William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth on the 7th of April, 1770.
He was educated at Hawkeshead school, in High Furness, and at St.
John's College, Cambridge. He had several brothers. One was lost at
sea, as commemorated in his poems in various places, as in vol. iii.
p. 96, in the sixth poem on the naming of places; and in vol. iv. p.
332, in Elegiac Stanzas; and again in the very next poem--To the
Daisy. He was, as we learn from a note, commander of the East India
Company's vessel, the Earl of Abergavenny. Another brother was the
late Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and a third, a solicitor in
Staples inn. On quitting college, he lived some time in the west of
England, and then traveled abroad; resided a year and a half in
France, at Orleans, Nantes, Paris, etc. He then went into Germany. In
these countries he traveled much on foot, and often quite alone;
passing through the solitary forests, and penetrating into the most
obscure villages. I have heard him relate that coming late,
accompanied by his sister and Coleridge, into a desolate German
hamlet, in Hesse Cassel,--and wretched places they are often, as every
one knows who has had to seek rest or refreshment in them,--they were
refused admittance, and thought they must have to pass the night in
the open street. Knocking, however, pretty determinedly at the door of
the village inn, the landlord, as if provoked by being disturbed,
suddenly rushed out upon them, and fell upon them with a huge cudgel,
so that they considered themselves in great personal danger, as well
they might at that time of day, when the visits of foreigners were not
very common; and not only were the common village publicans very
boorish, but, if we are to believe the hand-books of the traveling
handicrafts, many a foul murder was committed in those obscure places
for the stranger's purse and knapsack. Neither Wordsworth nor
Coleridge, however, were destined to be extinguished in that manner.
They succeeded in defending themselves, in making their way into the
house, and by appealing to them as Christian people, whose duty it was
to entertain, and not abuse strangers, they secured a night's lodging,
such as it was. Coleridge relates the anecdote somewhat differently in
his Biographia Literaria. He says, the rudeness of the landlord
within, was seconded by a rabble without. That the travelers could get
neither supper, coffee, nor beds; and finally, asking for some bundles
of straw to sleep upon, these possibly might have been granted, but
that he, Coleridge, happened to ask impatiently, if there were no
Christians left in Hesse Cassel; which so incensed them, that being
reported in the street, the rabble rushed in and expelled them from
the house, by hurling the burning brands from the hearth at them; and
that they bivouacked where they could; Coleridge passing his night
under a furz bush, well punctured by its thorns. You may find many
traces of Wordsworth's wanderings thus in his poems, particularly in
vol. iii., and also in vol. iv., where he very characteristically
narrates the adventures of a fly on a cold winter's day, as it
traverses the stove before which he sat warming himself.
Before going abroad he lived some time in Dorsetshire and
Somersetshire. It is probable that he made the acquaintance of
Coleridge at Cambridge. Coleridge had now become connected with
Southey and Lovell, two Bristol men, and was in a great measure
located there. The spirit of poetry had revived again after a long
period of mere imitation; and by these circumstances three of the
chief leaders of literary reform were thus brought together. Southey
was a Bristol man, Coleridge was a Devonshire man, Wordsworth a
Cumberland man; but here they were drawn together, and Bristol for a
time seemed as though it were to have the honor of becoming a sort of
western Athens. But Bristol itself had no sympathy with any literary
spirit. It is one of those places that have the singular fortune to
produce great men, though it never cherishes them. It produced
Chatterton, and let him perish; it produced Southey, and let him go
away to rear the fabric of his fame where he pleased. The spirit of
trade, and that not in its most adventurous or liberal character, was
and is the spirit of Bristol. By a wretched and penny-wise policy,
even of trade, it has allowed Gloucester, at many miles' distance from
the sea, to become a great port at its expense; by the same spirit it
has created Liverpool; and whoever now sees its wretched docks coming
up into the middle of the town, instead of stretching, business-like
and compactly, along the banks of the Avon, its dusty and unwatered
streets, and altogether dingy and sluggish appearance, feels at once,
that not even the poetry of trade can flourish there. Yet Bristol had
the honor thrust upon it, of issuing to the world the first
productions of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. Joseph Cottle, the
author of Alfred, an epic poem, whom Byron so mercilessly handled,
grafting upon him the name of his brother Amos, for the sake of more
ludicrous effect--Joseph Cottle was a bookseller here, and became the
patron of those three young, aspiring, but far from wealthy young men.
