Chapter 5

“He murmurs near the running brooksA music sweeter than their own.”

“He murmurs near the running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.”

Others, however, took a different view of his habits, as little flattering to his morals as the other view to his sense. One wiseacre remarked confidently, “I know what he is. We have all met him tramping away toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take all that trouble to look at a parcel of water? I think he carries on a snug business in the smuggling line, and, in these journeys, is on the lookout for somewetcargo.” Another, carrying out this bright idea, added, “I know he has got a private still in his cellar; for I once passed his house at a little better than a hundred yards distance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an ashen faggot at Christmas.”But the charge which probably had the most weight in those times was the last. “I know,” said one, “that he is surely a desperd French Jacobin; for he is so silent and dark that no one ever heard him say one word about politics.” The result of all these various rumors and scandals was the removal of Wordsworth from the village. It is curious that, with such an experience of English country-people, Wordsworth should never have looked at them dramatically, and represented them as vulgar and prejudiced human beings as well as immortal souls. It proves that humor did not enter at all into the constitution of his nature; that man interested him more than men; and that his spiritual affections, connecting humanity constantly with its divine origin, shed over the simplest villager a light and atmosphere not of earth.

While the ludicrous tattle to which we have referred was sounding all around him, he was meditating Peter Bell and the Lyrical Ballads, in the depths of the Allfoxden woods, and consecrating the rustics who were scandalizing him. The great Poet of the Poor, who has made the peasant a grander object of contemplation than the peer, and who saw through vulgar externals and humble occupations to the inmost soul of the man, had sufficient provocations to be the satirist of those he idealized.

In these Lyrical Ballads, and in the poems written at the same period of their publication, we perceive both the greatness and the limitations of Wordsworth, the vital and the mechanical elements in his poetry. As far as his theory of poetic diction was unimaginative, as far as its application was willful, it became a mere matter of the understanding, productive of little else than shocks to taste and the poetic sense, and indicating the perversity of a powerful intellect, pushing preconceived theories to the violation of ideal laws, rather than the rapt inspiration of the bard, flooding common words and objects with new life and divine meanings. It is useless to say that the passages to which we object would not provoke a smile if read in the spirit of the author. They are ludicrous in themselves, and would have made the author himself laugh had he possessed a moderate sense of the humorous. But the gravest objection against them is, that they do not harmonize with the poems in which they appear—are not vitally connected with them, but stand as excrescences plasteredonthem—and instantly suggest the theorizer expressing his scorn of an opposite vice of expression, by deliberately substituting for affected elegance a simplicity just as full of affectation. Wordsworth’s true simplicity, the simplicity which was the natural vehicle of his grand and solemn thoughts, the simplicity which came from writing close to the truth of things, and making the word rise out of the idea conceived like Venus from the sea, cannot be too much commended; but in respect to his false simplicity, his simplicity for the sake of being simple, we can only say that it has given some point to the sarcasm, “that Chaucer writes like a child, but Wordsworth childishly.” These objectionable passages, however, are very few; they stand apart from his works and apart from what was essential in him; and they are to be pardoned, as we pardon the occasional caprices of other great poets.

Another objection to the Lyrical Ballads, and to Wordsworth’s poems generally, is an objection which relates to his noblest creations. He never appears to have thoroughly realized that other men were not Wordsworths, and accordingly he not infrequently violates the law of expression—which we take to be the expression of a man to others, not the expression of a man to himself. He speaks, as it were, too much to his own ear, and having associated certain words with subtle thoughts and moods peculiar to himself, he does not seem aware that the words may not of themselves convey his meaning to minds differently constituted, and accustomed to take the expressions at their lexicon value. In this he differs from Coleridge, whose words and music have more instantaneous power in evoking the mood addressed, and thread with more force and certainty all the mental labyrinths of other minds, and act with a tingling and inevitable touch on the finest nerves of spiritual perception. The Ancient Mariner and Christobel almost create the moods in which they are to be read, and surprise the reader with a revelation of the strange and preternatural elements lying far back in his own consciousness. Wordsworth has much of this wondrous wizard power, but it operates with less direct energy, and is not felt in all its witchery until we have thought into his mind, become enveloped in its atmosphere, and been initiated into the “suggestive sorcery” of his language. Then, it appears to us, he is even more satisfying than Coleridge, moving, as he does, in the transcendental region of thought with a calmer and more assured step, and giving evidence of having steadily gazed on those spiritual realities which Coleridge seems to have casually seen by flashes of lightning. His language consequently is more temperate, as befits a man observing objects familiar to his mind by frequent contemplation; but, to common readers, it would be more effective if it had the suddenness and startling energy coming from the first bright vision of supernatural objects. As it is, however, his style proves that his mind had grown up to those heights of contemplation to which the mind of Coleridge only occasionally darted, under the winged impulses of imagination; and therefore Wordsworth gives more serene and permanent delight, more “sober certainty of waking bliss,” than Coleridge, however much the latter may excel in instantaneousness of effect.

