WORDSWORTH, AND THE LAKE SCHOOL.
The New School. William Wordsworth. Poetical Canons. The Excursion and
Sonnets. An Estimate. Robert Southey. His Writings. Historical Value.
S. T. Coleridge. Early Life. His Helplessness. Hartley and H. N.
Coleridge.
THE NEW SCHOOL.
In the beginning of the year 1820 George III. died, after a very long--but
in part nominal--reign of fifty-nine years, during a large portion of
which he was the victim of insanity, while his son, afterwards George IV.,
administered the regency of the kingdom.
George III. did little, either by example or by generosity, to foster
literary culture: his son, while nominally encouraging authors, did much
to injure the tone of letters in his day. But literature was now becoming
independent and self-sustaining: it needed to look no longer wistfully for
a monarch's smile: it cared comparatively little for the court: it issued
its periods and numbers directly to the English people: it wrote for them
and of them; and when, in 1830, the last of the Georges died, after an
ill-spent life, in which his personal pleasures had concerned him far more
than the welfare of his people, former prescriptions and prejudices
rapidly passed away; and the new epoch in general improvement and literary
culture, which had already begun its course, received a marvellous
impulsion.
The great movement, in part unconscious, from the artificial rhetoric of
the former age towards the simplicity of nature, was now to receive its
strongest propulsion: it was to be preached like a crusade; to be reduced
to a system, and set forth for the acceptance of the poetical world: it
was to meet with criticism, and even opprobrium, because it had the
arrogance to declare that old things had entirely passed away, and that
all things must conform themselves to the new doctrine. The high-priest of
this new poetical creed was Wordsworth: he proposed and expounded it; he
wrote according to its tenets; he defended his illustrations against the
critics by elaborate prefaces and essays. He boldly faced the clamor of a
world in arms; and what there was real and valuable in his works has
survived the fierce battle, and gathered around him an army of proselytes,
champions, and imitators.
WORDSWORTH.--William Wordsworth was the son of the law-agent to the Earl
of Lonsdale; he was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770. It was a
gifted family. His brother, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, was Master of
Trinity College. Another, the captain of an East Indiaman, was lost at sea
in his own ship. He had also a clever sister, who was the poet's friend
and companion as long as she lived.
Wordsworth and his companions have been called the Lake Poets, because
they resided among the English lakes. Perhaps too much has been claimed
for the Lake country, as giving inspiration to the poets who lived there:
it is beautiful, but not so surpassingly so as to create poets as its
children. The name is at once arbitrary and convenient.
Wordsworth was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, which he entered
in 1787; but whenever he could escape from academic restraints, he
indulged his taste for pedestrian excursions: during these his ardent mind
became intimate and intensely sympathetic with nature, as may be seen in
his _Evening Walk_, in the sketch of the skater, and in the large
proportion of description in all his poems.
It is truer of him than perhaps of any other author, that the life of the
man is the best history of the poet. All that is eventful and interesting
in his life may be found translated in his poetry. Milton had said that
the poet's life should be a grand poem. Wordsworth echoed the thought:
If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,
Then to the measure of that Heaven-born light,
Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.
He was not distinguished at college; the record of his days there may be
found in _The Prelude_, which he calls _The Growth of a Poet's Mind_. He
was graduated in 1791, with the degree of B.A., and went over to France,
where he, among others, was carried away with enthusiasm for the French
Revolution, and became a thorough Radical. That he afterwards changed his
political views, should not be advanced in his disfavor; for many ardent
and virtuous minds were hoping to see the fulfilment of recent predictions
in greater freedom to man. Wordsworth erred in a great company, and from
noble sympathies. He returned to England in 1792, with his illusions
thoroughly dissipated. The workings of his mind are presented in _The
Prelude_.
In the same year he published _Descriptive Sketches_, and _An Evening
Walk_, which attracted little attention. A legacy of £900 left him by his
friend Calvert, in 1795, enabled the frugal poet to devote his life to
poetry, and particularly to what he deemed the emancipation of poetry from
the fetters of the mythic and from the smothering ornaments of rhetoric.
