Before this last event occurred, however, in the autumn of 1792,
Wordsworth had left France for London, where he remained, more or less,
for upwards of a year; and it was during this time, that he wrote the
unpublished letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, respecting the political
opinions of his lordship, contained in an appendix to one of his
sermons, a portion of which letter has already been quoted. And although
Wordsworth still cleaves to his democratic ideas, and announces them
fearlessly to the bishop, he by no means sympathises, as will be seen,
with the mad actors in the Revolution. On the contrary, he is pained to
agony when he hears of the atrocities committed in the name of liberty;
and when, in the year 1794, crossing the sands of Morecomb Bay, during
one of his visits to Cumberland, he asked of a horseman who was passing,
“_What news?_” and received for answer, that “_Robespierre had
perished_,” “a passion seized him, a transport of almost epileptic
fervour prompted him, as he stood alone upon the perilous waste of
sands, to shout aloud anthems of thanksgiving, for this great
vindication of Eternal justice.”
Wordsworth was shocked, however, when England, after the death of the
king, on January 21st, 1793, declared war with France; and now resolved
to withdraw his mind, as much as possible, from the disappointed hopes
which politics had brought him as their harvest, and devote himself to
poetry. Accordingly, he left London, and once more commenced his
ramblings, and poetic labours. He passed a part of the summer of 1793 in
the Isle of Wight, hoping to find repose there; but the booming of
terrible cannon, every evening, at Portsmouth, and the consciousness
that a fleet was equipping in that port against France, made him sad,
and full of misgivings as to the result of the enterprise. He soon left
the beautiful island, therefore, and wandered, on foot, all over the
vast plain of Salisbury--visiting the old and melancholy temple of the
ancient Druids--and passing thence by Bristol and Tintern to North
Wales. It was during this tour, on Salisbury Plain, that he commenced
his poem entitled “Guilt and Sorrow;” a production of considerable
vigour and ability.
Having now, in 1793, completed his twenty-third year, his friends again
urged him to receive holy orders; but, feeling that he was not
_inwardly_ prepared for this important step, he again refused. The
principle manifested in this refusal, is all the more worthy and
memorable, because the poet had, at this time, no hearthstone, no place
that he could call _his_. His time was employed, therefore, in
travelling about, from place to place, and from friend to friend; now to
good Robert Jones, in Wales,--the man whom De Quincy conjectures to have
had no brains, and for which I owe the said De Quincy a grudge,
notwithstanding that I think more highly of him than any other man now
living in these realms,--and now to Mr. Rawson’s, of Millhouse, Halifax,
who had married Wordsworth’s cousin, Miss Threlkeld, the lady who
brought up Dorothy Wordsworth, the dearly beloved sister of the poet.
In 1794, Wordsworth writes to his friend Mathews “that his sister is
under the same roof with him; but that he is doing nothing, and knows
not what will become of him.” All his path lay dark and gloomy before
him. He was recommended to study the law, but he absolutely refused; and
the Fates seemed to be sporting with him. His love for Dorothy grew in
him every day, and it was in the year I am now speaking of, that she,
having accompanied him by coach from Halifax to Kendal, _walked_ with
him from the latter place to Grasmere--eighteen miles, and from thence
to Keswick--fifteen miles further, where they put up at a farm-house,
called Windybrow, and became thenceforth all-in-all to each other.
But the grand question for Wordsworth now to solve was, how he should
earn his daily bread. His poetry brought no grist to the mill; and he
had no friends to fall back on. In this condition, he wrote to his
friend Mathews, who was connected with the London Press, to get him
employment upon one of the daily or weekly papers, but without success.
He projected, likewise, several literary journals, with the same bad
fortune.
At last, however, Providence had ordained that a young man, named
Raisley Calvert, should die, and leave the poet £900. Poor fellow! He
seems to have been born for this special purpose. Wordsworth had known
him previous to his illness, and the young man was so impressed with the
genius and capabilities of the poet, that he bequeathed his little
fortune to him, in order that he might have leisure to develope them.
This was in 1795, whilst the negociations respecting the newspaper
employment were still pending. It was at Mrs. Sowerby’s hostel, at the
sign of the “Robin Hood,” in Penrith, where poor Calvert lay sick--where
Wordsworth nursed and tended him,--and where also he died.
This bequest was of the last importance to Wordsworth, for it rescued
him from poverty and distress, and enabled him to _live_.
All the avenues of the world were closed against him; for he was, by
nature and education, unfitted for the tradesman’s service, or the
clerk’s office, or the schoolman’s desk. He was a solitary dreamer; a
lonely, meditative man, who thought golden thoughts, and built starry
ladders to heaven, and did all sorts of strange things, similar in
character, which unfortunately could not be sold as wares in the public
market-place. And it was necessary, if Wordsworth was to be any thing,
that he should continue this foolish habit of dreaming, of rhyming, and
writing, into which he had so singularly fallen. For in her education of
the poet, Nature--who is a wise teacher and developer--always adopts one
regular method, although she frequently varies the process: and this
method consists in impressing the mind with her manifold forms, colours,
sounds, and works, that they may hereafter be reproduced in the glorious
imagination of the poet, and shine, like rich mosaics, in the wisdom of
his teaching. But for the friend alluded to, however, our poet could
never have afforded to have gone through his initiation in the mysteries
of poetry, but must have squatted down as a school-master in some
suitable town (which De Quincy says he once thought of doing), and have
turned professor of flogging Greek into pigmy humanities. Or, perhaps,
the Poet of Rydal might have been little better than a _scribe-engro_,
if I may coin a word from George Borrows’ “Romany,” and have ended his
life as a political or literary hack, in some _Times’_ omnibus, or other
vehicle of less note and more principle.
