[_30 May '08_]
I have had great joy in Mr. Nowell Charles Smith's new and comprehensive
edition of Wordsworth, published by Methuen in three volumes as majestic
as Wordsworth himself at his most pontifical. The price is fifteen
shillings net, and having regard to the immense labour involved in such an
edition, it is very cheap. I would sooner pay fifteen shillings for a real
book like this than a guinea for the memoirs of any tin god that ever sat
up at nights to keep a diary; yea, even though the average collection of
memoirs will furnish material to light seven hundred pipes. We have lately
been much favoured with first-rate editions of poets. I mention Mr. de
Sélincourt's Keats, and Mr. George Sampson's amazing and
not-to-be-sufficiently-lauded Blake. Mr. Smith's work is worthy to stand
on the same shelf with these. A shining virtue of Mr. Smith's edition is
that it embodies the main results of the researches and excavations not
only of Professor Knight, but, more important, of the wonderful Mr.
Hutchinson, whose contributions to the _Academy_, in days of yore, were
the delight of Wordsworthians.
* * * * *
Personally, I became a member of the order of Wordsworthians in the
historic year 1891, when Matthew Arnold's "Selections" were issued to the
public at the price of half a crown. I suppose that Matthew Arnold and Sir
Leslie Stephen were the two sanest Wordsworthians of us all. And Matthew
Arnold put Wordsworth above all modern poets except Dante, Shakespeare,
Goethe, Milton, and Molière. The test of a Wordsworthian is the ability to
read with pleasure every line that the poet wrote. I regret to say that,
strictly, Matthew Arnold was not a perfect Wordsworthian; he confessed,
with manly sincerity, that he could not read "Vaudracour and Julia" with
pleasure. This was a pity and Matthew Arnold's loss. For a strict
Wordsworthian, while utterly conserving his reverence for the most poetic
of poets, can discover a keen ecstasy in the perusal of the unconsciously
funny lines which Wordsworth was constantly perpetrating. And I would back
myself to win the first prize in any competition for Wordsworth's funniest
line with a quotation from "Vaudracour and Julia." My prize-line would
assuredly be:
_Yea, his first word of greeting was,--_
_"All right...._
It is true that the passage goes on:
_Is gone from me...._
But that does not impair the magnificent funniness.
* * * * *
From his tenderest years Wordsworth succeeded in combining the virtues of
Milton and of _Punch_ in a manner that no other poet has approached. Thus,
at the age of eighteen, he could write:
_Now while the solemn evening shadows sail,_
_On slowly-waving pinions, down the vale;_
_And fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines_
_Its darkening boughs...._
Which really is rather splendid for a boy. And he could immediately follow
that, speaking of a family of swans, with:
_While tender cares and mild domestic loves_
_With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,_
_The female with a meeker charm succeeds...._
Wordsworth richly atoned for his unconscious farcicalness by a multitude
of single lines that, in their pregnant sublimity, attend the
Wordsworthian like a shadow throughout his life, warning him continually
when he is in danger of making a fool of himself. Thus, whenever through
mere idleness I begin to waste the irrecoverable moments of eternity, I
always think of that masterly phrase (from, I think, the "Prelude," but I
will not be sure):
_Unprofitably travelling towards the grave._
This line is a most convenient and effective stone to throw at one's
languid friends. Finally let me hail Mr. Nowell Smith as a benefactor.