Coleridge had made the acquaintance of a Mr. Thomas Poole, of Nether
Stowey, a gentleman of some property, and a magistrate. Mr. Poole was
a friend of the two great brother potters, Josiah and Thomas
Wedgewood, of Staffordshire; he introduced Coleridge to them, and
eventually they settled on him an annuity of £150 a-year. Poole
invited Coleridge to come down to Stowey to see him, and after his
marriage prevailed on him to go and live in Stowey. The Wedgewoods
were accustomed also to visit Mr. Poole; and the same causes drew
Wordsworth and Southey occasionally down there. Thus Bristol ceased to
be the general rendezvous of this new literary coterie, and the
solitudes of Somersetshire received them. People have often wondered
what induced this poetical brotherhood to select a scene so far out of
the usual haunts of literary men, so inferior to Wordsworth's own
neighborhood, as Stowey and its vicinity. These are the circumstances.
It was Mr. Poole and cheapness which had a deal to do with it. Poole
drew Coleridge, Coleridge and the dreams of Pantisocracy drew most of
the others. Wordsworth, I believe, never speculated on the exclusive
happiness of following the plough on the banks of the Susquehannah;
but the whole of the corps had made the discovery that true poetry was
based on nature, and that it was to be found only by looking into
their own minds, and into the world of nature around them. They
therefore sought, not cities, but solitude, where they could at once
read, reflect, and store up that treasury of imagery, full of beauty
and truth, which should be reproduced, woven into the living tissue of
their own thought and passion, as poetry of a new, startling, and high
order. To this life of country seclusion Wordsworth and Southey
adhered, from choice, all their after-lives.
Wordsworth first resided at Racedown in Dorsetshire, where Coleridge
visited him. When Coleridge went to settle at Stowey, Wordsworth also
removed to Allfoxden, about five miles farther down, near the Bristol
Channel. Here his secluded habits gave rise to some ludicrous
circumstances, annoying enough, however, to drive him out of the
neighborhood. He was deep in the composition of poetry. He had a
Tragedy on the anvil, a poem called Salisbury Plain, never yet
published, and Peter Bell, beside his Lyrical Ballads, which last
Cottle brought out while he was here. He sought the deepest solitude,
and here, if anywhere, he could find it. Allfoxden house is situated
at the very extremity of the Quantock hills, and within about a mile
and a quarter of the Bristol Channel. As you advance from Stowey, the
Quantock hills run along at some little distance on your left hand.
They are of the character of downs, open and moorland on the top, and
with great masses of wood here and there on their slopes. The country
on your right is level, rich, and well wooded. On arriving near
Allfoxden, you turn abruptly to the left, and winding about through a
woody lane, and passing through a little hamlet, you begin to feel as
if you were going quite out of the world of mankind. You are at the
foot of the hills, and a thick wood terminates your way. But through
this wood you have to pass to find the house where Wordsworth had
hidden himself. Passing into this wood at a gate, you find yourself in
a most Druidical gloom. The wood is of well grown, tall, and thickly
growing oak; filled still closer with hollies, which were once
underwood, but which have shot up, and emulated the very oaks
themselves in altitude. They are unquestionably among the loftiest
hollies in England. Altogether the mass of wood is dense, the scene is
shadowy, the ground is strewn with its brown carpet of fallen leaves.
As you advance, on your right hand you catch a sound of water, and
pursuing it you find it issues from the bottom of a deep narrow glen
or dean, which no doubt gives the name to the place--All fox den, or
glen of all the foxes. This glen is a very poetical feature of the
place, and especially attractive to a man in Wordsworth's then turn
of mind, which led him to the deepest seclusion for the sake of
abstraction. Tall trees soar up from its sides, and meet above; some
of them have fallen across, dashed down by the wind. Wild plants grow
luxuriantly below; woodbines and other creepers climb and cling from
bough to bough; and the pure and crystal water hurries along over its
gravelly bed, beneath this mass of shade and overhanging banks, with a
merry music to the neighboring sea.
Leaving this glen, you hold on through the wood to the left, and soon
emerge into a park, inclosed by hills and woods, where a good
country-house looks out toward the sea. It is one of the most
secluded, and yet pleasantly secluded, houses in England. Around it
sweep the hills, scattered with fine timber, beneath which reposes a
herd of deer, and before it stretches the sea at a little distance.
