Of humble industry that promised best
To yield him no unworthy maintenance."
For a season he taught a village school, which many a fine, high, and
noble spirit has done and is doing; but he was impatient of the hills he
loved, and
"That stern yet kindly spirit, who constrains
The Savoyard to quit his native rocks,
The free-born Swiss to leave his narrow vales
(Spirit attach'd to regions mountainous
Like their own steadfast clouds), did now impel
His restless mind to look abroad with hope."
It had become his duty to choose a profession--a trade--a calling. He
was not a gentleman, mind ye, and had probably never so much as heard a
rumour of the existence of a silver fork: he had been born with a wooden
spoon in his mouth--and had lived, partly from choice and partly from
necessity, on a vegetable diet. He had not ten pounds in the world he
could call his own; but he could borrow fifty, for his father's son was
to be trusted to that amount by any family that chanced to have it among
the Atholl hills--therefore he resolved on "a hard service," which
"Gain'd merited respect in simpler times;
When squire, and priest, and they who round them dwelt
In rustic sequestration, all dependent
Upon the PEDLAR'S toil, supplied their wants,
Or pleased their fancies with the ware he brought."
Would Alfred have ceased to be Alfred had he lived twenty years in the
hut where he spoiled the bannocks? Would Gustavus have ceased to be
Gustavus had he been doomed to dree an ignoble life in the obscurest
nook in Dalecarlia? Were princes and peers in our day degraded by
working, in their expatriation, with head or hand for bread? Are the
Polish patriots degraded by working at eighteenpence a-day, without
victuals, on embankments of railroads? "At the risk of giving a shock to
the prejudices of artificial society, I have ever been ready to pay
homage to the aristocracy of nature, under a conviction that vigorous
human-heartedness is the constituent principle of true taste." These are
Wordsworth's own words, and deserve letters of gold. He has given many a
shock to the prejudices of artificial society; and in ten thousand
cases, where the heart of such society was happily sound at the core,
notwithstanding the rotten kitchen-stuff with which it was encrusted,
the shocks have killed the prejudices; and men and women, encouraged to
consult their own breasts, have heard responses there to the truths
uttered in music by the high-souled Bard, assuring them of an existence
there of capacities of pure delight, of which they had had either but a
faint suspicion, or, because "of the world's dread laugh," feared to
indulge, and nearly let die.
Mr Wordsworth quotes from Heron's _Scotland_ an interesting passage,
illustrative of the life led in our country at that time by that class
of persons from whom he has chosen one--not, mind you, imaginary, though
for purposes of imagination--adding that "his own personal knowledge
emboldened him to draw the portrait." In that passage Heron says, "As
they wander, each alone, through thinly-inhabited districts, they form
habits of reflection and of sublime contemplation, and that, with all
their qualifications, no wonder they should contribute much to polish
the roughness and soften the rusticity of our peasantry. In North
America," says he, "travelling merchants from the settlements have done
and continue to do much more towards civilising the Indian natives than
all the missionaries, Papist or Protestant, who have ever been sent
among them;" and, speaking again of Scotland, he says, "it is not more
than twenty or thirty years, since a young man going from any part of
Scotland to England for the purpose to _carry the pack_, was considered
as going to lead the life, and acquire the fortune of a gentleman.
When, after twenty years' absence in that honourable line of employment,
he returned with his acquisitions to his native country, he was regarded
as a gentleman to all intents and purposes." We have ourselves known
gentlemen who had carried the pack--one of them a man of great talents
and acquirements--who lived in his old age in the highest circles of
society. Nobody troubled their head about his birth and parentage--_for
he was then very rich_; but you could not sit ten minutes in his company
without feeling that he was "one of God Almighty's gentlemen," belonging
to the "aristocracy of Nature."
You have heard, we hope, of Alexander Wilson, the illustrious
Ornithologist, second not even to Audubon--and sometimes absurdly called
the Great American Ornithologist, because with pen and pencil he painted
in colours that will never die--the Birds of the New World. He was a
weaver--a Paisley weaver--a useful trade, and a pleasant place--where
these now dim eyes of ours first saw the light. And Sandy was a pedlar.
