Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--Rustic life (above
all, low and rustic life) especially unfavourable to the formation of a
human diction--The best parts of language the product of philosophers,
not of clowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and generic--The
language of Milton as much the language of real life, yea, incomparably
more so than that of the cottager.
As far then as Mr. Wordsworth in his preface contended, and most ably
contended, for a reformation in our poetic diction, as far as he has
evinced the truth of passion, and the dramatic propriety of those
figures and metaphors in the original poets, which, stripped of their
justifying reasons, and converted into mere artifices of connection or
ornament, constitute the characteristic falsity in the poetic style of
the moderns; and as far as he has, with equal acuteness and clearness,
pointed out the process by which this change was effected, and the
resemblances between that state into which the reader’s mind is thrown
by the pleasurable confusion of thought from an unaccustomed train
of words and images; and that state which is induced by the natural
language of impassioned feeling; he undertook a useful task, and
deserves all praise, both for the attempt and for the execution. The
provocations to this remonstrance in behalf of truth and nature were
still of perpetual recurrence before and after the publication of this
preface. I cannot likewise but add, that the comparison of such poems
of merit, as have been given to the public within the last ten or twelve
years, with the majority of those produced previously to the appearance
of that preface, leave no doubt on my mind, that Mr. Wordsworth is fully
justified in believing his efforts to have been by no means ineffectual.
Not only in the verses of those who have professed their admiration
of his genius, but even of those who have distinguished themselves
by hostility to his theory, and depreciation of his writings, are the
impressions of his principles plainly visible. It is possible, that with
these principles others may have been blended, which are not equally
evident; and some which are unsteady and subvertible from the narrowness
or imperfection of their basis. But it is more than possible, that
these errors of defect or exaggeration, by kindling and feeding the
controversy, may have conduced not only to the wider propagation of the
accompanying truths, but that, by their frequent presentation to the
mind in an excited state, they may have won for them a more permanent
and practical result. A man will borrow a part from his opponent the
more easily, if he feels himself justified in continuing to reject a
part. While there remain important points in which he can still feel
himself in the right, in which he still finds firm footing for continued
resistance, he will gradually adopt those opinions, which were the least
remote from his own convictions, as not less congruous with his own
theory than with that which he reprobates. In like manner with a kind of
instinctive prudence, he will abandon by little and little his weakest
posts, till at length he seems to forget that they had ever belonged
to him, or affects to consider them at most as accidental and “petty
annexments,” the removal of which leaves the citadel unhurt and
unendangered.
My own differences from certain supposed parts of Mr. Wordsworth’s
theory ground themselves on the assumption, that his words had been
rightly interpreted, as purporting that the proper diction for poetry
in general consists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions,
from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually
constitutes the natural conversation of men under the influence of
natural feelings. My objection is, first, that in any sense this rule
is applicable only to certain classes of poetry; secondly, that even
to these classes it is not applicable, except in such a sense, as
hath never by any one (as far as I know or have read,) been denied or
doubted; and lastly, that as far as, and in that degree in which it
is practicable, it is yet as a rule useless, if not injurious, and
therefore either need not, or ought not to be practised. The poet
informs his reader, that he had generally chosen low and rustic life;
but not as low and rustic, or in order to repeat that pleasure of
doubtful moral effect, which persons of elevated rank and of superior
refinement oftentimes derive from a happy imitation of the rude
unpolished manners and discourse of their inferiors. For the pleasure
so derived may be traced to three exciting causes. The first is the
naturalness, in fact, of the things represented. The second is the
apparent naturalness of the representation, as raised and qualified
by an imperceptible infusion of the author’s own knowledge and talent,
which infusion does, indeed, constitute it an imitation as distinguished
from a mere copy. The third cause may be found in the reader’s conscious
feeling of his superiority awakened by the contrast presented to
him; even as for the same purpose the kings and great barons of yore
retained, sometimes actual clowns and fools, but more frequently shrewd
and witty fellows in that character. These, however, were not Mr.
Wordsworth’s objects. He chose low and rustic life, “because in that
condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in
which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and
speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of
life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity,
and consequently may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly
communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from
those elementary feelings; and from the necessary character of rural
occupations are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and
lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated
with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.”
