altered air, or the wine drunk during an
eager discussion. By its steady recurrence it tempers and modifies
the excitement or pain produced by the intelligence communicated;
and by its tendency to divest language of its reality, it throws a
sort of half consciousness of unsubstantial existence over the whole
composition. Except for this, declares Wordsworth, even the best poetry
can in no respect differ from prose. He forgets to ask himself if
there are not numbers of common phrases and expressions which, though
they are perfectly allowable in prose, would produce a most unpleasant
effect in poetry; and forgets, too, to ask if it is not possible that
in every serious poem there may occur, without any artificiality,
sentences of a construction, and imagery of a kind, which would be
impossible in prose.
The only way in which the best poetry corresponds with "the very
language of men," is in its expressions resembling those which some
few of the most highly cultivated would use on the rarest occasions.
In daily converse language wanders unrestrainedly; in public speech it
is restrained by imperative connection and continuity of thought; in
the prose work, the carefully elaborated sentence progresses naturally
through all its twists and turnings; in verse, the form cannot be too
exquisite or too compact. Here the doctrine applies which Théophile
Gautier preached in his splendid poem, _L'Art_:--
"Oui, l'œuvre sort plus belle
D'une forme au travail
Rebelle,
_Vers_, marbre, onyx, émail!
Point de contraintes fausses!
Mais que pour marcher droit
Tu chausses,
Muse, un cothurne étroit!"
But, however much there is to be said against Wordsworth's poetics, or
"prosaics," as they might more correctly be called--against theories
which were at first accepted as synonymous with the "Fair is foul, and
foul is fair" of the witches in Macbeth--they are in the highest degree
interesting to the student of literature to-day as an accurate and
unambiguous expression of the first literary extreme to which English
Naturalism went.
[1] R. S. Mackenzie: _Life of Dickens_, p. 243.
[2] Masson: _Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays_.
[3] Johannes Ewald, a Danish poet.--Transcriber's note.
[4]
Oh! many are the poets that are sown
By nature! men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.
--_Excursion_: Book I.