Hear his words in an autobiography unknown to the Bard: "I have this
day, I believe, measured the height of an hundred stairs, and explored
the recesses of twice that number of miserable habitations; and what
have I gained by it?--only two shillings of worldly pelf! but an
invaluable treasure of observation. In this elegant dome, wrapt up in
glittering silks, and stretched on the downy sofa, recline the fair
daughters of wealth and indolence--the ample mirror, flowery floor, and
magnificent couch, their surrounding attendants; while, suspended in his
wiry habitation above, the shrill-piped canary warbles to enchanting
echoes. Within the confines of that sickly hovel, hung round with
squadrons of his brother-artists, the pale-faced weaver plies the
resounding lay, or launches the melancholy murmuring shuttle. Lifting
this simple latch, and stooping for entrance to the miserable hut, there
sits poverty and ever-moaning disease, clothed in dunghill rags, and
ever shivering over the fireless chimney. Ascending this stair, the
voice of joy bursts on my ear--the bridegroom and bride, surrounded by
their jocund companions, circle the sparkling glass and humorous joke,
or join in the raptures of the noisy dance--the squeaking fiddle
breaking through the general uproar in sudden intervals, while the
sounding floor groans beneath its unruly load. Leaving these happy
mortals, and ushering into this silent mansion, a more solemn--a
striking object presents itself to my view. The windows, the furniture,
and everything that could lend one cheerful thought, are hung in solemn
white; and there, stretched pale and lifeless, lies the awful corpse,
while a few weeping friends sit, black and solitary, near the breathless
clay. In this other place, the fearless sons of Bacchus extend their
brazen throats, in shouts like bursting thunder, to the praise of their
gorgeous chief. Opening this door, the lonely matron explores, for
consolation, her Bible; and in this house the wife brawls, the children
shriek, and the poor husband bids me depart, lest his termagant's fury
should vent itself on me. In short, such an inconceivable variety daily
occurs to my observation in real life, that would, were they moralised
upon, convey more maxims of wisdom, and give a juster knowledge of
mankind, than whole volumes of Lives and Adventures, that perhaps never
had a being except in the prolific brains of their fantastic authors."
At a subsequent period he retraced his steps, taking with him copies of
his poems to distribute among subscribers, and endeavour to promote a
more extensive circulation. Of this excursion also he has given an
account in his journal, from which it appears that his success was far
from encouraging. Among amusing incidents, sketches of character,
occasional sound and intelligent remarks upon the manners and prospects
of the common classes of society into which he found his way, there are
not a few severe expressions indicative of deep disappointment, and some
that merely bespeak the keener pangs of the wounded pride founded on
conscious merit. "You," says he, on one occasion, "whose souls are
susceptible of the finest feelings, who are elevated to rapture with the
least dawnings of hope, and sunk into despondency with the slightest
thwartings of your expectations--think what I felt." Wilson himself
attributed his ill fortune, in his attempts to gain the humble patronage
of the poor for his poetical pursuits, to his occupation. "A _packman_
is a character which none esteems, and almost every one despises. The
idea that people of all ranks entertain of them is, that they are
mean-spirited loquacious liars, cunning and illiterate, watching every
opportunity, and using every mean art within their power, to cheat."
This is a sad account of the estimation in which a trade was then held
in Scotland, which the greatest of our living poets has attributed to
the chief character in a poem comprehensive of philosophical discussions
on all the highest interests of humanity. But both Wilson and Wordsworth
are in the right: both saw and have spoken truth. Most small packmen
were then, in some measure, what Wilson says they were generally
esteemed to be--peddling pilferers, and insignificant swindlers. Poverty
sent them swarming over bank and brae, and the "sma' kintra touns"--and
for a plack people will forget principle who have, as we say in
Scotland, missed the world. Wilson knew that to a man like himself there
was degradation in such a calling; and he latterly vented his
contemptuous sense of it, exaggerating the baseness of the name and
nature of _packman_. But suppose such a man as Wilson to have been in
better times one of but a few packmen travelling regularly for years
over the same country, each with his own district or domain, and there
can be no doubt that he would have been an object both of interest and
of respect--his opportunities of seeing the very best and the very
happiest of humble life, in itself very various, would have been very
great; and with his original genius, he would have become, like
Wordsworth's Pedlar, a good moral Philosopher.
Without, therefore, denying the truth of his picture of packmanship, we
may believe the truth of a picture entirely the reverse, from the hand
and heart of a still wiser man--though his wisdom has been gathered from
less immediate contact with the coarse garments and clay floors of the
labouring poor.
It is pleasant to hear Wordsworth speak of his own "personal knowledge"
of packmen or pedlars. We cannot say of him in the words of Burns, "the
fient a pride, nae pride had he;" for pride and power are brothers on
earth, whatever they may prove to be in heaven. But his prime pride is
his poetry; and he had not now been "sole king of rocky Cumberland," had
he not studied the character of his subjects in "huts where poor men
lie"--had he not "stooped his anointed head" beneath the doors of such
huts, as willingly as he ever raised it aloft, with all its glorious
laurels, in the palaces of nobles and princes. Yes, the inspiration he
"derived from the light of setting suns," was not so sacred as that
which often kindled within his spirit all the divinity of Christian man,
when conversing charitably with his brother-man, a wayfarer on the dusty
high-road, or among the green lanes and alleys of merry England. You are
a scholar, and love poetry? Then here you have it of the finest, and
will be sad to think that heaven had not made you a pedlar.
