William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of
April, 1770. His father, John Wordsworth, was an attorney, and law-agent
to Sir James Lowther, who was afterwards raised to the peerage, and
created Earl of Lonsdale. His mother’s name was Anne Cookson, only
daughter of William Cookson, a mercer of Penrith, and of “Dorothy, born
at Crackenthorpe, of the ancient family of that name, who, from the time
of Edward the Third, had lived in Newbiggen Hall, Westmorland.”[B] His
grandfather was the first of the name of Wordsworth who came into
Westmorland, where he purchased the small estate of Stockbridge. His
ancestors had lived at Peniston, in Yorkshire, probably before the time
of the Norman Conquest. “Their names,” says Wordsworth, in his
_Autobiographic Memoranda_, “appear on different occasions in all the
transactions, personal and public, connected with that parish; and I
possess, through the kindness of Colonel Beaumont, an almery made in
1525, at the expense of a William Wordsworth, as is expressed in a Latin
inscription carved upon it, which carries the pedigree of the family
back four generations from himself.”
The poet was second son of his father, and spent most of his early days
at Cockermouth. He was subsequently removed to Hawkshead grammar school.
And here, properly speaking, his true history begins. In the “Prelude,”
a poem but lately published, we have a full account of his boyish ways,
and experiences, and a complete record of the development of his mind.
This poem is, therefore, doubly valuable, both as a psychological and
literary performance. True it is that, like all Wordsworth’s poems, on
their first appearance, it has been exceedingly well abused, and that
too by men who have eyes to see, and understandings wherewith to
understand; which is singular; but the poem is not the less a great
vestibule, or outer porch to a great poetic temple for all that. In
reading it, I seem to be walking up through the long dim avenues of
eternity with the young soul of the poet, and listening to its half
remembered ideas of the unspeakable glory from which it has come--itself
radiant with immortal lustres--and bursting out, ever and anon, in an
ecstacy of rapturous wonder at the mystic and beautiful revelations of
Time--the grand and everflowing pageantry of nature,--its woods,
mountains, streams, and heavenly hosts of stars. For it is certain that
this, or something like this, is the impression one receives, whilst
following the poet, in the manifold disclosures which he makes of his
own spiritual and mental development: he will not let go the glory of
his birth, but cleaves to it, as to the title of some grand heritage,
which he shall one day possess. And it is this, and its kindred
spiritual ideas, which give the mystic tinge and colouring to all
Wordsworth’s higher poetry, as if it had been baptised in an element
altogether alien to sensuous experience, and to the common world of man.
It was a long time, however, before Wordsworth could understand
Nature,--before he could make out what she would be at, in dodging him
in his ordinary paths, and haunting him in his solitary hours. True, he
was always very fond of the beautiful and terrible Mother; loved her
storm-wrath, and wind-wrath; her golden and voluptuous sunshine; her
rivers and brooklets; her mountains, lakes, dells, and the flowery
bespanglement of her green and rustling kirtle. But this was all. He did
not know that this love was merely initial,--the basework of a deeper
passion--the basement of a divine wisdom. And although he was always a
wayward and lonely boy, yet he _was_ a boy, and his roots did not strike
up precociously, and burst him into a man at once; but took time to
grow; so that the boy was father to the man. Neither would Nature allow
him to brood too intently over her wonders and loveliness, but took him
gently captive, in a sort of side-winds, or brief revelations of
herself, in his rambles and hunting sports; for he was made of too good
stuff to be spoilt by any over-doings--and she was jealous of her
favourite.