In Nov., 1797, he went to London, taking with him a play called _The
Borderers_: it was rejected by the manager. In the autumn of 1798, he
published his _Lyrical Ballads_, which contained, besides his own verses,
a poem by an anonymous friend. The poem was _The Ancient Mariner_; the
friend, Coleridge. In the joint operation, Wordsworth took the part based
on nature; Coleridge illustrated the supernatural. The _Ballads_ were
received with undisguised contempt; nor, by reason of its company, did
_The Ancient Mariner_ have a much better hearing. Wordsworth preserved his
equanimity, and an implicit faith in himself.
After a visit to Germany, he settled in 1799 at Grasmere, in the Lake
country, and the next year republished the _Lyrical Ballads_ with a new
volume, both of which passed to another edition in 1802. With this
edition, Wordsworth ran up his revolutionary flag and nailed it to the
mast.
POETICAL CANONS.--It would be impossible as well as unnecessary to attempt
an analysis of even the principal poems of so voluminous a writer; but it
is important to state in substance the poetical canons he laid down. They
may be found in the prefaces to the various editions of his _Ballads_, and
may be thus epitomized:
I. He purposely chose his incidents and situations from common life,
because in it our elementary feelings coexist in a state of simplicity.
II. He adopts the _language_ of common life, because men hourly
communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is
originally derived; and because, being less under the influence of social
vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions.
III. He asserts that the language of poetry is in no way different, except
in respect to metre, from that of good prose. Poetry can boast of no
celestial _ichor_ that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose:
the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both. In works
of imagination and sentiment, in proportion as ideas and feelings are
valuable, whether the composition be in prose or verse, they require and
exact one and the same language.
Such are the principal changes proposed by Wordsworth; and we find Herder,
the German poet and metaphysician, agreeing with him in his estimate of
poetic language. Having thus propounded his tenets, he wrote his earlier
poems as illustrations of his views, affecting a simplicity in subject and
diction that was sometimes simply ludicrous. It was an affected
simplicity: he was simple with a purpose; he wrote his poems to suit his
canons, and in that way his simplicity became artifice.
Jeffrey and other critics rose furiously against the poems which
inculcated such doctrines. "This will never do" were the opening words of
an article in the _Edinburgh Review_. One of the _Rejected Addresses_,
called _The Baby's Début, by W. W._, (spoken in the character of Nancy
Lake, eight years old, who is drawn upon the stage in a go-cart,) parodies
the ballads thus:
What a large floor! 'tis like a town;
The carpet, when they lay it down,
Won't hide it, I'll be bound:
And there's a row of lamps, my eye!
How they do blaze: I wonder why
They keep them on the ground?
And this, Jeffrey declares, is a flattering imitation of Wordsworth's
style.
The day for depreciating Wordsworth has gone by; but calmer critics must
still object to his poetical views in their entireness. In binding all
poetry to his _dicta_, he ignores that _mythus_ in every human mind, that
longing after the heroic, which will not be satisfied with the simple and
commonplace. One realm in which Poetry rules with an enchanted sceptre is
the land of reverie and day-dream,--a land of fancy, in which genius
builds for itself castles at once radiant and, for the time, real; in
which the beggar is a king, the poor man a Crœsus, the timid man a hero:
this is the fairy-land of the imagination. Among Wordsworth's poems are a
number called _Poems of the Imagination_. He wrote learnedly about the
imagination and fancy; but the truth is, that of all the great
poets,--and, in spite of his faults, he is a great poet,--there is none so
entirely devoid of imagination. What has been said of the heroic may be
applied to wit, so important an element in many kinds of poetry; he
ignores it because he was without it totally. If only humble life and
commonplace incidents and unfigured rhetoric and bald language are the
proper materials for the poetry, what shall be said of all literature,
ancient and modern, until Wordsworth's day?
THE EXCURSION AND SONNETS.--With his growing fame and riper powers, he had
deviated from his own principles, especially of language; and his peaceful
epic, _The Excursion_, is full of difficult theology, exalted philosophy,
and glowing rhetoric. His only attempt to adhere to his system presents
the incongruity of putting these subjects into the lips of men, some of
whom, the Scotch pedler for example, are not supposed to be equal to their
discussion. In his language, too, he became far more polished and
melodious. The young writer of the _Lyrical Ballads_ would have been
shocked to know that the more famous Wordsworth could write
A golden lustre slept upon the hills;
or speak of
A pupil in the many-chambered school,
Where superstition weaves her airy dreams.