"In days of yore how fortunately fared
The Minstrel! wandering on from Hall to Hall,
Baronial Court or Royal; cheer'd with gifts
Munificent, and love, and Ladies' praise;
Now meeting on his road an armed Knight,
Now resting with a Pilgrim by the side
Of a clear brook;--beneath an Abbey's roof
One evening sumptuously lodged; the next
Humbly, in a religious Hospital;
Or with some merry Outlaws of the wood;
Or haply shrouded in a Hermit's cell.
Him, sleeping or awake, the Robber spared;
He walk'd--protected from the sword of war
By virtue of that sacred Instrument
His Harp, suspended at the Traveller's side,
His dear companion wheresoe'er he went,
Opening from Land to Land an easy way
By melody, and by the charm of verse.
Yet not the noblest of that honour'd Race
Drew happier, loftier, more impassion'd thoughts
From his long journeyings and eventful life,
Than this obscure Itinerant had skill
To gather, ranging through the tamer ground
Of these our unimaginative days;
Both while he trod the earth in humblest guise,
Accoutred with his burden and his staff;
And now, when free to move with lighter pace.
"What wonder, then, if I, whose favourite School
Hath been the fields, the roads, and rural lanes,
Look'd on this Guide with reverential love?
Each with the other pleased, we now pursued
Our journey--beneath favourable skies.
Turn wheresoe'er we would, he was a light
Unfailing: not a hamlet could we pass,
Rarely a house, that did not yield to him
Remembrances; or from his tongue call forth
Some way-beguiling tale.
--Nor was he loth to enter ragged huts,
Huts where his charity was blest; his voice
Heard as the voice of an experienced friend.
And, sometimes, where the Poor Man held dispute
With his own mind, unable to subdue
Impatience, through inaptness to perceive
General distress in his particular lot;
Or cherishing resentment, or in vain
Struggling against it, with a soul perplex'd,
And finding in herself no steady power
To draw the line of comfort that divides
Calamity, the chastisement of Heaven,
From the injustice of our brother men;
To him appeal was made as to a judge;
Who, with an understanding heart, allay'd
The perturbation; listen'd to the plea;
Resolved the dubious point; and sentence gave
So grounded, so applied, that it was heard
With soften'd spirit--e'en when it condemn'd."
What was to hinder such a man--thus born and thus bred--with such a
youth and such a prime--from being in his old age worthy of walking
among the mountains with Wordsworth, and descanting
"On man, on nature, and on human life?"
And remember he was a _Scotsman_--compatriot of CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
What would you rather have had the Sage in "The Excursion" to have been?
The Senior Fellow of a College? A head? A retired Judge? An Ex-Lord
Chancellor? A Nabob? A Banker? A Millionaire? or, at once to condescend
on individuals, Natus Consumere Fruges, Esquire? or the Honourable
Custos Rotulorum?
You have read, bright bold neophyte, the Song at the Feast of Brougham
Castle, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the
estates and honours of his ancestors?
"Who is he that bounds with joy
On Carrock's side, a shepherd boy?
No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass
Light as the wind along the grass.
Can this be He that hither came
In secret, like a smother'd flame?
For whom such thoughtful tears were shed.
For shelter and a poor man's bread?"
Who but the same noble boy whom his high-born mother in disastrous days
had confided when an infant to the care of a peasant. Yet there he is no
longer safe--and
"The Boy must part from Mosedale groves,
And leave Blencathara's ragged coves,
And quit the flowers that summer brings
To Glenderamakin's lofty springs;
Must vanish, and his careless cheer
Be turn'd to heaviness and fear."
Sir Launcelot Threlkeld shelters him till again he is free to set his
foot on the mountains.
"Again he wanders forth at will,
And tends a flock from hill to hill:
His garb is humble; ne'er was seen
Such garb with such a noble mien;
Among the shepherd grooms no mate
Hath he, a child of strength and state."
So lives he till he is restored.
"Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth;
The shepherd-lord was honour'd more and more;
And, ages after he was laid in earth,
'The good Lord Clifford' was the name he bore!"
Now mark--that Poem has been declared by one and all of the "Poets of
Britain" to be equal to anything in the language; and its greatness lies
in the perfect truth of the profound philosophy which so poetically
delineates the education of the naturally noble character of Clifford.
Does he sink in our esteem because at the Feast of the Restoration he
turns a deaf ear to the fervent harper who sings,
"Happy day and mighty hour,
When our shepherd in his power,
Mounted, mail'd, with lance and sword,
To his ancestors restored,
Like a reappearing star,
Like a glory from afar,
First shall head the flock of war"?