Fortunately for literature, and for men, as the readers of literature,
Raisley Calvert was born and died--and the “Excursion” was written. I
would not, however, be thought to speak ungenerously of poor
Calvert:--God forbid!--but still I cannot help thinking about
Providence, and His dark, inscrutable ways how He smites one frail child
to the grave that another may have leisure to sing songs.--The poet
never forgets the bounty and generosity of the poor dead heart, now
hushed to silence, but raises this monument to his memory:
“Calvert! it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owe many years of early liberty.
This care was thine, when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem,
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where’er I liked, and finally array
My temples with the Muse’s diadem.
Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth,
If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,
In my past verse, or shall be in the lays
Of highest mood, which now I meditate,
It gladdens me, O worthy short-lived youth,
To think how much of this will be thy praise.”
In a letter which Wordsworth wrote to his dear friend, Sir George
Beaumont, Bart., in the year 1806, we learn the manner in which the
£900, bequeathed to him by Calvert, were invested. “Upon the interest of
the £900, £400 being laid out in annuity, with £200,” says Wordsworth,
“deducted from the principal, and £100, a legacy to my sister, and £100
more, which the “Lyrical Ballads” have brought me, my sister and I lived
seven years--nearly eight.” And it is certain that this sister, who
never left him from this time through his long life, exercised a
beautiful and benign influence over the poet, softened the asperities of
his character, and cheered him in his despondency. He thanks God that
his “beloved sister,”
----“in whose sight
Those days were passed,”
maintained for him a saving intercourse with his true self. It was to
her that he was indebted for many salutary admonitions; it was she who,
in the midst of the clashing politics and noisy-throated revolutions of
Europe, preserved him “still a poet,” and made “him seek beneath that
name, and that alone, his office upon earth.”
In 1795, Wordsworth, accompanied by his sister, left Cumberland, for
Racedown Lodge, near Cremkerne, in Dorsetshire. The country was
delightful, and the house pleasantly situated, with a garden attached to
it. They passed their time in reading, gardening, writing, and in
translating Ariosto, and other Italian poets. We also find the poet
making imitations of Juvenal’s Satires, copies of which he sent to his
friend Wrangham, with a view to joint publication. They were never
printed, however; and Wordsworth, in 1805, when he was urged by the same
friend to allow them to appear, repudiated them altogether, and
regretted that he had spent so much time in their composition, declaring
that he had come to a “fixed resolution to steer clear,” now and for
ever, of all personal satire. During this same year of ’95, he finished
his poem on “Guilt and Sorrow,” and began his tragedy of “The
Borderers,” which was completed before the close of the following year.
It is a cumbrous affair, and will not act; but it contains some fine
passages. It was first published in 1842, and was offered to Mr. Harris,
the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, through Mr. Knight, the actor,
and was, as Wordsworth confesses, “_judiciously_ returned, as not
calculated for the stage.”
In the year 1797, Coleridge came to Racedown. Miss Wordsworth describes
him in one of her letters as “a wonderful man;” his conversation teeming
with “soul, mind, and spirit,”--three things very nearly related to each
other, one would think. He is benevolent, too, good-tempered, and
cheerful, like her dear brother William, and “interests himself much
about every little trifle.” At first she thought him very plain--that is
for about “three minutes” for he is “pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick
lips, and not very good teeth; longish, loose growing, half-curling,
rough black hair.” But he no sooner began to talk than she forgot his
want of comeliness, his bad teeth, and wide mouth, and was entranced by
the magic of his eloquence. “His eye,” she adds, “is large and full,
not very dark, but grey; such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul
the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated
mind; it has more of the ‘poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling,’ than I
ever witnessed. He has fine dark eye-brows, and an overhanging
forehead.”
Such was the apparition of Coleridge, in Wordsworth’s house at Racedown.
The poet himself was delighted with his visitor, and they were soon in
deep conversation about literature, and their own several adventures,
and proposed argosies on that great and shoreless deep.--Wordsworth read
a new poem, which he had just written, called the “Ruined Cottage,”--and
Coleridge praised it highly. Then they sat down to tea, and presently
the latter “repeated two acts and a half of his tragedy, ‘Osoris.’”
The next morning, the “Borderers” was read, and passages from “twelve
hundred lines of blank verse,--superior,” says Coleridge, in a letter to
a friend, “I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our language which in
any way resembles it.” “I speak with heart-felt sincerity, and I think
combined judgment, when I tell you,” he elsewhere writes, “that I feel
a little man by his side.”
Coleridge came several times to see his big man, after this; and the two
poets grew so much attached to each other, and found such profitable
advantages in each other’s conversation and literary judgments, that
they resolved to dwell nearer to each other. Accordingly Wordsworth and
his sister went to live at Alfoxden, near Stowey, where Coleridge was
residing. This was in July, 1797,--and he describes his sojourn there as
a very “pleasant and productive time of his life.” The house which
Wordsworth occupied belonged to Mr. St. Aubyn, who was a minor,--and the
condition of occupancy seems to have been, that the poet should keep the
house in repair.
In one of Miss Wordsworth’s letters, dated August 14, 1797, she speaks
with great enthusiasm and delight, both of the house and the country.