The originality of the Lyrical Ballads consisted not so much in an accurate observation of nature as in an absolute communion with her, and interpretation of the spirit of her forms. They combine in a remarkable degree ecstasy with reflection, and are marvelously refined both in their perception of the life of nature and the subtle workings of human affections. Those elusive emotions which flit dimly before ordinary imaginations and then instantly disappear, Wordsworth arrests and embodies; and the remotestshades of feeling and thought, which play on the vanishing edges of conception, he connects with familiar objects, and brings home to our common contemplations. In the sphere of the affections he is confessedly great. The still, simple, searching pathos of “We are Seven,” the mysterious, tragic interest gathered around “The Thorn,” and the evanescent touch of an elusive mood in “The Anecdote for Fathers,” indicate a vision into the finest elements of emotion. The poems entitled, “Expostulation and Reply,” “The Tables Turned,” “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “To My Sister,” and several others, referring to this period of 1798, evince many of the peculiar qualities of his philosophy, and combine depth of insight with a most exquisite simplicity of phrase. The following extracts contain hints of his whole system of thought, expressing that belief in the life of nature, and the mode by which that life is communicated to the mind, which reappear, variously modified, throughout his writings:

Nor less I deem that there are PowersWhich of themselves our minds impress;That we can feel this mind of oursIs a wise passiveness.——And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!He, too, is no mean preacher:Come forth into the light of things,Let nature be your teacher.She has a world of ready wealth,Our minds and hearts to bless—Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,Truth breathed by cheerfulness.One impulse from a vernal woodMay teach you more of man,Of moral evil and of goodThan all the sages can.Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;Our meddling intellectMisshapes the beauteous forms of things—We murder to dissect.Enough of Science and of Art;Close up those barren leaves;Come forth and bring with you a heartThat watches and receives.——I heard a thousand blended notes,While in a grove I sat reclined,In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.——Through primrose tufts in that sweet bower,The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;And ’tis my faith that every flowerEnjoys the air it breathes.——There is a blessing in the airWhich seems a sense of joy to yieldTo the bare trees, and mountains bare,And grass in the green field.——One moment now may give us moreThan years of toiling reason:Our minds shall drink at every poreThe spirit of the season.Some silent laws our hearts will wake,Which they shall long obey:We for the year to come may takeOur temper from to-day.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers

Which of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feel this mind of ours

Is a wise passiveness.

——

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

He, too, is no mean preacher:

Come forth into the light of things,

Let nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless—

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Misshapes the beauteous forms of things—

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

——

I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sat reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

——

Through primrose tufts in that sweet bower,

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;

And ’tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

——

There is a blessing in the air

Which seems a sense of joy to yield

To the bare trees, and mountains bare,

And grass in the green field.

——

One moment now may give us more

Than years of toiling reason:

Our minds shall drink at every pore

The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will wake,

Which they shall long obey:

We for the year to come may take

Our temper from to-day.

But the most remarkable poem written at this period of Wordsworth’s life, is that on Tintern Abbey, “Lines Composed on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye.” We have here that spiritualization of nature, that mysterious sense of the Being pervading the whole universe of matter and mind, that feeling of the vital connection between all the various forms and kinds of creation, and that marriage of the soul of man with the visible universe, which constitute the depth and the charm of Wordsworth’s “divine philosophy.” After describing the landscape which he now revisits, he proceeds to develop the influence it has exerted on his spirit:

These beauteous forms,Through a long absence, have not been to me,As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:But oft in lonely rooms, and ’mid the dinOf towns and cities, I have owed to them,In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,And passing even into my purer mindWith tranquil restoration; feelings, too,Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,As have no slight and trivial influenceOn that best portion of a good man’s life,His little nameless, unremembered actsOf kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,To them I may have owed another giftOf aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,In which the burthen of the mystery,In which the heavy and the weary weightOf all this unintelligible world,Is lightened;that serene and blessed mood,In which the affections gently lead us on,Until the breath of this corporeal frame,And even the motion of our human bloodAlmost suspended, we are laid asleepIn body, and become a living soul;While with an eye made quiet by the powerOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things.