The house is somewhat raised above the level of the valley, so as to
catch the charming view of the lands, woods, and outspread waters
below. To the left, near the coast, you catch a view of the walls of
St. Audrey, the seat of Sir Peregrine Ackland, pleasingly assuring you
that you are not quite cut off from humanity. Below the house lies a
sunny flower-garden, and, behind, the ascending lawn is enriched by
finely disposed masses of trees; among them some enormous old oaks,
and elms of noblest growth. There are two elms, growing close
together, of remarkable size and height, beneath which a seat is
placed, commanding a view of the park and sea; and just below it a
fine, well grown larch, which used to be a very favorite tree of the
poet. Under these trees he used to sit, and read and compose; and no
man could have coveted a more congenial study. Here originated or took
form many of his lyrical ballads.
If you ascend the park, you find yourself, after a good, stout climb,
on the open hills. One summit after another, covered with clumps of
Scotch firs, allures you to ascend, till at length you find yourself
far from any abode, on the high moorland hills, amid a profound, but a
glorious solitude. Fine glens, with glittering streams, and here and
there a lonely cottage sending up its quiet smoke, run among these
hills, and extensive tracts of woodland offer you all the charms of
forest seclusion. The hills which range along behind Stowey cease
here, and were the great haunt of Coleridge and Wordsworth. They
might, if they pleased, extend their rambles over them, from the abode
of the one to that of the other. We find numerous evidences of their
haunting of these hills, among their poems. The ballad of The Thorn is
said to be derived hence. Coleridge mentions their name occasionally.
He has a poem to a brook among the Quantock hills; and the opening of
his Fears in Solitude, written in 1798, when he was at Stowey, is most
descriptive of their scenery:--
"A green and silent spot amid the hills,
A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place
No singing skylark ever poised herself.
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
All golden with the never bloomless furz,
Which now blooms most profusely; but the dell,
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax,
When, through its half-transparent stalks at eve,
The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
Oh! 'tis a quiet, spirit-healing nook!
Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he,
The humble man, who in his youthful years
Knew just so much of folly as had made
His early manhood more securely wise!
Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
While from the singing lark, that sings unseen
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best,
And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame,
And he with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious musings in the forms of nature!
And so, his senses gradually wrapped
In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,
That singest like an angel in the clouds!"
But the views from the Quantock hills are as charming as the hills
themselves. From above Allfoxden you look down directly on the Bristol
Channel, the little island of Steepholms lying in the liquid
foreground, and the Welsh hills stretching along in the back. On your
right you see the whole level but rich country stretching away to
Bridgewater, and on toward Bristol.
In this pleasant but solitary region we must recollect, however, that
the young poets were not left entirely to their solitary rambles and
cogitations. Coleridge had his wife and one or two young children with
him. Wordsworth had his sister, and great companion in his many
wanderings through various parts of the kingdom, Dorothy. Then there
was Mr. Poole, their common friend at Stowey; Charles Lloyd, the son
of the Quaker banker of Birmingham, a poet, with the usual fate of a
poet, sorrow and an early death, was there part of the time, as a
great admirer of, and boarder at, Coleridge's. Southey, Cottle,
Charles Lamb, and the two Wedgewoods, and others, visited them. We may
well believe that this knot of friends, young, full of enthusiasm, of
the love of nature, and the dreams of poetry, became a source of the
strangest wonder to the simple and very ignorant inhabitants of that
part of the country. People, whose children at the present hour, as
will be seen by the account of Coleridge, do not know what a poet
means, were not very likely to comprehend what could bring such a
number of strange young men, all at once, into their neighborhood.
What could they be after there? The honest people had no idea of
persons frequenting a place but in pursuit of some honest or dishonest
calling. They could not see what calling these young gentlemen were
following there, and they very naturally set down their business to be
of the latter description. They were neither lawyers, doctors, nor
parsons. They were neither farmers, merchants, nor, according to their
notions, thorough gentlefolks, _i.e._, people who lived in large
houses, kept large numbers of servants, and drove about in fine
carriages. On the contrary, they went wandering about among the hills
and woods, and by the sea. They were out, it was said, more by night
than by day; and I have heard people of rank and education, which
ought to have informed them better, assert, and who still do assert,
that they led a very dissolute life! The grave and moral Wordsworth,
the respectable Wedgewoods, correct Robert Southey, and Coleridge
dreaming of glories and intellectualities beyond the moon, were set
down for a very disreputable gang! Innocent Mrs. Coleridge, and poor
Dolly Wordsworth, were seen strolling about with them, and were
pronounced no better than they should be! Such was the character which
they unconsciously acquired, that Wordsworth was at length actually
driven out of the country.
