application of ideas to life is the most essential part of poetic
greatness[Transcriber's note: no punctuation here] I said that a great
poet receives his distinctive character of superiority from his
application, under the conditions immutably fixed by the laws of poetic
beauty and poetic truth, from his application, I say, to his subject,
whatever it may be, of the ideas
"On man, on nature, and on human life,"[368]
which he has acquired for himself. The line quoted is Wordsworth's own;
and his superiority arises from his powerful use, in his best pieces, his
powerful application to his subject, of ideas "on man, on nature, and on
human life."
Voltaire, with his signal acuteness, most truly remarked that "no nation
has treated in poetry moral ideas with more energy and depth than the
English nation." And he adds; "There, it seems to me, is the great merit
of the English poets." Voltaire does not mean by treating in poetry
moral ideas, the composing moral and didactic poems;--that brings us
but a very little way in poetry. He means just the same thing as was
meant when I spoke above "of the noble and profound application of ideas
to life"; and he means the application of these ideas under the
conditions fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth.
If it is said that to call these ideas _moral_ ideas is to introduce a
strong and injurious limitation, I answer that it is to do nothing of
the kind, because moral ideas are really so main a part of human life.
The question, _how to live_, is itself a moral idea; and it is the
question which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or
other, he is perpetually occupied. A large sense is of course to be
given to the term _moral_. Whatever bears upon the question, "how to
live," comes under it.
"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv'st, Live well; how long
or short, permit to heaven."[369]
In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once perceives, a
moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles the forward-bending
lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal
relief by the sculptor's hand before he can kiss, with the line,
"Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair--"
he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep,"[370]
he utters a moral idea.
Voltaire was right in thinking that the energetic and profound treatment
of moral ideas, in this large sense, is what distinguishes the English
poetry. He sincerely meant praise, no dispraise or hint of limitation;
and they err who suppose that poetic limitation is a necessary
consequence of the fact, the fact being granted as Voltaire states it.
If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound
application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny,
then to prefix to the term ideas here the term moral makes hardly any
difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree
moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at
bottom a criticism of life;[371] that the greatness of a poet lies in
his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,--to the
question: How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false
fashion; they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have
had their day; they are fallen into the hands of pedants and
professional dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find
attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a
poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayyám's words: "Let us make
up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we
find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the
contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and
exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our
delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word
_life_, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt
against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against _life_; a poetry of
indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards
_life_.
Epictetus had a happy figure for things like the play of the senses, or
literary form and finish, or argumentative ingenuity, in comparison with
"the best and master thing" for us, as he called it, the concern, how to
live. Some people were afraid of them, he said, or they disliked and
undervalued them. Such people were wrong; they were unthankful or
cowardly. But the things might also be over-prized, and treated as final
when they are not. They bear to life the relation which inns bear to
home. "As if a man, journeying home, and finding a nice inn on the road,
and liking it, were to stay forever at the inn! Man, thou hast
forgotten thine object; thy journey was not _to_ this, but _through_
this. 'But this inn is taking.' And how many other inns, too, are
taking, and how many fields and meadows! but as places of passage
merely, you have an object, which is this: to get home, to do your duty
to your family, friends, and fellow-countrymen, to attain inward
freedom, serenity, happiness, contentment. Style takes your fancy,
arguing takes your fancy, and you forget your home and want to make your
abode with them and to stay with them, on the plea that they are taking.
Who denies that they are taking? but as places of passage, as inns. And
when I say this, you suppose me to be attacking the care for style, the
care for argument. I am not; I attack the resting in them, the not
looking to the end which is beyond them."[372]
Now, when we come across a poet like Théophile Gautier,[373] we have a
poet who has taken up his abode at an inn, and never got farther. There
may be inducements to this or that one of us, at this or that moment, to
find delight in him, to cleave to him; but after all, we do not change
the truth about him,--we only stay ourselves in his inn along with him.
