Side by side with this revelation of Nature, and interwoven with it so
closely as to be inseparable, Wordsworth was receiving a revelation of
humanity, no less marvellous, no less significant for his recovery of
joy. Indeed he himself seems to have thought it the more important of the
two, for he speaks of the mind of man as
“My haunt and the main region of my song”;
And again he says that he will set out, like an adventurer,
“And through the human heart explore the way;
And look and listen—gathering whence I may,
Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain.”
The discovery of humble life, of peasant character, of lowly, trivial
scenes and incidents, as a field for poetry, was not original with
Wordsworth. But he was the first English poet to explore this field
thoroughly, sympathetically, with steady and deepening joy. Burns had
been there before him; but the song of Burns though clear and passionate,
was fitful. Cowper had been there before him; but Cowper was like a
visitor from the polite world, never an inhabitant, never quite able to
pierce gently, powerfully down to the realities of lowly life and abide
in them. Crabbe had been there before him; but Crabbe was something of
a pessimist; he felt the rough shell of the nut, but did not taste the
sweet kernel.
Wordsworth, if I may draw a comparison from another art, was the Millet
of English poetry. In his verse we find the same quality of perfect
comprehension, of tender pathos, of absolute truth interfused with
delicate beauty that makes Millet’s _Angelus_, and _The Gleaners_ and
_The Sower_ and _The Sheepfold_, immortal visions of the lowly life.
Place beside these pictures, if you will, Wordsworth’s _Solitary Reaper_,
_The Old Cumberland Beggar_, _Margaret_ waiting in her ruined cottage
for the husband who would never return, _Michael_, the old shepherd who
stood, many and many a day, beside the unfinished sheepfold which he had
begun to build with his lost boy,
“And never lifted up a single stone,”—
place these beside Millet’s pictures, and the poems will bear the
comparison.
Coleridge called Wordsworth “a miner of the human heart.” But there is a
striking peculiarity in his mining: he searched the most familiar places,
by the most simple methods, to bring out the rarest and least suspected
treasures. His discovery was that there is an element of poetry, like
some metal of great value, diffused through the common clay of every-day
life.
It is true that he did not always succeed in separating the precious
metal from the surrounding dross. There were certain limitations in his
mind which prevented him from distinguishing that which was familiar and
precious, from that which was merely familiar.
One of these limitations was his lack of a sense of humour. At a
dinner-party he announced that he was never witty but once in his life.
When asked to narrate the instance, after some hesitation he said: “Well,
I will tell you. I was standing some time ago at the entrance of my
cottage at Rydal Mount. A man accosted me with the question, ‘Pray, sir,
have you seen my wife pass by?’ Whereupon I said, ‘Why, my good friend,
I didn’t know till this moment that you had a wife!’” The humour of this
story is unintentional and lies otherwhere than Wordsworth thought. The
fact that he was capable of telling it as a merry jest accounts for the
presence of many queer things in his poetry. For example; the lines in
_Simon Lee_,
“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:”
the stanza in _Peter Bell_, which Shelley was accused of having
maliciously invented, but which was actually printed in the first edition
of the poem,
“Is it a party in a parlour
Cramming just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punch—some sipping tea
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent and all—damned?”
the couplet in the original version of _The Blind Highland Boy_ which
describes him as embarking on his voyage in
“A household tub, like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes.”
It is quite certain, I think, that Wordsworth’s insensibility to
the humourous side of things made him incapable of perceiving one
considerable source of comfort and solace in lowly life. Plain and poor
people get a great deal of consolation, in their hard journey, out of the
rude but keen fun that they take by the way. The sense of humour is a
means of grace.
I doubt whether Wordsworth’s peasant-poetry has ever been widely popular
among peasants themselves. There was an old farmer in the Lake Country
who had often seen the poet and talked with him, and who remembered him
well. Canon Rawnsley has made an interesting record of some of the old
man’s reminiscences. When he was asked whether he had ever read any of
Wordsworth’s poetry, or seen any of his books about in the farmhouses,
he answered:
“Ay, ay, time or two. But ya’re weel aware there’s potry and potry.
There’s potry wi’ a li’le bit pleasant in it, and potry sic as a man can
laugh at or the childer understand, and some as takes a deal of mastery
to make out what’s said, and a deal of Wordsworth’s was this sort, ye
kna. You could tell fra the man’s faace his potry would niver have no
laugh in it.”
But when we have admitted these limitations, it remains true that no
other English poet has penetrated so deeply into the springs of poetry
which rise by every cottage door, or sung so nobly of the treasures which
are hidden in the humblest human heart, as Wordsworth has. This is his
merit, his incomparable merit, that he has done so much, amid the hard
conditions, the broken dreams, and the cruel necessities of life, to
remind us how rich we are in being simply human.
Like Clifford, in the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_,
“Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,”
and thenceforth his chosen task was to explore the beauty and to show the
power of that common love.
“There is a comfort in the strength of love;
’Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain or break the heart.”