_The Excursion_, although long, is unfinished, and is only a portion of
what was meant to be his great poem--_The Recluse_. It contains poetry of
the highest order, apart from its mannerism and its improbable narrative;
but the author is to all intents a different man from that of the
_Ballads_: as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years was
from the radical youth who praised the French Revolution of 1791. As a
whole, _The Excursion_ is accurate, philosophic, and very dull, so that
few readers have the patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy
its beautiful passages.
To return to the events of his life. In 1802 he married; and, after
several changes of residence, he finally purchased a place called
Rydal-mount in 1813, where he spent the remainder of his long, learned,
and pure life. Long-standing dues from the Earl of Lonsdale to his father
were paid; and he received the appointment of collector at Whitehaven and
stamp distributor for Cumberland. Thus he had an ample income, which was
increased in 1842 by a pension of £300 per annum. In 1843 he was made
poet-laureate. He died in 1850, a famous poet, his reputation being due
much more to his own clever individuality than to the poetic principles he
asserted.
His ecclesiastical sonnets compare favorably with any that have been
written in English. Landor, no friend of the poet, says: "Wordsworth has
written more fine sonnets than are to be met with in the language
besides."
AN ESTIMATE.--The great amount of verse Wordsworth has written is due to
his estimate of the proper uses of poetry. Where other men would have
written letters, journals, or prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote
in verse: an excursion to England or Scotland, _Yarrow Visited and
Revisited_, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse. He exhibits
in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is emphatically and
without cant the poet of religion and morality. Coleridge--a poet and an
attached friend, perhaps a partisan--claims for him, in his _Biographia
Literaria_, "purity of language, freshness, strength, _curiosa felicitas_
of diction, truth to nature in his imagery, imagination in the highest
degree, but faulty fancy." We have already ventured to deny him the
possession of imagination: the rest of his friend's eulogium is not
undeserved. He had and has many ardent admirers, but none more ardent than
himself. He constantly praised his own verses, and declared that they
would ultimately conquer all prejudices and become universally popular--an
opinion that the literary world does not seem disposed to adopt.
ROBERT SOUTHEY.--Next to Wordsworth, and, with certain characteristic
differences, of the same school, but far beneath him in poetical power, is
Robert Southey, who was born at Bristol, August 12, 1774. He was the son
of a linen-draper in that town. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in
1792, but left without taking his degree. In 1794 he published a radical
poem on the subject of _Wat Tyler_, the sentiments of which he was
afterwards very willing to repudiate. With the enthusiastic instinct of a
poet, he joined with Wordsworth and Coleridge in a scheme called
_Pantisocrasy_; that is, they were to go together to the banks of the
Susquehanna, in a new country of which they knew nothing except by
description; and there they were to realize a dream of nature in the
golden age--a Platonic republic, where everything was to be in common, and
from which vice and selfishness were to be forever excluded. But these
young neo-platonists had no money, and so the scheme was given up.
In 1795 he married Miss Fricker, a milliner of Bristol, and made a voyage
to Lisbon, where his uncle was chaplain to the British Factory. He led an
unsettled life until 1804, when he established himself at Keswick in the
Lake country, where he spent his life. He was a literary man and nothing
else, and perhaps one of the most industrious writers that ever held a
literary pen. Much of the time, indeed, he wrote for magazines and
reviews, upon whatever subject was suggested to him, to win his daily
bread.
HIS WRITINGS.--After the publication of _Wat Tyler_ he wrote an epic poem
called _Joan of Arc_, in 1796, which was crude and severely criticized.
After some other unimportant essays, he inaugurated his purpose of
illustrating the various oriental mythologies, by the publication of
_Thalaba the Destroyer_, which was received with great disfavor at the
time, and which first coupled his name with that of Wordsworth as of the
school of Lake poets. It is in irregular metre, which at first has the
charm of variety, but which afterwards loses its effect, on account of its
broken, disjointed versification. In 1805 appeared _Madoc_--a poem based
upon the subject of early Welsh discoveries in America. It is a long poem
in two parts: the one descriptive of _Madoc in Wales_ and the other of
_Madoc in Aztlan_. Besides many miscellaneous works in prose, we notice
the issue, in 1810, of _The Curse of Kehama_--the second of the great
mythological poems referred to.