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me,

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into my purer mind

With tranquil restoration; feelings, too,

Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,

As have no slight and trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life,

His little nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened;that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,

Until the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul;

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

He then proceeds to describe the passionate fascination which nature exerted over his youth, and the change which had come over him by a deeper and more thoughtful communion with her spirit. When we consider that Wordsworth, at this time, was only twenty-eight, and that even the motions described in the first part of our extract had no existence in contemporary poetry, we can form some idea of his giant leap in advance of his age, as indicated by the unspeakable beauty and novelty of the concluding portion. Our readers will notice that although the style becomes almost transfigured by the intense and brooding imagination which permeates it, the diction is still as simple as prose:

I cannot paintWhat then I was. The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion; the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colors and their forms, were then to meAn appetite, a feeling, and a love,That had no need of a remoter charm,By thought supplied, nor any interestUnborrowed from the eye. That time is past,And all its aching joys are now no more,And all its dizzy raptures. Not for thisFaint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other giftsHave followed; for such loss, I would believe,Abundant recompense. For I have learnedTo look on nature, not as in the hourOf thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimesThe still, sad music of humanity,Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample powerTo chasten and subdue. And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts;a sense sublimeOf something still more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll living things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things. Therefore am I stillA lover of the meadows and the woods,And mountains; and of all that we beholdFrom this green earth; of all the mighty worldOf eye and ear—both what they half createAnd what perceive; well pleased to recognizeIn nature and the language of the sense,The anchor of my purest thoughts, the muse,The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soulOf all my moral being.

I cannot paint

What then I was. The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colors and their forms, were then to me

An appetite, a feeling, and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this

Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts

Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,

Abundant recompense. For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts;a sense sublime

Of something still more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All living things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear—both what they half create

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the muse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

It is this “sense sublime of something still more deeply interfused,” that gives to a well-known passage in the concluding portion of the poem its particular significance:

Nature never did betrayThe heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,Through all the years of this our life, to leadFrom joy to joy;for she can so informThe mind that is within us, so impressWith quietness and beauty, and so feedWith lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor allThe dreary intercourse of daily life,Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturbOur cheerful faith, that all which we beholdIs full of blessings.

Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead

From joy to joy;for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold

Is full of blessings.

In Wordsworth’s use of the word nature, it must always be borne in mind that he means, to use his own phrase,

The Original of human art,Heaven-promptedNature.

The Original of human art,

Heaven-promptedNature.

This poem enables us to understand the process by which so peculiar a nature as Wordsworth’s grew up into its spiritual stature. It was by placing his mind in direct contact with natural objects, passively receiving their impressions in the still hours of contemplation, and bringing his own soul into such sweet relations to the soul of nature as to “see into the life of things;” or, as he expresses it, in another connection, “his soul hadsight” of those spiritual realities, of which visible forms and hues are but the embodiment and symbolical language. Nature to him was therefore alwaysalive, spiritually as well as visiblyexisting; and he felt the correspondence between his own life and her life, from perceiving that one spirit penetrated both. Not only did he perceive this, but he mastered the secret alphabet by which man converses with nature, and to his soul she spoke an audible language. Indeed, his mind’s ear was even more acute than his mind’s eye; and no poet has excelled him in the subtle perception of the most remote relations of tone. Often, when he is on the peaks of spiritual contemplation, he hears voices when he cannot see shapes, and mutters mystically of his whereabouts in words which suggest rather than embody meaning. He grew in spiritual strength and height by assimilating the life of nature, as bodies grow by assimilating her grosser elements; and this process was little disturbed by communion with other minds, either through books or society. He took nothing at second-hand; and his nature is therefore not the nature of Homer, or Dante, or Shakspeare, or Milton, or Scott, but essentially the nature of Wordsworth, the nature which he saw with his own eyes, and shaped with his own imagination. His humanity sprung from this insight, for not until he became impressed with the spirit of nature, and divined its perfect adaptation to nourish and elevate the human mind, did he perceive the worth and dignity of man. Then simple humanity assumed in his mind a mysterious grandeur, and humble life was spiritualized by his consecrating and affectionate imagination. He might then say, with something of a proud content,

The moving accident is not my trade;To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;’Tis my delight alone in summer shade,To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

The moving accident is not my trade;

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts;

’Tis my delight alone in summer shade,

To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

The passages in which this thoughtful humanity and far-sighted spiritual vision appear in beautiful union, are too numerous for quotation, or even for reference. We will give but two, and extract them as hints of his spiritual biography and the growth of his mind:

