Mr. Wordsworth's genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age. Had
he lived in any other period of the world, he would never have been heard
of. As it is, he has some difficulty to contend with the hebetude of his
intellect, and the meanness of his subject. With him "lowliness is young
ambition's ladder;" but he finds it a toil to climb in this way the steep
of Fame. His homely Muse can hardly raise her wing from the ground, nor
spread her hidden glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor no fantasies,
which busy _passion_ draws in the brains of men:" neither the gorgeous
machinery of mythologic lore, nor the splendid colours of poetic diction.
His style is vernacular: he delivers household truths. He sees nothing
loftier than human hopes; nothing deeper than the human heart. This he
probes, this he tampers with, this he poises, with all its incalculable
weight of thought and feeling, in his hands, and at the same time calms
the throbbing pulses of his own heart, by keeping his eye ever fixed on
the face of nature. If he can make the life-blood flow from the wounded
breast, this is the living colouring with which he paints his verse: if he
can assuage the pain or close up the wound with the balm of solitary
musing, or the healing power of plants and herbs and "skyey influences,"
this is the sole triumph of his art. He takes the simplest elements of
nature and of the human mind, the mere abstract conditions inseparable
from our being, and tries to compound a new system of poetry from them;
and has perhaps succeeded as well as any one could. "_Nihil humani a me
alienum puto_"--is the motto of his works. He thinks nothing low or
indifferent of which this can be affirmed: every thing that professes to
be more than this, that is not an absolute essence of truth and feeling,
he holds to be vitiated, false, and spurious. In a word, his poetry is
founded on setting up an opposition (and pushing it to the utmost length)
between the natural and the artificial: between the spirit of humanity,
and the spirit of fashion and of the world!
It is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, and is carried
along with, the revolutionary movement of our age: the political changes
of the day were the model on which he formed and conducted his poetical
experiments. His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we cannot
explain its character at all) is a levelling one. It proceeds on a
principle of equality, and strives to reduce all things to the same
standard. It is distinguished by a proud humility. It relies upon its own
resources, and disdains external show and relief. It takes the commonest
events and objects, as a test to prove that nature is always interesting
from its inherent truth and beauty, without any of the ornaments of dress
or pomp of circumstances to set it off. Hence the unaccountable mixture of
seeming simplicity and real abstruseness in the _Lyrical Ballads_. Fools
have laughed at, wise men scarcely understand them. He takes a subject or
a story merely as pegs or loops to hang thought and feeling on; the
incidents are trifling, in proportion to his contempt for imposing
appearances; the reflections are profound, according to the gravity and
aspiring pretensions of his mind.
His popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trappings
of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "the cloud-capt towers, the
solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces," are swept to the ground, and "like
the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." All the
traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age, are obliterated and
effaced. We begin _de novo_, on a _tabula rasa_ of poetry. The purple
pall, the nodding plume of tragedy, are exploded as mere pantomime and
trick, to return to the simplicity of truth and nature. Kings, queens,
priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the distinctions of rank,
birth, wealth, power, "the judge's robe, the marshal's truncheon, the
ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not to be found here. The author
tramples on the pride of art with greater pride. The Ode and Epode, the
Strophe and the Antistrophe, he laughs to scorn. The harp of Homer, the
trump of Pindar and of Alcaeus are still. The decencies of costume, the
decorations of vanity are stripped off without mercy as barbarous, idle,
and Gothic. The jewels in the crisped hair, the diadem on the polished
brow are thought meretricious, theatrical, vulgar; and nothing contents
his fastidious taste beyond a simple garland of flowers. Neither does he
avail himself of the advantages which nature or accident holds out to him.
He chooses to have his subject a foil to his invention, to owe nothing but
to himself. He gathers manna in the wilderness, he strikes the barren rock
for the gushing moisture. He elevates the mean by the strength of his own
aspirations; he clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur from the stores
of his own recollections. No cypress grove loads his verse with funeral
pomp: but his imagination lends "a sense of joy
"To the bare trees and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field."
No storm, no shipwreck startles us by its horrors: but the rainbow lifts
its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs through the withered fern. No
sad vicissitude of fate, no overwhelming catastrophe in nature deforms his
page: but the dewdrop glitters on the bending flower, the tear collects in
the glistening eye.
"Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales,
The generations are prepared; the pangs,
The internal pangs are ready; the dread strife
Of poor humanity's afflicted will,
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, and salutes the
morning skies; so Mr. Wordsworth's unpretending Muse, in russet guise,
scales the summits of reflection, while it makes the round earth its
footstool, and its home!