“Here we are,” she says, “in a large mansion, in a large park, with
seventy head of deer around us.... Sea, woods wild as fancy ever
painted, brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland, villages so romantic,
&c. The woods are as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more
romantic; it has the character of the less grand part of the
neighbourhood of the Lakes.” She then describes their “favourite
parlour,” which, like that of Racedown, looks into the garden. They were
three miles from Stowey, and only two from the sea. Look which way they
would, their eyes were filled with beauty: smooth downs, and valleys
with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever
intersected with hedges, but scattered over with trees. The hills were
covered with bilberries, or oak woods. They could walk for miles over
the hill-tops, which was quite smooth, without rocks.
And in this beautiful locality did the poet reside for about twelve
months, composing during that time, all the poems contained in the first
edition of the “Lyrical Ballads,” with the exception of the “Female
Vagrant.” These _Ballads_ are in many ways remarkable: in the first
place, because they were the joint production of men who subsequently
proved themselves to be two of our greatest poets; and, secondly,
because they brought these men prominently before the eyes of the public
and of the critical world. The Ballads, as they were called, were
likewise of a very high order; and it is not too much to say, that such
a book of poems as this had not been published since the Augustan era of
our literature, Milton’s alone excepted, if Milton may not be said to
have closed that era. Here first appeared the “Ancient Mariner,” and the
“Nightingale,” by Coleridge; “Tintern Abbey,” and “Lines left under a
Yew-tree Seat,” by Wordsworth; four poems which of themselves were
sufficient to float half a dozen volumes. It is true that the “Ancient
Mariner,” the “_Old Navigator_,” as Coleridge loved to call it, is what
may be styled a _made-up_ poem--a wild, unearthly patchwork of the
imagination,--but it contains, nevertheless, such passages as it would
be rare to match outside those seas. It is full, too, of all kinds of
music--sweet, wild, natural, and supernatural--now grand, like the
rolling bass of some mighty organ, and now, ærial, celestial; catching
up the reader into a strange heaven, and filling him with an unspeakable
ecstacy. Wonderful power is likewise manifested in the structure of the
tale; and one is amazed how so slender an incident, as that upon which
the tale is founded, could be worked out so successfully, and with such
deep and thrilling interest. The “Nightingale,” however, is quite a
different poem, and is redolent of nature. “Tintern Abbey,” and “Lines
left under a Yew-tree Seat,” are in Wordsworth’s best style, and have
never been surpassed by him, in the fullest maturity of his genius.
The idea of the “Ballads” originated in the following circumstances:
Wordsworth and his sister, accompanied by Coleridge, commenced a
pedestrian tour, in November 1797, to Linton, and the Valley of Stones,
near it. The whole party, however, were so poor that they could ill
afford the expense of the journey, and the two poets resolved to write a
poem for the “New Monthly Magazine,” for which they hoped to get £5, and
thus balance the outlay which they required for the tour. The course of
the friends lay along the Quartock Hills, towards Watchet; and here it
was that Coleridge planned his “Old Navigator,” the base of it being, as
he said, a dream of Cruikshanks’. Wordsworth and Coleridge were to have
written this poem conjointly, but the great dissimilarity of their
manner soon compelled them to abandon this idea, and Coleridge was left
to complete the work by himself. Wordsworth suggested, however, as some
crime was to be committed by the Mariner, which was to bring upon him a
spectral persecution in his wanderings, as the consequence of that
crime, that he should be represented as having killed an Albatross on
entering the South-Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions
should follow him and avenge the crime. The navigation of the ship by
the dead men was also a suggestion of Wordsworth’s. As Coleridge
proceeded with his work, it was very soon found that it would be too
long for the Magazine, and they began to think of issuing it as a
volume, along with other poems, by both bards. These poems were to be
founded “on supernatural subjects, taken from common life, but to be
looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium.”
Wordsworth’s share in the poetical contributions to this volume, besides
those already mentioned were, amongst others, “The Idiot Boy,” “Her Eyes
are Wild,” “We are Seven,” and “The Thorn.” The last verse of “We are
Seven,” was composed first, and Coleridge threw off, impromptu, the
first verse of the poem, whilst the little party were sitting down to
tea, in the pretty little parlour at Alfoxden, which looked out into the
garden. Speaking of the “Idiot Boy,” Wordsworth says:--“The last stanza,
‘The cocks did crow, and moon did shine so cold,’ was the production of
the whole. The words were reported to me by my dear friend Thomas Poole;
but I have since heard the same reported of other idiots. Let me add,
that this long poem was composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost
extempore; not a word, I believe, being corrected, though one stanza was
omitted. I mention this in gratitude to those happy moments, for in
truth I never wrote anything with so much glee.”
It was in 1798 that the Lines to Tintern Abbey were written. The poet
and his sister had been staying for a week with Mr. Cottle, of Bristol,
visiting Coleridge by the way, who had a little time before resigned his
ministerial engagement with a Unitarian congregation at Bristol, and was
now in receipt of an annuity of £150, given to him by the magnificent
generosity of “Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood.” From Mr. Cottle’s they
proceeded to the Banks of the Wye, crossed the Severn ferry, and walked
ten miles further to Tintern Abbey, a very beautiful ruin on the Wye.
They proceeded, next morning, along the river, through Monmouth, to
Goderich Castle, returning to Tintern in a boat, and from thence in a
small vessel back again to Bristol.