Among his prose works must be mentioned _The Chronicle of the Cid_, _The
History of Brazil_, _The Life of Nelson_, and _The History of the
Peninsular War_. A little work called _The Doctor_ has been greatly liked
in America.
Southey wrote innumerable reviews and magazine articles; and, indeed,
tried his pen at every sort of literary work. His diction--in prose, at
least--is almost perfect, and his poetical style not unpleasing. His
industry, his learning, and his care in production must be acknowledged;
but his poems are very little read, and, in spite of his own prophecies,
are doomed to the shelf rather than retained upon the table. Like
Wordsworth, he was one of the most egotistical of men; he had no greater
admirer than Robert Southey; and had his exertions not been equal to his
self-laudation, he would have been intolerable.
The most singular instance of perverted taste and unmerited eulogy is to
be found in his _Vision of Judgment_, which, as poet-laureate, he produced
to the memory of George the Third. The severest criticism upon it is Lord
Byron's _Vision of Judgment_--reckless, but clever and trenchant. The
consistency and industry of Southey's life caused him to be appointed
poet-laureate upon the death of Pye; and in 1835, having declined a
baronetcy, he received an annual pension of £300. Having lost his first
wife in 1837, he married Miss Bowles, the poetess, in 1839; but soon after
his mind began to fail, and he had reached a state of imbecility which
ended in death on the 21st of March, 1843. In 1837, at the age of
sixty-three, he collected and edited his complete poetical works, with
copious and valuable historical notes.
HISTORICAL VALUE.--It is easy to see in what manner Southey, as a literary
man, has reflected the spirit of the age. Politically, he exhibits
partisanship from Radical to Tory, which may be clearly discerned by
comparing his _Wat Tyler_ with his _Vision of Judgment_ and his _Odes_. As
to literary and poetic canons, his varied metre, and his stories in the
style of Wordsworth, show that he had abandoned all former schools. In his
histories and biographies he is professedly historical; and in his epics
he shows that greater range of learned investigation which is so
characteristic of that age. The _Curse of Kehama_ and _Thalaba_ would have
been impossible in a former age. He himself objected to be ranked with the
Lakers; but Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge have too much in common,
notwithstanding much individual difference, not to be classed together as
innovators and asserters, whether we call them Lakers or something else.
It was on the occasion of his publishing _Thalaba_, that his name was
first coupled with that of Wordsworth. His own words are, "I happened to
be residing at Keswick when Mr. Wordsworth and I began to be acquainted.
Mr. Coleridge also had resided there; and this was reason enough for
classing us together as a school of poets." There is not much external
resemblance, it is true, between _Thalaba_ and the _Excursion_; but the
same poetical motives will cause both to remain unread by the
multitude--unnatural comparisons, recondite theology, and a great lack of
common humanity. That there was a mutual admiration is found in Southey's
declaration that Wordsworth's sonnets contain the profoundest poetical
wisdom, and that the _Preface_ is the quintessence of the philosophy of
poetry.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.--More individual, more eccentric, less
commonplace, in short, a far greater genius than either of his fellows,
Coleridge accomplished less, had less system, was more visionary and
fragmentary than they: he had an amorphous mind of vast proportions. The
man, in his life and conversation, was great; the author has left little
of value which will last when the memory of his person has disappeared. He
was born on the 21st of October, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary. His father was
a clergyman and vicar of the parish. He received his education at Christ's
Hospital in London, where, among others, he had Charles Lamb as a comrade,
and formed with him a friendship which lasted as long as they both lived.
EARLY LIFE.--There he was an erratic student, but always a great reader;
and while he was yet a lad, at the age of fourteen, he might have been
called a learned man.
He had little self-respect, and from stress of poverty he intended to
apprentice himself to a shoemaker; but friends who admired his learning
interfered to prevent this, and he was sent with a scholarship to Jesus
College, Cambridge, in 1791. Like Wordsworth and Southey, he was an
intense Radical at first; and on this account left college without his
degree in 1793. He then enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons;
but, although he was a favorite with his comrades, whose letters he wrote,
he made a very poor soldier. Having written a Latin sentence under his
saddle on the stable wall, his superior education was recognized; and he
was discharged from the service after only four months' duty. Eager for
adventure, he joined Southey and Lloyd in their scheme of pantisocracy,
to which we have already referred; and when that failed for want of money,
he married the sister-in-law of Southey--Miss Fricker, of Bristol. He was
at this time a Unitarian as well as a Radical, and officiated frequently
as a Unitarian minister. His sermons were extremely eloquent. He had
already published some juvenile poems, and a drama on the fall of
Robespierre, and had endeavored to establish a periodical called _The
Watchman_. He was always erratic, and dependent upon the patronage of his
friends; in short, he always presented the sad spectacle of a man who
could not take care of himself.
