BYRON AND WORDSWORTH

The present age can hardly be reproached either with an absence of

admirers or with a lack of self-complacency. Even its most fervid

flatterers, however, ever and anon admit that it exhibits a few trifling

defects; and among these is sometimes named a diminution of popular

interest in poetic literature. Some have attributed this decline to one

cause, some to another; but the fact can hardly be disputed. The Heavenly

Muse is suffering a partial eclipse. The gross and material substance of

the earth has somehow got between her and the Soul, that source and centre

of her gentle light; and some enthusiasts aver that with the progress of

Science and the production at will of its precise and steadfast lights,

fitful luminaries of night may henceforth be dispensed with. But spiritual

eclipses, though not to be predicted with the accuracy with which physical

eclipses are foretold, and though unfortunately they endure for longer

periods, are equally transitory; and the nineteenth century was scarcely

original, nor will its successor prove to be correct, in fancying that the

garish and obedient flame of material philosophy will prove a satisfactory

substitute for the precious, if precarious illumination of the Spirit.

Among the causes that have contributed to divert popular affection and

popular sympathy from poetical literature, there are three that deserve to

be specially indicated. The first of these is the multiplication of prose

romances, which, though so much lower in literary value and in artistic

character than poetry, and so much less elevating in their tendency, are

better fitted to stimulate the vulgar imagination, and minister more

freely to the common craving for excitement. The second cause is the

reaction that has settled upon mankind from the fervid hopes inspired by

the propagation of those theories and the propounding of those promises

which the historian associates with the French Revolution. All saner minds

have long since discovered that happiness is to be procured neither for

the individual nor for the community by mere political changes; and the

discovery has been distinctly hostile to literary enthusiasm. Finally,

many poets, and nearly all the critics of poetry, in our time, seem

determined to alienate ordinary human beings from contact with the Muse.

The world is easily persuaded that it is an ignoramus; and the vast

majority of people, after being told, year after year, that what they do

not understand is poetry, and what they do not care one straw about is the

proper theme and the highest expression of song, end by concluding that

poetry has become a mystery beyond their intelligence, a sort of

freemasonry from whose symbols they are jealously excluded. Unable to

appreciate what the critics tell them are the noblest productions of

genius, they modestly infer that between genius and themselves there is no

method of communication; and incapable of reading with pleasure the poetry

they are assured ought to fill them with rapture, they desist from reading

poetry altogether. They have not the self-confidence to choose their own

poets and select their own poetry; and indeed in these days, the only

chance any writer has of being read is that he should first be greatly

talked about. Thus, what between the poets who are talked about by

so-called experts, and thus made notorious, but whom ordinary folks find

unreadable, and the poets, if there be any such, whom ordinary folks would

read with pleasure if they knew of their existence, but of whom they have

scarcely heard, poetry has become "caviare to the general," who content

themselves with the coarser flavour of the novel, and the more easily

digested pabulum of the newspaper.

But if poetry is now comparatively little read, no one can deny that it is

much written about; and many persons would perhaps see in the second of

these facts a reason for doubting the reality of the first. But the

contradiction is only apparent. Poetry is the subject at present of much

prose criticism, prose exposition, and prose controversy; but the

controversialists are largely the poets themselves, or those who aspire to

the title. The subject is treated by them with much earnestness, indeed

with some little heat; and it is easy to perceive that the main object of

most of the disputants is to establish the superiority of the poet whom

the critic himself most admires, and possibly whom he himself most

resembles. The controversy rages around those poets alone who are claimed

by the nineteenth century, and practically, these are five in number;

Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. Each of these has his

votaries, his disciples, his passionate advocates. The public look on, a

little bewildered; for who is to decide when doctors disagree? Few, if

any, of the disputants lay down explicit canons respecting poetry, which

may enable a competent bystander to play the part of umpire even to his

own satisfaction; and he is left, like the controversialists themselves,

to abide by his own personal tastes, and to estimate poets and poetry

according to his individual fancy.

It was therefore with no slight satisfaction one heard that one of our

poets, who is likewise a critic, but who brings to his criticisms

moderation of language and measure of statement, was about to appraise the

English poets who have written in this century, but who have for many

years joined the Immortals. To Mr. Matthew Arnold, if to any one amongst

us, may be applied the passage from Wordsworth, to be found in the

"Supplementary Essay" published in 1815:

Whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which

must necessarily exist before the decisions of a critic can be of

absolute value? For a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a

critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of

society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispassionate

government? Where are we to look for that initiatory composure of

mind which no selfishness can disturb; for a natural sensibility that

has been tutored into correctness, without losing anything of its

quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands

which an author of original imagination shall make upon them,

associated with a judgment that cannot be duped into admiration by

aught that is unworthy of it? Among those, and those only, who, never

having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its

force, have applied to the consideration of the laws of this art the

best power of their understandings.

To Mr. Arnold, if to any, we say, this enumeration of the qualities

indispensable to a trustworthy critic of poetry, may be applied; and if

the conclusions at which he bids us to arrive should not turn out to be

such as we can wholly accept, at least we shall have the satisfaction of

feeling that we dissent from one who has not invited our attention in

vain, and who perhaps, by the avowals he incidentally makes in the course

of his argument, has enabled us to hold with all the more confidence

certain opinions which we will endeavour to establish by independent

reasons of our own.

Here, with sufficient brevity for the present, is the conclusion of Mr.

Arnold on the vexed question of the primacy among English poets, no longer

living, of the last century:

I place Wordsworth's poetry above Byron's, on the whole, although in

some points he was greatly Byron's inferior. But these two,

Wordsworth and Byron, stand, it seems to me, first and pre-eminent in

actual performance, a glorious pair, among the English poets of this

century. Keats had probably, indeed, a more consummate poetic gift

than either of them; but he died having produced too little and being

as yet too immature to rival them. I for my part can never ever think

of equalling with them any other of their contemporaries; either

Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium; or

Shelley, beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his

luminous wings in vain. Wordsworth and Byron stand out by themselves.

When the year 1900 is turned, and our nation comes to recount her

poetic glories in the century which has just then ended, the first

names with her will be these.

We do not propose to traverse the entire field of controversy here lightly

indicated; our purpose being to confine ourselves to a consideration of

Mr. Arnold's particular conclusion, that Wordsworth's poetry should be

placed above Byron's. But before passing to that duty, we may say,

parenthetically, that though we agree with Mr. Arnold that Shelley's

poetry often exhibits a lamentable "want of sound subject-matter," the

claims of the "beautiful and ineffectual angel" are here somewhat

summarily dismissed; and that when Mr. Arnold says further that he "doubts

whether Shelley's delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far

more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time

better, and finally come to stand higher than his poetry," he makes us

lift our eyes in sheer amazement, and somewhat more than doubt whether

this will not prove to be among the utterly falsified prophecies of very

able critics.

Holding the opinion he does concerning Wordsworth and Byron, Mr. Arnold

has published a selection from the works of both, in distinct and separate

volumes, and he believes that he has thereby rendered an equal service to

each. "Alone," he writes, "among our poets of the earlier part of this

century, Byron and Wordsworth not only furnish material enough for a

volume of this kind, but also, it seems to me, they both of them gain

considerably by being thus exhibited." We, on the contrary, submit that if

the comparison is to end here, and is to be confined to the results

produced by Mr. Arnold's method, a more unjust and inadequate method, as

far as Byron is concerned, could not possibly be resorted to. Wordsworth

gains considerably, but Byron loses considerably, to employ Mr. Arnold's

language, by being thus exhibited. No doubt, Mr. Arnold means to be just.

He always means to be just. But in the very description he gives of the

contents of these two volumes on their respective title-pages, does he not

betray a sort of unconscious consciousness that he is dealing with two

very different poets, and with two poets whose works are very different?

If this be not so, how comes it that he calls one volume _"Poems" of

Wordsworth_, and the other _"Poetry" of Byron_? The distinction is a

genuine one. Indeed, it is something more than genuine; it was inevitable,

and Mr. Arnold was obliged to make it, if the title of each volume was to

describe its contents correctly. The best poems of Wordsworth are short,

most of them remarkably short; and therefore, in a volume of selections

from his works, they can without difficulty be presented in their

integrity. The best poems of Byron, like the best poems of AEschylus, of

Virgil, of Dante, of Shakespeare, of Milton, are of considerable length;

and if selections from Byron are to be made, his best poems must be

mutilated for the purpose. Mr. Arnold has mutilated them accordingly.

Thus, while intending to treat Wordsworth and Byron in precisely the same

manner, he has treated them, and by the very conditions of the case could

not help treating them, in an entirely different manner.

That Mr. Arnold has not been altogether insensible to this objection--and,

indeed, with his calm and dispassionate penetration, he was not likely to

be--is apparent not only in the different description he gives of the

contents of the two volumes, on their respective title-pages, but from

certain observations in his prefatory essay upon Byron. When he says that

"there are portions of Byron's poetry which are far higher in worth, and

far more free from fault than others," or that "Byron cannot but be a

gainer by having attention concentrated upon what is vivid, powerful,

effective, in his work, and withdrawn from what is not so," he is, we

would suggest, stating nothing more than a truism, or what is equally true

of every poet. He is only beating the air, and hesitating to close with

the real difficulty with which he feels himself confronted. But when he

proceeds to urge that "Byron has not a great artist's profound and patient

skill in combining an action or in developing a character,--a skill which

we must watch and follow if we are to do justice to it," he shows that he

feels it to be necessary to offer a defence for applying to Byron a

treatment from which Byron may possibly suffer. We confess, with all our

admiration for Mr. Arnold--and it is as deep as it is sincere--we have

never been able to resist the suspicion that he is _tant soit peu_ a

sophist; and surely it is sophistry, in the course of an attempt to show

that Byron and Wordsworth each equally gain by the "selection" method of

treatment, to urge, with that air of tranquil and well-bred triumph of

which Mr. Arnold is so consummate a master, that "to take passages from

work produced as Byron's was, is a very different thing from taking

passages out of the _Oedipus_ or the _Tempest_ and deprives the poetry

far less of its advantage"? For the question is not whether Sophocles,

Shakespeare, and Byron may be treated ostensibly in the same manner by an

editor of selections, without injustice being done to any of them, but

whether Wordsworth and Byron can. That is the question; and it is not

answered, but avoided, by altering the terms of the proposition.

