“Companionless,
No dog attending, by no staff sustained,
He stood, and in his very dress appeared
A desolation, a simplicity,
To which the trappings of a gaudy world
Make a strange back-ground.”
Presently, he began to mutter sounds as of pain, or birth-pangs of
uneasy thought,--
“Yet still his form
Kept the same awful steadiness; at his feet
His shadow lay, and moved not.”
Wordsworth now came from his hiding place, and hailed the poor, lone,
desolate, old man, who rose, slowly, from his resting place,
“and with a lean and wasted arm,
Returned the salutation; then resumed
His station, as before.”
The poet entered into conversation with him, and asked him to relate
his history. It was the old tale--told with a quiet uncomplaining voice,
a stately air of mild indifference. He had served in the Tropic islands,
and on landing, three weeks ago, he had been dismissed the service. He
was now journeying homeward, to lay his weary bones in the churchyard of
his native village. Wordsworth was touched at the uncomplaining misery
of the poor old man, and invited him to go with him. The veteran picked
up his staff from the shadowy ground, and walked by the poet’s side down
into the valley, where a hospitable cottage was soon found, and the
soldier bestowed for the night. On leaving him, Wordsworth
“entreated that, henceforth,
He would not linger in the public ways,
But ask for timely furtherance and help,
Such as his state required.”
And now, mark the touching reply of the friendless old man:
“With the same ghastly mildness in his look
He said, “My trust is in the God of heaven,
And in the eye of him who passes me.”
And in this manner,--with occasional adventures, but none so memorable
as this,--Wordsworth passed his vacation. Nature, too, had claimed him
for her own--for her bard, minister, and interpreter; had purified him
of the frivolities which had previously lowered his mind, and loosed the
girds of his gigantic spirit, and she now made him happy in the
consciousness of his destiny. During one of his morning walks, he thus
describes this consciousness:--
“My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be; else sinning greatly,
A dedicated spirit. On I walked
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.”
Subsequent portions of his vacations were spent in Wales, and Penrith,
on the southern border of Cumberland. His mother’s relations resided at
this latter town, and it was with them that his beloved sister Dorothy
was placed when the poet’s family was broken up. It was the daughter of
these relations also to whom the poet was married in after life. Her
name was Mary Hutchinson; she was a schoolmate of the poet’s at
Penrith, and an affectionate, intelligent, good wife she made him,
during the forty-eight years of their wedded life. And now, during the
holidays, these beautiful persons--viz. Dorothy and Mary, were his
companions, as he roved amongst the scenery of Penrith.[E]” He mounted
with them the Border Beacon, on the north-east of the town; and, on that
eminence, now overgrown with fir trees, which intercept the view, but
which was then free and open, and displayed a glorious panorama, he
beheld the wide plain stretched far and near below, closed by the dark
hills of Ullswater on the west, and by the dim ridges of Scotland on the
north. The road from Penrith towards Appleby, on the south-east, passes,
at about a mile’s distance, the romantic ruins of that
“Monastic castle mid tall trees,
Low standing by the margin of the stream,”
where the river Lowther flows into the Emont, which descends from the
lake of Ullswater through a beautiful and fertile valley, in which at
the village of Sockbridge, some of Wordsworth’s ancestors lived, and
where, at the church of Burton, some of them lie buried. That “monastic
castle” is Brougham Castle, a noble and picturesque ruin. This was a
favourite resort of the youthful poet and his sister.
“Those mouldering towers
Have seen us side by side, when having clomb
The darksome windings of a broken stair,
And crept along a ridge of fractured wall,
Not without trembling, we in safety looked
Forth, through some Gothic window’s open space,
And gather’d with one mind a rich reward
From the far stretching landscape, by the light
Of morning beautified, or purple eve.”
In aftertimes this castle was to be the subject of one of his noblest
lyrical effusions. “The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.”
“High in the breathless hall the minstrel sate,
And Emont’s murmur mingled with the song.”
A little beyond the castle, by the roadside, stands the Countess’
Pillar, a record of filial affection, and Christian charity to which
also he has paid a poetical tribute; and the woods of Lowther, at a
short distance on the south, were ever associated in his memory with the
delightful days which he passed in his vacations at Penrith, and were
afterwards the scene of intellectual enjoyment in the society of the
noble family whose name they bear.”