Coleridge, writing to Cottle, says, "Wordsworth has been caballed
against _so long and so loudly_, that he has found it impossible
to prevail on the tenant of the Allfoxden estate to let him the house,
after their first agreement is expired, so he must quit it at
midsummer. Whether we shall be able to procure him a house and
furniture near Stowey, we know not, and yet we must; for the hills,
and the woods, and the streams, and the sea, and the shores, would
break forth into reproaches against us, if we did not strain every
nerve to keep their poet among them. Without joking, and in serious
sadness, Poole and I can not endure to think of losing him.
"At all events, come down, Cottle, as soon as you can, but before
midsummer; and we will procure a horse, easy as thy own soul, and we
will go on a roam to Linton and Limouth, which, if thou comest in May,
will be in all their pride of woods and water-falls, not to speak of
its august cliffs, and the green ocean, and the vast valley of stones,
all which live disdainful of the seasons, or accept new honors only
from the winter's snows."
This poetic trip, in company with another strange man, would, of
course, be considered by the neighbors to be another smuggling or spy
excursion. What else could they be going all that way for, to look at
"the green sea," and at great "valleys of stones?" I remember the
knowing laughter with which a country innkeeper in Cornwall once broke
out, when, on his asking me what was my business in that part of the
country, I replied, "to look about me."
"To look about! Oh, yes, the gentleman knows very well! To look about!
Yes, indeed, make me believe that people go a great way off, into
strange neighborhoods, merely to look about them!" The people of
Somersetshire were equally sagacious at finding a mare's nest.
Wordsworth, always a solemn-looking mortal, even in his youth, was
particularly obnoxious to their suspicions, especially as he lived in
that large house, in that very solitary place. Hear Cottle's account
of the affair.
"Mr. Wordsworth had taken the Allfoxden house, near Stowey, for one
year, during the minority of the heir; and the reason why he was
refused a continuance by the ignorant man who had the letting of it,
arose, as Mr. Coleridge informed me, from a whimsical cause, or rather
a series of causes. The wiseacres of the village had, it seems, made
Mr. Wordsworth the object of their serious conversation. One said,
that 'he had seen him wander about by night, and look rather strangely
at the moon! And then, he roamed over the hills like a partridge.'
Another said, 'he had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some
outlandish brogue, that nobody could understand!' Another said, 'It's
useless to talk, Thomas, I think he is what people call "a wise man"'
(a conjurer!). Another said, 'You are every one of you wrong. I know
what he is. We have all met him tramping away toward the sea. Would
any man in his senses take all that trouble to look at a parcel of
water! I think he carries on a snug business in the smuggling line,
and in these journeys, is on the lookout for some wet cargo!' Another
very significantly said, 'I know that he has got a private still in
his cellar; for I once passed his house at a little better than a
hundred yards' distance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an
ashen fagot at Christmas.' Another said, 'However that was, he is
surely a desperd French jacobin; for he is so silent and dark that
nobody ever heard him say one word about politics.' And thus these
ignoramuses drove from their village a greater ornament than will ever
again be found among them."
Southey once thought of settling near Neath instead of the Lakes, and
had pitched on a house which was to let, but the owner refused to
receive him as tenant, because he had heard a rumor of his being a
jacobin.
Cottle gives an amusing adventure at Allfoxden, which must not be
omitted. "A visit to Mr. Coleridge at Stowey, in the year 1797, had
been the means of my introduction to Mr. Wordsworth. Soon after our
acquaintance had commenced, Mr. Wordsworth happened to be in Bristol,
and asked me to spend a day or two with him at Allfoxden. I consented,
and drove him down in a gig. We called for Mr. Coleridge, Miss
Wordsworth, and the servant at Stowey; and they walked, while we rode
to Mr. Wordsworth's house, distant two or three miles, where we
purposed to dine. A London alderman would smile at our bill of fare.