“The Wye,” says Wordsworth, “is a stately and majestic river, from its
width and depth, but never slow and sluggish--you can always hear its
murmur. It travels through a woody country, now varied with cottages and
green meadows, and now with huge and fantastic rocks.... No poem of mine
was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than
this [viz., “Tintern Abbey:”]--I began it upon leaving Tintern, after
crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol, in
the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not a
line of it was uttered, and not any part of it written down, till I
reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the
“Lyrical Ballads.”
“Peter Bell” was likewise written about this time; and the following
interesting particulars, respecting its origin, are furnished by the
poet:
“This tale was founded upon an anecdote which I read in a newspaper, of
an ass being found hanging his head over a canal, in a wretched
posture. Upon examination, a dead body was found in the water, and
proved to be the body of its master. In the woods of Alfoxden, I used to
take great delight in noticing the habits, tricks, and physiognomy of
asses; and it was here, no doubt, that I was put upon writing the Poem
of ‘Peter Bell,’ out of liking for the creature that is so often
dreadfully abused. The countenance, gait, and figure of Peter were taken
from a wild rover with whom I walked from Builth, on the river Wye,
downwards, nearly as far as the town of Hay. He told me strange stories.
It has always been a pleasure to me through life, to catch at every
opportunity that has occurred in my rambles, of being acquainted with
this class of people. The number of Peter’s wives was taken from the
trespasses in this way of a lawless creature who lived in the county of
Durham, and used to be attended by many women, sometimes not less than
half a dozen, as disorderly as himself; and a story went in the county,
that he had been heard to say, whilst they were quarrelling: “Why can’t
you be quiet?--there’s none so many of you.’ Benoni, or the child of
sorrow, I knew when I was a school-boy. His mother had been deserted by
a gentleman in the neighbourhood, she herself being a gentlewoman by
birth. The circumstances of her story were told me by my dear old dame,
Ann Tyson, who was her confidante. The lady died broken-hearted. The
crescent moon, which makes such a figure in the prologue, assumed this
character one evening, while I was watching its beauty, in front of
Alfoxden House. I intended this poem for the volume before spoken of;
but it was not published for more than twenty years afterwards. The
worship of the Methodists, or Ranters, is often heard during the
stillness of the summer evening, in the country, with affecting
accompaniments of moral beauty. In both the psalmody and voice of the
preacher there is not unfrequently much solemnity, likely to impress the
feelings of the rudest characters, under favourable circumstances.”
It was during Wordsworth’s residence in the South, in 1794, that a
circumstance occurred, which has not been alluded to before in these
memoirs, but which is interesting in itself, and still more so from the
fact that it was the means of making Wordsworth acquainted with
Coleridge, Southey, Robert Lovell, and George Burnet. I will relate this
circumstance in the language of a writer for Chambers’ Papers for the
People, and quote still further passages from the same tract,
illustrative of the life of Wordsworth and his friends, at this time.[G]
The circumstance was as follows: Coleridge, Southey, Lovell, and Burnet
“came down to Bristol, as the most convenient part from which they could
embark for the wild banks of the Susquehana. On that remote river they
were to found a Platonic Republic, where everything was to be in common,
and from which vice and selfishness were to be for ever excluded. These
ardent and intellectual adventurers had made elaborate calculations how
long it would take them to procure the necessaries of life, and to build
their barns, and how they should spend their leisure in what Coleridge
sung as
‘Freedom’s undivided dell,
Where toil and health with mellowed love shall dwell;
Far from folly, far from men,
In the rude romantic glen.’
Yet, it is supposed, they knew nothing of the Susquehana more than of
any other American river, except that its name was musical and sonorous;
and far from having anything wherewith to convey themselves and their
moveables across the Atlantic, they had to borrow five pounds to make up
their lodging bill. This sum was advanced them, with unalloyed pleasure,
by Mr. Cottle, a bookseller in the town, a benevolent and worthy man,
who seems almost to have been located there for no other purpose than to
introduce the three chief Lake Poets to the world.
“The bubble of the Susquehana, or, as it was called, Pantisocracy, was
exploded, by Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, all getting into the bonds
of matrimony, which have a miraculous virtue in testing the solidity of
schemes of life. They married three sisters of the name of Fricker. It
was the perpetual restlessness of Coleridge which first brought him and
his companions into contact with Wordsworth. The former wonderful man,
in capabilities perhaps the mightiest of that illustrious group, and in
his mental constitution one of the most puzzling psychological phenomena
which human nature has ever presented, was the originator of the
Pantisocratic proposal. He was a man of luxurious imagination, deep
emotiveness, various learning, and an exquisite nervous susceptibility.
In 1795, he was making excursions through the lovely and tranquil
scenery of Somersetshire, when he became acquainted with a most worthy
and excellent man, Mr. Poole, resident in the quiet village of Stowey.
On his return to Bristol, where he was married, he still exhibited his
uneasiness. First he removed to his immortal rose-bound cottage at
Clevedon, then back to the pent-up houses at Redcliff Hill, and from
these again to the more open situation of Kingsdown. Nothing would then
satisfy him but he must set up a serial, to be called ‘The Watchman;’
and his own sketches of his travelling canvass for that periodical,
might take rank with some chapters of Don Quixote. Take, for instance,
this picture of a great patriot at Birmingham, to whom he applies for
his magnificent patronage:--He was ‘a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler
by trade. He was a tall, dingy man, in whom length was so predominant
over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry
poker! Oh, that face!--I have it before me at this moment. The lank,
black, twine-like hair, pinguinitescent, cut in a straight line along
the black stubble of his thin, gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a
scorched aftermath from a last week’s shaving. His coat-collar behind,
in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse yet glib
cordage which I suppose he called his hair, and which, with a bend
inward at the nape of the neck--the only approach to flexure in his
whole figure--slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance,
lank, dark, very hard, and with strong, perpendicular furrows--gave me a
dim notion of some one looking at me through a gridiron,--all soot,
grease, and iron.’ This thoroughbred lover of liberty, who had proved
that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in the
‘Revelations’ that spake as a dragon, nevertheless declined to take ‘The
Watchman’; and in short, after a disastrous career, that serial died a
natural death. The disappointed editor took refuge, for a brief season,
with Mr. Poole, at Stowey, and there, for the first time, he met
Wordsworth, who then resided about twenty miles off, at Racedown, in
Dorsetshire.
