perhaps, in soiled nankeen trousers, and with the blue and brass in which
he used to appear in Unitarian pulpits, buttoned round his growing
corpulency; Wordsworth in a suit of russet, not to say dingy, brown, with
a broad flapping straw hat to protect his weak eyesight. And as for Miss
Wordsworth, we may well believe that in her dress she thought more of use
than of ornament. These three, mounted on their outlandish Irish car,
with a horse, now gibbing and backing over a bank, now reduced to a walk,
with one of the poets leading him by the head, must have cut but a sorry
figure, and wakened many a smile and gibe in passers-by. As they wound
their way up Nithsdale, one can well imagine how some Border lord or
laird, riding, or driving past in smart equipage, would look on them
askance, taking them for what Burns calls a 'wheen gangrel bodies,' or
for a set of Dominie Sampsons from the other side the Border, or for some
offshoot of the 'Auld Licht' Seceders. Poor Coleridge, ill at ease, and
in the dumps all the way, stretched asleep on the car cushions, while the
other two were admiring the scenery, could not have added to their
hilarity. And it must have been a relief to Wordsworth and his sister,
though the Journal hints it not, when he left them at Loch Lomond. But
however grotesque their appearance may have been, they bore within them
that which made their journey rich in delight to themselves, not to say
to others. They were then both in their prime, Wordsworth and his sister
being just past thirty. They had the observant eye and the feeling heart
which money cannot buy. No doubt to them, accustomed to the cleanness
and comfort of the farms and cottages of Westmoreland, those 'homes of
ancient peace,' with their warm stone porches and their shelter of
household sycamores, the dirt and discomfort of the inns and of the
humbler abodes they entered must have been repulsive enough. Even the
gentlemen's seats had to them an air of neglect and desolation, and the
new plantations of larch and fir with which they had then begun to be
surrounded, gave an impression of rawness, barrenness, and lack of
geniality. Nor less in large towns, as in Glasgow, were they struck by
the dulness and dreariness in the aspect and demeanour of the dim 'common
populations.' They saw and felt these things as keenly as any could do.
But, unlike ordinary travellers, they were not scared or disgusted by
them. They did not think that the first appearance was all. They felt
and saw that there was more behind. With lively interest they note the
healthy young women travelling barefoot, though well dressed, the
children without shoes or stockings, the barefoot boys, some with their
caps wreathed with wild-flowers, others who could read Virgil or Homer.
They pass, as friends, beneath the humble cottage roofs, look with
sympathy on the countenances of the inmates, partake, when bidden, of
their homely fare, enter feelingly into their pathetic human histories.
They came there not to criticise, but to know and feel.
Again, their intense love for their Westmoreland dales and meres did not
send them to look on those of Scotland with a sense of rivalry, but of
brotherhood. They were altogether free from that vulgar habit of
comparing scene with scene which so poisons the eye to all true
perception of natural beauty,--as though the one great end were to
graduate all the various scenes of nature in the list of a competitive
examination. Hence whatever new they met with, they were ready to
welcome and enjoy. They could appreciate the long, bare, houseless,
treeless glens, not less than the well-wooded lakes. And yet Miss
Wordsworth's home-heartedness makes her long for some touches of home and
human habitation to break the long bleak solitudes she passed through.
The absolute desolation of the Moor of Rannoch, so stirring to some, was
evidently too much for her.
'The loneliness
Loaded her heart, the desert tired her eye.'
Again, throughout the Journal we see how to her eye man and nature
interact on each other. That deep feeling, so strong in her brother's
poetry, of the interest that man gives to nature, and still more the
dignity that nature gives to man, is not less strongly felt by her. It
is man seen against a great background of nature and solitude that most
stirs her imagination. The woman sitting sole by the margin of Daer
Water, or the old man alone in the corn-field, or the boy solitary on the
Moor of Crawfordjohn--these in her prose are pictures quite akin and
equal to many a one that occurs in her brother's verse. This sense of
man with 'grandeur circumfused,' 'the sanctity of nature given to man,'
is as primary in her as in her brother. I cannot believe that she merely
learnt it from him. It must have been innate in both, derived by both
from one original source.