No--his generous nature is true to its generous nurture; and now deeply
imbued with the goodness he had too long loved in others ever to forget,
he appears noblest when showing himself faithful in his own hall to the
"huts where poor men lie;" while we know not, at the solemn close, which
life the Poet has most glorified--the humble or the high--whether the
Lord did the Shepherd more ennoble, or the Shepherd the Lord.
Now, we ask, is there any essential difference between what Wordsworth
thus records of the high-born Shepherd-Lord in the Feast of Brougham
Castle, and what he records of the low-born Pedlar in "The Excursion?"
None. They are both educated among the hills; and according to the
nature of their own souls and that of their education, is the
progressive growth and ultimate formation of their character. Both are
exalted beings--because both are wise and good--but to his own coeval he
has given, besides eloquence and genius,
"The vision and the faculty divine,"
that
"When years had brought the philosophic mind"
he might walk through the dominions of the Intellect and the
Imagination, a Sage and a Teacher.
Look into life, and watch the growth of character. Men are not what they
seem to the outward eye--mere machines moving about in customary
occupations--productive labourers of food and wearing apparel--slaves
from morn to night at taskwork set them by the Wealth of Nations. They
are the Children of God. The soul never sleeps--not even when its
wearied body is heard snoring by people living in the next street. All
the souls now in this world are for ever awake; and this life, believe
us, though in moral sadness it has often been rightly called so, is no
dream. In a dream we have no will of our own, no power over ourselves;
ourselves are not felt to be ourselves; our familiar friends seem
strangers from some far-off country; the dead are alive, yet we wonder
not; the laws of the physical world are suspended, or changed, or
confused by our phantasy; Intellect, Imagination, the Moral Sense,
Affection, Passion, are not possessed by us in the same way we possess
them out of that mystery: were Life a Dream, or like a Dream, it would
never lead to Heaven.
Again, then, we say to you, look into life and watch the growth of
character. In a world where the ear cannot listen without hearing the
clank of chains, the soul may yet be free as if it already inhabited the
skies. For its Maker gave it LIBERTY OF CHOICE OF GOOD OR OF EVIL; and
if it has chosen the good it is a King. All its faculties are then fed
on their appropriate food provided for them in nature. It then knows
where the necessaries and the luxuries of its life grow, and how they
may be gathered--in a still sunny region inaccessible to blight--"no
mildewed ear blasting his wholesome brother." In the beautiful language
of our friend Aird,--
"And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the Hills of God."
Go, read the EXCURSION then--venerate the PEDLAR--pity the
SOLITARY--respect the PRIEST, and love the POET.
So charmed have we been with the sound of our own voice--of all sounds
on earth the sweetest surely to our ears--and, therefore, we so dearly
love the monologue, and from the dialogue turn averse, impatient of him
ycleped the interlocutor, who, like a shallow brook, will keep prattling
and babbling on between the still deep pools of our discourse, which
nature feeds with frequent waterfalls--so charmed have we been with the
sound of our own voice, that, scarcely conscious the while of more than
a gentle ascent along the sloping sward of a rural Sabbath-day's
journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Highland
league--five miles--of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the
Mountain-top. True that his altitude is not very great--somewhere, we
should suppose, between two and three thousand feet--much higher than
the Pentlands--somewhat higher than the Ochils--a middle-sized Grampian.
Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable
bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so,
supporting the globe. So is Andes; but his strength has never been put
to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras--but we must not be
personal--so suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in
mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might
be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers?
These mountains are neither immense nor enormous--nor are there any such
in the British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on Riddell's
ingenious Scale--in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland
the Reeks; and you see that they are mere mole-hills to Chimborazo.
Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an
Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture--for Vulture he
is--flies league-high--the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself
half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long
river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of
the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye,
can see the rising and the setting sun, and his march on the meridian,
without a telescope. If ever he fly by night--and we think we have seen
a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life--he must be a
rare astronomer.
"High from the summit of a craggy cliff
Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown
On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young,
Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire.
Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own
He drives them from his fort, the towering seat
For ages of his empire; which in peace
Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea
He wings his course, and preys in distant isles."
Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas!
such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions
would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds.
Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some
inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the
dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself
driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the
unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded
in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in
the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we
do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere
to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the
Himalayas would not satisfy our aspirations. But we can calculate the
distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon.
Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains,
as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do
to ours--and let "Andes, giant of the Western Star," but dare to look at
us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from
his cloudy hands. There you stand--and were you to rear your summits
much higher into heaven, you would alarm the hidden stars.
Yet we have seen you higher--but it was in storm. In calm like this you
do well to look beautiful--your solemn altitude suits the sunny season,
and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your
heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and
show them to the glens, crowned with fire.