“Coleridge returned for a short time to Bristol, but in January, 1797,
he removed to Stowey, where he rented a small cottage. This must have
been a pleasant episode in the lives of the gifted individuals whom it
brought together in that sweet village. Wordsworth, who was now
twenty-seven, had come with his sister to Alfoxden, which was within two
miles of Stowey. Charles Lloyd, a young man of most sensitive and
graceful mind, and of great poetical susceptibility, resided in the
family with Coleridge. Charles Lamb, then in the spring-time of his
life, was also a frequent inmate; and often afterwards, under the cloud
which lowered over his noble devotedness in London, his fancy wandered
back to that happy valley.--Why, says he to Charles Lloyd, who
unexpectedly looked in upon him in the great Babylon:
‘Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out?
What offering does the stranger bring
Of social scenes, home-bred delights,
That him in aught compensate may
For Stowey’s pleasant winter nights,
For loves and friendships far away?’
The Pantisocratist, George Burnet, was also a visitor. Mrs. Coleridge
herself had a poetical taste, and there is one very graceful piece of
hers written on the receipt of a thimble from her kind friend Mr.
Cottle. Just such a thimble, sings Sarah Coleridge--
‘Just such a one, _mon cher ami_
(The finger-shield of industry),
The inventive gods, I deem, to Pallas gave,
What time the vain Arachne, madly brave,
Challenged the blue-eyed virgin of the sky
A duel in embroidered work to try.
And hence the thimbled finger of grave Pallas
To the erring needle’s point was more than callous.
But, ah! the poor Arachne! she, unarmed,
Blundering through hasty eagerness, alarmed
With all a rival’s hopes, a mortal’s fears,
Still missed the stitch, and stained the web with tears.’
Hartley Coleridge, the ærial child who awakened the fears and sympathies
of Wordsworth, was a fine boy, rejoicing his parents’ hearts; and the
happy pair had cut a road into their neighbours’ orchards, that they
might pass to their firesides under the arches of blossoms, with a speed
suiting to their affections. Alas! that sweet Stowey. Cottle, in his old
age, has painted one or two pictures of it and of its gifted habitants,
now in their graves, that go to the heart. Take the scene with Coleridge
in the jasmine arbour, where the tripod table was laden with delicious
bread and cheese, and a mug of the true brown Taunton ale. ‘While the
dappled sunbeams,’ says the old man, calling up kindly memories, ‘played
on our table through the umbrageous canopy, the very birds seemed to
participate in our felicities, and poured forth selectest anthems. As we
sat in our sylvan hall of splendour, a company of the happiest mortals,
the bright blue heavens, the sportive insects, the balmy zephyrs, the
feathered choristers, the sympathy of friends, all augmented the
pleasurable to the highest point this side the celestial.... While thus
elevated in the universal current of our feelings, Mrs. Coleridge
approached with her fine Hartley; we all smiled, but the father’s eye
beamed transcendental joy. But all things have an end! Yet pleasant it
is for Memory to treasure up in her choicest depository a few such
scenes (those sunny spots in existence), on which the spirit may repose
when the rough adverse winds shake and disfigure all besides.’ Or take
the more lively visit to Alfoxden, on Wordsworth’s invitation. Away
they all went from Stowey; the poet and Emmeline, Coleridge and Cottle.
They were to dine on philosopher’s fare--a bottle of brandy, a loaf, a
piece of cheese, and fresh lettuces from Wordsworth’s garden. The first
mishap was a theftuous abstraction of the cheese; and, on the back of
it, Coleridge, in the very act of praising the brandy as a substitute,
upset the bottle, and knocked it to pieces. They all tried to take off
the harness from the horse. Cottle tried it, then the bard of Rydal; but
in vain. Coleridge, who had served his apprenticeship as Silas
Comberbatch in the cavalry, then twisted the poor animal’s neck almost
to strangulation; but was at last compelled to pronounce that the
horse’s head must have grown since the collar was put on! It was
useless, he said, to try to force so huge an _os frontis_ through so
narrow a collar. All had given up, when lo! the servant girl turned the
collar upside down, and slipped it off in an instant, to the
inconceivable wonder and humiliation of the poets, who proceeded to
solace themselves with the brown bread, the lettuces, and a jug of
sparkling water. Who, knowing the subsequent fate of the tenants of
Stowey, would not love to dwell on these delightful pictures of their
better days?
“It must not be supposed, however, that the tempter never entered into
this Eden; but when he did so, it was generally through the
mischief-making pranks of Coleridge, who constantly kept his friends in
hot water. He and Lamb had just published a joint volume of poems, and
Coleridge could not refrain from satirising and parodying their
offspring in the newspapers. Take this epigram as a specimen:--
‘TO THE AUTHOR OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.
‘Your poem must eternal be--
Dear Sir, it cannot fail;
For ’tis incomprehensible,
And without head or tail.’