Love he had found in huts where poor men lie;His daily teachers had been woods and rills,The silence that is in the starry sky,The sleep that is among the lonely hills.—-But who is He with modest looks,And clad in homely russet brown?He murmurs near the running brooksA music sweeter than their own.He is retired as noontide dew,Or fountain in a noonday grove;And you must love him, ’ere to youHe will seem worthy of your love.The outward shows of sky and earth,Of hill and valley, he had viewed;And impulses of deeper birthHad cometo him in solitude.In common things that round us lieSome random truths he can impart—The harvest of a quiet eyeThat sleeps and broods on his own heart.

Love he had found in huts where poor men lie;

His daily teachers had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

—-

But who is He with modest looks,

And clad in homely russet brown?

He murmurs near the running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a noonday grove;

And you must love him, ’ere to you

He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,

Of hill and valley, he had viewed;

And impulses of deeper birth

Had cometo him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie

Some random truths he can impart—

The harvest of a quiet eye

That sleeps and broods on his own heart.

We shall give but one more extract; illustrative of the moral wisdom which the poetic recluse had drank in from Nature, and incorporated with his own character. It was written at the age of twenty-five:

If thou be one whose heart the holy formsOf young imagination have kept pure,Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,Howe’er disguised in its own majesty,Is littleness; that he who feels contemptFor any living thing, hath facultiesWhich he has never used; that thought with himIs in its infancy. The man whose eyeIs ever on himself doth look on one,The least of Nature’s works, one who might moveThe wise man to that scorn which wisdom holdsUnlawful, ever. O be wiser, Thou!Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;True dignity abides with him aloneWho, in the silent hour of inward thought,Can still suspect, and still revere himself,In lowliness of heart.

If thou be one whose heart the holy forms

Of young imagination have kept pure,

Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,

Howe’er disguised in its own majesty,

Is littleness; that he who feels contempt

For any living thing, hath faculties

Which he has never used; that thought with him

Is in its infancy. The man whose eye

Is ever on himself doth look on one,

The least of Nature’s works, one who might move

The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds

Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, Thou!

Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;

True dignity abides with him alone

Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,

Can still suspect, and still revere himself,

In lowliness of heart.

We have dwelt thus long on Wordsworth’s first characteristic publication, because it expresses so well the nature of his own mind, and because it gave an original impulse to poetical literature. These Lyrical Ballads were published in the summer of 1798, and though they attracted no general attention corresponding to their original merit, they exercised great influence upon all the young minds who were afterward to influence the age. In September, 1798, in company with Coleridge, he visited Germany, and on his return he settled at Grasmere, in Westmoreland; a spot so well known to all readers of his poetry, and where he continued to reside for fifteen years. In 1803 he married a Miss Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith. Neither was wealthy, their jointincome being but £100 a year. Of his wife we know little, except that she was of small stature and gentle manners, and was loved by her husband with that still, deep devotion characteristic of his affections. He refers to her, in a poem written in his old age, as

She who dwells with me, whom I have lovedWith such communion, that no place on earthCan ever be a solitude to me.

She who dwells with me, whom I have loved

With such communion, that no place on earth

Can ever be a solitude to me.

Between 1803 and 1807, when a second volume of Lyrical Ballads was published, he wrote many of the most beautiful and sublime poems in his whole works. To this period belong “The Memorials of a Tour in Scotland,” (1803,) containing “The Solitary Reaper,” “The Highland Girl,” “Ellen Irwin,” “Rob Roy’s Grave,” and other exquisite and glowing impersonations—his grand sonnets dedicated to “National Independence and Liberty”—“The Horn of Egremont Castle,” “Heart-Leap Well,” “Character of a Happy Warrior,” “A Poet’s Epitaph,” “Vandracour and Julia,” the “Ode to Duty,” and, above all, the sublime “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood,” which appears not to have been struck off at one beat, but to have been composed at various periods between the years 1803 and 1806.