One is struck throughout by the absence of all effort at fine or
imaginative writing. But this only makes more effective those natural
gleams that come unbidden. After the dulness of Glasgow and the Vale of
Leven comes that wakening up to very ecstasy among the islands of Loch
Lomond,--that new world, magical, enchanting. And then that plunge into
the heart of the Highlands, when they find themselves by the shores of
Loch Katrine, alone with the native people there,--the smell of the
peat-reek within, and the scent of the bog-myrtle without; those 'gentle
ardours' that awake, as they move along Lochawe-side and look into the
cove of Cruachan, or catch that Appin glen by Loch Linnhe, at the bright
sunset hour, enlivened by the haymaking people; or that new rapture they
drink in at the first glimpse, from Loch Etive shores, of the blue
Atlantic Isles. And then what a fitting close to such a tour was that
meeting with Walter Scott; the two great poets of their time, both in the
morning of their power, and both still unknown, joining hands of
friendship which was to last for life!
But I have said more than enough. Those who care for the things which
the Wordsworths cared for will find in this quiet narrative much to their
mind. And they will find from it some new light shed on those delightful
poems, memorial of that tour, which remain as an undying track of glory
illuminating the path these two trod. These poems are printed in the
Appendix, that those who know them well may read them once again, and
that those who do not know them, except by Guide-book extracts, may turn
to them, after reading the Journal, and try whether they cannot find in
them something which they never found elsewhere.
* * * * *
There is one entry, the last in the Journal, made as late as 1832, which
alludes to a fact which, but for this note, might have been left without
comment. {0c} Throughout the whole tour no distinction seems to have
been made between Saturday and Sunday. One would have thought that, if
nothing else, sympathy at least, which they did not lack, would have led
Wordsworth and his sister to turn aside and share the Sabbath worship of
the native people. Even the tired jade might have put in his claim for
his Sabbath rest; not to mention the scandal which the sight of Sunday
travellers in lonely parts of Scotland must then have caused, and the
name they must many a time have earned for themselves, of
'Sabbath-breakers.' This last entry of 1832, however, marks a change,
which, if it came to Dorothy, came not less decidedly to her brother.
This change has been often remarked on, and has been stigmatised by 'the
enlightened ones' as 'the reaction.' They say that the earlier
nature-worship, which they call Pantheistic, speaks the true and genuine
man; the later and more consciously Christian mood they regard as the
product, not of deepened experience, but of timidity, or at least as the
sign of decreasing insight. It is not so that I would interpret it.
Wordsworth and his sister, with their rare gift of soul and eye, saw
further into nature, and felt it more profoundly than common men can, and
had no doubt found there something which the gross world dreams not of.
They recovered thence a higher teaching, which men for ages had lost.
They learnt to think of God as being actually very near to them in all
they saw and heard; not as the mechanical Artificer, who makes a world
and then dwells aloof from it, but as
'The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves.'
In nature, which to most eyes is but a dull lifeless mass, impelled by
dead mechanic movements, their finer spirits were aware of a breathing
life, a living Presence, distinct, yet not alien from, their own spirits,
and thence they drank life, and strength, and joy. And not in nature
alone, but from their own hearts, from the deep places of their moral
nature, and from their minglings with their fellow-men, they could
oftentimes overhear
'The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.'
And through this they learned to feel for themselves, and not
conventionally, the upholding presence of One on whom the soul's 'dark
foundations rest.' Likely enough, in the prime of their strength they
may have imagined that these teachings coming from nature and from man
were in themselves enough.
But when sorrow and bereavement came, and with them the deepened sense of
sin and of utter need, they learned that in nature alone was nothing
which in the end they could abide by. They had been true to the lights
they had, and they were led on to higher. They were led to go beyond
nature and man for their ultimate support, and to overhear from that
higher region another, diviner 'tone, into which all the strains of this
world's music are ultimately to be resolved.' The Poet, nor less his
sister, came at length to feel, what philosophers find so hard to
believe,--that The Being whom he had long known as near him in the
solitudes of nature, as close to the beatings of his own heart, was He
who had so loved him as to die for him. True it is that this later and
more distinctly Christian experience is but faintly reflected in
Wordsworth's poetry compared with the earlier naturalistic mood. But
this is explained by the fact that before the later experience became
prominent, the early fervour of poetic creation had already passed. Not
the less for this, however, was the poet's later conviction a riper, more
advanced wisdom--not a retrogression.