It was very fortunate for Wordsworth that his early life was cast in the
midst of such magnificent scenery, as that of Cumberland, for it acted
powerfully upon his mind, and helped to mould his character, and
develope his genius. School did very little for him, nor College, nor
even books, until a comparatively late period of his life. But both
nature and poetry had always a great and transcendent charm for him. As
a boy, at Cockermouth he obtained the rudiments of learning from the
Rev. W. Gillbanks; and his father, who was a man of vigorous character,
and considerable culture and scholarship, initiated him into the
pantheon of poetry, by repeating to him the finest passages of
Shakspeare, Milton, and Spenser, which the boy subsequently committed to
memory. But he was frequently refractory in his conduct, and peevish in
his temper. His mother, whom he loved much, and who died before he was
eight years of age, had at times terrible misgivings about her darling
son, on these accounts, although I find no record to justify her in her
forebodings. He was certainly a wild little fellow, full of animal
spirits, which never flagged, with a little of the dare-devil in him:
but this is natural enough in a healthy boy. Wordsworth, in alluding to
his mother’s dread of the “evil chance” of his life, gives us an
anecdote, with the intention of justifying her, which seems to me very
comical in such connection.
“I remember going once,” he says, “into the attics of my grandfather’s
house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an
intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was
kept there. I took the foil in my hand, but my heart failed me.
“Upon another occasion, while I was at the same house, along with my
eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large
drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down upon particular
occasions.--The walls were humg round with family pictures, and I said
to my elder brother: ‘Dare you strike your whip through that old lady’s
petticoat?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I won’t.’ ‘Then,’ said I, ‘here
goes!’--and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat; for which,
no doubt, I was properly punished, although I have forgotten it. But,
possibly from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I was
perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it
than otherwise.”
Perhaps the real truth of Mrs. Wordsworth’s anxiety is, after all, to be
found in the fact that she had anticipated an extraordinary career for
her son. There does not appear, however, to have been much ground for
the supposition that the “evil chance” would prevail; and considering
the wise teaching of this dear mother, and the apt though erratic nature
of her son, I think there was good reason for a more cheering augury of
his fate. Speaking of his mother’s mode of education, in the “Prelude,”
he says, that it was founded upon
“a virtual faith, that He
Who fills the mothers breast with innocent milk,
Doth also for our nobler part provide,
Under His great correction and control,
As innocent instincts, and as innocent food.
* * * * *
This was her creed, and therefore she was pure
From anxious fear of error, or mishap,
And evil, overweeningly so called,
Was not puffed up by false, unnatural hopes,
Nor selfish, with unnecessary care;
Nor with impatience for the season asked
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are, than from regard
Glanced on their promises in restless pride.
Such was she--not for faculties more strong
Than others have, but from the times, perhaps,
And spot in which she lived, and thro’ a grace
Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness,
A heart that found benignity and hope,
Being itself benign.”
That there are evidences of this healthful and pious faith, this holy
and beneficent teaching, in Wordsworth’s writings, every one acquainted
with them will admit; and the passage just quoted is more than
ordinarily interesting on this account, as an illustration of the force
of early training. His mother’s love haunts him in later years, although
he is altogether silent about his father, and only speaks of his mother
twice in all his poems. The hearth-stone, and its gods, seem to have
been too sacred with him for parade. When he appears before the vicar,
with a trembling, earnest company of boys about his own age, to say the
catechism, at Easter, as the custom was, the mother watches him with
beating heart; and here is the second tribute of affection to her
beloved memory:
“How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me,
Beloved mother! Thou whose happy hand
Had bound the flowers I wore, with faithful tie;
Sweet flowers, at whose inaudible command,
Her countenance, phantom like, doth reappear;
Oh! lost too early for the frequent tear,
And ill-requited by this heart-felt sigh.”