It consisted of philosopher's viands; namely, a bottle of brandy, a
noble loaf, and a stout piece of cheese; and, as there was plenty of
lettuces in the garden, with all these comforts we calculated on doing
very well.
"Our fond hopes, however, were somewhat damped, by finding that our
stout piece of cheese had vanished! A sturdy _rat_ of a beggar,
whom we had relieved on the road, with his olfactories all alive, no
doubt, _smelled_ our cheese; and, while we were gazing at the
magnificent clouds, contrived to abstract our treasure! Cruel tramp!
an ill return for our pence! We both wished that the rind might not
choke him. The mournful fact was ascertained a little before we drove
into the court-yard of the house. Mr. Coleridge bore the loss with
great fortitude, observing that we should never starve with a loaf of
bread and a bottle of brandy. He now, with the dexterity of an adept,
admired by his friends around, unbuckled the horse, and putting down
the shafts with a jerk, as a triumphant conclusion of his work,--lo!
the bottle of brandy that had been placed most carefully behind us on
the seat, from the inevitable law of gravity, suddenly rolled down,
and before we could arrest the spirituous avalanche, pitching right on
the stones, was dashed to pieces! We all beheld the spectacle, silent
and petrified! We might have collected the broken fragments of the
glass; but the brandy, that was gone! clean gone!
"One little untoward thing often follows another, and while the rest
stood musing, chained to the place, regaling themselves with the
Cognac effluvium, and all miserably chagrined, I led the horse to the
stable, where a fresh perplexity arose. I removed the harness without
difficulty, but after many strenuous attempts I could not get off the
collar. In despair, I called for assistance, when aid soon drew near.
Mr. Wordsworth first brought his ingenuity into exercise, but, after
several unsuccessful efforts, he relinquished the achievement as
altogether impracticable. Mr. Coleridge now tried his hand, but showed
no more grooming skill than his predecessors; for after twisting the
poor horse's neck, almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of
his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse's
head must have grown--gout or dropsy! since the collar was put on!
'For,' said he, 'it is a downright impossibility for such a huge os
frontis to pass through so narrow a collar!' Just at this instant, the
servant girl came near, and understanding the cause of our
consternation, 'La, master,' said she, 'you do not go about the work
in the right way. You should do like this;' when, turning the collar
completely upside down, she slipped it off in a moment, to our great
humiliation and wonderment; each satisfied, afresh, that there were
heights of knowledge in the world, to which he had not attained.
"We were now summoned to dinner; and a dinner it was, such as every
blind and starving man in the three kingdoms would have rejoiced to
behold. At the top of the table stood a superb brown loaf. The center
dish presented a pile of the true cos lettuces, and at the bottom
appeared an empty plate, where the stout piece of cheese ought to have
stood!--cruel mendicant! and though the brandy was clean gone, yet its
place was well, if not _better_ supplied by a superabundance of
fine sparkling Castalian champagne! A happy thought at this time
started into one of our minds, that some sauce would render the
lettuces a little more acceptable, when an individual in the company
recollected a question once propounded by the most patient of
men--'How can that which is unsavory be eaten without salt?' and asked
for a little of that valuable culinary article. 'Indeed, sir,' said
Betty, 'I quite forgot to buy salt.' A general laugh followed the
announcement, in which our host heartily joined. This was nothing. We
had plenty of other good things, and while crunching our succulents,
and munching our crusts, we pitied the far worse condition of those,
perchance as hungry as ourselves, who were forced to dine alone, off
ether. For our next meal, the mile-off village furnished all that
could be desired, and these trifling incidents present the sum and the
result of half the little passing disasters of life."
The Lyrical Ballads having been brought out about midsummer, 1798; in
September of that year Wordsworth and Coleridge set out for Germany.
On his return to England he settled at Grasmere, about the beginning
of this century. At Grasmere, he resided in two or three different
houses; one was Town-end, where his friends, the Cooksons, now reside;
another at Allen-bank, at a white house on the hillside, conspicuous
in our vignette. He continued to live at Grasmere fifteen years, and
has since resided at his present abode, Rydal Mount, about thirty
years.
Mr. Wordsworth, after finishing his education, seems to have made
choice of no profession but that of poetry. His patrimony could not
have been large, as I have heard Mrs. Wordsworth say, that, at the
time of their marriage, they had in joint income about £100 a-year.