Of course nobody could suspect Coleridge of this; and, indeed, to his
infinite amusement, a vain fellow affected to hesitate about being
introduced to him, on the ground that he had mortally injured him by the
writing of this very epigram! But Lamb could not fail to observe the
doings of the poet-metaphysician more closely, and the result was a
quarrel, which induced that ‘gentle creature’ to send him an
unnaturally bitter series of theological questions, such as--‘Whether
the vision beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual
representment, to each individual angel, of his own present attainments
and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal
looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and
self-satisfaction?’ Troubles from without added to this confusion
within. The village wiseacres, to whom the habits of Wordsworth and his
eccentric friend were totally incomprehensible, had decided that they
were terrible scoundrels, who required to be looked after. One sage had
seen Wordsworth look strangely at the moon; another had overheard him
mutter in some unintelligible and outlandish brogue. Some thought him a
conjuror; some a smuggler, from his perpetually haunting the sea-beach;
some asserted that he kept a snug private still in his cellar, as they
knew by their noses at a hundred yards distance; while others where
convinced that he was ‘surely a desperate French Jacobin, for he was so
silent nobody ever heard him say one word about politics.’ While the
saturnine and stately Wordsworth was thus slanderously assailed, his
fluent and witty associate could not expect to escape. One day,
accordingly while on a pedestrian excursion, Coleridge met a woman who,
not knowing who he was, abused him to himself in unmeasured Billingsgate
for a whole hour, as a vile Jacobin villain, who had misled George
Burnet of her parish. ‘I listened,’ wrote the poet to a friend, ‘very
particularly, appearing to approve all she said, exclaiming, “Dear me!”
two or three times; and, in fine, so completely won her heart by my
civilities, that I had not courage enough to undeceive her.’ This is all
very ludicrous and amusing now; but at the time its effect was such,
that the person who had the letting of Alfoxden House refused
point-blank to relet it to Wordsworth. This was of course a great
vexation to Poole and Coleridge, who set about trying to procure another
house in the vicinity.
“But the two bards were not a subject of jealousy and suspicion to the
ignorant peasantry alone. A country gentleman of the locality became so
alarmed, that he called in the aid of that tremendous abstraction--the
state; and a spy was sent down from head-quarters, and lodged in
mysterious privacy in Stowey Inn. The poets could never stir out but
this gentleman was at their heels, and they scarcely ever had an
out-of-doors conversation which he did not overhear. He used to hide
behind a bank at the seaside, which was a favourite seat of theirs. At
that time they used to talk a great deal of Spinosa; and as their
confidential attendant had a notable Bardolph nose, he at first took it
into his head that they were making light of his importance by
nicknaming him ‘Spy Nosy;’ but was soon convinced that that was the name
of a man ‘who had made a book, and lived long ago.’ On one occasion
Bardolph assumed the character of a Jacobin, to draw Coleridge out; but
such was the bard’s indignant exposure of the Revolutionists, that even
the spy felt ashamed that he had put Jacobinism on. Poor Coleridge was
so unsuspicious, that he felt happy he had been the means of shaking the
convictions of this awful partisan, and doing the unhappy man some good.
At last the spy reported favourably, to the great disgust of the rural
magnate who had engaged his services, and who now tried to elicit fresh
grounds of suspicion from the village innkeeper. But that worthy was
obstinate in his belief that it was totally impossible for Coleridge to
harangue the inhabitants, as he talked ‘real Hebrew-Greek,’ which their
limited intellects could not understand. This, however, only exasperated
his inquisitor, who demanded whether Coleridge had not been seen roving
about, taking charts and maps of the district. The poor innkeeper
replied, that though he did not wish to say any ill of anybody, yet he
must confess he had heard that Coleridge was a poet, and intended to put
Quantock into print. Thus the friends escaped this peril, which was then
a formidable one. Coleridge was at the time wandering about the romantic
coombes of the Quantock Hills, making studies for a poem on the plan
afterwards followed out by Wordsworth in his ‘Sonnets to the Duddon;’
and in the heat of the moment he resolved to dedicate it to Government,
as containing the traitorous plans which he was to submit to the French,
in order to facilitate their schemes of invasion. ‘And these, too,’ says
he, ‘for a tract of coast that from Clevedon to Minehead scarcely
permits the approach of a fishing-boat.’”
This episode brings us back to Wordsworth, and shows, amongst other
things, the reason why he left Alfoxden, although not the slightest
allusion is made to this spy business, or to the Pantisocratic scheme in
the memoirs of the poet by Doctor Wordsworth. The poet’s removal to
Bristol sometime about July, in the year 1798, was caused, according to
the doctor, by Wordsworth’s “desire to be nearer the printer,” and he
(the doctor) quotes a letter from Miss Wordsworth, bearing date July
18th of that year, in which she says, “William’s poems are now in the
press; they will be out in six weeks.” These poems, or “Lyrical
Ballads,” as they were called, were printed by Cottle, of Bristol, and
Wordsworth received thirty guineas as his share, for the copyright of
the volume.
“At his first interview with Wordsworth, Cottle had heard some of the
lyrical poems read, and had earnestly advised their publication,
offering for them the same sum he had given to Coleridge and Southey for
their works, and stating flatteringly that no provincial bookseller
might ever again have the honour of ushering such a trio to renown.