With such a mother as this, it is no wonder that Wordsworth--in spite of
his occasional devilry--was a happy and joyous boy. He looks back,
indeed, in after life, upon the home and scenes of his childhood, as
upon some enchanted region. He has no withering recollections of poverty
or distress; all is sunshine and delight. The sweet, melodious, and
romantic Derwent is the syren of these dreams, and it sings with
wondrous music in his verse. All his memories are associated with the
fine scenery of his birth-place--are fused into it--and become, at last
the real foundation of his life: and here is a description of his native
scenery, which I find ready made to my hand:
“The whole district may be said to stand single in the world, and to
have in the peculiar character of its beauty no parallel elsewhere. It
is in the concentration of every variety of loveliness into a compass
which in extent does not greatly tax the powers of the pedestrian, that
it fairly defies rivalry, and affords the richest pabulum to the
poetical faculty. There, every form of mountain, rock, lake, stream,
wood, and plain, from the conformation of the country, is crowded with
the most prodigal abundance into a few square miles. Coleridge
characterises it as a ‘cabinet of beauties.’ ‘Each thing,’ says he, ‘is
beautiful in itself; and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or
valley to another, is itself a beautiful thing again.’ Wordsworth, in
his own ‘Description of the Country of the Lakes,’ dwells with the zest
and minuteness of idolatry upon every feature of that treasury of
landscape. The idea he gives of the locality is very perfect and
graphic. If the tourist were seated on a cloud midway between Great
Gavel and Scafell, and only a few yards above their highest elevation,
he would look down to the westward on no fewer than nine different
valleys, diverging away from that point, like spokes from the nave of a
wheel, towards the vast rim formed by the sands of the Irish Sea. These
vales--Langdale, Coniston, Duddon, Eskdale, Wastdale, Ennerdale,
Buttermere, Borrowdale, and Keswick--are of every variety of character;
some with, and some without lakes; some richly fertile, and some awfully
desolate. Shifting from the cloud, if the tourist were to fly a few
miles eastward, to the ridge of old Helvellyn, he would find the wheel
completed by the vales of Wytheburn, Ulswater, Haweswater, Grasmere,
Rydal, and Ambleside, which bring the eye round again to Winandermere,
in the vale of Langdale, from which it set out. From the sea or plain
country all round the circumference of this fairy-land, along the
gradually-swelling uplands, to the mighty mountains that group
themselves in the centre, the infinite varieties of view may be
imagined--varieties made still more luxuriant by the different position
of each valley towards the rising or setting sun. Thus a spectator in
the vale of Winandermere will in summer see its golden orb going down
over the mountains, while the spectator in Keswick will at the same
moment mark it diffusing its glories over the low grounds. In this
delicious land, dyed in a splendour of ever-shifting colours, the old
customs and manners of England still lingered in the youth of
Wordsworth, and took a firm hold of his heart, modifying all his habits
and opinions. Though a deluge of strangers had begun to set in towards
this retreat, and even the spirit of the factory threatened to invade
it, still the dalesmen were impressed with that character of steadiness,
repose, and rustic dignity, which has always possessed irresistible
charms for the poet. Their cottages, which, from the numerous irregular
additions made to them, seemed rather to have grown than to have been
built, were covered over with lichens and mosses, and blended insensibly
into the landscape, as if they were not human creations, but constituent
parts of its own loveliness. In this old English Eden, all his schoolboy
days, Wordsworth wandered restlessly, drawn hither and thither by his
irresistible passion for nature, and receiving into his soul those
remarkable photographs which were afterwards to delight his countrymen.
There can be no doubt that the charms of this lake scenery added still
more strength to the poet’s peculiar tendencies, and developed a
conservative sentiment, which, though temporarily overcome, afterwards
reared itself up in haughtier majesty than before. The poet was
naturally led to indulge much in out-of-door wanderings and pastimes,
such as skating, of which he has left a picture unapproachable in its
vividness and precision.”