And when we come across a poet like Wordsworth, who sings
"Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope,
And melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress,
Of moral strength and intellectual power,
Of joy in widest commonalty spread--"[374]
then we have a poet intent on "the best and master thing," and who
prosecutes his journey home. We say, for brevity's sake, that he deals
with _life_, because he deals with that in which life really consists.
This is what Voltaire means to praise in the English poets,--this
dealing with what is really life. But always it is the mark of the
greatest poets that they deal with it; and to say that the English poets
are remarkable for dealing with it, is only another way of saying, what
is true, that in poetry the English genius has especially shown its
power.
Wordsworth deals with it, and his greatness lies in his dealing with it
so powerfully. I have named a number of celebrated poets above all of
whom he, in my opinion, deserves to be placed. He is to be placed above
poets like Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, Schiller, because these
famous personages, with a thousand gifts and merits, never, or scarcely
ever, attain the distinctive accent and utterance of the high and
genuine poets--
"Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti,"[375]
at all. Burns, Keats, Heine, not to speak of others in our list, have
this accent;--who can doubt it? And at the same time they have treasures
of humor, felicity, passion, for which in Wordsworth we shall look in
vain. Where, then, is Wordsworth's superiority? It is here; he deals
with more of _life_ than they do; he deals with _life_ as a whole, more
powerfully.
No Wordsworthian will doubt this. Nay, the fervent Wordsworthian will
add, as Mr. Leslie Stephen[376] does, that Wordsworth's poetry is
precious because his philosophy is sound; that his "ethical system is as
distinctive and capable of exposition as Bishop Butler's"; that his
poetry is informed by ideas which "fall spontaneously into a scientific
system of thought." But we must be on our guard against the
Wordsworthians, if we want to secure for Wordsworth his due rank as a
poet. The Wordsworthians are apt to praise him for the wrong things, and
to lay far too much stress upon what they call his philosophy. His
poetry is the reality, his philosophy--so far, at least, as it may put
on the form and habit of "a scientific system of thought," and the more
that it puts them on--is the illusion. Perhaps we shall one day learn to
make this proposition general, and to say: Poetry is the reality,
philosophy the illusion. But in Wordsworth's case, at any rate, we
cannot do him justice until we dismiss his formal philosophy.
The _Excursion_ abounds with philosophy and therefore the _Excursion_ is
to the Wordsworthian what it never can be to the disinterested lover of
poetry,--a satisfactory work. "Duty exists," says Wordsworth, in the
_Excursion_; and then he proceeds thus--
" ... Immutably survive,
For our support, the measures and the forms,
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not."[377]
And the Wordsworthian is delighted, and thinks that here is a sweet
union of philosophy and poetry. But the disinterested lover of poetry
will feel that the lines carry us really not a step farther than the
proposition which they would interpret; that they are a tissue of
elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.
Or let us come direct to the centre of Wordsworth's philosophy, as "an
ethical system, as distinctive and capable of systematical exposition as
Bishop Butler's"--
"... One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists, one only;--an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe'er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good."[378]
That is doctrine such as we hear in church too, religious and
philosophic doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of
such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet's
excellence. But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here
presented, none of the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth
which we require from a poet, and in which Wordsworth is really strong.
Even the "intimations" of the famous Ode,[379] those corner-stones of
the supposed philosophic system of Wordsworth,--the idea of the high
instincts and affections coming out in childhood, testifying of a divine
home recently left, and fading away as our life proceeds,--this idea, of
undeniable beauty as a play of fancy, has itself not the character of
poetic truth of the best kind; it has no real solidity. The instinct of
delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in
Wordsworth himself as a child.
But to say that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and
tends to die away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful. In
many people, perhaps with the majority of educated persons, the love of
nature is nearly imperceptible at ten years old, but strong and
operative at thirty. In general we may say of these high instincts of
early childhood, the base of the alleged systematic philosophy of
Wordsworth, what Thucydides says of the early achievements of the Greek
race: "It is impossible to speak with certainty of what is so remote;
but from all that we can really investigate, I should say that they were
no very great things."