What, therefore, really remains of this plea of Mr. Arnold's, this excuse

for mutilating Byron's poems and presenting them in fragments, is the

allegation that Byron is not, _above and before all things_, a great,

patient, and systematic artist. That much may be granted; and no competent

critic would deny it. But more cannot be granted than is strictly true;

and candour equally demands that it should be admitted that though Byron

was not long-suffering and far-reaching enough in the conception of his

poems, nor careful and self-critical enough in their execution, he

possessed at least enough of the instinct and the scope of the artist to

produce works that cohere with themselves, and that have a unity of design

sufficiently definite to mark it as something distinct from the mere

succession of executed detail. Will Mr. Arnold seriously pretend that a

more "vivid, powerful, and effective" impression is not created upon the

mind by a perusal of the whole of _Manfred_, than by a perusal of portions

of it, or of one or two dissociated Acts? Mr. Arnold turns Byron's own

modest confessions against himself, and lays stress upon the avowal that

the _Giaour_ is "a string of passages." But if any one were, after due

reflection, to maintain, that more justice is done to Byron by reading

some of its passages than by reading the whole of the poem, we confess we

should be obliged to entertain some doubt as to his own instincts as an

artist. For, where men like Byron are concerned, it is peculiarly true

that the divinity of the Muse shapes their ends, rough-hew these how they

may. Of every one of Byron's tales--the _Siege of Corinth_, _The Bride of

Abydos_, _Parisina_--this is equally true. It has more than once been

observed that _Childe Harold_ suffers from the fact that a period of eight

years elapsed between the composition of the first and second cantos, and

the composition of the third and fourth; and as far as style is concerned,

the contrast is very striking, two of the cantos being for the most part

almost as feeble, and two of them as forcible, as anything deserving the

name of poetry well can be. Nevertheless, there would be no difficulty in

showing, and we think no reader of poetry endowed with a fair amount of

artistic sense would require to be shown, that a certain oneness of

purpose and unity of drift presides over and accompanies the entire poem,

in a word that it is substantially homogeneous; and if any one, after

reading through the third and fourth cantos at a stretch, as we recently

did, were to tell us that he thought a few extracts from each give an

adequate conception of the two, and that reading portions is in effect

equivalent to reading the whole, we should have reached that limit of

controversy which is expressed by a silence that is not assent. It is true

that Mr. Arnold has been fairly lavish in his extracts from _Childe

Harold_; yet out of the 300 stanzas which compose the third and fourth

cantos, his selection contains only 114, or little more than a third. But

it is not only by the curtailment of the quantity, but by the treatment

applied to what is selected, that injury is done to _Childe Harold_. The

passages quoted are scattered at intervals through the volume, so that all

consecutiveness and coherence are lost. The majestic march of the poem is

utterly broken. The subtle argument that lurks in the order of every

poem--whether it be the _lucidus ordo_ of a speech, or an order less

obvious and patent--is completely destroyed. The strain neither begins nor

ends, neither rises nor falls, neither pauses nor progresses. The statue

is shivered to pieces, and we are offered a collection of chips, mixed up

with fragments from other marbles that have been treated with equal

ruthlessness. Here there is a hand, here a portion of a foot, here a

section of the features, here a bit of the torso. They still are

magnificent, and full of suggestiveness. But are they equal and equivalent

to the entire statue? Are they as good as the whole of the original work?

With surprising paradox Mr. Arnold assures us they are considerably

better.

This singular conclusion is attained, it seems to us, by the excessive

assertion, or at least by the exaggerated application, of a theory in

which there is, unquestionably, a solid element of truth. We have said

that Byron is not an austere and consistent artist. But that is not to

affirm that he is not an artist at all; whereas, in thus treating his

productions fragmentarily, Mr. Arnold acts as though such an assertion

were true. Byron, says Mr. Arnold, is not "architectural." But is he not?

There is architecture, and architecture; the severe and systematic

architecture of the Greeks, and the more free, irregular, unmethodical

architecture which we know as Gothic. In the conception, and what in

technical parlance is called the composition, of his works, Byron is

assuredly no Greek. The exquisite oneness of design characteristic of

Athenian genius he certainly did not borrow from the land and the race no

one has so splendidly extolled. But if we turn to some of the noblest

productions of Gothic architecture, what do we find? We find Cathedrals of

unquestioned beauty and of universal fame, produced, it would

superficially seem, almost haphazard; without design, without plan, even

without architect. In our own land we may see Minsters that, begun in the

eleventh, were not finished till the fifteenth century. Like _Childe

Harold_, they bear the evident marks of different ages, and of different

styles; and like _Don Juan_, they show that they were commenced without

their parent knowing where or how they were to end. Nay, like it again,

some of them remain unfinished to this day. But will any one affirm that

their integrity, as they stand, is nothing to them, and nothing to us?

Because no great master-conception presided over their origin and their

execution, will no injury be done to them by taking them to pieces, and

saying, "Here is a lovely apse; here you see a beautiful flying buttress;

here contemplate an exquisite rood-screen; here you have an admirable bit

of the choir, and there a glorious specimen of the roof"?

Nor can it be urged that this illustration does violence to the process

Mr. Arnold has adopted. On the contrary, the analogy is not strong enough;

for _Manfred_, _The Corsair_, _Cain_, _Childe Harold_ itself, were

conceived and executed, not less, but far more homogeneously, than the

edifices with which we have compared them, and if it would be unjust and

inadequate to treat Gothic cathedrals after this fashion, it is still more

unjust and inadequate to treat Byron's poems after this fashion. More

glaring still becomes the injustice, and more utter the inadequacy, when

we remember in whose company he is so treated. Mr. Arnold does not break

Wordsworth's poems to pieces and present us with the fragments; for there

is no necessity to do so. The long ones Mr. Arnold cheerfully throws over,

confessing that _The Excursion_ "can never be a satisfactory work to the

disinterested lover of poetry," and even that Jeffrey was not wrong when

he said of it, "This will never do." To adhere to our metaphor, it is a

large comfortless Meeting-house; and so is the _Recluse_. The best of

Wordsworth's poems, as we have said, and as Mr. Arnold says, are his short

ones. There are charming English cottages, or, if it be preferred--for we

have no intention of decrying them, we admire them vastly--exquisite

little wayside chapels; and they fit conveniently into the space, without

being tampered with, which Mr. Arnold has provided for them. But the best

of Byron's poems are the long ones; are vast Gothic edifices that soar

high into the air and cover a vast amount of ground, and therefore cannot

be compressed into the same compass. We have seen how Mr. Arnold gets over

the difficulty. He pulls them down, places bits and sections of them side

by side with the untouched cottages and still complete oratories of

Wordsworth, and asks us to compare the two. We are far from saying that,

even under these conditions, the comparison ends to Byron's disadvantage.

But it surely must be evident to every one that the conditions are not

equal, and therefore, however fair were the intentions of the editor, that

they are not really just. We should be sorry if any one supposed we

consider Mr. Swinburne as sound a critic as Mr. Arnold. But, upon this

particular question, Mr. Swinburne has propounded a conclusion against

which, we submit, Mr. Arnold contends in vain. "The greatest of Byron's

works was his whole work taken together." Nothing could be more terse or

more true; and if Mr. Swinburne would be content always to form his

judgments thus calmly and comprehensively, and to express them with this

brevity and directness, he would soon come to exercise an authority which

is at present refused by many to his literary verdicts.

But though, if the comparison instituted between Byron and Wordsworth by

Mr. Arnold were to be confined within the conditions he has imposed on

both alike, great injustice would be done to Byron, it may well be doubted

if the plan adopted by Mr. Arnold will really tend to Byron's

disadvantage. On the contrary we suspect that, with the best will in the

world to do all he can for Wordsworth, Mr. Arnold has done him rather an

ill turn. For the whole, or anything approaching to the whole, of the best

of Byron, is not to be found in the volume of selections edited by Mr.

Arnold; and everybody will feel that Byron is a far greater poet than he

could possibly be made to appear by any such method. But all the best

poetry of Wordsworth is in the volume Mr. Arnold dedicates to him; and we

entertain little doubt that there is no dispassionate critic who would not

be obliged to allow that a considerable portion, indeed we fear the

greater portion of it, is not poetry at all. The process Mr. Arnold has

applied to Wordsworth, will have to be applied over again, and with

greater rigour. He has rejected as "not satisfactory work to the

disinterested lover of poetry," an immense quantity of what Wordsworth

conceived to be such. Another editor will have to reject a considerable

proportion of what Mr. Arnold has too indulgently included. His selection

will have to be selected from afresh; and thus, with doubtful

friendliness, he has pointed and prepared the way for some entirely

dispassionate critic who will leave of Wordsworth only what, to "the

disinterested lover of poetry," is worth leaving; and this unfortunately,

though of a high and delightful quality, will prove to be comparatively

little. In a word, to do Byron anything like justice, we require several

volumes of the size of that Mr. Arnold devotes to him; we require, in

fact, most of what he wrote. To do Wordsworth justice, we require a volume

less than half the size of what Mr. Arnold gives us; we require, in fact,

to suppress at least three-fourths of what he wrote.

But, again, we can raise no question, and propound no conclusion which Mr.

Arnold, with his penetrating sense and acute susceptibility, has not

himself more or less discerned. After observing, "we must be on our guard

against Wordsworthians," he thus writes, in a vein of delicate humour:

I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians: and if we are to get

Wordsworth recognised by the public and by the world, we must

recommend him not in the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of

disinterested lovers of poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I

can read with pleasure and edification _Peter Bell_, and the whole

series of _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, and the addresses to Mr.

Wilkinson's spade, and even the _Thanksgiving Ode_; everything of

Wordsworth, I think, except _Vaudracour and Julia_. It is not for

nothing that one has been brought up in the veneration of a man so

truly worthy of homage; that one has seen and heard him, lived in his

neighbourhood, and been familiar with his country.