Possibly a good deal of this may be regarded as the effect of disappointed
views and an inverted ambition. Prevented by native pride and indolence
from climbing the ascent of learning or greatness, taught by political
opinions to say to the vain pomp and glory of the world, "I hate ye,"
seeing the path of classical and artificial poetry blocked up by the
cumbrous ornaments of style and turgid _common-places_, so that nothing
more could be achieved in that direction but by the most ridiculous
bombast or the tamest servility; he has turned back partly from the bias
of his mind, partly perhaps from a judicious policy--has struck into the
sequestered vale of humble life, sought out the Muse among sheep-cotes and
hamlets and the peasant's mountain-haunts, has discarded all the tinsel
pageantry of verse, and endeavoured (not in vain) to aggrandise the
trivial and add the charm of novelty to the familiar. No one has shown the
same imagination in raising trifles into importance: no one has displayed
the same pathos in treating of the simplest feelings of the heart.
Reserved, yet haughty, having no unruly or violent passions, (or those
passions having been early suppressed,) Mr. Wordsworth has passed his life
in solitary musing, or in daily converse with the face of nature. He
exemplifies in an eminent degree the power of _association_; for his
poetry has no other source or character. He has dwelt among pastoral
scenes, till each object has become connected with a thousand feelings, a
link in the chain of thought, a fibre of his own heart. Every one is by
habit and familiarity strongly attached to the place of his birth, or to
objects that recall the most pleasing and eventful circumstances of his
life. But to the author of the _Lyrical Ballads_, nature is a kind of
home; and he may be said to take a personal interest in the universe.
There is no image so insignificant that it has not in some mood or other
found the way into his heart: no sound that does not awaken the memory of
other years--
"To him the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance: the
cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed: a
linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is
weighed down with a heap of recollections: a grey cloak, seen on some wild
moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, afterwards becomes an
object of imagination to him: even the lichens on the rock have a life and
being in his thoughts. He has described all these objects in a way and
with an intensity of feeling that no one else had done before him, and has
given a new view or aspect of nature. He is in this sense the most
original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be
spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read
them, the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand
them, the great despise, the fashionable may ridicule them: but the author
has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely
student of nature, which can never die. Persons of this class will still
continue to feel what he has felt: he has expressed what they might in
vain wish to express, except with glistening eye and faultering tongue!
There is a lofty philosophic tone, a thoughtful humanity, infused into his
pastoral vein. Remote from the passions and events of the great world, he
has communicated interest and dignity to the primal movements of the heart
of man, and ingrafted his own conscious reflections on the casual thoughts
of hinds and shepherds. Nursed amidst the grandeur of mountain scenery, he
has stooped to have a nearer view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked
a branch of white-thorn from the spray: but in describing it, his mind
seems imbued with the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him--the
tall rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit; the cataract
roars in the sound of his verse; and in its dim and mysterious meaning,
the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the forked
Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is little mention of mountainous
scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by internal evidence one might be
almost sure that it is written in a mountainous country, from its
bareness, its simplicity, its loftiness, and its depth!
His later philosophic productions have a somewhat different character.
They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They are
classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being gaudy;
dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have been composed
not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half-inspired groves and
stately recollections of Cole-Orton. We might allude in particular, for
examples of what we mean, to the lines on a Picture by Claude Lorraine,
and to the exquisite poem, entitled _Laodamia_. The last of these
breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of antiquity--the
sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty and the languor of
death--
"Calm contemplation and majestic pains."
Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finishing, like
that of careful sculpture, not from gaudy colouring--the texture of the
thoughts has the smoothness and solidity of marble. It is a poem that
might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and
sages would gather round to listen to it! Mr. Wordsworth's philosophic
poetry, with a less glowing aspect and less tumult in the veins than Lord
Byron's on similar occasions, bends a calmer and keener eye on mortality;
the impression, if less vivid, is more pleasing and permanent; and we
confess it (perhaps it is a want of taste and proper feeling) that there
are lines and poems of our author's, that we think of ten times for once
that we recur to any of Lord Byron's. Or if there are any of the latter's
writings, that we can dwell upon in the same way, that is, as lasting and
heart-felt sentiments, it is when, laying aside his usual pomp and
pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth to the common ground of a
disinterested humanity. It may be considered as characteristic of our
poet's writings, that they either make no impression on the mind at all,
seem mere _nonsense-verses_, or that they leave a mark behind them that
never wears out. They either
"Fall blunted from the indurated breast"--
without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a passion. To one
class of readers he appears sublime, to another (and we fear the largest)
ridiculous. He has probably realised Milton's wish,--"and fit audience
found, though few:" but we suspect he is not reconciled to the
alternative. There are delightful passages in the EXCURSION, both of
natural description and of inspired reflection (passages of the latter
kind that in the sound of the thoughts and of the swelling language
resemble heavenly symphonies, mournful _requiems_ over the grave of human
hopes); but we must add, in justice and in sincerity, that we think it
impossible that this work should ever become popular, even in the same
degree as the _Lyrical Ballads_. It affects a system without having any
intelligible clue to one; and instead of unfolding a principle in various
and striking lights, repeats the same conclusions till they become flat
and insipid. Mr. Wordsworth's mind is obtuse, except as it is the organ
and the receptacle of accumulated feelings: it is not analytic, but
synthetic; it is reflecting, rather than theoretical. The EXCURSION, we
believe, fell still-born from the press. There was something abortive, and
clumsy, and ill-judged in the attempt. It was long and laboured. The
personages, for the most part, were low, the fare rustic: the plan raised
expectations which were not fulfilled, and the effect was like being
ushered into a stately hall and invited to sit down to a splendid banquet
in the company of clowns, and with nothing but successive courses of
apple-dumplings served up. It was not even _toujours perdrix_!
Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, with marked
features, and an air somewhat stately and Quixotic. He reminds one of some
of Holbein's heads, grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of sly
humour, kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions of the
person. He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth and
manliness and a rugged harmony, in the tones of his voice. His manner of
reading his own poetry is particularly imposing; and in his favourite
passages his eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the meaning labours
slowly up from his swelling breast. No one who has seen him at these
moments could go away with an impression that he was a "man of no mark or
likelihood." Perhaps the comment of his face and voice is necessary to
convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be intelligible,
but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that he is either mad or
inspired. In company, even in a _tete-a-tete_, Mr. Wordsworth is often
silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become verbose and oracular of
late years, he was not so in his better days. He threw out a bold or an
indifferent remark without either effort or pretension, and relapsed into
musing again. He shone most (because he seemed most roused and animated)
in reciting his own poetry, or in talking about it. He sometimes gave
striking views of his feelings and trains of association in composing
certain passages; or if one did not always understand his distinctions,
still there was no want of interest--there was a latent meaning worth
inquiring into, like a vein of ore that one cannot exactly hit upon at the
moment, but of which there are sure indications. His standard of poetry is
high and severe, almost to exclusiveness. He admits of nothing below,
scarcely of any thing above himself. It is fine to hear him talk of the
way in which certain subjects should have been treated by eminent poets,
according to his notions of the art. Thus he finds fault with Dryden's
description of Bacchus in the _Alexander's Feast_, as if he were a mere
good-looking youth, or boon companion--
"Flushed with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face"--
instead of representing the God returning from the conquest of India,
crowned with vine-leaves, and drawn by panthers, and followed by troops
of satyrs, of wild men and animals that he had tamed. You would think, in
hearing him speak on this subject, that you saw Titian's picture of the
meeting of _Bacchus_ and _Ariadne_--so classic were his conceptions, so
glowing his style. Milton is his great idol, and he sometimes dares to
compare himself with him. His Sonnets, indeed, have something of the same
high-raised tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime favourite
of his, and he has been at the pains to modernize some of the Canterbury
Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely puerile
writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection
for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not think our author
has any very cordial sympathy with Shakspeare. How should he? Shakspeare
was the least of an egotist of anybody in the world. He does not much
relish the variety and scope of dramatic composition. "He hates those
interlocutions between Lucius and Caius." Yet Mr. Wordsworth himself wrote
a tragedy when he was young; and we have heard the following energetic
lines quoted from it, as put into the mouth of a person smit with remorse
for some rash crime:
"Action is momentary,
The motion of a muscle this way or that;
Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite!"
Perhaps for want of light and shade, and the unshackled spirit of the
drama, this performance was never brought forward. Our critic has a great
dislike to Gray, and a fondness for Thomson and Collins. It is mortifying
to hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom, because they have been
supposed to have all the possible excellences of poetry, he will allow to
have none. Nothing, however, can be fairer, or more amusing, than the way
in which he sometimes exposes the unmeaning verbiage of modern poetry.