In such scenery then, and with such occupations, did the boy spend his
time, until it became necessary to send him to a higher school than
Cockermouth afforded. He was accordingly dispatched to Hawkshead Grammar
School, near the lake of Esthwaite, where he was not crammed with
overmuch learning. He speaks of these larger school days with
enthusiasm, in his “Prelude;”--not, however, because the little Latin
and mathematics which he learned were so tasteful to his mind; but
because his leisure hours and holidays were rendered sweeter by the
restraints of the school, and gave a greater zest to his field-sports,
and the secular books which he loved. He mentions his amusements--such
as birds’ nesting, in the warm moist mornings of Spring,--springing
woodcocks, in the brown and mellow days of Autumn,--bathing in the
Derwent, that “tempting playmate” of his, into which, even when five
years old, he would plunge again and again, “making one long bathing of
a Summer’s day,”--rowing, on sunny half-holidays with his boisterous
schoolmates, on the great “plain of Windermere,”--or skating, by day and
night, upon the frozen bosom of Esthwaite. His beloved books, too, at
this time, find a record in his verse. They are Fielding--that mighty
creator, so full of the “_play-impulse_,” like an old god who makes
worlds, and amuses himself with the story of their various fortunes;
Cervantes, who laughed Christendom out of its chivalry, because chivalry
was dead as an institution, and had become laughable; Le Sage, with his
Shaksperian knowledge of life, and his inimitable artistic power; and
Swift, with his sharp wit, learning, and satire, glittering amid
continents of mud. “Gulliver’s Travels,” and the “Tale of a Tub,” were
the things which stuck to him fastest, however, of all the works of
these writers.
In the meanwhile the poet was awakening within him, and the poetic
pabulum was becoming, every day, more and more necessary to his
existence. His fine receptive spirit stored up all the forms and
influences of nature; revivified them, and reproduced them by its power.
The strong individuality, which marks his poetry, manifested itself at
this early period; for he loved solitude better than his playmates;
although he loved them too, and speaks of them with affection; but the
dells, mountains, and lakes, were his most beloved companions.--Often
would he lie down upon the grass or the heather, and wait for the gentle
voices which had so frequently whispered the secrets of nature in his
ears, and by their inspiration had enabled him to catch a glimpse of the
divine glory behind the veil of things; or looking upwards into the blue
unfathomable depths of heaven, he has asked questions which those depths
could not answer, and has thus tasted of the sorrow which makes life
holy. His own mind had begun to react upon Nature, and to make her more
beautiful or terrible, according to his mood. He began to feel the
_auxiliar light_, which comes from the soul, and diffuses its glory over
all things, making the common noble, and investing the grandest forms of
the material world, with the still grander attributes of imagination.
He hints at the process of all this; at the “plastic power” and the
creative power,--the outer and the inner modus of his culture. “A
plastic power,” he says--
“Abode with me; a forming hand, at times
Rebellious, acting in a devious mood;
A local spirit of his own, at war
With general tendency; but for the most
Subservient strictly to external things
With which it communed. An auxiliar light
Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds,
The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on
Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed
A like dominion; and the midnight storm
Grew darker in the presence of my eye.”
And all this was much better than school-learning--although school
learning is not to be despised. But Wordsworth, as before remarked,
learned very little at school, although he took honours in the great
Alma Mater, out of doors. And it is singular that nearly every one who
has made a figure, and left a mark in the world’s page, has been equally
unindebted to school for his success. Genius hates to be put in harness,
and yet without discipline of some sort or other, there can be no
stability of character--no steady aim, purpose, or achievement. Nature
always takes care to exaggerate the natural tendency of her favourites,
that the balance may be restored by discipline, and that the work which
she requires of the peculiar faculties may be done. And to this
discipline genius itself must, in the end, submit, or fail in the high
purpose of its existence. We can afford that it should be a little
erratic, and wild in its ways, especially in youth; that it should even
like the song of the birds better than the concords of grammar. But it
must learn grammar after all, and many other things beside, if it is
really to do any great work in the world. And this was the case with
Wordsworth, who alternated his book studies with those of Nature. For
although he acquired nothing more than the mechanical forms of learning
at Hawkshead--and these were limited to Latin and mathematics--yet the
discipline was good for his health, and the acquirements themselves were
not to be despised. In the meanwhile, he had written verses too
remarkable to be passed over without notice, although the poet himself
says, “they are but a tame imitation of Pope’s versification, and a
little in his style.” They were written upon the completion of the
second centenary of the foundation of the Hawkshead grammar school (in
1585, by Archbishop Sandys,) as a school exercise, when Wordsworth was
only fourteen years old; and as the poetry is not included in his works,
although Dr. Wordsworth has preserved it in the autobiographical
memoranda of his “Memoir,” lately published, I will make a quotation
from it, that the reader may see how the genius of Wordsworth first
adapted itself to the laws and formulary of poetic art. It is
_Education_ that speaks in the following lines.