Now it is clear to me, that in the most interesting of the poems, in
which the author is more or less dramatic, as THE BROTHERS, MICHAEL,
RUTH, THE MAD MOTHER, and others, the persons introduced are by no
means taken from low or rustic life in the common acceptation of those
words! and it is not less clear, that the sentiments and language, as
far as they can be conceived to have been really transferred from the
minds and conversation of such persons, are attributable to causes and
circumstances not necessarily connected with “their occupations and
abode.” The thoughts, feelings, language, and manners of the
shepherd-farmers in the vales of Cumberland and Westmoreland, as far as
they are actually adopted in those poems, may be accounted for from
causes, which will and do produce the same results in every state of
life, whether in town or country. As the two principal I rank that
independence, which raises a man above servitude, or daily toil for the
profit of others, yet not above the necessity of industry and a frugal
simplicity of domestic life; and the accompanying unambitious, but
solid and religious, education, which has rendered few books familiar,
but the Bible, and the Liturgy or Hymn book. To this latter cause,
indeed, which is so far accidental, that it is the blessing of
particular countries and a particular age, not the product of
particular places or employments, the poet owes the show of
probability, that his personages might really feel, think, and talk
with any tolerable resemblance to his representation. It is an
excellent remark of Dr. Henry More’s, that “a man of confined
education, but of good parts, by constant reading of the Bible will
naturally form a more winning and commanding rhetoric than those that
are learned: the intermixture of tongues and of artificial phrases
debasing their style.”
It is, moreover, to be considered that to the formation of healthy
feelings, and a reflecting mind, negations involve impediments not less
formidable than sophistication and vicious intermixture. I am
convinced, that for the human soul to prosper in rustic life a certain
vantage-ground is prerequisite. It is not every man that is likely to
be improved by a country life or by country labours. Education, or
original sensibility, or both, must pre-exist, if the changes, forms,
and incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant. And where
these are not sufficient, the mind contracts and hardens by want of
stimulants: and the man becomes selfish, sensual, gross, and
hard-hearted. Let the management of the Poor Laws in Liverpool,
Manchester, or Bristol be compared with the ordinary dispensation of
the poor rates in agricultural villages, where the farmers are the
overseers and guardians of the poor. If my own experience have not been
particularly unfortunate, as well as that of the many respectable
country clergymen with whom I have conversed on the subject, the result
would engender more than scepticism concerning the desirable influences
of low and rustic life in and for itself. Whatever may be concluded on
the other side, from the stronger local attachments and enterprising
spirit of the Swiss, and other mountaineers, applies to a particular
mode of pastoral life, under forms of property that permit and beget
manners truly republican, not to rustic life in general, or to the
absence of artificial cultivation. On the contrary the mountaineers,
whose manners have been so often eulogized, are in general better
educated and greater readers than men of equal rank elsewhere. But
where this is not the case, as among the peasantry of North Wales, the
ancient mountains, with all their terrors and all their glories, are
pictures to the blind, and music to the deaf.
I should not have entered so much into detail upon this passage,
but here seems to be the point, to which all the lines of difference
converge as to their source and centre;--I mean, as far as, and in
whatever respect, my poetic creed does differ from the doctrines
promulgated in this preface. I adopt with full faith, the principle of
Aristotle, that poetry, as poetry, is essentially ideal, that it avoids
and excludes all accident; that its apparent individualities of rank,
character, or occupation must be representative of a class; and that
the persons of poetry must be clothed with generic attributes, with the
common attributes of the class: not with such as one gifted individual
might possibly possess, but such as from his situation it is most
probable before-hand that he would possess. If my premises are right and
my deductions legitimate, it follows that there can be no poetic medium
between the swains of Theocritus and those of an imaginary golden age.
The characters of the vicar and the shepherd-mariner in the poem of THE
BROTHERS, and that of the shepherd of Green-head Ghyll in the MICHAEL,
have all the verisimilitude and representative quality, that the
purposes of poetry can require. They are persons of a known and
abiding class, and their manners and sentiments the natural product of
circumstances common to the class. Take Michael for instance:
An old man stout of heart, and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength: his mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs,
And in his shepherd’s calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes
When others heeded not, He heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.
The Shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him, and he to himself would say,
‘The winds are now devising work for me!’
And truly, at all times, the storm, that drives
The traveller to a shelter, summoned him
Up to the mountains: he had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So lived he, until his eightieth year was past.
And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd’s thoughts.
Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air; the hills, which he so oft
Had climbed with vigorous steps; which had impressed
So many incidents upon his mind
Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear;
Which, like a book, preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals, whom he had saved,
Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts,
So grateful in themselves, the certainty
Of honourable gain; these fields, these hills
Which were his living Being, even more
Than his own blood--what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
On the other hand, in the poems which are pitched in a lower key, as the
HARRY GILL, and THE IDIOT BOY, the feelings are those of human nature in
general; though the poet has judiciously laid the scene in the country,
in order to place himself in the vicinity of interesting images, without
the necessity of ascribing a sentimental perception of their beauty
to the persons of his drama. In THE IDIOT BOY, indeed, the mother’s
character is not so much the real and native product of a “situation
where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in which
they can attain their maturity and speak a plainer and more emphatic
language,” as it is an impersonation of an instinct abandoned by
judgment. Hence the two following charges seem to me not wholly
groundless: at least, they are the only plausible objections, which I
have heard to that fine poem. The one is, that the author has not, in
the poem itself, taken sufficient care to preclude from the reader’s
fancy the disgusting images of ordinary morbid idiocy, which yet it was
by no means his intention to represent. He was even by the “burr, burr,
burr,” uncounteracted by any preceding description of the boy’s beauty,
assisted in recalling them. The other is, that the idiocy of the boy
is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother, as to present to the
general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the blindness of anile
dotage, than an analytic display of maternal affection in its ordinary
workings.
In THE THORN, the poet himself acknowledges in a note the necessity of
an introductory poem, in which he should have portrayed the character
of the person from whom the words of the poem are supposed to proceed:
a superstitious man moderately imaginative, of slow faculties and deep
feelings, “a captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who, being
past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity, or small
independent income, to some village or country town of which he was
not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live. Such men
having nothing to do become credulous and talkative from indolence.” But
in a poem, still more in a lyric poem--and the Nurse in ROMEO AND JULIET
alone prevents me from extending the remark even to dramatic poetry, if
indeed even the Nurse can be deemed altogether a case in point--it is
not possible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourser, without
repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I
dare assert, that the parts--(and these form the far larger portion of
the whole)--which might as well or still better have proceeded from the
poet’s own imagination, and have been spoken in his own character,
are those which have given, and which will continue to give, universal
delight; and that the passages exclusively appropriate to the supposed
narrator, such as the last couplet of the third stanza [64]; the seven
last lines of the tenth [65]; and the five following stanzas, with
the exception of the four admirable lines at the commencement of the
fourteenth, are felt by many unprejudiced and unsophisticated hearts,
as sudden and unpleasant sinkings from the height to which the poet had
previously lifted them, and to which he again re-elevates both himself
and his reader.
If then I am compelled to doubt the theory, by which the choice of
characters was to be directed, not only a priori, from grounds of
reason, but both from the few instances in which the poet himself
need be supposed to have been governed by it, and from the comparative
inferiority of those instances; still more must I hesitate in my assent
to the sentence which immediately follows the former citation; and
which I can neither admit as particular fact, nor as general rule. “The
language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what
appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of
dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best
objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and
because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle
of their intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity,
they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions.” To this I reply; that a rustic’s language, purified from
all provincialism and grossness, and so far reconstructed as to be made
consistent with the rules of grammar--(which are in essence no
other than the laws of universal logic, applied to psychological
materials)--will not differ from the language of any other man of
common sense, however learned or refined he may be, except as far as
the notions, which the rustic has to convey, are fewer and more
indiscriminate. This will become still clearer, if we add the
consideration--(equally important though less obvious)--that the rustic,
from the more imperfect development of his faculties, and from the
lower state of their cultivation, aims almost solely to convey insulated
facts, either those of his scanty experience or his traditional belief;
while the educated man chiefly seeks to discover and express those
connections of things, or those relative bearings of fact to fact, from
which some more or less general law is deducible. For facts are valuable
to a wise man, chiefly as they lead to the discovery of the indwelling
law, which is the true being of things, the sole solution of their modes
of existence, and in the knowledge of which consists our dignity and our
power.
As little can I agree with the assertion, that from the objects with
which the rustic hourly communicates the best part of language is
formed. For first, if to communicate with an object implies such an
acquaintance with it, as renders it capable of being discriminately
reflected on, the distinct knowledge of an uneducated rustic would
furnish a very scanty vocabulary. The few things and modes of action
requisite for his bodily conveniences would alone be individualized;
while all the rest of nature would be expressed by a small number of
confused general terms. Secondly, I deny that the words and combinations
of words derived from the objects, with which the rustic is familiar,
whether with distinct or confused knowledge, can be justly said to form
the best part of language. It is more than probable, that many classes
of the brute creation possess discriminating sounds, by which they can
convey to each other notices of such objects as concern their food,
shelter, or safety. Yet we hesitate to call the aggregate of such
sounds a language, otherwise than metaphorically. The best part of human
language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts
of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed
symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the
greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated
man; though in civilized society, by imitation and passive remembrance
of what they hear from their religious instructors and other superiors,
the most uneducated share in the harvest which they neither sowed,
nor reaped. If the history of the phrases in hourly currency among our
peasants were traced, a person not previously aware of the fact would
be surprised at finding so large a number, which three or four centuries
ago were the exclusive property of the universities and the schools;
and, at the commencement of the Reformation, had been transferred from
the school to the pulpit, and thus gradually passed into common life.