Wordsworth, however, strongly objected to publication; but in April,
1798, the poet sent for Cottle to hear them recited ‘under the old
trees in the park.’ Coleridge despatched a confirmatory invitation. ‘We
will procure a horse,’ wrote persuasive Samuel Taylor, ‘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 waterfalls, 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
honours only from the winter’s snow.’ The three friends did go on their
romantic excursion, saw sweet Linton and Limouth, and arranged the
publication of the first volume of the ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ which we have
now seen brought to their publication day, and submitted to the judgment
of the public. Dr. Wordsworth, however, does not allude in the “Memoirs”
to Cottle as one of their party to the Valley of Stones.
The reader of this day, accustomed to dwell with delight and reverence
upon the Old Navigator, the Nightingale, Tintern Abbey, &c., will be a
little startled to hear that although only five hundred copies of the
Lyrical Ballads were printed, Cottle had to dispose of the greater part
of them to a London bookseller at a loss, in consequence of the terrific
mud-showers of abuse which the critics poured upon the poems.
Nevertheless, and in spite of the failure of the adventure, as a
commercial speculation, there were minds of no mean order that detected
the genius which produced them. Professor Wilson and De Quincy were
amongst the number of these; and the former said, in speaking of the
Ballads, that a new sun had risen at midday. Hannah More, also, who,
notwithstanding her own milk-and-water productions, was a woman of
discernment, was delighted with “Harry Gill,” and deigned to say so in
the teeth of the dirty demireps that abused it. But the volume gradually
sunk for a time below the public horizon, and when Cottle gave up his
business, and disposed of his copyright to the Longmans of London, these
publishers returned that of the Ballads as valueless, and Cottle made a
present of it to its authors.
In the meanwhile, Wordsworth and his sister, accompanied by Coleridge,
with the proceeds of their poetry in their pockets, went to Germany. The
writer for Chambers says--
“The different temperaments of the poets displayed themselves very
remarkably on the voyage. The bard of Rydal seems to have kept very
quiet; but his mercurial companion, after indulging in most questionable
potations with a motley group of eccentric foreigners, got up and danced
with them a succession of dances, which, he says, might very
appropriately have been termed _reels_. Where Wordsworth was may be
conjectured from Coleridge’s remark, that those ‘who lay below in all
the agonies of sea-sickness must have found our Bacchanalian merriment
----“a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.”
One of the party was a Dane, a vain and disgusting coxcomb, whose
conversation with Coleridge, whom he first took for a ‘Doctor Teology,’
and then for ‘un philosophe,’ actually outburlesqued burlesque. The
astounded bard, for the first time in his life, took notes of a
dialogue, of which a single sample is enough.
“THE DANE.--Vat imagination! vat language! vat vast science! vat eyes!
vat a milk white forehead! Oh my heafen! vy, you’re a got!
“ANSWER.--You do me too much honour, sir.
“THE DANE.--Oh me, if you should tink I is flattering you! I haf ten
tousand a year--yes, ten tousand a year--yes, ten tousand pound a year!
Vell, and vat is dhat? Vy, a mere trifle! I ’ould’nt gif my sincere
heart for ten times dhe money! Yes, you’re a got! I a mere man! But, my
dear friend, dhink of me as a man! Is--is--I mean to ask you now, my
dear friend--is I not very eloquent? Is I not speak English very fine?
“And so his Daneship, in this extraordinary style, went on fishing for
compliments, and asking whether he did not speak just like Plato, and
Cato, and Socrates, till he lost all opinion of Coleridge on finding
that he was a Christian. The discarded poet then wrapped himself in his
great-coat, and looked at the water, covered with foam and stars of
flame, while every now and then detachments of it ‘darted off from the
vessel’s side, each with its own constellation, over the sea, and
scoured out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness.’ By and by
he lay down, and ‘looking up at two or three stars, which oscillated
with the motion of the sails, fell asleep.’
“They landed at Hamburg, on the Elbe Stairs, at the Boom-House.
Wordsworth, with a French emigrant, whose acquaintance he had cultivated
at sea, went in search of a hotel, and put up at ‘Die Wilde Man,’ while
the other wild man, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, strolled about, amusing
himself with looking at the ‘Dutch women, with large umbrella hats
shooting out half a yard before them, and a prodigal plumpness of
petticoat behind,’ and many similar striking and unusual spectacles.
“In Hamburg the pair were introduced to the brother of the poet
Klopstock, and to Professor Ebeling, a lively and intelligent man, but
so deaf that they had to ‘drop all their pearls into a huge
ear-trumpet.’ At Mr. Klopstock’s they saw a bust of the poet, whom they
afterwards visited. It had a solemn and heavy greatness in the
countenance, which corresponded with the notions entertained by
Coleridge of his style and genius, and which were afterwards discovered
not to exist in the prototype himself. Coleridge, whose chief object in
coming to Germany was to become acquainted with the German language and
literature, left Wordsworth in Hamburg, and went to Ratzeburg, where he
boarded in the pastor’s house. He returned, however, for a few days, to
take final leave of his friend, and the two paid a visit to Klopstock
together. His house was one of a row of what appeared small
summer-houses, with four or five rows of young meagre elms in front, and
beyond these a green, bounded by a dead flat. The bard’s physiognomy
disappointed them as much as his domicile. Coleridge recognised in it no
likeness to the bust, and no traces either of sublimity or enthusiasm.