“There have I lov’d to skim the tender age,
The golden precepts of the classic page;
To lead the mind to those Elysian plains
Where, thron’d in gold, immortal Science reigns;
Fair to the view is sacred Truth display’d,
In all the majesty of light arrayed,
To teach, on rapid wings, the curious soul,
To roam from earth to heaven, from pole to pole;
From thence to search the mystic cause of things,
And follow Nature to her secret springs;
Nor less to guide the fluctuating youth,
Firm in the sacred paths of moral truth.
To regulate the mind’s disordered frame,
And quench the passions kindling into flame;
The glimmering fires of virtue to enlarge,
And purge from vice’s dross my tender charge.
Oft have I said, the paths of fame pursue,
And all that virtue dictates, dare to do.
Go to the world--peruse the book of man,
And learn from thence thy own defects to scan;
Severely honest, break no plighted trust--
But coldly rest not here--be more than just!
Join to the rigour of the sires of Rome
The gentler manners of the private dome;
When virtue weeps in agony of woe,
Teach from the heart the tender tears to flow;
If Pleasure’s soothing song thy soul entice,
Or all the gaudy pomp of splendid vice,
Arise superior to the syren’s power,
The wretch, the chort-liv’d vision of an hour.
Soon fades her cheek, her blushing beauties fly,
As fades the chequer’d bow that paints the sky.”
Now, it must be acknowledged, that this writing, imitative as it is, is
very remarkable as the production of a boy of fourteen; and that it
displays an uncommon degree of artistic skill in its construction, with
much command of language, and a moral culture one does not often meet
with in boys. This, however, was not Wordsworth’s first attempt at
composition. “It may be, perhaps, as well to mention,” says the poet,
in his brief autobiographical notes, appended to the Memoir, “that the
first verses I wrote, were a task imposed by my master; the subject ‘The
Summer Vacation;’ and of _my own accord_ I added others upon ‘Return to
School.’ These exercises, however,” he continues, “put it into my head
to compose verses from the impulse of my own mind; and I wrote, while
yet a schoolboy, a long poem running upon my own adventures, and the
scenery of the country in which I was brought up. The only part of that
poem which has been preserved is the conclusion of it, which stands at
the beginning of my collected poems. It commences ‘Dear native
regions.’” This poem was the archetype of the “Prelude,” and was a good
preparatory discipline to the structure of that nobly musical poem.
In 1786, in anticipation of leaving school, he wrote some sweet verses,
in which he speaks, with a sad fondness, of the old region round about
Hawkshead, and vows, with a lover’s heart, never to forget its beauty,
but to turn towards it wherever he may be, as to the shrine of his
idolatry.
“Thus from the precincts of the west
The sun, while sinking down to rest,
Though his departing radiance fail
To illuminate the hollow vale,
A lingering lustre fondly throws
On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.”
The muse had now fairly possessed him, and he was destined to have a
triumphant career as the high priest of song. Among his earliest sonnets
is the following, which is the last quotation I shall give from these
boyish effusions.
“Calm is all nature as a resting wheel:
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O’er vale and mountain and the starless sky.
Now in this blank of things a harmony,
Home-felt and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the senses will supply
Fresh food, for only then while memory
Is hushed am I at rest. My friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would allay my pain;
Oh, leave me to myself, nor let me feel
The officious touch that makes me droop again!”
