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Footnote 37:
The preface to _The Poems of Wordsworth_, chosen and edited by Matthew
Arnold, 1879.
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I remember hearing Lord Macaulay say, after Wordsworth’s death, when
subscriptions were being collected to found a memorial of him, that ten
years earlier more money could have been raised in Cambridge alone, to
do honor to Wordsworth, than was now raised all through the country.
Lord Macaulay had, as we know, his own heightened and telling way of
putting things, and we must always make allowance for it. But probably
it is true that Wordsworth has never, either before or since, been so
accepted and popular, so established in possession of the minds of all
who profess to care for poetry, as he was between the years 1830 and
1840, and at Cambridge. From the very first, no doubt, he had his
believers and witnesses. But I have myself heard him declare that, for
he knew not how many years, his poetry had never brought him in enough
to buy his shoe-strings. The poetry-reading public was very slow to
recognize him, and was very easily drawn away from him. Scott effaced
him with this public, Byron effaced him.
The death of Byron, seemed, however, to make an opening for Wordsworth.
Scott, who had for some time ceased to produce poetry himself, and stood
before the public as a great novelist; Scott, too genuine himself not to
feel the profound genuineness of Wordsworth, and with an instinctive
recognition of his firm hold on nature and of his local truth, always
admired him sincerely, and praised him generously. The influence of
Coleridge upon young men of ability was then powerful, and was still
gathering strength; this influence told entirely in favor of
Wordsworth’s poetry. Cambridge was a place where Coleridge’s influence
had great action, and where Wordsworth’s poetry, therefore, flourished
especially. But even amongst the general public its sale grew large, the
eminence of its author was widely recognized, and Rydal Mount became an
object of pilgrimage. I remember Wordsworth relating how one of the
pilgrims, a clergyman, asked him if he had ever written anything besides
the _Guide to the Lakes_. Yes, he answered modestly, he had written
verses. Not every pilgrim was a reader, but the vogue was established
and the stream of pilgrims came.
Mr. Tennyson’s decisive appearance dates from 1842. One cannot say that
he effaced Wordsworth as Scott and Byron had effaced him. The poetry of
Wordsworth had been so long before the public, the suffrage of good
judges was so steady and so strong in its favor, that by 1842 the
verdict of posterity, one may almost say, had been already pronounced,
and Wordsworth’s English fame was secure. But the vogue, the ear and
applause of the great body of poetry-readers, never quite thoroughly
perhaps his, he gradually lost more and more, and Mr. Tennyson gained
them. Mr. Tennyson drew to himself, and away from Wordsworth, the
poetry-reading public, and the new generations. Even in 1850, when
Wordsworth died, this diminution of popularity was visible, and
occasioned the remark of Lord Macaulay which I quoted at starting.
The diminution has continued. The influence of Coleridge has waned, and
Wordsworth’s poetry can no longer draw succor from this ally. The poetry
has not, however, wanted eulogists; and it may be said to have brought
its eulogists luck, for almost every one who has praised Wordsworth’s
poetry has praised it well. But the public has remained cold, or, at
least, undetermined. Even the abundance of Mr. Palgrave’s fine and
skilfully chosen specimens of Wordsworths, in the _Golden Treasury_,
surprised many readers, and gave offense to not a few. To tenth-rate
critics and compilers, for whom any violent shock to the public taste
would be a temerity not to be risked, it is still quite permissible to
speak of Wordsworth’s poetry, not only with ignorance, but with
impertinence. On the Continent he is almost unknown.
I cannot think, then, that Wordsworth has, up to this time, at all
obtained his deserts. “Glory,” said M. Renan the other day, “glory after
all is the thing which has the best chance of not being altogether
vanity.” Wordsworth was a homely man, and himself would certainly never
have thought of talking of glory as that which, after all, has the best
chance of not being altogether vanity. Yet we may well allow that few
things are less vain than _real_ glory. Let us conceive of the whole
group of civilized nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual
purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working
towards a common result; a confederation whose members have a due
knowledge both of the past, out of which they all proceed, and of one
another. This was the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will
impose itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies more and more.