This, however, would go a good way with a young couple, of simple
habits, in a place like Grasmere at that time of day. Mrs. Wordsworth
was a Miss Hutchinson of Cockermouth. Poetry was Wordsworth's real
business from the first, as it has been the great and continued
business of his life. His sister Dorothy, also gifted with
considerable poetic power, as may be seen in the Address to a Child
during a boisterous winter evening, and The Mother's Return, at pp. 9
and 12 of the first volume of his poems, as well as in the Journal of
their Wanderings together, was his great and congenial companion. She
had a passion for nature, not less ardent than his own; and went on at
his side, fearless of rain, or cold, or tempest, nor shrinking from
heat. She was ready to climb the mountain, to cross the torrent, or
slide down the slippery steep with equal boldness and skill, derived
from long practice. With him she traversed a great part of Scotland,
Wales, and parts of England. He describes their thus setting out from
Grasmere:--
"To cull contentment upon wildest shores,
And luxuries extract from bleakest moors;
With prompt embrace all beauty to infold,
And having rights in all that we behold."
To this ramble, chiefly on foot, we are indebted for some of the most
vigorous and characteristic lyrics that Wordsworth ever wrote. He was
young, ardent, and overflowing with enthusiasm; and the soil of
Scotland, on which so many deeds of martial fame had been done, or
where Ossian had sung in the misty years of far-off times, or other
bards whose names had for centuries been embalmed in the strains which
the spirit of the people had perpetuated, kindled in him a fervent
sympathy. We can imagine the delighted brother and sister marching on,
over the beautiful hills, the dark heaths, and down the enchanting
vales of the Highlands, conversing eagerly of the scenes they had
seen, and the incidents they had heard, till the glowing thoughts had
formed themselves, in the poet's mind, into almost instant song. These
poems have all the character of having been cast, hot from the furnace
of inspiration, into their present mold. There is a life, an original
freshness, and a native music about them. Such are Ellen Irvine, or
the Braes of Kirtle; To a Highland Girl; Glen Almain, or the Solitary
Glen; Stepping Westwood; The Solitary Reaper; Rob Roy's Grave; Yarrow
Revisited; In the Pass of Killicranky; The Jolly Matron of Jedburgh
and her Husband; The Blind Highland Boy; The Brownie's Cell; Cora
Linn, etc.
It was to this beloved companion of his wanderings that he, the
year afterward, addressed these beautiful verses, on revisiting
Tintern.--Vol. ii. p. 179.
----"Thou art with me, here, upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest friend,
My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, or the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee; and, in after-years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion of all lovely forms,
Thy memory be a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations. Nor, perchance,
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes those gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshiper of nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service; rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods, and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear both for themselves and for thy sake!"
Was there something in "the shooting gleams of those wild eyes," which
foretold that, like the lights of a fitful sky, they should flash and
quickly disappear? The mind of that beloved sister has for many years
gone, as it were, before her, and she lives on in a second infancy,
carefully cherished in the poet's home.
Wordsworth, as I have observed, devoted himself to no profession but
that of poetry. He followed the stream of life as it led him down the
retired vale of poetic meditation, but not without, at times, being
visited by fears of what the end might be. Of this he gives a graphic
description in his poem of Resolution and Independence, the hero of
which is the old leech gatherer.
"I heard the skylark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare:
Far from the world I walk and from all care,
But there may come another day to me--
Solitude, pain of heart, distress and poverty.
"My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought.
As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good.
But how can he expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no care at all?
"I thought of Chatterton, the marvelous boy.
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plough along the mountain side.
By our own spirits are we deified:
We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness."
But this sad and common fate of poets, was not to visit Wordsworth.