Finally, the "scientific system of thought" in Wordsworth gives us at
least such poetry as this, which the devout Wordsworthian accepts--
"O for the coming of that glorious time
When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth
And best protection, this Imperial Realm,
While she exacts allegiance, shall admit
An obligation, on her part, to _teach_
Them who are born to serve her and obey;
Binding herself by statute to secure,
For all the children whom her soil maintains,
The rudiments of letters, and inform
The mind with moral and religious truth."[380]
Wordsworth calls Voltaire dull, and surely the production of these
un-Voltairian lines must have been imposed on him as a judgment! One can
hear them being quoted at a Social Science Congress; one can call up the
whole scene. A great room in one of our dismal provincial towns; dusty
air and jaded afternoon daylight; benches full of men with bald heads
and women in spectacles; an orator lifting up his face from a manuscript
written within and without to declaim these lines of Wordsworth; and in
the soul of any poor child of nature who may have wandered in thither,
an unutterable sense of lamentation, and mourning, and woe!
"But turn we," as Wordsworth says, "from these bold, bad men," the
haunters of Social Science Congresses. And let us be on our guard, too,
against the exhibitors and extollers of a "scientific system of thought"
in Wordsworth's poetry. The poetry will never be seen aright while they
thus exhibit it. The cause of its greatness is simple, and may be told
quite simply. Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary
power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the
joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties; and
because of the extraordinary power with which, in case after case, he
shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it.
The source of joy from which he thus draws is the truest and most
unfailing source of joy accessible to man. It is also accessible
universally. Wordsworth brings us word, therefore, according to his own
strong and characteristic line, he brings us word
"Of joy in widest commonalty spread."[381]
Here is an immense advantage for a poet. Wordsworth tells of what all
seek, and tells of it at its truest and best source, and yet a source
where all may go and draw for it.
Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that everything is precious which
Wordsworth, standing even at this perennial and beautiful source, may
give us. Wordsworthians are apt to talk as if it must be. They will
speak with the same reverence of _The Sailor's Mother_, for example, as
of _Lucy Gray_. They do their master harm by such lack of
discrimination. _Lucy Gray_ is a beautiful success; _The Sailor's
Mother_ is a failure. To give aright what he wishes to give, to
interpret and render successfully, is not always within Wordsworth's own
command. It is within no poet's command; here is the part of the Muse,
the inspiration, the God, the "not ourselves."[382] In Wordsworth's
case, the accident, for so it may almost be called, of inspiration, is
of peculiar importance. No poet, perhaps, is so evidently filled with a
new and sacred energy when the inspiration is upon him; no poet, when it
fails him, is so left "weak as is a breaking wave." I remember hearing
him say that "Goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough." The remark is
striking and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its
maker knew well how it came there. Wordsworth is right, Goethe's poetry
is not inevitable; not inevitable enough. But Wordsworth's poetry, when
he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself. It
might seem that Nature not only gave him the matter for his poem, but
wrote his poem for him. He has no style. He was too conversant with
Milton not to catch at times his master's manner, and he has fine
Miltonic lines; but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like
Milton. When he seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity and
pomposity. In the _Excursion_ we have his style, as an artistic product
of his own creation; and although Jeffrey completely failed to recognize
Wordsworth's real greatness, he was yet not wrong in saying of the
_Excursion_, as a work of poetic style: "This will never do."[383]. And
yet magical as is that power, which Wordsworth has not, of assured and
possessed poetic style, he has something which is an equivalent for it.
Every one who has any sense for these things feels the subtle turn, the
heightening, which is given to a poet's verse by his genius for style.
We can feel it in the
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well"--[384]
of Shakespeare; in the
"... though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues"--[385]
of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's power of poetic
style which gives such worth to _Paradise Regained_, and makes a great
poem of a work in which Milton's imagination does not soar high.