His school-days at Hawkshead were now drawing to a close, but before we
leave this part of his life, this genial seed-time from which he
subsequently reaped so glorious a harvest, it will be well to add a few
more particulars respecting the locality of Hawkshead, and the general
discipline of its old Elizabethan grammar school, as a sort of
supplement to the previous history. And, first of all, a word about
Esthwaite. [C] “Esthwaite, though a lovely scene in its summer garniture
of woods, has no features of permanent grandeur to rely on. A wet or
gloomy day, even in summer, reduces it to little more than a wildish
pond, surrounded by miniature hills; and the sole circumstances which
restore the sense of a romantic region, and an Alpine character, are the
knowledge (but not the sense) of endless sylvan scenery, stretching for
twenty miles to the sea-side, and the towering groups of Langdale and
Grasmere fells, which look over the little pasture barrier of Esthwaite,
from distances of eight, ten, and fourteen miles.”
“Esthwaite, therefore, being no object for itself, and the sublime head
of Coniston being accessible by a road which evades Hawkshead, few
tourists ever trouble the repose of this little village town....
Wordsworth, therefore, enjoyed this labyrinth of valleys in a perfection
that no one can have experienced since the opening of the present
century. The whole was one paradise of virgin beauty; and even the rare
works of man, all over the land, were hoar with the grey tints of an
antique picturesque; nothing was new, nothing was raw and uncicatrized.
Hawkshead, in particular, though tamely seated in itself and its
immediate purlieus, has a most fortunate and central locality, as
regards the best (at least the most interesting) scene for a pedestrian
rambler. The gorgeous scenery of Borrowdale, the austere sublimities of
Wastdalehead, of Langdalehead, or Mardale,--these are too oppressive in
their colossal proportions, and their utter solitudes, for encouraging a
perfectly human interest. Now, taking Hawkshead as a centre, with a
radius of about eight miles, we might describe a little circular tract
which embosoms a perfect net-work of little valleys--separate wards or
cells, as it were, of one large valley, walled in by the great primary
mountains of the region. Grasmere, Easdale, Little Langdale,
Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, Elterwater, Loughrigg Tarn, Skelwith, and many
other little quiet nooks, lie within a single division of this
labyrinthine district. All these are within one summer afternoon’s
ramble. And amongst these, for the years of his boyhood, lay the daily
excursions of Wordsworth.
“I do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an amiable boy; he
was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits; not
generous; and above all, not self-denying.... Meantime, we are not to
suppose that Wordsworth, the boy, expressly sought for solitary scenes
of nature amongst woods and mountains, with a direct conscious
anticipation of imaginative pleasure, or loving them with a pure,
disinterested love, on their own separate account. These are feelings
beyond boyish nature, or, at all events, beyond boyish nature trained
amidst the necessities of social intercourse. Wordsworth, like his
companions, haunted the hills and the vales for the sake of angling,
snaring birds, swimming, and sometimes of hunting, according to the
Westmorland fashion, on foot: for riding to the chace is often quite
impossible, from the precipitous nature of the ground. It was in the
course of these pursuits, by an indirect effect growing gradually upon
him, that Wordsworth became a passionate lover of Nature, at the time
when the growth of his intellectual faculties made it possible that he
should combine those thoughtful passions with the experience of the eye
and ear.”
De Quincey then continues to relate, as an illustration of the sudden,
silent manner in which Nature makes herself felt by the observer, even
when he is paying no attention to her operations, but is occupied with
nearer and more secondary matters--how he and Wordsworth were walking
one midnight, during the Peninsular war, from Grasmere to Dunmail Raise,
to meet the mail, in order that they might obtain the newspaper
Coleridge was in the habit of sending them, and thus learn the earliest
intelligence of the state of affairs on the Continent. “At intervals,
Wordsworth had stretched himself at length on the high road, applying
his ear to the ground, so as to catch any sound of wheels that might be
going along at a distance. Once, when he was slowly rising from this
effort, his eye caught a bright star that was glittering between the
brow of Seat Sandal and the mighty Helvellyn. He gazed upon it for a
minute or so; and then, upon turning away to descend into Grasmere, he
made the following explanation:--‘I have remarked, from my earliest
days, that if, under any circumstances, the attention is perfectly
braced up to a steady act of observation, or of steady expectation,
then, if this intense condition of vigilance should suddenly relax, at
that moment any beautiful, any impressive visual object, or collection
of objects, falling upon the eye, is carried to the heart with a power
not known under other circumstances. Just now my ear was placed upon the
stretch, in order to catch any sound of wheels that might come down upon
the lake of Wythburn, from the Keswick road; at the very instant when I
raised my head from the ground, in final abandonment of hope for this
night, at the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once
relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above
those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and
penetrated my capacity of apprehension, with a pathos and a sense of the
Infinite, that would not have arrested me under other circumstances.’”