A remarkable man, and one connected by friendship with the poet, lived
between Penrith and Lowther, at Yanwath. This was Mr. Thomas Wilkinson
“a quaker, a poet, a professor of the topiarian art, a designer of
walks, prospects, and pleasure grounds.
‘Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till’d his land,
And shap’d these pleasant walks by Emont’s side,’
and the verses which follow, will hand down the name of Wilkinson to
posterity, together with that of John Evelyn, and the Corycian old man
of Virgil.”
Wordsworth’s last college vacation was spent in a pedestrian tour in
France, along with his friend Robert Jones, of Plas-yn-llan, near
Ruthin, in Denbighshire. De Quincy thinks that the poet took Jones along
with him as a kind of protective body-guard, against the rascality of
foreign landlords, who in those days were apt to play strange tricks
upon travellers, presenting their extortionary bills with one hand,
whilst they held a cudgel in the other, to enforce payment. De Quincy,
however, is not quite sure of this, but conjectures the fact to have
been so, because Wordsworth has only apostrophised him in one of his
poems commencing
“I wonder how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face.”
Jones, however, seems to have been a scholar and gentleman; and
Wordsworth frequently visited him, not only at his house, in
Plas-yn-llan, but afterwards at Soulderne, near Deddington, in
Oxfordshire, when Jones was made incumbent of that place. At all events,
whatever sympathies--whether intellectual or those of friendship--united
these college chums, it is certain that they commenced their tour
together, and ended it with mutual satisfaction. They set out on the
13th of July, 1790, for Calais, _via_ Dover, “on the eve of the day when
the king took an oath of fidelity to the new constitution.” The poet
gives a highly coloured account of his wanderings through France,
Switzerland, and Italy, in the “Prelude,” and a chart of the entire
journey, commencing July 13th, at Calais, and ending September 29th, at
a village three miles from Aix-la-Chapelle, is recorded in the
“Memoirs.” There is likewise a letter addressed to his sister, dated
September 6th, 1790, Kesill (a small village on the Lake of Constance),
in which the poet describes his own feelings and reflections during this
romantic journey. In this letter he says, “My spirits have been kept in
a perpetual hurry of delight, by the almost uninterrupted succession of
sublime and beautiful objects which have passed before my eyes during
the past month.” He then describes the course they took from, the
wonderful scenery of the Grande Chartreuse to Savoy and Geneva; from the
Pays de Vaud side of the lake to Villeneuve, a small town seated at its
head. “The lower part of the lake,” he says, “did not afford us a
pleasure equal to what might have been expected from its celebrity. This
was owing partly to its width, and partly to the weather, which was one
of those hot, gleamy days, in which all distant objects are veiled in a
species of bright obscurity. But the higher part of the lake made us
ample amends; ’tis true we had some disagreeable weather,--but the banks
of the water are infinitely more picturesque, and as it is much
narrower, the landscape suffered proportionally less from that pale
steam, which before almost entirely hid the opposite shore.” From
Villeneuve they proceeded up the Rhone, to Martigny, where they left
their bundles, and struck over the mountains to Chamouny, and visited
the glaciers of Savoy.
“That very day,
From a bare ridge, we also first beheld,
Unveiled, the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved
To have a soulless image on the eye,
That had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be. The wondrous vale
Of Chamouny stretched far below, and soon,
With its dumb cataracts, and streams of ice,
A motionless array of mighty waves,
Five rivers, broad and vast, made rich amends,
And reconciled us to realities;
There small birds warble from the leafy trees,
The eagle soars high in the element;
There doth the reaper bind the yellow sheaf,
The maiden spread the haycock in the sun;
While Winter, like a well-tamed lion, walks,
Descending from the mountain to make sport,
Among the cottages, by beds of flowers.”
From Chamouny they returned to Martigny, and went from thence, along the
Rhine, to Brig, where, quitting the Valais, they made for the Alps,
which they crossed at Simplon, and visited the Lake Como, in Italy.