Alas! even the best of us are mortal; and we accept this graceful passage

as Mr. Arnold's confession that he, too, is a Wordsworthian against whom

we must be on our guard. An extremist of a school he could not now be; but

"it is not for nothing," as he says, that he was trained in it. "Once a

priest," says an Italian proverb, "always a priest"; and, we fear, once a

Wordsworthian, always a Wordsworthian. It is no reproach; but "we must be

on our guard." For our part, we are tolerably familiar with Wordsworth's

country, but, beyond that, we are under no such spell as Mr. Arnold

confesses to above. We entertain profound veneration and homage for

Wordsworth, but it is the result, not so much of early teaching--the most

difficult of all lessons to unlearn--as of independent admiration and

sympathy inspired in riper years. We, too, can read _Peter Bell_ and the

_Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, but with more edification than pleasure; and we

have read, afresh, every word of what Mr. Arnold has included in his

_Poems of Wordsworth_, only to reach the conclusion we have already

stated, that from many, only too many of them, the spirit, the essence,

the indefinable something, of poetry is absent.

We should be sorry to be thought guilty of dogmatism, and there is always

peril in generalisations. Let us therefore descend to particulars, as far

as space will permit, and analyse the contents of Mr. Arnold's _Poems of

Wordsworth_. The volume consists of 317 pages; of which 20 are dedicated

to "Poems of Ballad Form," 92 to "Narrative Poems," 56 to "Lyrical Poems,"

34 to "Poems akin to the Antique and Odes," 32 to "Sonnets," and 83 to

"Reflective and Elegiac Poems."

In the first division, _We are Seven_, _Lucy Gray_, and _The Reverie of

Poor Susan_, are the only poems that can be pronounced wholly

satisfactory, and that give real pleasure. _Anecdote for Fathers_ and

_Alice Fell_ would be just as well away, for they would raise the

reputation of no poet, save it be with those against whom "we must be on

our guard." The poems, _The Childless Father_, _Power of Music_, and

_Star-Gazers_, are redeemed only by their moral; and perhaps of _Power of

Music_, even this cannot be said.

An Orpheus! an Orpheus!--yes, Faith may grow bold,

And take to herself all the wonders of old;--

Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same

In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.

His station is there;--and he works on the crowd,

He sways them with harmony merry and loud;

He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim--

Was aught ever heard like his Fiddle and him?

What an eager assembly! what an empire is this!

The weary have life, and the hungry have bliss;

The mourner is cheered, and the anxious have rest;

And the guilt-burthened soul is no longer opprest.

Then follow eight stanzas, in which the baker, the apprentice, the

newsman, the lamplighter, the porter, the lass with her barrow, the

cripple, the mother, and others, are described as stopping to listen, in

language similar to that of the three stanzas we have quoted; the only

slight improvement upon it being such lines as "She sees the Musician,

'tis all that she sees," until we reach the conclusion:

Now, coaches and chariots! roar on like a stream;

Here are twenty souls happy as souls in a dream:

They are deaf to your murmurs, they care not for you,

Nor what ye are flying, nor what ye pursue.

The more ardent admirers of Wordsworth are in the habit of assuming that

those persons who approach their favourite poet with a more hesitating

homage, fail to appreciate the beauty of simplicity, and fancy that a

composition is not poetical because it lacks what is called elevation of

language and the "grand style." We can assure them, in all sincerity, that

far from that being the basis of our inability to admire all that they

admire, we admire Wordsworth most, and we admire him immensely, when he is

as simple as it is possible to be. We have just cited a poem, which we

scarcely think deserves that name. But, side by side with it, in Mr.

Arnold's volume, is a much shorter composition, on precisely the same

theme, which is, if possible, still more simple in treatment, but which is

true poetry, if true poetry was ever written. It is called _The Reverie of

Poor Susan_:

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,

Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees

A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,

And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,

Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;

And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,

The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,

The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:

The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,

And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.

After reading _The Reverie of Poor Susan_, we may pay Wordsworth's Muse

the compliment that was paid by the Latin poet to the woman who was

_simplex munditiis_. Its neat simplicity is in great measure the secret of

its success; but it is not mean in its simplicity. Neither, as in the

other poems we have contrasted with it, have we to wait till the end of

the poem for the moral and the meaning. The moral is interwoven and

interfused with it, and every line breathes the soul and essence of the

entire composition. But nearly all these "Poems of Ballad Form" are

didactic; and does not Mr. Arnold tell us, in his preface, "Some kinds of

poetry are in themselves lower kinds than others; the ballad kind is a

lower kind; the didactic kind, still more, is a lower kind"? Of the twenty

pages of these poems of lower kind, we are strongly disposed to think that

the "disinterested lover of poetry" would discard twelve, and retain only

eight, and that Wordsworth, to use Mr. Arnold's phrase, would "stand

higher" if this were done.

But even this proportion between retention and rejection cannot well be

maintained by the disinterested lover of poetry as he advances through the

volume. The "Narrative Poems" occupy nearly a third of it, and in this

section the amount of real poetry is meagre indeed. We had no conception

how many short poems Wordsworth had written, unredeemed by "the gleam, the

light that never was, on sea or land," till we read this collection

consecutively; and we read it in the open air, in a beautiful country, on

the loveliest day of a lovely May. But nothing could possibly attune the

heart of the disinterested lover of poetry to such verses as these:

When Ruth was left half desolate,

Her father took another mate;

And Ruth, not seven years old,

A slighted child, at her own will

Went wandering over dale and hill,

In thoughtless freedom, bold.

There came a Youth from Georgia's shore--

A military casque he wore,

With splendid feathers drest;

He brought them from the Cherokees;

The feathers nodded in the breeze,

And made a gallant crest.

"Beloved Ruth!" No more he said.

The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed

A solitary tear:

She thought again--and did agree

With him to sail across the sea,

And drive the flying deer.

"And now, as fitting is and right,

We in the Church our faith will plight,

A husband and a wife."

Even so they did; and I may say

That to sweet Ruth that happy day

Was more than human life.

Not only is it impossible, we think, for the disinterested lover of poetry

to read this either with pleasure or with edification, but it is not easy

for him to read it without an ever-broadening smile. As a rule, the verse

to be met with in our less fastidious Magazines is not of a very high

order. But we doubt if the editor of any one of them would consent to

insert the foregoing stanzas, or those that follow, with their, "But as

you have before been told," "Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, They

for the voyage were prepared," "God help thee, Ruth! Such pains she had,

That she in half a year was mad," and such like specimens of unartistic

and naive childishness. Surely, if there be any one who thinks this

poetry, it must be Mr. Arnold's friend, the British Philistine? If

Murdstone and Quinion could be converted and ever took to reading poetry,

would not this be the sort of verse that would delight them? And would

they not do so by reason of that "stunted sense of beauty," and that

"defective type" of intellect with which Mr. Arnold justly reproaches the

English middle-class?

Did these poems stand alone, in their prosaic puerility, we might be

surprised that Mr. Arnold had reproduced them; but we should have been

content to conclude that, like Homer, both poet and editor had been

nodding. But we turn page after page of these "Narrative Poems" to be

astonished by what we encounter. The next poem to _Ruth_ is _Simon Lee:

The Old Huntsman, with an Incident in which he was Concerned_:

Few months of life has he in store,

As he to you will tell,

For still, the more he works, the more

Do his weak ankles swell.

My gentle Reader, I perceive

How patiently you've waited,

And now I fear that you'll expect

Some tale will be related.

O Reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle Reader! you would find

A tale in everything.

What more I have to say is short,

And you must kindly take it:

It is no tale; but, should you _think_,

Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

Simon is grubbing the stump of a tree, but was unequal to the task. The

poet takes the mattock from his hand, and with a blow severs the root, "At

which the poor Old Man so long, And vainly had endeavoured." Thankful

tears come into his eyes, whereupon the poet remarks:

I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds

With coldness still returning;

Alas! the gratitude of men

Hath oftener left me mourning.

The sentiment is nice and pretty, but is it poetry, or, even if it were,

could it make poetry of the doggerel--for surely there really is no other

name for it--that precedes it? And do Wordsworthians against whom Mr.

Arnold tells us we ought to be on our guard, or Wordsworthians who fancy

that we need not be on our guard against _them_, suppose that moralising

correctly and piously in verse about every "incident" in which somebody

happens to be "concerned," renders the narrative a "tale,"--much more,

makes poetry of it? We are far from saying that Wordsworth might not, in a

happier mood, have written poetry upon this particular incident. But we do

say, with some confidence, that he has unfortunately not done so; that the

incident, narrated in the manner in which he has narrated it, cannot of

itself be accepted as poetry--which, as Mr. Arnold well knows, is the

extreme Wordsworthian theory, as advocated by Wordsworth himself in pages

upon pages of controversial prose; and that we are greatly astonished Mr.

Arnold should indirectly lend it countenance, by reprinting and stamping

with his precious approval, such infelicitous triviality as the above. We

cannot shrink from saying this, through an unworthy dread lest we should

be confounded with "the tenth-rate critics and compilers to whom it is

still permissible to speak of Wordsworth's poetry, not only with

ignorance, but with impertinence." Mr. Arnold has himself shown that he

does not hesitate to speak in pretty strong terms of those portions of

Wordsworth's verse which he does not regard as poetry. He describes them

as "abstract verbiage"; he acknowledges that they are so inferior, it

seems wonderful how Wordsworth should have produced them; and in a passage

delightfully humorous he imagines a long passage of Wordsworth being

declaimed at a Social Science Congress to an admiring audience of men with

bald heads and women in spectacles, "and in the soul of any poor child of

nature who may have wandered in thither, an unutterable sense of

lamentation, mourning, and woe."

All that we ask, therefore, is to be allowed the same amount of liberty

which Mr. Arnold himself has exercised, and to be permitted to do what he

has done. We, too, would fain disengage what is valuable in Wordsworth's

poetry from what is worthless. We, too, would fain "exhibit his best work,

and clear away obstructions from around it." But we contend, and we

willingly leave the decision to disinterested lovers of poetry, that such

poems as _Ruth_ and _Simon Lee_ are not only not Wordsworth's best work,

but not good work at all; on the contrary are part of the obstruction from

which it should be cleared.

The next two poems in the "Narrative" section refer to the fidelity of

dogs, and a single stanza will suffice to show that they are of much the

same calibre as the two that precede them:

But hear a wonder for whose sake

This lamentable tale I tell!

A lasting monument of words

This wonder merits well.

The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,

Repeating the same timid cry,

This Dog, had been through three months' space

A dweller in that savage place.