J. C. SHAIRP.
CUILALUINN, _June_ 1874.
FIRST WEEK.
William and I parted from Mary on Sunday afternoon, August 14th, 1803;
and William, Coleridge, and I left Keswick on Monday morning, the 15th,
at twenty minutes after eleven o'clock. The day was very hot; we walked
up the hills, and along all the rough road, which made our walking half
the day's journey. Travelled under the foot of Carrock, a mountain
covered with stones on the lower part; above, it is very rocky, but sheep
pasture there; we saw several where there seemed to be no grass to tempt
them. Passed the foot of Grisdale and Mosedale, both pastoral valleys,
narrow, and soon terminating in the mountains--green, with scattered
trees and houses, and each a beautiful stream. At Grisdale our horse
backed upon a steep bank where the road was not fenced, just above a
pretty mill at the foot of the valley; and we had a second threatening of
a disaster in crossing a narrow bridge between the two dales; but this
was not the fault of either man or horse. Slept at Mr. Younghusband's
public-house, Hesket Newmarket. In the evening walked to Caldbeck Falls,
a delicious spot in which to breathe out a summer's day--limestone rocks,
hanging trees, pools, and waterbreaks--caves and caldrons which have been
honoured with fairy names, and no doubt continue in the fancy of the
neighbourhood to resound with fairy revels.
* * * * *
_Tuesday_, _August_ 16_th_.--Passed Rose Castle upon the Caldew, an
ancient building of red stone with sloping gardens, an ivied gateway,
velvet lawns, old garden walls, trim flower-borders with stately and
luxuriant flowers. We walked up to the house and stood some minutes
watching the swallows that flew about restlessly, and flung their shadows
upon the sunbright walls of the old building; the shadows glanced and
twinkled, interchanged and crossed each other, expanded and shrunk up,
appeared and disappeared every instant; as I observed to William and
Coleridge, seeming more like living things than the birds themselves.
Dined at Carlisle; the town in a bustle with the assizes; so many strange
faces known in former times and recognised, that it half seemed as if I
ought to know them all, and, together with the noise, the fine ladies,
etc., they put me into confusion. This day Hatfield was condemned {2} I
stood at the door of the gaoler's house, where he was; William entered
the house, and Coleridge saw him; I fell into conversation with a debtor,
who told me in a dry way that he was 'far over-learned,' and another man
observed to William that we might learn from Hatfield's fate 'not to
meddle with pen and ink.' We gave a shilling to my companion, whom we
found out to be a friend of the family, a fellow-sailor with my brother
John {3} 'in Captain Wordsworth's ship.' Walked upon the city walls,
which are broken down in places and crumbling away, and most disgusting
from filth. The city and neighbourhood of Carlisle disappointed me; the
banks of the river quite flat, and, though the holms are rich, there is
not much beauty in the vale from the want of trees--at least to the eye
of a person coming from England, and, I scarcely know how, but to me the
holms had not a natural look; there was something townish in their
appearance, a dulness in their strong deep green. To Longtown--not very
interesting, except from the long views over the flat country; the road
rough, chiefly newly mended. Reached Longtown after sunset, a town of
brick houses belonging chiefly to the Graham family. Being in the form
of a cross and not long, it had been better called Crosstown. There are
several shops, and it is not a very small place; but I could not meet
with a silver thimble, and bought a halfpenny brass one. Slept at the
Graham's Arms, a large inn. Here, as everywhere else, the people seemed
utterly insensible of the enormity of Hatfield's offences; the ostler
told William that he was quite a gentleman, paid every one genteelly,
etc. etc. He and 'Mary' had walked together to Gretna Green; a heavy
rain came on when they were there; a returned chaise happened to pass,
and the driver would have taken them up; but 'Mr. Hope's' carriage was to
be sent for; he did not choose to accept the chaise-driver's offer.