HIS WRITINGS.--After a residence at Stowey, in Somersetshire, where he
wrote some of his finest poems, among which were the first part of
_Christabel_, _The Ancient Mariner_, and _Remorse_, a tragedy, he was
enabled, through the kindness of friends, to go, in 1798, to Germany,
where he spent fourteen months in the study of literature and metaphysics.
In the year 1800 he returned to the Lake country, where he for some time
resided with Southey at Keswick; Wordsworth being then at Grasmere. Then
was established as a fixed fact in English literature the Lake school of
poetry. These three poets acted and reacted upon each other. From having
been great Radicals they became Royalists, and Coleridge's Unitarian
belief was changed into orthodox churchmanship. His translation of
Schiller's _Wallenstein_ should rather be called an expansion of that
drama, and is full of his own poetic fancies. After writing for some time
for the _Morning Post_, he went to Malta as the Secretary to the Governor
in 1804, at a salary of £800 per annum. But his restless spirit soon drove
him back to Grasmere, and to desultory efforts to make a livelihood.
In 1816 he published the two parts of _Christabel_, an unfinished poem,
which, for the wildness of the conceit, exquisite imagery, and charming
poetic diction, stands quite alone in English literature. In a periodical
called _The Friend_, which he issued, are found many of his original
ideas; but it was discontinued after twenty-seven numbers. His _Biographia
Literaria_, published in 1817, contains valuable sketches of literary men,
living and dead, written with rare critical power.
In his _Aids to Reflection_, published in 1825, are found his metaphysical
tenets; his _Table-Talk_ is also of great literary value; but his lectures
on Shakspeare show him to have been the most remarkable critic of the
great dramatist whom the world has produced.
It has already been mentioned that when the first volume of Wordsworth's
_Lyrical Ballads_ was published, _The Ancient Mariner_ was included in it,
as a poem by an anonymous friend. It had been the intention of Coleridge
to publish another poem in the second volume; but it was considered
incongruous, and excluded. That poem was the exquisite ballad entitled
_Love_, or _Genevieve_.
HIS HELPLESSNESS.--With no home of his own, he lived by visiting his
friends; left his wife and children to the support of others, and seemed
incapable of any other than this shifting and shiftless existence. This
natural imbecility was greatly increased during a long period by his
constant use of opium, which kept him, a greater portion of his life, in a
world of dreams. He was fortunate in having a sincere and appreciative
friend in Mr. Gilman, surgeon, near London, to whose house he went in
1816; and where, with the exception of occasional visits elsewhere, he
resided until his death in 1834. If the Gilmans needed compensation for
their kindness, they found it in the celebrity of their visitor; even
strangers made pilgrimages to the house at Highgate to hear the rhapsodies
of "the old man eloquent." Coleridge once asked Charles Lamb if he had
ever heard him preach, referring to the early days when he was a Unitarian
preacher. "I never heard you do anything else," was the answer he
received. He was the prince of talkers, and talked more coherently and
connectedly than he wrote: drawing with ease from the vast stores of his
learning, he delighted men of every degree. While of the Lake school of
poetry, and while in some sort the creature of his age and his
surroundings, his eccentricities gave him a rare independence and
individuality. A giant in conception, he was a dwarf in execution; and
something of the interest which attaches to a _lusus naturæ_ is the chief
claim to future reputation which belongs to S. T. C.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE, his son, (1796-1849,) inherited much of his father's
talents; but was an eccentric, deformed, and, for a time, an intemperate
being. His principal writings were monographs on various subjects, and
articles for Blackwood. HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, (1800-1843,) a nephew and
son-in-law of the poet, was also a gifted man, and a profound classical
scholar. His introduction to the study of the great classic poets,
containing his analysis of Homer's epics, is a work of great merit.