Next in order comes _Hart-Leap Well_, which consists of two parts. In the

first we come across such lines and phrases as "Joy sparkled in the

prancing courser's eyes," "A rout that made the echoes roar," "Soon did

the Knight perform what he had said, And far and wide thereof the fame did

ring," "But there is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add

another tale," which are simply a distress to the disinterested reader of

poetry. In the second part, the poet warms up, and ends with a passage

which is very beautiful:

Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;

Small difference lies between thy creed and mine:

This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;

His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

The Being, that is in the clouds and air,

That is in the green leaves among the groves,

Maintains a deep and reverential care

For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

The Pleasure-house is dust:--behind, before,

This is no common waste, no common gloom;

But Nature, in due course of time, once more

Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay,

That what we are, and have been, may be known;

But, at the coming of the milder day,

These monuments shall all be overgrown!

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals;

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

Of course, this is poetry, and very good poetry; and it is, justly, one of

the favourite passages of ardent admirers of Wordsworth. But we can

scarcely refrain from saying that, good as it is, there exists something

of precisely the same kind, and, as it happens, in precisely the same

metre, which is considerably better. Surely, no one will have any

difficulty in naming it. It is Gray's famous _Elegy_. Yet we remember how

indignant the "Wordsworthians against whom we ought to be on our guard"

were with the _Quarterly Review_, because there appeared in it a paper in

which Wordsworth and Gray were compared. To mention them in the same

breath was sacrilege! We do not wish to affirm that the disinterested

lover of poetry believes Gray ever to have scaled the heights where

Wordsworth's wing sometimes floats almost without effort. But it cannot be

uninteresting to mark that, in what we may call the middle notes,

Wordsworth is distinctly inferior to Gray, though ever and anon his voice

gets entirely beyond Gray's compass.

It would be impossible, with any regard for space, to quote from, or even

to name, every poem reproduced by Mr. Arnold, which in our opinion would

have been better suppressed. But if we seem to have established our

contention so far, we think the reader may rely upon it that he would more

or less concur in what else might be said on this score. _The Force of

Prayer_, _The Affliction of Margaret_, _The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian

Woman_, are little if any less trivial than the poems already condemned;

while in _The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_, we read six pages

equally poor and unpoetical, suddenly to come upon such a quatrain as the

following:

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;

His daily teachers had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

The last two lines it would be impossible to praise too highly. Only the

silence of profound reverence can do them justice. They are touches like

these, touches like "the harvest of a quiet eye," that give to Wordsworth

his holy predominance, and whatever predominance, after fair examination,

must be adjudged him. But how few they are! Perhaps it is in the nature of

things that they should be so. But being so few and far between, they

cannot fill up the blank that intervenes. They are indeed "Angels'

visits." But even poetry has to do mainly with human guests, and a poet

must be judged, as Mr. Arnold truly affirms, by "the ample body of

powerful work" he leaves behind. We cannot assume that much of

Wordsworth's poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is

unutterably beautiful. The utmost we can do is to grant, concerning him,

what he himself said so finely of a young girl:

If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,

And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

It is possible that like the "dear child, dear girl," he lay in Abraham's

bosom "all the year," but he communicates the fact, he impresses us with

the fact, but seldom. As a rule, he seems to be outside the Temple

altogether. Hence these magnificent bursts of poetical depth and

sublimity, which, be it said, are peculiar to Wordsworth, are mere short

passages, and there are not many of them. But if they suffice, after a

complete survey of the works of both poets, to place Wordsworth above

Byron, we shall be obliged to conclude that they suffice to place him

above every poet that ever lived. That such a theory of poetry, such a

canon of criticism is untenable, unless we are to cast every hitherto

accepted theory of poetry and every former canon of criticism to the

winds, we trust, in due course, to be able to establish.

We are aware that _The Brothers_ is a favourite composition with

thoroughgoing Wordsworthians. But as we have been told to be on our guard

against them, we need not hesitate to say that it seems to us to consist

of very ordinary verse, and the piece itself to be devoid of any real

poetical temperament, though it fills sixteen pages in Mr. Arnold's

collection. Sixteen more are occupied by _Margaret_, upon which we are

unable to pronounce a different or a modified verdict. Both abound in such

passages as the following:

He left his house: two wretched days had past,

And on the third, as wistfully she raised

Her head from off her pillow, to look forth,

Like one in trouble, for returning light,

Within her chamber-casement she espied

A folded paper, lying as if placed

To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly

She opened--found no writing, but beheld

Pieces of money carefully enclosed,

Silver and gold. "I shuddered at the sight,"

Said Margaret, "for I knew it was his hand

Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended,

That long and anxious day! I learned from one

Sent hither by my husband to impart

The heavy news,--that he had joined a Troop

Of soldiers, going to a distant land.

He left me thus--he could not gather heart

To take a farewell of me; for he feared

That I should follow with my Babes, and sink

Beneath the misery of that wandering life."

If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has

hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the

rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows

how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose.

What, for instance, is this?--

At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind

assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to

which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten

times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it

to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a

prouder heart than Luke's. When Isabel had to her house returned, the

old man said, "He shall depart to-morrow." To this word the housewife

answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he

should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent,

and Michael was at ease.

Is this prose or verse? We have printed it as prose. Wordsworth wrote it

as verse, and Mr. Arnold has reproduced it as poetry. Had all Wordsworth's

compositions been of this calibre, and a painfully large number of them

are, well might John Stuart Mill affirm that any man of good abilities

might become as good a poet as Wordsworth by giving his mind to it, and we

will add that a man of good abilities could hardly employ them worse. Yet

this passage, and fourteen pages of verse not one whit better than it, are

to be met with in _Michael_, one of the narrative poems Mr. Arnold, with

special emphasis, begs us to admire. "The right sort of verse," he says,

"to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most

characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from _Michael_:

And never lifted up a single stone.

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style,

strictly so called; yet it is expressive of the highest and most

expressive kind." Of course, in order to properly appreciate it, we must

know the context, which fortunately is easily compressed. Michael and his

son Luke were to build a sheepfold; but, as told in the passage we have

printed, Luke is sent to a kinsman, who will advance him in life. Before

he goes, Michael takes him to lay the first stone of the sheepfold. The

lad then leaves home, falls into dissolute courses, and at last hides

himself beyond the seas. After that, it is narrated of Michael:

And to that hollow dell from time to time

Did he repair, to build the Fold of which

His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet

The pity which was then in every heart

For the Old Man--and 'tis believed by all

That many and many a day he thither went,

And never lifted up a single stone.

We have asked several disinterested lovers of poetry, some of them ardent

admirers of Wordsworth, what they think of this; and we are bound to say

that most of them failed to see anything in it whatsoever. That is not our

case. We feel the force of the situation, and the apt simplicity of the

concluding line. Yet repeat it, dwell on it, and surrender ourselves to it

as we will, we fail to persuade ourselves that it merits the lofty eulogy

pronounced on it by Mr. Arnold. It is with hesitation that we presume, on

such a point, and where the issue is so direct, to place our opinion in

seeming competition with his; but we can only leave the decision to the

_communis sensus_ of disinterested lovers of poetry. But nothing--not even

Mr. Arnold's authority--could satisfy us that this line suffices to lend

the wings of poetry to fourteen closely printed pages of such pedestrian

verse as that of which _Michael_ for the most part consists.

The only other poem in the "Narrative" section of the volume is _The

Leech-Gatherer_; and it, besides containing many lines of admirable

poetry, is itself a coherently beautiful poem. But when, resuming our

analysis, we enquire how much poetry there is in the 112 pages, or in more

than the third portion of the volume we have as yet examined, what do we

find? Exactly 20, and only 20, which we honestly believe the disinterested

lover of poetry, the critic to whom Mr. Arnold makes appeal, would

recognise as strictly deserving that description. We can seriously assert

that this is the amount we should save from the wreck, if we were editing

a selection from Wordsworth, were disengaging his good work from his bad,

and were seeking to obtain for him readers who care nothing whatever about

him personally, and who only wish ever and anon to steep themselves in the

atmosphere of native and sterling poetry. We are well aware that, from

another and a more extended point of view, Wordsworth never wrote a line,

in verse or in prose, which is not worth preserving, and worth reading.

But that is not at present the question. We are dealing with the critical

contention of a great and influential critic, that "what strikes me with

admiration, what establishes in my opinion Wordsworth's superiority"--to

Byron, be it understood, and to every English poet since Milton--"is the

great and ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even after all

his inferior work has been cleared away." This it is which renders it

necessary to clear away the inferior work, in order that we may see if the

body of "powerful" work that remains be really "ample" or not.

The "Lyrical Poems" contain the best, the most characteristic, and the

most valuable of the compositions of Wordsworth. For our part, we should

have excluded _To a Sky-Lark_, at page 126--not the beautiful one with the

same title at page 142--_Stray Pleasures_, the two poems _At the Grave of

Burns_, _Yarrow Visited_, _Yarrow Revisited_, in spite of their vogue with

Wordsworthians _quand meme_, _To May_, and _The Primrose of the Rock_.

There would then be left 33 pages containing the best poems _of their

kind_ anywhere to be found, and of inestimable value to the disinterested

lover of poetry. The fervid lover of poetry knows them by heart, and

carries them with him through life. Is it necessary to give their names?

_She was a Phantom of Delight_, _The Solitary Reaper_, _Three Years She

Grew_, _To the Cuckoo_, _I Wandered lonely as a Cloud_--these, and their

companions, to be found about the middle of Mr. Arnold's volume, are among

the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of

mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts

and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a

peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this

literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for

their authors by _Childe Harold_ or _Hamlet_. But to conclude that

Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would

be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. It would be to

imitate the filial and uxorious fondness of the late Mr. Carlyle, who

gravely tells us that his father had a larger intellect than Burns, and

that his amiable, long-suffering wife wrote letters of greater value and

insight than the works of George Sand and George Eliot, and "all the pack

of scribbling women from the beginning of time." To love Wordsworth is

pardonable; nay, it is inevitable to those who are intimate with his

tenderest work. But the critic must disengage his judgment from his

affections, if he is not to mislead the persons he aspires to instruct,

and to injure the art of whose dignity he is bound to be jealous.