Then to be recognized by the verdict of such a confederation as a
master, or even as a seriously and eminently worthy workman, in one’s
own line of intellectual or spiritual activity, is indeed glory; a glory
which it would be difficult to rate too highly. For what could be more
beneficent, more salutary? The world is forwarded by having its
attention fixed on the best things; and here is a tribunal, free from
all suspicion of national and provincial partiality, putting a stamp on
the best things, and recommending them for general honor and acceptance.
A nation, again, is furthered by recognition of its real gifts and
successes; it is encouraged to develop them further. And here is an
honest verdict, telling us which of our supposed successes are really,
in the judgment of the great impartial world, and not only in our own
private judgment only, successes, and which are not.
It is so easy to feel pride and satisfaction in one’s own things, so
hard to make sure that one is right in feeling it! We have a great
empire. But so had Nebuchadnezzar. We extol the “unrivaled happiness” of
our national civilization. But then comes a candid friend, and remarks
that our upper class is materialized, our middle class vulgarized, and
our lower class brutalized. We are proud of our painting, our music. But
we find that in the judgment of other people our painting is
questionable, and our music non-existent. We are proud of our men of
science. And here it turns out that the world is with us; we find that
in the judgment of other people, too, Newton among the dead, and Mr.
Darwin among the living, hold as high a place as they hold in our
national opinion.
Finally, we are proud of our poets and poetry. Now poetry is nothing
less than the most perfect speech of man, that in which he comes nearest
to being able to utter the truth. It is no small thing, therefore, to
succeed eminently in poetry. And so much is required for duly estimating
success here, that about poetry it is perhaps hardest to arrive at a
sure general verdict, and takes longest. Meanwhile, our own conviction
of the superiority of our national poets is not decisive, is almost
certain to be mingled, as we see constantly in English eulogy of
Shakespeare, with much of provincial infatuation. And we know what was
the opinion current amongst our neighbors the French—people of taste,
acuteness, and quick literary tact—not a hundred years ago, about our
great poets. The old _Biographie Universelle_ notices the pretension of
the English to a place for their poets among the chief poets of the
world, and says that this is a pretension which to no one but an
Englishman can ever seem admissible. And the scornful, disparaging
things said by foreigners about Shakespeare and Milton, and about our
national over-estimate of them, have been often quoted, and will be in
every one’s remembrance.
A great change has taken place, and Shakespeare is now generally
recognized, even in France, as one of the greatest of poets. Yes, some
anti-Gallican cynic will say, the French rank him with Corneille and
with Victor Hugo! But let me have the pleasure of quoting a sentence
about Shakespeare, which I met with by accident not long ago in the
_Correspondant_, a French review which not a dozen English people, I
suppose, look at. The writer is praising Shakespeare’s prose. With
Shakespeare, he says, “prose comes in whenever the subject, being more
familiar, is unsuited to the majestic English iambic.” And he goes on:
“Shakespeare is the king of poetic rhythm and style, as well as the king
of the realm of thought; along with his dazzling prose, Shakespeare has
succeeded in giving us the most varied, the most harmonious verse which
has ever sounded upon the human ear since the verse of the Greeks.” M.
Henry Cochin, the writer of this sentence, deserves our gratitude for
it; it would not be easy to praise Shakespeare, in a single sentence,
more justly. And when a foreigner and a Frenchman writes thus of
Shakespeare, and when Goethe says of Milton, in whom there was so much
to repel Goethe rather than to attract him, that “nothing has been ever
done so entirely in the sense of the Greeks as _Samson Agonistes_,” and
that “Milton is in very truth a poet whom we must treat with all
reverence,” then we understand what constitutes a European recognition
of poets and poetry as contradistinguished from a merely national
recognition, and that in favor both of Milton and of Shakespeare the
judgment of the high court of appeal has finally gone.
I come back to M. Renan’s praise of glory, from which I started. Yes,
real glory is a most serious thing, glory authenticated by the
Amphiotyonic Court of final appeal, definite glory. And even for poets
and poetry, long and difficult as may be the process of arriving at the
right award, the right award comes at last, the definite glory rests
where it is deserved. Every establishment of such a real glory is good
and wholesome for mankind at large, good and wholesome for the nation
which produced the poet crowned with it. To the poet himself it can
seldom do harm; for he, poor man, is in his grave, probably, long before
his glory crowns him.
Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, and certainly
his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves that this great and
steady light of glory as yet shines over him. He is not fully recognized
at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that
the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and
Milton, of which all the world now recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the
most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the
present time. Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot
well be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll of our chief
poetical names, besides Shakespeare and Milton, from the age of
Elizabeth downwards, and going through it,—Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray,
Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron,
Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are dead),—I think it certain
that Wordsworth’s name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, above
them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and excellences which
Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance of each as a whole, I say
that Wordsworth seems to me to have left a body of poetical work
superior in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring
freshness, to that which any one of the others has left.
But this is not enough to say. I think it certain, further, that if we
take the chief poetical names of the Continent since the death of
Molière, and, omitting Goethe, confront the remaining names with that of
Wordsworth, the result is the same. Let us take Klopstock, Lessing,
Schiller, Uhland, Rückert, and Heine for Germany; Filicaia, Alfieri,
Manzoni, and Leopardi for Italy; Racine, Boileau, Voltaire, André
Chenier, Béranger, Lamartine, Musset, M. Victor Hugo (he has been so
long celebrated that although he still lives I may be permitted to name
him) for France. Several of these, again, have evidently gifts and
excellences to which Wordsworth can make no pretension. But in real
poetical achievement it seems to me indubitable that to Wordsworth, here
again, belongs the palm. It seems to me that Wordsworth has left behind
him a body of poetical work which wears, and will wear, better on the
whole than the performance of any one of these personages, so far more
brilliant and celebrated, most of them, than the homely poet of Rydal.
Wordsworth’s performance in poetry is on the whole, in power, in
interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, superior to
theirs.
This is a high claim to make for Wordsworth. But if it is a just claim,
if Wordsworth’s place among the poets who have appeared in the last two
or three centuries is after Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe,
indeed, but before all the rest, then in time Wordsworth will have his
due. We shall recognize him in his place, as we recognize Shakespeare
and Milton; and not only we ourselves shall recognize him, but he will
be recognized by Europe also. Meanwhile, those who recognize him already
may do well, perhaps, to ask themselves whether there are not in the
case of Wordsworth certain special obstacles which hinder or delay his
due recognition by others, and whether these obstacles are not in some
measure removable.
The _Excursion_ and the _Prelude_, his poems of greatest bulk, are by no
means Wordsworth’s best work. His best work is in his shorter pieces,
and many indeed are there of these which are of first-rate excellence.
But in his seven volumes the pieces of high merit are mingled with a
mass of pieces very inferior to them; so inferior to them that it seems
wonderful how the same poet should have produced both. Shakespeare
frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite false, and which are
entirely unworthy of him. But one can imagine him smiling if one could
meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; smiling and replying
that he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it matter? But with
Wordsworth the case is different. Work altogether inferior, work quite
uninspired, flat and dull, is produced by him with evident
unconsciousness of its defects, and he presents it to us with the same
faith and seriousness as his best work. Now a drama or an epic fill the
mind, and one does not look beyond them; but in a collection of short
pieces the impression made by one piece requires to be continued and
sustained by the piece following. In reading Wordsworth the impression
made by one of his fine pieces is too often dulled and spoiled by a very
inferior piece coming after it.
Wordsworth composed verses during a space of some sixty years; and it is
no exaggeration to say that within one single decade of those years,
between 1798 and 1808, almost all his really first-rate work was
produced. A mass of inferior work remains, work done before and after
this golden prime, imbedding the first-rate work and clogging it,
obstructing our approach to it, chilling, not unfrequently, the
high-wrought mood with which we leave it. To be recognized far and wide
as a great poet, to be possible and receivable as a classic, Wordsworth
needs to be relieved of a great deal of the poetical baggage which now
encumbers him. To administer this relief is indispensable, unless he is
to continue to be a poet for the few only,—a poet valued far below his
real worth by the world.