Klopstock could only speak French and German, and Coleridge only English
and Latin, so that Wordsworth, who was accomplished in French, acted as
interpreter. It may here be mentioned that this ignorance of Coleridge’s
brought upon him a peculiar sort of civility at Ratzeburg. The _amtmann_
of that place, anxious to be civil, and totally unable to find any
medium of communication, every day they met, as the only courtesy he had
it in his power to offer, addressed to him the whole stock of English he
possessed, which was to this effect:-- ‘----ddam your ploot unt eyes,
my dearest Englander, vhee goes it?’ The conversation with Klopstock
turned entirely upon English and German literature, and in the course of
it Wordsworth gave ample proofs of his great taste, industry, and
information, and even showed that he was better acquainted with the
highest German writers than the author of the ‘Messiah’ himself. On his
informing the latter that Coleridge intended to translate some of his
odes, the old man said to Coleridge--‘I wish you would render into
English some select passages of the “Messiah,” and _revenge_ me of your
countrymen.’ ‘This,’ says Coleridge, ‘was the liveliest thing he
produced in the whole conversation.’ That genius was, however, deeply
moved, but could not help being disgusted with the venerable bard’s
snow-white periwig, which felt to his eye what Mr. Virgil would have
been to his ear. After this, Coleridge left Hamburg, and resided four
months in Ratzeburg, and five in Gottingen. Wordsworth had two
subsequent interviews with Klopstock, and dined with him. He kept notes
of these conversations, some of which are given in ‘Satyrane’s Letters,’
in the second volume of the ‘Biographia Literaria.’ One or two
incidents strongly illustrate Wordsworth’s peculiar character and
poetical taste. He complained, for example, of Lessing making the
interest of the ‘Oberon’ turn upon mere appetite. ‘Well, but,’ said
Klopstock, ‘you see that such poems please everybody.’ He immediately
replied, that ‘it was the province of a great poet to raise a people up
to his own level--not to descend to theirs.’ Klopstock afterwards found
fault with the Fool in ‘Lear,’ when Wordsworth observed that ‘he gave a
terrible wildness to the distress’--a remark which evinced a deep
appreciation of that awful drama. Wordsworth subsequently made a short
tour, and visited Coleridge at Gottingen on his return.’
Wordsworth, during the greater part of his time in Germany lived at
Goslar, and he found the people neither very friendly nor hospitable.
Goslar is situate at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, which are covered
with fine oaks and beech, and the poet and his sister, to make up for
the loss of society in the town, sought solitude amongst these
magnificent woods. Among the poems written at this time were, “Strange
fits of passion have I known,” “Three years she grew in sun and
shower,” “Lines to a Sexton,” “The Danish Boy,” intended as a prelude to
a ballad never written; “A Poet’s Epitaph,” “Art thou a Statist?” “Lucy
Gray.” All these poems and many more were written in 1799; and the
latter is founded on a circumstance related by the poet’s sister “of a
little girl, who, not far from Halifax, in Yorkshire, was bewildered in
a snow-storm. Her footsteps were tracked by her parents to the middle of
the lock of a canal, and no other footsteps of her, backward or forward,
could be traced. The body, however, was found in the canal. The way in
which the incident was treated, and the spiritualizing of the character,
might furnish hints for contrasting the imaginative influences, which I
have endeavoured to throw over common life, with Crabbe’s matter-of-fact
style of handling subjects of the same kind. This is not spoken to his
disparagement,--far from it; but to direct the attention of thoughtful
readers into whose hands these notes may fall, to a comparison that may
enlarge the circle of their sympathies, and tend to produce in them a
catholic judgment.” “Lines written in Germany, ’98-9” have the following
note attached to them in the “Memoirs,” with which I will conclude
these extracts.
“A bitter winter it was when these verses were composed, by the side of
my sister, in our lodgings at a draper’s house, in the romantic imperial
town of Goslar, on the edge of the Hartz Forest. In this town the German
emperors of the Franconian line were accustomed to keep their court, and
it retains vestiges of ancient splendour. So severe was the cold of this
winter that when we passed out of the parlour warmed by the stove, our
cheeks were struck by the air as if by cold iron. I slept in a room over
a passage that was not ceiled. The people of the house used to say,
rather unfeelingly, that they expected I should be frozen to death some
night; but with the protection of a pelisse lined with fur, and a
dog-skin bonnet, such as was worn by the peasants, I walked daily on the
ramparts, in a sort of public ground or garden, in which was a pond.
Here I had no companion but a kingfisher, a beautiful creature that used
to glance by me. I consequently became much attached to it.” During
these walks he composed the ‘Poet’s Epitaph.’ His ‘Poem of Ruth,’ ‘The
Address to the Scholars of a Village School,’ ‘The two April Mornings,’
‘The Fountain,’ ‘A Conversation,’ ‘Matthew,’ and a variety of others
were likewise written about this time. In his correspondence with
Coleridge at this time, the latter speaks in terms of the highest
affection for him. ‘I am sure I need but say,’ he writes, ‘how you are
incorporated with the better part of my being; how whenever I spring
forward into the future with noble affections, I always alight by your
side.’”
On the 10th of February, 1799, Wordsworth and his sister left Goslar,
and returned towards England. The poet was now nearly thirty years of
age; and as the gates of the Imperial City closed behind him, he felt
like a bird suddenly released from captivity, and resolved to build up
some stately architecture of verse, which men would not willingly let
die. Accordingly he commenced the “Prelude,” within the very hum of the
city. Six out of the fourteen books which compose it, were written
before 1805.
In the spring of 1799 the poet and his sister returned to England; and
in a letter to Cottle, written immediately after their arrival, we find
them in “the county of Durham, just on the borders of Yorkshire,”
thankful, after sufficient experience of Germany, for the dear face of
old England once more.