Briefly, then, and pursuing to the end the "disinterested-lover-of-poetry"

method recommended to us by Mr. Arnold, and of which we think we have

already given illustrations to enable any one to decide for himself

whether we pursue it with equity and candour, we reach the conclusion

that, of the 317 pages composing Mr. Arnold's collection, only 103, on a

liberal estimate, contain what is worth preserving as poetry; or at least,

if there be any dispute as to whether it is poetry, there can be none,

outside the specially Wordsworthian circle, as to its being very inferior

poetry indeed, and in no degree calculated to confer, extend, or uphold

any man's reputation as a poet. That it is admirable in sentiment and

laudable in moral purpose, may at once be granted. But the purest of

sentiments and the loftiest of purposes do not constitute poetry, even

when apparelled in verse. Indeed we may say of them what Mr. Arnold

himself says of those portions of Wordsworth's writings which he discards,

that they are "doctrine such as we hear in church, religious and

philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of

such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet's excellence.

But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, more of

the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth we require from a

poet."

It may possibly seem an ungracious part to dwell upon the inferior

portions of Wordsworth work, and to play the _role_ of Devil's Advocate in

the case of one who is assured beforehand of the honours of canonisation.

But it should be remembered that this invidious task has been imposed upon

us by Mr. Arnold, who has asserted, and challenged contradiction to the

assertion, that in Wordsworth is to be found "an ampler body of powerful

work," which constitutes his superiority over every English poet since

Milton. It is he who has rendered it necessary, in justice to other poets,

to enquire with accuracy, what _is_ the amount of powerful work to be

found in Wordsworth; and this cannot be done without careful and judicial

scrutiny. Our object is the same as Mr. Arnold's; not to decry Wordsworth,

but to ascertain his proper place in relation to other poets. If we seem

to have spoken of him harshly, then so must Mr. Arnold; the only

difference between us being that he thinks a certain proportion of

Wordsworth's verse poor stuff, while we view a yet larger portion of it in

that light. Nor is it the example of Mr. Arnold alone that can be cited in

exoneration of perfect outspokenness. M. Scherer is a distinguished French

critic, whom Mr. Arnold quotes, and M. Scherer has in turn introduced Mr.

Arnold's _Selections_ from Wordsworth to the French public in the pages of

the _Temps_. He is a warm admirer of Wordsworth, and, as Mr. Arnold tells

us, an excessive depreciator of Byron. From him, therefore, we may, with

all the less scruple, cite the following avowals:

The simplicity of Wordsworth's subjects and manner too often

degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into

poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present

of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said

to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds,

but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a

person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our

sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so

insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking

them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of

"the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever

with him as he paces along."

The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of

his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every

object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching

vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening

to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a

hymn of Watts.

The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the

prosaic, often lapses into it altogether.

This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to

say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude

that M. Scherer would reject at least all that we have rejected? But, in

any case, that there is substantial agreement between us and him, so far,

is evident.

What, then, is the "ample body of powerful work" that is left of

Wordsworth after the eliminating process has been applied to it by the

disinterested lover of poetry? Between three and four thousand lines;

rather more than the amount of matter in the third and fourth cantos of

_Childe Harold_, rather less than the amount of matter in _Hamlet_. The

quantity therefore, the "body" of work left, is not very large. Still we

should not contest that it was "ample" enough to establish the superiority

of Wordsworth over Byron, if it happened to be sufficiently "powerful" for

the purpose. Though quantity must count for something, even in the

comparison of poet with poet, since quantity implies copiousness, and

usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the

difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration

of quantity altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be

sufficiently great. If, for example, the four thousand lines, or

thereabouts, of poetry Wordsworth has written, had been embodied, say, in

a _Hamlet_, then work so powerful would have been ample to establish his

superiority not only over every English poet since Milton, but over every

poet since the one who has left us, so to speak, several _Hamlets_.

For what is it that renders _Hamlet_ so great and so powerful? Is it

single lines of beautiful poetry? Is it detached passages of profound and

elevated thought presented in poetic guise? These go for much, more

especially when we consider them in connection with that of which they are

the drapery. But what would they be, and what should we think of them,

detached from the conception of the drama itself, without the plot,

action, and progress of the piece, without the invention and unfolding of

its characters, without its varied and forcible situations, without its

wit, its irony, its humour? What should we think of _Hamlet_ if divested

of the panorama of moving human passions, of its merciless tragedy, and,

finally, of its utter absence of moral so complete, that moralists have

been for a hundred years wrangling what the moral is? These are the

qualities, and these alone, which make great poetry and great poets.

What has Wordsworth of all these? The answer, if candid and disinterested,

must be, Absolutely nothing. He has written no epic, no drama, no poem of

any kind in which so much as an attempt is made to deal with the clashing

of the various passions that "stir this mortal frame." Of Action he is

utterly devoid. Of Invention, he seems absolutely unconscious. He has no

wit; he has no humour. He has conceived no character, he has portrayed no

character. If he can be said to deal with situations at all, they are of

the simplest and most elementary kind, and he does not in any sense create

them. He finds them at his door. No one blames him for making use of them,

where he makes use of them well; but this is a very different thing from

the invention shown in _Macbeth_ or _The Tempest_, or even in _Cain_, in

_Manfred_, and in _The Siege of Corinth_. Sardanapalus is not a Lear, nor

is Myrra a Cordelia. But, as exhibitions and portraitures of human

character and human passion in poetry they are as much beyond _Lucy Gray_,

or _Michael_, or the little Child in _We are Seven_, as Lear and Cordelia

are beyond them in turn.

Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer:

We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human

heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the

passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having

been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society

which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public

affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of

thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of

hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has

discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has

nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of

those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fifty years ago.

Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now

bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of

those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like

Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true

understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed

upon Nature and much analysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we

dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning

and speculative element. Even the title of thinker only half becomes

him. He is a contemplative.

It is true that, at the end of his review of Wordsworth, and without any

previous admonition that he is going to do so, M. Scherer says, in one

brief sentence, "Wordsworth seems to me to come after Milton, notably

below him in my opinion, but withal the first after him"; thus endorsing

the judgment of Mr. Arnold. But, unlike Mr. Arnold, he makes no attempt to

establish or justify this view, but throws it out, as an _obiter dictum_,

after writing a long essay, every argument and every phrase of which tend

towards a diametrically opposite conclusion. So thoroughly is this the

case, that we can honestly say we agree with every word in his essay, with

the exception of the one brief sentence we have just cited.

But in the longer and more detailed passage quoted above, is not

everything conceded for which we are contending? According to M. Scherer,

Wordsworth has knowledge neither of the human heart nor of the interior

drama of the passions. He has no broad views of history and society. He is

a stranger to love, hatred, ambition, and the disquietudes they cause, as

well as to the disquietudes caused by deep thought; and not having passed

through these, he has necessarily not "come out upon the other side," and

is equally a stranger to the tranquillity of complete knowledge and

complete experience. He is not a philosopher; he is hardly a thinker. He

is a contemplative solitary, who has consorted much with woods, lakes, and

mountains, and has dwelt much upon the sensations they excite in himself.

Verily, this is a sorry equipment for a great poet. Is it an exaggeration

to say that, if all this be true, Wordsworth is destitute of most of the

qualities which in a great poet have hitherto been deemed indispensable?

If, in spite of these remarkable deficiencies, he really be the greatest

English poet since Milton, we shall be forced to conclude that English

poets since Milton have been far less powerful, of far lower calibre, and

of far less value, than has generally been supposed.

What then is the precise value, the real calibre, the particular kind of

power, of that "ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given

us? We have seen it is not an epic, nor a drama, nor one great

comprehensive poem of any kind. It consists of lyrics, ballads, sonnets,

and odes; of many of which it would not be just or critical to say more

than that they are very sweet and charming, several of which must be

pronounced exquisite, and a few, very few, of which may be designated

sublime. We own we share the general opinion that the greatest composition

of Wordsworth is the _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_. We are surprised

and disappointed to find Mr. Arnold speaking rather coldly of it; and M.

Scherer likewise refers to it in a depreciatory tone, though he gives

different reasons for his conclusion. M. Scherer thinks it "sounds a

little false," and adds that he "cannot help seeing in it a theme adopted

with reference to the poetic developments of which Wordsworth was

susceptible, rather than a very serious belief of the author." We confess

we think the judgment harsh, and the reasons given for it insufficient,

if not indeed irrelevant. The objection Mr. Arnold entertains for it is

that "it has not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no

real solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no

doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say

that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die

away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful."

Now, with all deference to Mr. Arnold, which is due to him in a special

manner when he is expounding Wordsworth, Wordsworth does not say this. In

the first place, Wordsworth, after describing the comparative and

temporary diminution of this instinct, describes its revival and

transfiguration in another guise. But what is far more important to note

is, Wordsworth does _not_ say the instinct is universal. He is writing as

a poet, not as a psychologist; and though he treats of an objective infant

for a time, and uses the pronoun "_our_ infancy," he in reality is

describing his own experience, and letting it take its chance of being the

experience of a certain number of other people. What, we may well ask, can

a poet do more than this, when he gets into the higher range, the upper

atmosphere of poetry? When Shakespeare talks of "the shade of melancholy

boughs," he does not mean that everybody feels them to be melancholy. That

is the privilege--the melancholy privilege, if any one wills it so--of the

higher natures. That what Wordsworth describes in his splendid _Ode_ not

only was true of himself, but is true likewise of all great poetic

spirits, we entertain no doubt; and it will become true of an

ever-increasing number of persons, if mankind is to make progress in the

intimate and integral union of intellectual and poetic sentiment. In our

opinion, the highest note of Wordsworth is struck in this Ode, and

maintained through a composition of considerable length and of

argumentative unity of purpose. It is struck by him elsewhere--indeed in

the lines on Hartley Coleridge, we have a distinct overture, so to speak,

to the Ode; but nowhere is it sustained for so long, or with such oneness,

definiteness, and largeness of aim. There is, perhaps, no finer poem, of

equal length, in any language. We could well understand any one

maintaining that there exists no other so fine.