Thus, in the beginning of Dr. Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_--
"Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind from China to Peru"--
he says there is a total want of imagination accompanying the words, the
same idea is repeated three times under the disguise of a different
phraseology: it comes to this--"let _observation_, with extensive
_observation_, _observe_ mankind;" or take away the first line, and the
second,
"Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
literally conveys the whole. Mr. Wordsworth is, we must say, a perfect
Drawcansir as to prose writers. He complains of the dry reasoners and
matter-of-fact people for their want of _passion_; and he is jealous of
the rhetorical declaimers and rhapsodists as trenching on the province of
poetry. He condemns all French writers (as well of poetry as prose) in the
lump. His list in this way is indeed small. He approves of Walton's
Angler, Paley, and some other writers of an inoffensive modesty of
pretension. He also likes books of voyages and travels, and Robinson
Crusoe. In art, he greatly esteems Bewick's woodcuts, and Waterloo's
sylvan etchings. But he sometimes takes a higher tone, and gives his mind
fair play. We have known him enlarge with a noble intelligence and
enthusiasm on Nicolas Poussin's fine landscape-compositions, pointing out
the unity of design that pervades them, the superintending mind, the
imaginative principle that brings all to bear on the same end; and
declaring he would not give a rush for any landscape that did not express
the time of day, the climate, the period of the world it was meant to
illustrate, or had not this character of _wholeness_ in it. His eye also
does justice to Rembrandt's fine and masterly effects. In the way in which
that artist works something out of nothing, and transforms the stump of a
tree, a common figure into an _ideal_ object, by the gorgeous light and
shade thrown upon it, he perceives an analogy to his own mode of investing
the minute details of nature with an atmosphere of sentiment; and in
pronouncing Rembrandt to be a man of genius, feels that he strengthens his
own claim to the title. It has been said of Mr. Wordsworth, that "he hates
conchology, that he hates the Venus of Medicis." But these, we hope, are
mere epigrams and _jeux-d'esprit_, as far from truth as they are free from
malice; a sort of running satire or critical clenches--
"Where one for sense and one for rhyme
Is quite sufficient at one time."
We think, however, that if Mr. Wordsworth had been a more liberal and
candid critic, he would have been a more sterling writer. If a greater
number of sources of pleasure had been open to him, he would have
communicated pleasure to the world more frequently. Had he been less
fastidious in pronouncing sentence on the works of others, his own would
have been received more favourably, and treated more leniently. The
current of his feelings is deep, but narrow; the range of his
understanding is lofty and aspiring rather than discursive. The force, the
originality, the absolute truth and identity with which he feels some
things, makes him indifferent to so many others. The simplicity and
enthusiasm of his feelings, with respect to nature, renders him bigotted
and intolerant in his judgments of men and things. But it happens to him,
as to others, that his strength lies in his weakness; and perhaps we have
no right to complain. We might get rid of the cynic and the egotist, and
find in his stead a common-place man. We should "take the good the Gods
provide us:" a fine and original vein of poetry is not one of their most
contemptible gifts, and the rest is scarcely worth thinking of, except as
it may be a mortification to those who expect perfection from human
nature; or who have been idle enough at some period of their lives, to
deify men of genius as possessing claims above it. But this is a chord
that jars, and we shall not dwell upon it.
Lord Byron we have called, according to the old proverb, "the spoiled
child of fortune:" Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some
peculiarities, that he is "the spoiled child of disappointment." We are
convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his
honours meekly, and would have been a person of great _bonhommie_ and
frankness of disposition. But the sense of injustice and of undeserved
ridicule sours the temper and narrows the views. To have produced works of
genius, and to find them neglected or treated with scorn is one of the
heaviest trials of human patience. We exaggerate our own merits when they
are denied by others, and are apt to grudge and cavil at every particle of
praise bestowed on those to whom we feel a conscious superiority. In mere
self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood
over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus the genial current of the
soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions of petulance and
self-conceit. Mr. Wordsworth has thought too much of contemporary critics
and criticism; and less than he ought of the award of posterity, and of
the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but of those who were made
so by their admiration of his genius. He did not court popularity by a
conformity to established models, and he ought not to have been surprised
that his originality was not understood as a matter of course. He has
_gnawed too much on the bridle_; and has often thrown out crusts to the
critics, in mere defiance or as a point of honour when he was challenged,
which otherwise his own good sense would have withheld. We suspect that
Mr. Wordsworth's feelings are a little morbid in this respect, or that he
resents censure more than he is gratified by praise. Otherwise, the tide
has turned much in his favour of late years--he has a large body of
determined partisans--and is at present sufficiently in request with the
public to save or relieve him from the last necessity to which a man of
genius can be reduced--that of becoming the God of his own idolatry!