* * * * *
_Wednesday_, _August_ 17_th_.--Left Longtown after breakfast. About
half-a-mile from the town a guide-post and two roads, to Edinburgh and
Glasgow; we took the left-hand road, to Glasgow. Here saw a specimen of
the luxuriance of the heath-plant, as it grows in Scotland; it was in the
enclosed plantations--perhaps sheltered by them. These plantations
appeared to be not well grown for their age; the trees were stunted.
Afterwards the road, treeless, over a peat-moss common--the Solway Moss;
here and there an earth-built hut with its peat stack, a scanty growing
willow hedge round the kailgarth, perhaps the cow pasturing near,--a
little lass watching it,--the dreary waste cheered by the endless singing
of larks.
We enter Scotland by crossing the river Sark; on the Scotch side of the
bridge the ground is unenclosed pasturage; it was very green, and
scattered over with that yellow flowered plant which we call grunsel; the
hills heave and swell prettily enough; cattle feeding; a few corn fields
near the river. At the top of the hill opposite is Springfield, a
village built by Sir William Maxwell--a dull uniformity in the houses, as
is usual when all built at one time, or belonging to one individual, each
just big enough for two people to live in, and in which a family, large
or small as it may happen, is crammed. There the marriages are
performed. Further on, though almost contiguous, is Gretna Green, upon a
hill and among trees. This sounds well, but it is a dreary place; the
stone houses dirty and miserable, with broken windows. There is a
pleasant view from the churchyard over Solway Firth to the Cumberland
mountains. Dined at Annan. On our left as we travelled along appeared
the Solway Firth and the mountains beyond, but the near country dreary.
Those houses by the roadside which are built of stone are comfortless and
dirty; but we peeped into a clay 'biggin' that was very 'canny,' and I
daresay will be as warm as a swallow's nest in winter. The town of Annan
made me think of France and Germany; many of the houses large and gloomy,
the size of them outrunning the comforts. One thing which was like
Germany pleased me: the shopkeepers express their calling by some device
or painting; bread-bakers have biscuits, loaves, cakes painted on their
window-shutters; blacksmiths horses' shoes, iron tools, etc. etc.; and so
on through all trades.
Reached Dumfries at about nine o'clock--market-day; met crowds of people
on the road, and every one had a smile for us and our car . . . . The
inn was a large house, and tolerably comfortable; Mr. Rogers and his
sister, whom we had seen at our own cottage at Grasmere a few days
before, had arrived there that same afternoon on their way to the
Highlands; but we did not see them till the next morning, and only for
about a quarter of an hour.
* * * * *
_Thursday_, _August_ 18_th_.--Went to the churchyard where Burns is
buried. A bookseller accompanied us. He showed us the outside of
Burns's house, where he had lived the last three years of his life, and
where he died. It has a mean appearance, and is in a bye situation,
whitewashed; dirty about the doors, as almost all Scotch houses are;
flowering plants in the windows.
Went on to visit his grave. He lies at a corner of the churchyard, and
his second son, Francis Wallace, beside him. There is no stone to mark
the spot; {5} but a hundred guineas have been collected, to be expended
on some sort of monument. 'There,' said the bookseller, pointing to a
pompous monument, 'there lies Mr. Such-a-one'--I have forgotten his
name,--'a remarkably clever man; he was an attorney, and hardly ever lost
a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him, and there they
rest, as you see.' We looked at the grave with melancholy and painful
reflections, repeating to each other his own verses:--
'Is there a man whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs himself life's mad career
Wild as the wave?--
Here let him pause, and through a tear
Survey this grave.
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.'
The churchyard is full of grave-stones and expensive monuments in all
sorts of fantastic shapes--obelisk-wise, pillar-wise, etc. In speaking
of Gretna Green, I forgot to mention that we visited the churchyard. The
church is like a huge house; indeed, so are all the churches, with a
steeple, not a square tower or spire,--a sort of thing more like a
glass-house chimney than a Church of England steeple; grave-stones in
abundance, few verses, yet there were some--no texts. Over the graves of
married women the maiden name instead of that of the husband, 'spouse'
instead of 'wife,' and the place of abode preceded by 'in' instead of
'of.' When our guide had left us, we turned again to Burns's house.