But, if this Ode be struck out of the account, what remains to represent

an "ample body of powerful work"? For, after all, in criticism, if we

criticise at all, we must use words with some definite meaning. Perhaps

Mr. Arnold would tell us that it is not the business of true Culture to be

too definite; and we should heartily agree with him. One of the things

that makes prose so inferior to poetry is its inaccurate precision. But it

is Mr. Arnold himself who, on this occasion, compels us to be precise. He

has elected to compare Wordsworth with every poet since Milton, and, in

doing so, he has been obliged to use language which, to be of any use,

must be more or less definite. What is meant by "ample"? Still more, what

is meant by "powerful"? Does he mean that Wordsworth's "Lyrical Poems,"

which we think to be the best of Wordsworth's compositions after the Ode,

and which he thinks the best, before the Ode, are "powerful"? Let us quote

perhaps the best of them, already quoted elsewhere, but that can never be

read too often:

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

So sweetly to reposing bands

Of Travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;--

I listened till I had my fill,

And when I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

This is exquisite; and of the sort of exquisiteness that leads one, in

private, and in uncritical colloquies, to fall, as the phrase runs, into

ecstasies. But can it, with any regard to accuracy of speech, be described

as "powerful" work? We submit that it cannot. _Lear_ is powerful. The

first six books of _Paradise Lost_ are powerful. The first four cantos of

_Don Juan_ are powerful. The _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_ is

powerful. But unless we are to lose ourselves in a labyrinth of critical

confusion, we must no more allege or allow that _The Solitary Reaper_ is

powerful, than we can affirm that _Where the Bee Sucks_ is powerful, that

Milton's sonnet, _To the Nightingale_ is powerful, or that Byron's _She

Walks in Beauty like the Night_ is powerful. They are all very beautiful;

but that is another matter, and it will not do to confound totally

different things.

How many lyrics, as perfect as the one we have quoted, has Wordsworth

written? We can count but nine; and the most liberal computation could not

extend them beyond twelve. To these would have to be added perhaps twice

as many, very inferior to these, but still very beautiful, a certain

number, but a very limited number, of first-rate sonnets, the Odes we have

referred to, and detached lines and passages from other poems, notably the

passage in the poem _On Revisiting Tintern Abbey_. The result would be

about a third of the amount we ourselves should altogether extract from

Wordsworth, and of which alone it could justly be said that some of it was

powerful, and all of it was very beautiful work.

This is what, we venture to assert, remains, after rigid scrutiny, of "the

ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given us. These are the

compositions which, according to Mr. Arnold, "in real poetical achievement

... in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring

freshness," establish Wordsworth's superiority.

Now can this claim possibly be allowed, unless, as we have said, all

previous canons of criticism, and all previous estimates of poetry are to

be cast to the winds? If it is to be allowed, then AEschylus, Euripides,

Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, must come down from their

pedestals, and be regarded by us with very different eyes from those with

which we have hitherto scanned them. For what are the marks, what the

qualities, which have distinguished these poets above their fellows, and

by reason of which the world has extolled their genius? It is not merely

for poetic diction, for tenderness of sentiment, for elevation of feeling,

for apt simile, appropriate metaphor, illuminating imagery, and the play

of fancy as exhibited in subordinate detail, that we estimate them as we

do. Neither is it, as we have already pointed out, but as we must repeat,

for detached passages of sublimity, nor yet for short poems of exquisite

beauty, that they have been assigned the rank they occupy. They occupy

that rank by reason of their great conceptions, by reason of their

capacity to project long and comparatively complex poems dedicated to a

lofty theme, and to conduct these through all their intricate windings

from first to last, by employing all the arts, all the expedients, all the

resources of Imagination, chief among which are Action, Invention, and

Situation. To these, of course, must be added copious, elastic, and

dignified language, melody, pathos, and just imagery; for, without these,

a man is not a poet at all. These are the very instruments of his craft,

the very credentials of his profession; and if he has these, no one will

challenge his right to be called a poet. But, unless the higher qualities,

the greater credentials are also his, he must be content with an inferior

place, no matter how many beautiful or sublime things he may have said,

and no matter how excellent the doctrines he may have taught. He has

failed to show his mastery over the great materials, his familiarity with

the great purposes, of his art. Wordsworth projected two long poems, _The

Prelude_ and _The Excursion_; and, practically, these two are one. They

are of portentous length; and that is their only claim to be considered

great. They have no Action, no Situation, no Invention, no Characters.

They consist of pages upon pages, nay, of books upon books, of

interminable talk, in which in reality Wordsworth himself is the only

talker. Little of the talk is poetry. Much of it is, as Mr. Arnold says,

"abstract verbiage." But we need not pursue the theme. Mr. Arnold candidly

confesses that when Jeffrey said of _The Excursion_, "this will never do,"

he was quite right.

Unquestionably, he was right; and he would still have been right, even had

_The Excursion_ contained a far greater number of passages of true poetry

than it does. It will be an evil day for poetry, and for the readers of

poetry, if it ever comes to be allowed that the sole or the main function

of poetry is to _talk about_ things, and that a man can get himself

accepted as a great poet by pursuing this course. Unfortunately, it was

Wordsworth's theory that he could. It would be fatal if critics became of

the same opinion. It is their bounden duty, on the contrary, to protest

against such a theory. Wordsworth sets it down, in black and white, both

in prose and verse, over and over again:

O Reader! had you in your mind

Such stores as silent thought can bring,

O gentle Reader! you will find

A tale in everything.

What more I have to say is short,

And you must kindly take it:

It is no tale; but, should you think,

Perhaps a tale you'll make it.

Here is the theory full-blown. The poet is not to tell the tale, the

reader is to make it one, by thinking; and if he only thinks enough, he

will find a tale in everything! Could anything be more grotesque, or more

utterly opposed to any sane canon of the function of an author, and his

relation to his readers? It is the business of the poet to tell the tale,

and thereby to set the reader thinking; an altogether different process

from the one here suggested. "Wordsworthians against whom we must be upon

our guard," often cite the following stanza with admiration:

The moving accident is not my trade;

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:

'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,

To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts!

Have they forgotten the "moving accidents by flood and field," or do they

not know whose trade it was to unfold a tale that

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood?

Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will

not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing

this makes a man as great a poet as doing what Wordsworth did not and

plainly could not do. In the last book of _The Excursion_, he says:

Life, death, eternity! momentous themes

Are they--and might demand a seraph's tongue,

Were they not equal to their own support;

And therefore no incompetence of mine

Could do them wrong....

Ye wished for art and circumstance, that make

The individual known and understood;

And such as my best judgment could select

From what the place afforded, could be given.

But _no_ subject is equal to its own support, where the poet is concerned,

however it may be with the preacher and the moralist. The poet himself

must support it. We _do_ wish for act and circumstance, in poetry; and

when Wordsworth tells us that he has, in _The Excursion_, given us the

best of these he can, we can only answer that this best is not enough, but

wholly insufficient and inadequate.

That Mr. Arnold would deny all this, if put to him plainly, we do not

believe. It is all the more to be regretted that he should have expressed

himself in such a manner as to encourage others in forming judgments and

holding opinions which imply affirmation to the contrary. When he quotes

from Wordsworth the following lines,

Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope,

And melancholy fear subdued by faith,

Of blessed consolation, in distress,

Of moral strength and intellectual power,

Of joy in widest commonalty spread,

and adds that "here we have a poet intent on the best and master thing,"

and wishes us to infer Wordsworth's superiority from that fact, does he

not perceive that he is not only misleading his readers, but flagrantly

contradicting what he himself avers in the selfsame essay? Being "intent"

on these subjects is not enough. A further question remains to be

answered; viz. how has the poet dealt with them? Nowhere has Wordsworth

dealt with them so completely, so ambitiously, so exhaustively, as in _The

Excursion_. Yet what does Mr. Arnold say of it? He says that _The

Excursion_ can never be a satisfactory work to the disinterested lover of

poetry, and that much of it is "a tissue of elevated but abstract

verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry." It is plain, therefore,

that being "intent" even on "the best and master thing" does not suffice.

The passage Mr. Arnold quotes, leaving the incautious reader to infer that

it _does_ suffice, is merely the

Life, death, eternity! momentous themes,

and their being "equal to their own support" over again. Wordsworth is

perpetually telling us that his subject is Man, and wishes us to infer

that, the subject being great, what is written on it must be great.

Unfortunately, Man, with him, is like Love with the Scotch girl; it is Man

"in the abstract." Shakespeare also treats of Man; but he treats of him

_in men_, and Wordsworth does not. In fact, he communes. As M. Scherer

says, he is a Solitary, a Contemplative. In a word, he is essentially, and

before all things a subjective poet, and reader after reader has

complained, and critic after critic has confessed, that to be subjective,

not objective, to reflect instead of to act, to think rather than to

narrate, is the bane of modern poetry, and the conclusive mark of the

inferiority of so large a proportion of it.

Yet, this notwithstanding, Mr. Arnold tells us that Wordsworth "deals with

that in which life really consists"; and, not content with this, he

actually goes on to declare that "Wordsworth deals with more of life than

they do";--"they" being every English poet since Milton, and indeed every

poet of every tongue since Milton, with the exception of Goethe! We can

only say that such an assertion is astounding; the most startling paradox,

indeed, we ever encountered in a criticism by a critic of authority. To

argue upon it against Mr. Arnold is, happily, superfluous; for Mr. Arnold

has anticipated and categorically answered his own paradox. Let him open

his own poems; let him turn to _Stanzas In Memory Of Obermann_, and let

him read on until he comes to the following couplet:

But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken,

From half of human fate.

Has he forgotten the passage? or would he now expunge it? Mr. Arnold the

poet, and Mr. Arnold the critic, are evidently at issue. But we think no

one will experience much difficulty in deciding which of two has "hit the

nail on the head," and whether it be sound criticism to affirm that

Wordsworth deals with that in which life really consists, or sound

criticism to affirm that with one half of life he does not deal at all. At

any rate, these rival criticisms are not to be reconciled, and Mr. Arnold

must elect between the two.