Wordsworth has in constant possession, and at command, no style of this
kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too
well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of it
occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in
such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton's--
"the fierce confederate storm
Of sorrow barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of cities;"[386]
although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is undeniable, is
more properly that of eloquent prose than the subtle heightening and
change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the
elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of
_Laodameia_. Still, the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth,
if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression,
is a line like this from _Michael_--
"And never lifted up a single stone."
There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style,
strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most
truly expressive kind.
Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying
for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire
fidelity it utters, Burns could show him.
"The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stain'd his name."[387]
Every one will be conscious of a likeness here to Wordsworth; and if
Wordsworth did great things with this nobly plain manner, we must
remember, what indeed he himself would always have been forward to
acknowledge, that Burns used it before him.
Still Wordsworth's use of it has something unique and unmatchable.
Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to
write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power. This arises
from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth
feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural
character of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject
with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere naturalness.
His expression may often be called bald, as, for instance, in the poem
of _Resolution and Independence_; but it is bald as the bare mountain
tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.
Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound
truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His
best poems are those which most perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a
warm admiration for _Laodameia_ and for the great _Ode_; but if I am to
tell the very truth, I find _Laodameia_ not wholly free from something
artificial, and the great _Ode_ not wholly free from something
declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show
Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as
_Michael, The Fountain, The Highland Reaper_.[388] And poems with the
peculiar and unique beauty which distinguishes these, Wordsworth
produced in considerable number; besides very many other poems of which
the worth, although not so rare as the worth of these, is still
exceedingly high.
On the whole, then, as I said at the beginning, not only is Wordsworth
eminent by reason of the goodness of his best work, but he is eminent
also by reason of the great body of good work which he has left to us.
With the ancients I will not compare him. In many respects the ancients
are far above us, and yet there is something that we demand which they
can never give. Leaving the ancients, let us come to the poets and
poetry of Christendom. Dante, Shakespeare, Molière, Milton, Goethe, are
altogether larger and more splendid luminaries in the poetical heaven
than Wordsworth. But I know not where else, among the moderns, we are to
find his superiors.
To disengage the poems which show his power, and to present them to the
English-speaking public and to the world, is the object of this volume.
I by no means say that it contains all which in Wordsworth's poems is
interesting. Except in the case of _Margaret_, a story composed
separately from the rest of the _Excursion_, and which belongs to a
different part of England, I have not ventured on detaching portions of
poems, or on giving any piece otherwise than as Wordsworth himself gave
it. But under the conditions imposed by this reserve, the volume
contains, I think, everything, or nearly everything, which may best
serve him with the majority of lovers of poetry, nothing which may
disserve him.
I have spoken lightly of Wordsworthians; and if we are to get Wordsworth
recognized by the public and by the world, we must recommend him not in
the spirit of a clique, but in the spirit of disinterested lovers of
poetry. But I am a Wordsworthian myself. I can read with pleasure and
edification _Peter Bell_, and the whole series of _Ecclesiastical
Sonnets_, and the address to Mr. Wilkinson's spade, and even the
_Thanksgiving Ode_;--everything of Wordsworth, I think, except
_Vaudracour and Julia_. It is not for nothing that one has been brought
up in the veneration of a man so truly worthy of homage; that one has
seen him and heard him, lived in his neighborhood, and been familiar
with his country. No Wordsworthian has a tenderer affection for this
pure and sage master than I, or is less really offended by his defects.
But Wordsworth is something more than the pure and sage master of a
small band of devoted followers, and we ought not to rest satisfied
until he is seen to be what he is. He is one of the very chief glories
of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her
poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him
recognized as this, and let our one study be to bring to pass, as widely
as possible and as truly as possible, his own word concerning his poems:
"They will coöoperate with the benign tendencies in human nature and
society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser,
better, and happier."
III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT[389]
The disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity;
sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness
and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a
smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing
so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity
and ignorance or else as an engine of social and class distinction,
separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have
not got it. No serious man would call this _culture_, or attach any
value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very
differing estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must
find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real
ambiguity; and such a motive the word _curiosity_ gives us.