Mrs. Burns was gone to spend some time by the sea-shore with her
children. We spoke to the servant-maid at the door, who invited us
forward, and we sate down in the parlour. The walls were coloured with a
blue wash; on one side of the fire was a mahogany desk, opposite to the
window a clock, and over the desk a print from the 'Cotter's Saturday
Night,' which Burns mentions in one of his letters having received as a
present. The house was cleanly and neat in the inside, the stairs of
stone, scoured white, the kitchen on the right side of the passage, the
parlour on the left. In the room above the parlour the Poet died, and
his son after him in the same room. The servant told us she had lived
five years with Mrs. Burns, who was now in great sorrow for the death of
'Wallace.' She said that Mrs. Burns's youngest son was at Christ's
Hospital.
We were glad to leave Dumfries, which is no agreeable place to them who
do not love the bustle of a town that seems to be rising up to wealth.
We could think of little else but poor Burns, and his moving about on
that unpoetic ground. In our road to Brownhill, the next stage, we
passed Ellisland at a little distance on our right, his farmhouse. We
might there have had more pleasure in looking round, if we had been
nearer to the spot; but there is no thought surviving in connexion with
Burns's daily life that is not heart-depressing. Travelled through the
vale of Nith, here little like a vale, it is so broad, with irregular
hills rising up on each side, in outline resembling the old-fashioned
valances of a bed. There is a great deal of arable land; the corn ripe;
trees here and there--plantations, clumps, coppices, and a newness in
everything. So much of the gorse and broom rooted out that you wonder
why it is not all gone, and yet there seems to be almost as much gorse
and broom as corn; and they grow one among another you know not how.
Crossed the Nith; the vale becomes narrow, and very pleasant; cornfields,
green hills, clay cottages; the river's bed rocky, with woody banks.
Left the Nith about a mile and a half, and reached Brownhill, a lonely
inn, where we slept. The view from the windows was pleasing, though some
travellers might have been disposed to quarrel with it for its general
nakedness; yet there was abundance of corn. It is an open country--open,
yet all over hills. At a little distance were many cottages among trees,
that looked very pretty. Brownhill is about seven or eight miles from
Ellisland. I fancied to myself, while I was sitting in the parlour, that
Burns might have caroused there, for most likely his rounds extended so
far, and this thought gave a melancholy interest to the smoky walls. It
was as pretty a room as a thoroughly dirty one could be--a square parlour
painted green, but so covered over with smoke and dirt that it looked not
unlike green seen through black gauze. There were three windows, looking
three ways, a buffet ornamented with tea-cups, a superfine largeish
looking-glass with gilt ornaments spreading far and wide, the glass
spotted with dirt, some ordinary alehouse pictures, and above the
chimney-piece a print in a much better style--as William guessed, taken
from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds--of some lady of quality, in the
character of Euphrosyne. 'Ay,' said the servant girl, seeing that we
looked at it, 'there's many travellers would give a deal for that, it's
more admired than any in the house.' We could not but smile; for the
rest were such as may be found in the basket of any Italian image and
picture hawker.
William and I walked out after dinner; Coleridge was not well, and slept
upon the carriage cushions. We made our way to the cottages among the
little hills and knots of wood, and then saw what a delightful country
this part of Scotland might be made by planting forest trees. The ground
all over heaves and swells like a sea; but for miles there are neither
trees nor hedgerows, only 'mound' fences and tracts; or slips of corn,
potatoes, clover--with hay between, and barren land; but near the
cottages many hills and hillocks covered with wood. We passed some fine
trees, and paused under the shade of one close by an old mansion that
seemed from its neglected state to be inhabited by farmers. But I must
say that many of the 'gentlemen's' houses which we have passed in
Scotland have an air of neglect, and even of desolation. It was a beech,
in the full glory of complete and perfect growth, very tall, with one
thick stem mounting to a considerable height, which was split into four
'thighs,' as Coleridge afterwards called them, each in size a fine tree.
Passed another mansion, now tenanted by a schoolmaster; many boys playing
upon the lawn. I cannot take leave of the country which we passed
through to-day, without mentioning that we saw the Cumberland mountains
within half a mile of Ellisland, Burns's house, the last view we had of
them. Drayton has prettily described the connexion which this
neighbourhood has with ours when he makes Skiddaw say--