There is another thing. Wordsworth classified his poems not according to
any commonly received plan of arrangement, but according to a scheme of
mental physiology. He has poems of the fancy, poems of the imagination,
poems of sentiment and reflection, and so on. His categories are
ingenious but far-fetched, and the result of his employment of them is
unsatisfactory. Poems are separated one from another which possess a
kinship of subject or of treatment far more vital and deep than the
supposed unity of mental origin, which was Wordsworth’s reason for
joining them with others.
The tact of the Greeks in matters of this kind was infallible. We may
rely upon it that we shall not improve upon the classification adopted
by the Greeks for kinds of poetry; that their categories of epic,
dramatic, lyric, and so forth, have a natural propriety, and should be
adhered to. It may sometimes seem doubtful to which of two categories a
poem belongs; whether this or that poem is to be called, for instance,
narrative or lyric, lyric or elegiac. But there is to be found in every
good poem a strain, a predominant note, which determines the poem as
belonging to one of these kinds rather than the other; and here is the
best proof of the value of the classification, and of the advantage of
adhering to it. Wordsworth’s poems will never produce their due effect
until they are freed from their present artificial arrangement, and
grouped more naturally.
Disengaged from the quantity of inferior work which now obscures them,
the best poems of Wordsworth, I hear many people say, would indeed stand
out in great beauty, but they would prove to be very few in number,
scarcely more than a half a dozen. I maintain, on the other hand, that
what strikes me with admiration, what establishes in my opinion
Wordsworth’s superiority, is the great and ample body of powerful work
which remains to him, even after all his inferior work has been cleared
away. He gives us so much to rest upon, so much which communicates his
spirit and engages ours!
This is of very great importance. If it were a comparison of single
pieces, or of three or four pieces, by each poet, I do not say that
Wordsworth would stand decisively above Gray, or Burns, or Coleridge, or
Keats, or Manzoni, or Heine. It is in his ampler body of powerful work
that I find his superiority. His good work itself, his work which
counts, is not all of it, of course, of equal value. 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. Poetry of
this latter sort counts, too, sometimes, by its biographical interest
partly, not by its poetical interest pure and simple; but then this can
only be when the poet producing it has the power and importance of
Wordsworth, a power and importance which he assuredly did not establish
by such didactic poetry alone. Altogether, it is, I say, by the great
body of powerful and significant work which remains to him, after every
reduction and deduction has been made, that Wordsworth’s superiority is
proved.
To exhibit this body of Wordsworth’s best work, to clear away
obstructions from around it, and to let it speak for itself, is what
every lover of Wordsworth should desire. Until this has been done,
Wordsworth, whom we, to whom he is dear, all of us know and feel to be
so great a poet, has not had a fair chance before the world. When once
it has been done, he will make his way best, not by our advocacy of him,
but by his own worth and power. We may safely leave him to make his way
thus, we who believe that a superior worth and power in poetry finds in
mankind a sense responsive to it and disposed at last to recognize it.
Yet at the outset, before he has been duly known and recognized, we may
do Wordsworth a service, perhaps, by indicating in what his superior
power and worth will be found to consist, and in what it will not.
Long ago, in speaking of Homer, I said that the noble and profound
application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic
greatness. I said that a great poet receives his distinctive character
of superiority from his application, under the conditions immutably
fixed by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth, from his
application, I say, to his subject, whatever it may be, of the ideas.
“On man, on nature, and on human life,”
which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is Wordsworth’s own;
and his superiority arises from his powerful use, in his best pieces,
his powerful application to his subject, of ideas “on man, on nature,
and on human life.”
Voltaire, with his signal acuteness, most truly remarked that “no nation
has treated in poetry moral ideas with more energy and depth than the
English nation.” And he adds: “There, it seems to me, is the great merit
of the English poets.” Voltaire does not mean, by “treating in poetry
moral ideas,” the composing moral and didactic poems;—that brings us but
a very little way in poetry. He means just the same thing as was meant
when I spoke above “of the noble and profound application of ideas to
life”; and he means the application of these ideas under the conditions
fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth. If it is
said that to call these ideas _moral_ ideas is to introduce a strong and
injurious limitation, I answer that it is to do nothing of the kind,
because moral ideas are really so main a part of human life. The
question, _how to live_, is itself a moral idea; and it is the question
which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or other, he
is perpetually occupied. A large sense is of course to be given to the
term _moral_. Whatever bears upon the question, “how to live,” comes
under it.
“Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv’st,
Live well; how long or short, permit to heaven.”
In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once perceives, a
moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles the forward-bending
lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal
relief by the sculptor’s hand before he can kiss, with the line,
“Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair—”
he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that
“We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep,”
he utters a moral idea.
Voltaire was right in thinking that the energetic and profound treatment
of moral ideas, in this large sense, is what distinguishes the English
poetry. He sincerely meant praise, not dispraise or hint of limitation;
and they err who suppose that poetic limitation is a necessary
consequence of the fact, the fact being granted as Voltaire states it.
If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound
application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny,
then to prefix to the term ideas here the term moral makes hardly any
difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree
moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at
bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his
powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,—to the question:
How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion;
they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had
their day; they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional
dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times,
even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take
for its motto Omar Kheyam’s words: “Let us make up in the tavern for the
time which we have wasted in the mosque.” Or we find attractions in a
poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the contents may be what
they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude
ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let
our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word _life_, until we
learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas
is a poetry of revolt against _life_; a poetry of indifference towards
moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards _life_.
Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the play of the senses, or
literary form and finish, or argumentative ingenuity, in comparison with
“the best and master thing” for us, as he called it, the concern, how to
live. Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked and
undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they were unthankful or
cowardly. But the things might also be over-prized, and treated as final
when they are not. They bear to life the relation which inns bear to
home. “As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on the road,
and liking it, were to stay forever at the inn! Man, thou hast forgotten
thine object; thy journey was not _to_ this, but _through_ this. ‘But
this inn is taking.’ And how many other inns, too, are taking, and how
many fields and meadows! but as places of passage merely. You have an
object, which is this: to get home, to do your duty to your family,
friends, and fellow-countrymen, to attain inward freedom, serenity,
happiness, contentment. Style takes your fancy, arguing takes your
fancy, and you forget your home and want to make your abode with them
and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking. Who denies that
they are taking? but as places, of passage, as inns. And when I say
this, you suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the care for
argument. I am not; I attack the resting in them, the not looking to the
end which is beyond them.”
Now, when we come across a poet like Théophile Gautier, we have a poet
who has taken up his abode at an inn, and never got farther. There may
be inducements to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to
find delight in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not change
the truth about him,—we only stay ourselves in his inn along with him.
And when we come across a poet like Wordsworth, who sings
“Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope.
And melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress,
Of moral strength and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread”—
then we have a poet intent on “the best and master thing,” and who
prosecutes his journey home. We say, for brevity’s sake, that he deals
with _life_, because he deals with that in which life really consists.
This is what Voltaire means to praise in the English poets,—this dealing
with what is really life. But always it is the mark of the greatest
poets that they deal with it; and to say that the English poets are
remarkable for dealing with it, is only another way of saying, what is
true, that in poetry the English genius has especially shown its power.
Wordsworth deals with it, and his greatness lies in his dealing with it
so powerfully. I have named a number of celebrated poets above all of
whom he, in my opinion, deserves to be placed. He is to be placed above
poets like Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, Schiller, because these
famous personages, with a thousand gifts and merits, never, or scarcely
ever, attain the distinctive accent and utterance of the high and
genuine poets—
“Quique pii vates et Phœbo digna locuti,”
at all. Burns, Keats, Heine, not to speak of others in our list, have
this accent;—who can doubt it? And at the same time they have treasures
of humor, felicity, passion, for which in Wordsworth we shall look in
vain. Where, then, is Wordsworth’s superiority? It is here; he deals
with more of _life_ than they do; he deals with _life_, as a whole, more
powerfully.