The extreme difficulty, and often the impossibility, of finding words
for the simplest moral and intellectual processes of the languages of
uncivilized tribes has proved perhaps the weightiest obstacle to the
progress of our most zealous and adroit missionaries. Yet these tribes
are surrounded by the same nature as our peasants are; but in still more
impressive forms; and they are, moreover, obliged to particularize many
more of them. When, therefore, Mr. Wordsworth adds, “accordingly, such
a language”--(meaning, as before, the language of rustic life purified
from provincialism)--“arising out of repeated experience and regular
feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language,
than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think
that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in
proportion as they indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of
expression;” it may be answered, that the language, which he has in
view, can be attributed to rustics with no greater right, than the style
of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir Roger L’Estrange. Doubtless, if
what is peculiar to each were omitted in each, the result must needs be
the same. Further, that the poet, who uses an illogical diction, or a
style fitted to excite only the low and changeable pleasure of wonder by
means of groundless novelty, substitutes a language of folly and vanity,
not for that of the rustic, but for that of good sense and natural
feeling.
Here let me be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions, which
I controvert, are contained in the sentences--“a selection of the real
language of men;”--“the language of these men” (that is, men in low and
rustic life) “has been adopted; I have proposed to myself to imitate,
and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men.”
“Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition, there
neither is, nor can be, any essential difference:” it is against these
exclusively that my opposition is directed.
I object, in the very first instance, to an equivocation in the use of
the word “real.” Every man’s language varies, according to the extent of
his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness
of his feelings. Every man’s language has, first, its individualities;
secondly, the common properties of the class to which he belongs; and
thirdly, words and phrases of universal use. The language of Hooker,
Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke differs from the common language of the
learned class only by the superior number and novelty of the thoughts
and relations which they had to convey. The language of Algernon Sidney
differs not at all from that, which every well-educated gentleman would
wish to write, and (with due allowances for the undeliberateness, and
less connected train, of thinking natural and proper to conversation)
such as he would wish to talk. Neither one nor the other differ half as
much from the general language of cultivated society, as the language
of Mr. Wordsworth’s homeliest composition differs from that of a common
peasant. For “real” therefore, we must substitute ordinary, or lingua
communis. And this, we have proved, is no more to be found in the
phraseology of low and rustic life than in that of any other class. Omit
the peculiarities of each and the result of course must be common to
all. And assuredly the omissions and changes to be made in the language
of rustics, before it could be transferred to any species of poem,
except the drama or other professed imitation, are at least as numerous
and weighty, as would be required in adapting to the same purpose the
ordinary language of tradesmen and manufacturers. Not to mention,
that the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every
county, nay in every village, according to the accidental character
of the clergyman, the existence or non-existence of schools; or even,
perhaps, as the exciteman, publican, and barber happen to be, or not to
be, zealous politicians, and readers of the weekly newspaper pro bono
publico. Anterior to cultivation the lingua communis of every country,
as Dante has well observed, exists every where in parts, and no where as
a whole.
Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of
the words, “in a state of excitement.” For the nature of a man’s words,
where he is strongly affected by joy, grief, or anger, must necessarily
depend on the number and quality of the general truths, conceptions and
images, and of the words expressing them, with which his mind had been
previously stored. For the property of passion is not to create; but
to set in increased activity. At least, whatever new connections of
thoughts or images, or--(which is equally, if not more than equally,
the appropriate effect of strong excitement)--whatever generalizations
of truth or experience the heat of passion may produce; yet the terms of
their conveyance must have pre-existed in his former conversations, and
are only collected and crowded together by the unusual stimulation. It
is indeed very possible to adopt in a poem the unmeaning repetitions,
habitual phrases, and other blank counters, which an unfurnished or
confused understanding interposes at short intervals, in order to keep
hold of his subject, which is still slipping from him, and to give him
time for recollection; or, in mere aid of vacancy, as in the scanty
companies of a country stage the same player pops backwards and
forwards, in order to prevent the appearance of empty spaces, in the
procession of Macbeth, or Henry VIII. But what assistance to the poet,
or ornament to the poem, these can supply, I am at a loss to conjecture.
Nothing assuredly can differ either in origin or in mode more widely
from the apparent tautologies of intense and turbulent feeling, in which
the passion is greater and of longer endurance than to be exhausted or
satisfied by a single representation of the image or incident exciting
it. Such repetitions I admit to be a beauty of the highest kind; as
illustrated by Mr. Wordsworth himself from the song of Deborah. At her
feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell:
where he bowed, there he fell down dead. Judges v. 27.