And it was precisely in this manner, according to De Quincy, and indeed
according to the known laws by which Nature educates the faculties of
the poet, that Wordsworth was educated in his boyhood. All this hunting,
fishing, and rambling, were but the means by which Nature allured him to
the woods and waters, that she might silently impress him with her
manifold forms and influences. There are evidences, however, of
something like _communion_ with Nature in the early poems of Wordsworth,
even before he left Hawkshead; and his solitary wanderings, his roamings
round the lake of Esthwaite--five miles before breakfast--were not
without a purpose, and could not have been undertaken unless an
unquenchable, though perhaps not a fully developed love, had possessed
his heart, for natural scenery, and the mystic lore which it teaches.
His own confession, that though Nature was at first a dumb perplexing
riddle to him, and merely affected him by her beauty and grandeur,--I
say his own confession, that in spite of this, he subsequently felt the
coming of the “_auxiliar light_” from his own soul, which penetrated her
forms, and made them instinct with sublime intelligence--will illustrate
the idea with sufficient force and clearness.
Enough, however, has been said upon this subject, for it is impossible
to trace in any direct manner, the subtle and delicate influences of
Nature upon the human mind, or to determine even, in the instance of
Wordsworth, the precise time when he first sought “the woods and
mountains, with a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative
pleasure.” We will leave all this, therefore, and direct the reader to
the “Prelude,” as the best exposition of the poet’s mental development
at this early period. A few words respecting the government of the
Hawkshead grammar school, as an influence affecting the character of the
poet, and we will then follow him to Cambridge.
“Taking into consideration the peculiar tastes of the person,” says De
Quincy, “and the peculiar advantages of the place, I conceive that no
pupil of a public school can ever have passed a more luxurious boyhood
than Wordsworth. The school discipline was not, I believe, very strict;
the mode of living out of school very much resembled that of Eton for
Oppidans,--less elegant perhaps, and less costly in its provisions for
accommodation, but not less comfortable; and in that part of the
arrangement which was chiefly Etonian, even more so; for in both places
the boys, instead of being gathered into one fold, and at night into one
or two huge dormitories, were distributed amongst motherly old “dames,”
technically so called at Eton, but not at Hawkshead.” In the latter
place, agreeably to the inferior scale of the whole establishment, the
houses were smaller and more college like, consequently more like
private households; and the old lady of the _menage_ was more constantly
amongst them, providing with maternal tenderness, and with a
professional pride, for the comfort of her young flock, and protecting
the weak from oppression. The humble cares to which those poor matrons
dedicated themselves, may be collected from several allusions scattered
through the poems of Wordsworth; that entitled “Nutting” for instance,
in which his early Spinosistic feeling is introduced of a mysterious
power diffused through the solitudes of woods, a presence that was
disturbed by the intrusion of careless and noisy outrage, and which is
brought into a strong relief by the previous homely picture of the old
housewife equipping her young charge with beggar’s weeds in order to
prepare him for a struggle with thorns and brambles. Indeed not only the
moderate rank of the boys, and the peculiar kind of relation assumed by
these matrons, equally suggested this humble class of motherly
attentions, but the whole spirit of the place and neighbourhood was
favourable to an old English homeliness of domestic and personal
economy.”
It will thus be seen that Wordsworth was early inducted into those
thriftful and economical habits which marked his character through life,
and enabled him during his young days to bear the temporary loss of his
paternal fortune without much inconvenience. And the above facts are
worthy to be remembered, not only as illustrating much for us in the
history of Wordsworth, but as another instance of the power of a wise
and early training.