No Wordsworthian will doubt this. Nay, the fervent Wordsworthian will
add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen does, that Wordsworth’s poetry is precious
because his philosophy is sound; that his “ethical system is as
distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler’s;” that his
poetry is informed by ideas which “fall spontaneously into a scientific
system of thought.” But we must be on our guard against the
Wordsworthians, if we want to secure for Wordsworth his due rank as a
poet. The Wordsworthians are apt to praise him for the wrong things, and
to lay far too much stress upon what they call his philosophy. His
poetry is the reality, his philosophy,—so far, at least, as it may put
on the form and habit of “a scientific system of thought,” and the more
that it puts them on,—is the illusion. Perhaps we shall one day learn to
make this proposition general, and to say: Poetry is the reality,
philosophy the illusion. But in Wordsworth’s case, at any rate, we
cannot do him justice until we dismiss his formal philosophy.
The _Excursion_ abounds with philosophy, and therefore the _Excursion_
is to the Wordsworthian what it never can be to the disinterested lover
of poetry,—a satisfactory work. “Duty exists,” says Wordsworth, in the
_Excursion_; and then he proceeds thus—
“... Immutably survive,
For our support, the measures and the forms,
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not.”
And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet
union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinterested lover of poetry
will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the
proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of
elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.
Or let us come direct to the center of Wordsworth’s philosophy, as “an
ethical system, as distinctive and capable of systematical exposition as
Bishop Butler’s”—
“... One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists, one only;—an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe’er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.”
That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, religious and
philosophic 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, none of the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth
which we require from a poet, and in which Wordsworth is really strong.
Even the “intimation” of the famous Ode, those cornerstones of the
supposed philosophic system of Wordsworth,—the idea of the high
instincts and affections coming out in childhood, testifying of a divine
home recently left, and fading away as our life proceeds,—this idea, of
undeniable beauty as a play of fancy, has itself 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. In many people, perhaps with the majority of
educated persons, the love of nature is nearly imperceptible at ten
years old, but strong and operative at thirty. In general we may say of
these high instincts of early childhood, the base of the alleged
systematic philosophy of Wordsworth, what Thucydides says of the early
achievements of the Greek race: “It is impossible to speak with
certainty of what is so remote; but from all that we can really
investigate, I should say that they were no very great things.”
Finally, the “scientific system of thought” in Wordsworth gives us at
least such poetry as this, which the devout Wordsworthian accepts—
“O for the coming of that glorious time
When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth
And best protection, this Imperial Realm,
While she exacts allegiance, shall admit
An obligation, on her part, to _teach_
Them who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding herself by statute to secure,
For all the children whom her soil maintains,
The rudiments of letters, and inform
The mind with moral and religious truth.”
Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the production of these
un-Voltairian lines must have been imposed on him as a judgment! One can
hear them being quoted at a Social Science Congress; one can call up the
whole scene. A great room in one of our dismal provincial towns; dusty
air and jaded afternoon daylight; benches full of men with bald heads
and women in spectacles; an orator lifting up his face from a manuscript
written within and without to declaim these lines of Wordsworth; and in
the soul of any poor child of nature who may have wandered in thither,
an unutterable sense of lamentation, and mourning, and woe!
“But turn we,” as Wordsworth says, “from these bold, bad men,” the
haunters of Social Science Congresses. And let us be on our guard, too,
against the exhibitors and extollers of a “scientific system of thought”
in Wordsworth’s poetry. The poetry will never be seen aright while they
thus exhibit it. The cause of its greatness is simple, and may be told
quite simply. Wordsworth’s poetry is great because of the extraordinary
power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the
joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties; and
because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he
shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it.
The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest and most
unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is also accessible
universally. Wordsworth brings us word, therefore, according to his own
strong and characteristic line, he brings us word
“Of joy in widest commonalty spread.”
Here is an immense advantage for a poet. Wordsworth tells of what all
seek, and tells of it at its truest and best source, and yet a source
where all may go and draw for it.
Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything is precious which
Wordsworth, standing even at this perennial and beautiful source, may
give us. Wordsworthians are apt to talk as if it must be. They will
speak with the same reverence of _The Sailor’s Mother_, for example, as
of _Lucy Gray_. They do their master harm by such lack of
discrimination. _Lucy Gray_ is a beautiful success; _The Sailor’s
Mother_ is a failure. To give aright what he wishes to give, to
interpret and render successfully, is not always within Wordsworth’s own
command. It is within no poet’s command; here is the part of the Muse,
the inspiration, the God, the “not ourselves.” In Wordsworth’s case, the
accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration, is of peculiar
importance. No poet, perhaps, is so evidently filled with a new and
sacred energy when the inspiration is upon him; no poet, when it fails
him, is so left “weak as is a breaking wave.” I remember hearing him say
that “Goethe’s poetry was not inevitable enough.” The remark is striking
and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew
well how it came there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe’s poetry is not
inevitable; not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth’s poetry, when he is
at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It might
seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but wrote
his poem for him. He has no style. He was too conversant with Milton not
to catch at times his master’s manner, and he has fine Miltonic lines;
but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like Milton. When he
seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. In the
_Excursion_ we have his style, as an artistic product of his own
creation; and although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize
Wordsworth’s real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of the
_Excursion_, as a work of poetic style: “This will never do.” And yet
magical as is that power, which Wordsworth has not, of assured and
possessed poetic style, he has something which is an equivalent for it.
Every one who has any sense for these things feels the subtle turn, the
heightening, which is given to a poet’s verse by his genius for style.
We can feel it in the
“After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well”—
of Shakespeare; in the
“... though fall’n on evil days,
On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues”—
of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton’s power of poetic
style which gives such worth to _Paradise Regained_, and makes a great
poem of a work in which Milton’s imagination does not soar high.
Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at command, no style of this
kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too
well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of it
occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in
such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton’s—
“the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of cities;”
although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is undeniable, is
more properly that of eloquent prose than the subtle heightening and
change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the
elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of
_Laodameia_. Still the right sort of verse 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, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most
truly expressive kind.
Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying
for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire
fidelity it utters, Burns could show him.
“The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stain’d his name.”
Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to Wordsworth; and if
Wordsworth did great things with this nobly plain manner, we must
remember, what indeed he himself would always have been forward to
acknowledge, that Burns used it before him.
Still Wordsworth’s use of it has something unique and unmatchable.
Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to
write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises
from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth
feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural
character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject
with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness.
His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem
of _Resolution and Independence_; but it is bald as the bare mountain
tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.
Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound
truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His
best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a
warm admiration for _Laodameia_ and for the great _Ode_; but if I am to
tell the very truth, I find _Laodameia_ not wholly free from something
artificial, and the great _Ode_ not wholly free from something
declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show
Wordsworth’s unique power, I should rather choose poems such as
_Michael_, _The Fountain_, _The Highland Reaper_. And poems with the
peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth
produced in considerable number; besides very many other poems of which
the worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still
exceedingly high.
On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not only is Wordsworth
eminent by reason of the goodness of his best work, but he is eminent
also by reason of the great body of good work which he has left to us.
With the ancients I will not compare him. In many respects the ancients
are far above us, and yet there is something that we demand which they
can never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the poets and
poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are
altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven
than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the moderns, we are to
find his superiors.
To disengage the poems which show his power, and to present them to the
English-speaking public and to the world, is the object of this volume.
I by no means say that it contains all which in Wordsworth’s poems is
interesting. Except in the case of _Margaret_, a story composed
separately from the rest of the _Excursion_, and which belongs to a
different part of England, I have not ventured on detaching portions of
poems, or on giving any piece otherwise than as Wordsworth himself gave
it. But under the conditions imposed by this reserve, the volume
contains, I think, everything, or nearly everything, which may best
serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may
disserve him.
I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians; and if we are to get Wordsworth
recognized 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 address 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 him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, and been familiar
with his country. No Wordsworthian has a tenderer affection for this
pure and sage master than I, or is less really offended by his defects.
But Wordsworth is something more than the pure and sage master of a
small band of devoted followers, and we ought not to rest satisfied
until he is seen to be what he is. He is one of the very chief glories
of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her
poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him
recognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely
as possible and as truly as possible, his own word concerning his poems:
‘They will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and
society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser,
better, and happier.’