What is the first and broad conclusion to be drawn from all that has been

said? It is this: that Wordsworth, as a poet, has treated great subjects

with marked and striking inadequacy, and smaller subjects with marked and

striking success. Now we submit that no man deserves to be called or

considered a great poet who has not treated some great subject in a great

manner. This is the mark, this is the test, of a great poet; and if we

once surrender this distinction, this standard, we soon lose ourselves in

hopeless critical confusion and entanglement. But no great subject _can_

be greatly or adequately treated in poetry, save objectively, and with the

help of action, passion, incident, of all the expedients, in fact, we have

enumerated. It never can be treated adequately or greatly by merely

writing _about_ it. This is all that Wordsworth has done with his great

subjects, with "truth, grandeur, beauty, love," and the rest of them; and

therefore, as far as great subjects are concerned, he has failed, and

failed conspicuously. Where he has succeeded, and succeeded conspicuously,

succeeded admirably, succeeded perfectly, is in smaller subjects, such as

_The Solitary Reaper_, _The Cuckoo_, _Three Years She Grew_, and their

companions. This is to have done much; but it is not to have left behind

"an ample body of powerful work." Much less is it to have left behind an

"ampler" body of powerful work than every English poet since Milton, Byron

included.

For what is the "ample body of powerful work" that Byron has left? If

Byron had failed as completely as Wordsworth in the treatment of his

larger themes, in a word, of his great subjects, then, in spite of much

fine lyrical work in Byron, the palm would have to be adjudged to

Wordsworth. But what critic of authority, who means to retain it, will

come forward and assert that Byron has failed in the treatment of his

larger themes, of his great subjects? Is _Childe Harold_ a failure? Is

_Manfred_ a failure? Is _Cain_ a failure? Is _Don Juan_ a failure? We,

like Mr. Arnold, can honestly say that though we "felt the expiring wave

of Byron's mighty influence," we now "regard him, and have long regarded

him, without illusion"; in fact, with just as little illusion as we regard

Wordsworth, which is perhaps more than Mr. Arnold can yet say. We are

unable to assert, with Scott, that, in _Cain_, "Byron has matched Milton

on his own ground." It would have been very wonderful if he had, as

wonderful as if Virgil had matched Homer on Homer's own ground. "Sero

venientibus ossa"; or, as some one put it during the controversy between

the respective merits of the Ancients and the Moderns, "The Ancients have

stolen all our best ideas." Besides, though Byron has not matched Milton

on the ground Milton occupied first and pretty nigh exhausted, Byron has

done many other things that Milton has not done. We are equally unable to

say that Byron, "as various in composition as Shakespeare himself, has

embraced every topic in human life"; though we strongly incline to think

that a dispassionate and exhaustive survey would show him to be more

various in composition, and to have embraced a greater number of topics

appertaining to human life, than any poet, English or foreign, ancient or

modern, except Shakespeare.[1] Equally unable are we to accept the dictum

of Goethe, which Mr. Arnold vainly endeavours to explain away, by trying

to prove that Goethe did not mean what he certainly said, viz. that Byron

"is in the main greater than any other English poet."

Therefore, as we say, we look upon Byron without any illusion, and without

any wish to extol him above his real rank, by calling on his behalf even

such witnesses as Scott and Goethe. We look at his works with the same

detachment and dispassionateness as we look at the Parthenon or on the

Venus of Milo. But, so looking on them, looking on them not through any

pet theories of our own, not with any moral, theological, or sectarian

bias, but simply with the same "dispassionate-lover-of-poetry" eyes with

which we look on _Antigone_, the _AEneid_, the _Fairy Queen_, or _Faust_,

we find ourselves unable to resist the conclusion, that, like them,

_Childe Harold_, _Manfred_, _Cain_, and _Don Juan_ are great poems, are

great themes, greatly treated. This is not to say that they are perfect,

that they are in every way satisfactory. Is the _Fairy Queen_ perfectly

satisfactory? Is the _AEneid_ perfectly satisfactory? No critic has ever

found them so. Is the _Iliad_ perfectly satisfactory? It would be very odd

if it were, seeing that, as no one but Mr. Gladstone any longer doubts, it

is the work, not of one poet, but of several poets. But when all has been

urged against them that can be urged by the most judicial criticism, they

remain great subjects greatly executed. In the same manner, so do Byron's

greater poems. Roughly and broadly speaking, they _are_ satisfactory;

whereas in no sense can _The Prelude_ and _The Excursion_ be said to be

satisfactory. On the contrary, they are entirely unsatisfactory. In a

word, of Byron's larger works, it may be said that they will "do"; of

Wordsworth's, on the contrary, as Jeffrey said, and as Mr. Arnold himself

allows, they "won't." That is the distinction; and it is an immense one.

Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in

Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction

with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet

may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a

conspicuous degree. It is in Character, no doubt, that Byron is more

particularly weak, as compared with Shakespeare, though he is by no means

so weak, in himself, and as compared with others, as people have come to

assume, by hearing the point so superficially iterated. It is not that

Byron cannot depict character; but he does not depict a sufficient number

of characters. They are not numerous and various enough. When M. Scherer

says that "Byron has treated hardly any subject but one--himself," he is

repeating the parrot-cry of very shallow people, and is doing little

justice to his own powers as a critic. Indeed, had Shakespeare never

lived, it is probable that it would never have occurred to any one to urge

against Byron his deficiencies in this respect. It is because he is so

great a poet, because he is so great in other respects, and because some

critics have therefore inadvertently attempted to place him on a level

with Shakespeare, that his inferiority in this particular suggested itself

to those holding a juster view. Once suggested, it was harped upon,

exaggerated, and, we may fairly say, has now been done to death. We

presume, however, that no one would suggest that, even in the poetic

presentation of Character, Byron, however inferior to certain other

writers, is not immeasurably superior to Wordsworth, who never even

attempted to portray Character.

When we turn from the consideration of the power shown by Byron in the

presentation of Character, to his power shown in Action, Invention, and

Situation, the account becomes a very different one. In brisk and rapid

narrative, in striking incident, in prompt and perpetual

movement--qualities in which not only is Wordsworth deficient, but of

which he is absolutely devoid--Byron exhibits his true greatness as a

poet. Even in the _Tales_, in _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, _The

Corsair_, _The Siege of Corinth_, _The Prisoner of Chillon_, which it has

of late been the fashion, we had almost said the affectation, to

depreciate, there is a stir, a "go," a swift and swirling torrent of

action, a current of animation, a full and foaming stream of narrative, a

tumult and conflict of incident, which will never cease to be regarded as

among the best, the highest, and the most indispensable elements of

poetry, until we are all laid up in lavender, until we all take to moping

and brooding over our own feelings, until we all confine ourselves to

"smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought"; until we all

become content

To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,

In the loved presence of the cottage-fire.

And listen to the flapping of the flame,

Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.

Even if one confined oneself merely to Byron's _Tales_, the assertion that

Wordsworth "deals with more of life" than Byron, would be startling. Love,

hatred, revenge, ambition, the rivalry of creeds, travel, fighting,

fighting by land and fighting by sea, almost every passion, and every form

of adventure, these are the "life" they deal with; and we submit that it

is to deal with a considerable portion of it; with far more of life at any

rate than Wordsworth deals with in the whole of his poems. Listen to his

own confession:

And thus from day to day my little boat

Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.

Now turn to Byron:

O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,

Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,

Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,

Survey our empire, and behold our home.

These are our realms, no limit to their sway!

That is precisely the difference. The horizon of Byron is so much larger.

Far from it being true that Wordsworth deals with more of life than Byron

does, the precise opposite is the truth, that Byron deals with far more of

life than Wordsworth does, if by life we mean the life of men, of men of

action, of men of the world, and not the life, as M. Scherer says, of

Solitaries, Contemplatives, and Recluses.

If we turn to Byron's Dramas, to _Sardanapalus_, to _The Two Foscari_, to

_The Doge of Venice_, no doubt we crave for yet more action, more

incident, more situation, than Byron gives us. But we do so because

Shakespeare has accustomed us to crave for more; and the craving has been

intensified by the sensational character of modern novels and modern

stage-plays. Nevertheless these are present, in no small amount, in the

plays we have named; and whether people choose to consider the amount

great or small, surely it is immeasurably greater than the amount of

action, invention, and situation Wordsworth exhibits in any and every

poem, of any and every kind, he ever wrote.

We have more than once mentioned _Childe Harold_, but we must refer to it

once more and finally, in support and illustration of what we have been

urging. The persons who are of opinion that Byron never treated any

subject but himself, will perhaps likewise be of opinion that, in _Childe

Harold_, Byron treats only of himself, and that it is a purely

contemplative and subjective poem. A more superficial opinion could not

well be held. In form contemplative, it is in substance a poem full of

action, situation, and incident; in a word, it is a poem essentially and

notably objective. It is the only poem, ostensibly contemplative, of which

this can be said; and it assumes this complexion and character by dint of

Byron's own character, which was above all things active, and could not be

content without action. In _Childe Harold_, Byron summons dead men and

dead nations from their sepulchres, and makes them live and act again. He

revivifies Athens, he resuscitates Rome. He makes Cicero breathe and burn;

he makes the fallen columns and shattered pillars of the Forum as eloquent

as Tully. Petrarch once more waters the tree that bears his lady's name.

The mountains find a tongue. Jura answers from her misty shroud. The

lightning becomes a word. Rousseau tortures himself afresh; Gibbon afresh

saps solemn creeds with solemn sneer; afresh Egeria visits Numa in the

silence of the night, his breast to hers replying. Lake Leman woos, and

kisses away the cries of the Rhone, as they awake. Then she reproves like

a sister's voice. The boats upon the lake are wings to waft us from

distraction. The stars become the poetry of Heaven. Waterloo is fought

before our very eyes. The defiles fatal to Roman rashness are again

crowded with Numidian horse, and Hannibal and Thrasymene flash before our

eyes. A soul is infused into the dead; a spirit is instilled into the

mountains. The torrents talk; the sepulchres act. Movement never ceases,

and the situation is perpetually shifting. Its incidents are almost the

whole of History. In it we have--what M. Scherer justly says Wordsworth

has not--the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives,

the interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on

condition of having been their victim, and those general views upon

History and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the

practice of affairs. All this, too, we have, in the third and fourth

cantos--for the first and second are very inferior--presented, in

language, imagery, and music, of the noblest and most elevated kind; till,

swelling, as an organ swells, before it closes, the poem concludes with

that magnificent address to the Ocean, which rounds it off and completes

it, even as the physical ocean rounds off and completes the physical

earth. In no other poem that was ever written are Nature and man--not Man

in the abstract, but men as they act, strive, feel, and suffer--so

thoroughly interfused and interwoven; and they are interwoven and

interfused as they are interwoven and interfused in actual life, not by

men contemplating and talking, but by men doing and acting, in a word, by

living. And if the reference be to men in general and life in general, and

not to a particular sort of man living a particular sort of life away from

other men, then we make bold to say, though in doing so we contradict Mr.