Wordsworth’s description of the scenery round Como, is in his highest
manner:--
“The banks,” he says, “of many of the Italian and Swiss lakes are so
steep and rocky as not to admit of roads; that of Como, is partly of
this character. A small footpath is all the communication by land
between one village and another, on the side along which we passed for
upwards of thirty miles. We entered upon this path about noon, and owing
to the steepness of the banks, were soon unmolested by the sun, which
illuminated the woods, rocks, and villages of the opposite shore. The
lake is narrow, and the shadows of the mountains were early thrown
across it. It was beautiful to watch them travelling up the side of the
hills--for several hours, to remark one-half of a village covered with
shade, and the other bright with the strongest sunshine. It was with
regret that we passed every turn of this charming path, where every new
picture was purchased by the loss of another, which we should never have
been tired of gazing upon. The shores of the lake consist of steeps,
covered with large sweeping woods of chestnut, spotted with villages,
some clinging upon the summits of advancing rocks, and others, hiding
themselves in their recesses. Nor was the surface of the lake less
interesting than its shores; half of it glowing with the richest green
and gold, the reflection of the illuminated wood and path, shaded with a
soft blue tint. The picture was still further diversified by the number
of sails which stole lazily by us, as we passed in the wood above them.
After all this, we had the moon. It was impossible not to contrast that
repose, that complacency of spirit, produced by these lovely scenes,
with the sensations I had experienced two or three days before in
passing the Alps. At the lake of Como my mind ran through a thousand
dreams of happiness, which might be enjoyed upon its banks, if
heightened by conversation, and the exercise of the social affections.
Among the more awful scenes of the Alps, I had not a thought of man, or
a single created being; my whole soul was turned to Him, who produced
the terrible majesty before me.” From Como the tourists proceeded to the
country of the Grisons; from thence to Switzerland, and the lakes
Lucerne, Zurich, Constance, and the falls of the Rhine. At Basle, a town
in Switzerland, upon the Rhine, they bought a boat, and floated down
that glorious river, which, as Longfellow says, “rolls through his
vineyards, like Bacchus, crowned and drunken,” as far as Cologne,
returning home by Calais.
In passing the Alps, the travellers lost their way, and were benighted.
They were afterwards indebted for their safety to a peasant; and in
speaking of this event, the poet has the following fine passage in the
“Prelude:”--
“The melancholy slackening that ensued
Upon these tidings by the peasant given,
Was soon dislodged. Downwards we hurried fast,
And with the half-shaped road which we had missed,
Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,
And with them did we journey several hours,
At a slow pace. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,--
And in the narrow rent, at every turn
Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside,
As if a voice were in them; the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds, and region of the Heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness of the light--
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types, and symbols of eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.”
This Swiss tour furnishes the materials for many autobiographical
passages in the “Prelude,” which was written about ten years
afterwards--and more immediately for the poem entitled “Descriptive
Sketches,” written in 1791-2, and dedicated to Mr. Jones. These
sketches, and another poem, called “The Evening Walk,” were published by
Johnson, of Cambridge, in 1793. They are, according to De Quincy, who
bought up the remainder, in 1805, as presents, and as future curiosities
in literature--“forcibly picturesque, and the selection of
circumstances is very original and felicitous.” I cannot speak of these
poems at first hand, for they were never republished, and only a few
extracts are included in the poet’s collected works. De Quincy,
however--himself the greatest master of our language, and the highest
literary judge in Britain--is good to speak after. “The Evening Walk” is
dedicated to the poet’s sister, and was written during his school and
college days. It is an ideal representation of the Lake scenery. The
“Sketches” were composed chiefly in the poet’s wandering on the banks of
the Loire, 1791-2. From the specimens I have seen of them, they appear
to be founded, like the earlier pieces already quoted, upon the style of
Pope, though they are clothed in high and dignified language, and glow
with all the gorgeous colouring which poetry can command and apply. They
are totally unlike his mature poems, and have a different artistic base
and execution. It will be seen from them, however, that what is called
the “meanness” and “poverty” of Wordsworth’s latest effusions, is not
the result of incapacity, but of theoretic principle.
The “Sketches” fell into the hands of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1794,
and were the means of introduction between these two great men, and of a
life-enduring friendship.
“There is in them,” says Coleridge, in his “Biographia,” a harshness and
acerbity combined with words and images all aglow, which might recal
those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out
of a hard and thorny rind or shell, within which the rich fruit is
elaborating. The language is not only peculiar and strong, but at times
knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the
novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the
difficulties of the style, demand always a greater attention than
poetry,--at all events, than descriptive poetry has a right to claim.”
Here is a specimen of this “gorgeous blossomy” style:
“Here half a village shines in gold arrayed,
Bright as the moon; half hides itself in shade;
While from amid the darkened roof, the spire,
Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire:
There all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the lake below.
Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore,
And steals into the shade the lazy oar;
Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs,
And amorous music on the water dies.”