The devotion he had vowed to nature was to remain hallowed, happy, and
unbroken to the end. His lot was to be the very _ideal_ of the
poetic lot. He was to live amid his native mountains, guarantied
against care and poverty; at liberty to roam at will amid beauty and
solitude; to work out his deepest thoughts in stately verse, and in
his old age to receive there the reverence of his countrymen. He had
the interest of the Lowther family. By that he was appointed
distributor of stamps for the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland;
in his case a mere sinecure, for the business of the office is easily
executed by one or more experienced clerks. Since then, two out of his
three children have married well. His son, a clergyman, to a daughter
of Mr. Curwen, formerly M.P., and his daughter, to Mr. Quillinan. His
second son has succeeded him in his stamp-distributorship. He has
succeeded Southey in the laureateship, and has had, superadded, a
pension of three or four hundred a-year. Perhaps none of the purely
poetic tribe have labored less for fortune, and few have been more
fortunate. The early experience of himself and his poetic
cotemporaries is very instructive to all who seek to realize a
reputation; it is, to have faith, to persevere, and believe nature and
not critics. Never was a fiercer onslaught made than by the Edinburgh
Review, on the whole race of poets who then arose. With the same
fatality which has since led that journal to declare that no steamer
would be able to cross the Atlantic, and that Grey, the author of the
railway system, was a madman, and ought to be put into Bedlam, it
denounced the whole class of young poets, who were destined to revive
real poetry in the land, as it afterward did Lord Byron, as drivelers,
and fools. Scotland, having stoned to death its own Burns, made a
determined attempt to annihilate all the rising poetry of England. It
commenced the review of Wordsworth's Excursion with the ludicrous
words,--"This will never do!" and declared that there was not a line
of poetry, or scarcely of common sense, in it, "from the hour that the
driveler squatted himself down in the sun, to the end of his
preaching." Let every youthful aspirant remember this history; and
that if criticism could prevail over genius, we should not at this
moment have one great established poet on our list of fame.
Wordsworth's poetical philosophy is now thought to be too well known
to need much explanation. He has indeed expounded it himself in almost
every page.
Yet, after all the brilliant and profound criticism which has been
expended upon it, by almost every review in these kingdoms, and by
every writer on poetry and poets, the simple truth remains to be told.
The fact lay too much on the surface for very deep and metaphysical
divers to perceive. It was too obvious to be seen by those who profess
to see farther into a millstone than any body else. And what, then, is
the fundamental philosophy of Wordsworth?
It is, what he, perhaps, would himself start to hear, simply a poetic
Quakerism. The Quaker's religious faith is in immediate inspiration.
He believes that if he "centers down," as he calls it, into his own
mind, and puts to rest all his natural faculties and thoughts, he will
receive the impulses and intimations of the Divine Spirit. He is not
to seek, to strive, to inquire, but to be passive, and receive. This
is precisely the great doctrine of Wordsworth, as it regards poetry.
He believes the Divine Spirit which fills the universe, to have so
molded all the forms of visible nature, as to make them to us
perpetual monitors and instructors:--
"To inform
The mind that is within us; to impress
With quietness and beauty, and to feed
With lofty thoughts."
Thus, in Expostulation and Reply, this doctrine is most distinctly
pronounced:--
"'Why, William, on that old gray stone
Thus for the length of half-a-day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?
"'Where are your books? that light bequeathed
To beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.
"'You look round on your mother earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!'
"One morning thus by Esthwaite Lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Mathew spake,
And thus I made reply:--
"'The eye it can not choose but see;
We can not bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.
"'Nor less I deem that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feel, this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
"'Think you, mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
"'Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old gray stone,
And dream my time away.'"
The same doctrine is inculcated in the very next poem, The Tables
Turned. Here the poet calls his friend from his books, as full of toil
and trouble, adding:--
"And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let nature be your teacher.
"She has a world of ready wealth
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
"Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things;
We murder to dissect.
"Enough of science and of art;
Close up their barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives."
Now, if George Fox had written poetry, that is exactly what he would
have written. So completely does it embody the grand Quaker doctrine,
that Clarkson, in his Portraiture of Quakerism, has quoted it, without
however perceiving that the grand and complete fabric of Wordsworth's
poetry is built on this foundation; that this dogma of quitting men,
books, and theories, and sitting down quietly to receive the unerring
intimations and influences of the spirit of the universe, is identical
in Fox and Wordsworth; is the very same in the poetry of the one as in
the religion of the other. The two reformers acquired their faith by
the same process, and in the same manner. They went out into solitude,
into night, and into woods, to seek the oracle of truth. Fox retired
to a hollow oak, as he tells us, and with prayers and tears sought
after the truth, and came at length to see that it lay not in schools,
colleges, and pulpits, but in the teaching in a passive spirit of the
great Father of Spirits. Wordsworth retired to the
"Mountains, to the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lovely streams,
Wherever nature led."