Arnold roundly, that in _Childe Harold_ alone there is "an ampler body of

powerful work," and that _Childe Harold_ alone "deals with more of life,"

than all Wordsworth's poems, not even selected from, but taken in their

integrity, without the diminution of a single passage or the omission of a

single line.

At this point, Mr. Arnold steps in with a notable plea. It may be that

much of what Wordsworth has written is trivial, and that still more of it

is abstract verbiage, or doctrine we hear in church, perfectly true, but

wanting in the sort of truth we require, poetic truth. It may also be that

Wordsworth has written no one great poem, and that the poem he fancied to

be great will not do, and can never be satisfactory to the disinterested

lover of poetry. It may furthermore be the case that in Wordsworth's poems

we have to lament a deficiency, if not indeed a total absence of Action,

Invention, Situation, and Character, and that he is only a Contemplative,

a Recluse, a Solitary, analysing the sensations produced upon himself by

dwelling upon mountains, woods, and waters. All this may be so. But, says

Mr. Arnold, "Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life," the greatness of a

poet depends upon his criticism of life, and Wordsworth's criticism of

life is more complete, more powerful, and more sound, than that of any

English poet since Milton, indeed than that of any poet since Milton, with

the one exception of Goethe.

The great and the justly acquired authority of Mr. Arnold must not deter

us from saying that to no canon of criticism upon poetry with which we are

acquainted do so many objections present themselves. We suspect Mr. Arnold

himself has discerned some of these since he first propounded it; for

while in his Prefatory Essay upon Wordsworth he urges it with absolute

confidence, in his Prefatory Essay on Byron he does so more hesitatingly,

and exhibits more anxiety to explain it. But does he not explain it away,

when he says, "We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an

adequate definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth"?

Upon this point M. Scherer, an admirer, like ourselves, of both Wordsworth

and Mr. Arnold, has some just observations:

Wordsworth seems to Mr. Arnold to have the qualities of poetic

greatness, and Mr. Arnold accordingly defines these qualities. The

great poet, in his opinion, is the one that expresses the most noble

and the most profound idea, upon the nature of man, the one who has a

philosophy of life, and who impresses it powerfully on the subjects

which he treats. The definition, it will be perceived, is a little

vague.

Mr. Arnold, we all know, is rather partial to vagueness, being of opinion

that it is of the essence of Culture to be more or less vague, and that

without a certain amount of vagueness there can be no sweetness and no

light. We should be sorry to seem to say anything against those delightful

characteristics, lest we should be supposed to be without them; and we

hereby declare ourselves all in favour of our "consciousness playing

about our stock notions," even if those stock notions be sweetness and

light themselves, with their accompanying charm of vagueness. But though,

in all seriousness, what Swift calls sweetness and light are invaluable

qualities, despite the partial vagueness they entail, yet when two poets

are compared, and a definition of the main business and main essence of

poetry is offered, in order that by it the relative greatness of the two

may be tested, it is just as well that the definition should not be too

vague, should be at any rate precise enough to afford the test desired.

But what is the use of it if it does not "bring us much on our way"?

Unfortunately, Mr. Arnold's theory of poetry being a criticism of life not

only does not help us along our road, it tends to take us off our road. We

regret we have not left ourselves space to deal with his theory at length,

and can only hope we may have an opportunity of returning to it. But lest

Mr. Arnold should be tempted to raise it to the dignity of a "stock

notion," and to bestow upon it the privilege of that faithful iteration

which is bestowed upon "culture," "sweetness and light," "Barbarians,

Philistines, and Populace," which have a good deal more to say for

themselves, we think it well to point out to him that, by averring poetry

to be "a criticism of life," he is giving a handle to the Philistines of

criticism, and to the enemies of sweetness and light, which they may turn

against him in a notable manner.

For _whose_ "criticism of life"? Does he not perceive that he is enabling

people to maintain, which unfortunately they are already only too disposed

to do, that this poet is a great poet because they consider his criticism

of life to be right and true, and that other poet to be not a great poet,

or a much smaller poet, because they consider his criticism of life to be

wrong and false? Why, this is the very pest and bane of English criticism

upon poetry, and upon art generally; the criticism which in reality

resolves itself into "I agree with this; I like that." This is the

criticism of sheer and unadulterated Philistinism, against which Mr.

Arnold has been waging such excellent and needed war for several years.

Nor, in spite of much vagueness, will it be possible for Mr. Arnold to

escape from this consequence of his dictum that poetry is a criticism of

life. For at last, after much that seems to us like beating about the

bush, he goes straight to the point, and makes the fatal confession in

plain words.

As compared with Leopardi, Wordsworth, though at many points less

lucid, though far less a master of style, far less of an artist,

gains so much by his criticism of life being, in certain matters of

profound importance, healthful and true, whereas Leopardi's pessimism

is not, that the value of Wordsworth's poetry, on the whole, stands

higher for us, I think, than that of Leopardi's, as it stands higher

for us, I think, than that of any modern poetry except Goethe's.

Higher, because it is more healthful! That any critic, not an abject

Philistine, should say such a thing, amazes us beyond words. Surely Mr.

Arnold is aware that there are persons whose opinion on that subject

carries much weight, who consider that Goethe's criticism of life is

neither healthful nor true, but on the contrary false or mischievous, yet

who do not on that account deny to Goethe the title of a great poet. Is

Mr. Arnold really serious when he asserts that, other things being equal,

one poet is less great than another poet because the first is a pessimist,

and the other is an optimist? If he is, let us have two more volumes of

Selections; one containing all the best optimist poetry, and the other

containing all the best pessimist poetry, that was ever written. Which

collection would be the more true, we do not undertake to know, and, as

critics and disinterested lovers of poetry, we do not care. But we

entertain no doubt whatever which Selection would contain the finest

poetry. It would not be the optimist one. Some of the finest poetry ever

written upon life is to be found surely in the Old Testament. What might

be taken as its motto? "Vanity of Vanities. All is Vanity." As far as this

life, and any criticism of it are concerned, it is a very Gospel of

Pessimism.

Is the conclusion then that a pessimistic criticism of life necessarily

makes a poet greater than another poet who criticises it from an

optimistic point of view? Not in the least. The consideration--we do not

say to the positive philosopher, to the historian, to the moralist,

but--to the disinterested lover of poetry, is simply irrelevant.

But there is an attitude towards life which does give a poet the chance at

least of being greater than either a poet who criticises life as a

pessimist, or than a poet who criticises it as an optimist. That attitude

is one neither of pessimism nor of optimism; indeed, not a criticism of

life at all, or at least not such a criticism of life as to leave it open

to any one to declare that it is healthful and true, or that it is

insalubrious and false. Will Mr. Arnold tell us what is Shakespeare's

criticism of life? Is it pessimistic or optimistic? We are almost alarmed

at asking the question; for who knows that, in doing so, we may not be

sowing the seeds of a controversy as long and as interminable as the

controversy respecting the moral purpose, the criticism of life in

_Hamlet_? Once started, the controversy will go on for ever, precisely

because there is no way of ending it. What constitutes, not the

superiority, but the comparative inferiority, of Byron and Wordsworth

alike, is their excessive criticism of life. They criticise life overmuch.

It is the foible of each of them. What constitutes the superiority of

Shakespeare is, that he does not so much criticise life, as present it. He

holds the mirror up to nature, and is content to do so, showing it with

all its beautiful and all its ugly features, and with perfect

dispassionateness. Hence his unequalled greatness.

We regret we have not space to set this forth more at length. But Mr.

Arnold will scarcely misunderstand us; and we would venture to ask him to

ponder these objections, and to let his consciousness play freely about

them. If he does so, we have little doubt that the theory about poetry

being a criticism of life, with its appalling consequences to the critic,

to the disinterested lover of poetry, to the adherent of culture, to the

friend of sweetness and light, and in fact to every one but the Philistine

with his stock ideas, will silently be dropped.

But if Mr. Arnold sees insuperable objections to this course, and the

canon about poetry being a criticism of life is to be added to that list

of delightful formulae, which, during the last decade, have shed so much

light on our condition, then we can only once more appeal from Mr. Arnold

to Mr. Arnold, and ask how it is that Wordsworth can be considered to have

criticised life, and to "deal with that in which life really consists," if

it be true, as Mr. Arnold tells us it is true, that

Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken

From half of human fate.

How, we shall still have to ask, can a poet be said to have criticised

life of whom such an ardent admirer as M. Scherer can observe, "As for

cities, Wordsworth seeks to ignore them. He takes them for a discordant

note which it is only just and right to drown and get rid of in the

general harmony of creation."

But we must end; and we submit that we have established our case.

Wordsworth can be made to figure as the greatest poet since Milton, only

by canons of criticism that would make him not only a greater poet than

Milton, but a greater poet than any poet that preceded Milton. If this be

so, let us know it. But if not, it is vain work, trying to extol him, as a

poet, above Byron. Mr. Arnold has done Byron injustice by making

selections from his works, and asserting that selections are better than

the whole of the works from which they are selected. You might as well

select from a mountain. What should we think of the process that said,

"Here is an edelweiss, here some heather, here a lump of quartz, here a

bit of ice from a glacier, here some water from a torrent, here some

pine-cones, here some eggs from an eagle's nest; and now you know all

about Mont Blanc"? Byron is no more to be known in that fashion than the

Matterhorn is. You must make acquaintances with pastoral valleys, with

yawning precipices, with roaring cataracts, with tinkling cattle-bells,

with the rumble of avalanches, with the growl of thunder, with the zigzag

lightning, with storm, and mists, and sudden burst of tenderest sunshine,

with these, with more, in fact with all, if Alp or Byron is to be really

known. But Mr. Arnold has rendered Byron one service at least. When he

says that Byron and Wordsworth stand first and pre-eminent among the

English poets of this century, he relieves Byron of danger of rivalry.