There are no events, in the common acceptation of the term, in Wordsworth’s life after the period of his marriage, except the publication of his various works, and the pertinacious war waged against them by the influential critics. Though his means were at first limited, he soon, through the friendship of the Earl of Lonsdale, received the appointment of Distributor of Stamps for the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, a sinecure office, the duties of which were done by clerks, but which seems to have given him an income sufficient for his wants. In 1809 he published a prose work on the “Convention of Cintra,” which, though designed as a popular appeal in favor of the oppressed Spaniards, was little read at the time, and is now forgotten. Southey, whose mind was on fire with sympathy for the Spanish cause, says of this pamphlet, in a letter to Scott—“Wordsworth’s pamphlet will fail of producing any general effect, because the sentences are long and involved; and his friend, De Quincey, who corrected the press, has rendered them more obscure by an unsound system of punctuation. This fault will outweigh all its merits. The public never can like any thing which they feel it difficult to understand. . . . I impute Wordsworth’s want of perspicuity to two causes—his admiration of Milton’s prose, and his habit of dictating instead of writing: if he were his own scribe his eye would tell him where to stop.”

But the great work to which Wordsworth was devoting the best years of his life, was his long philosophical poem of “The Recluse,” designed to give an account of the growth of his own mind, and to develop all the peculiarities, poetical, ethical and religious, of his system of thought. A large portion of this remains unpublished, but the second part was issued in quarto, in 1814, under the title of “The Excursion,” and was immediately lighted upon by all the wit-snappers and critics of the old school, and mercilessly “probed, vexed and criticised.” Jeffrey, who began his celebrated review of it in the Edinburgh with the sentence, “This will never do,” was successful in ridiculing some of its weak points, but made the mistake of stigmatizing its sublimest passages as “unintelligible ravings.” The choice of a pedler as the hero of a philosophical poem, though it was based on facts coming within the author’s knowledge, was a violation of ideal laws, because it had not sufficient general truth to justify the selection. A pedler may be a poet, moralist and metaphysician, but such examples are for biography rather than poetry, and indicate singularity more than originality in the poet who chooses them. Allowing for this error, substracting some puerile lines, and protesting against the tendency to diffusion in the style, “The Excursion” still remains as a noble work, rich in description, in narrative, in sentiment, fancy and imagination, and replete with some of the highest and rarest attributes of poetry. To one who has been an attentive reader of it, grand and inspiring passages crowd into the memory at the mere mention of its title. It is, more perhaps than any other of Wordsworth’s works, enveloped in the atmosphere of his soul, and vital with his individual life; and in all sympathetic minds, in all minds formed to feel its solemn thoughts and holy raptures, it feeds

“A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire.”

“The Excursion” was followed, in 1815, by the “White Doe of Rylstone,” a narrative poem, which Jeffrey said deserved the distinction of being the worst poem ever printed in a quarto volume, and which appears to us one of the very best. We do not believe the “White Doe” is much read, and its exceeding beauty, subtle grace, and profound significance, are not perceived in a hasty perusal. It is instinct with the most refined and ethereal imagination, and could have risen from the depths of no mind in which moral beauty had not been organized into moral character. Its tenderness, tempered by “thoughts whose sternness makes them sweet,” pierces into the very core of the heart. The purpose of the poem is to exhibit suffering as a purifier of character, and the ministry of sympathies,

“Aloft ascending, and descending quiteEven unto inferior kinds,”

“Aloft ascending, and descending quite

Even unto inferior kinds,”

in allaying suffering; and this is done by a story sufficiently interesting of itself to engage the attention, apart from its indwelling soul of holiness. In the representation of the Nortons we have the best specimens of Wordsworth’s power of characterization, a power in which he is generally deficient, but which he here exhibits with almost dramatic force and objectiveness.

“Peter Bell” and “The Wagoner,” which appeared in 1819, were executed in a spirit very different from that which animates the “White Doe.” They were originally written to illustrate a system, and seem to have been published, at this period, to furnish the enemies of Wordsworth some plausibleexcuse for attacking his growing reputation. “Peter Bell” was conceived and composed as far back as 1798, and though it exhibits much power and refinement of imagination, the treatment of the story is essentially ludicrous. But still it contains passages of description which are eminently Wordsworthian, and which the most accomplished of Wordsworth’s defamers never equaled. With what depth, delicacy, sweetness and simplicity are the following verses, for instance, conceived and expressed:

He roved among the vales and streams,In the green wood and hollow dell;They were his dwellings night and day,—But nature ne’er could find the wayInto the heart of Peter Bell.In vain, through every changeful year,Did Nature lead him as before;A primrose by the river’s brimA yellow primrose was to him,And it was nothing more.——At noon, when by the forest’s edgeHe lay beneath the branches high,The soft blue sky did never meltInto his heart;he never feltThe witchery of the soft blue sky.On a fair prospect some have lookedAnd felt, as I have heard them say,As if the moving time had beenA thing as steadfast as the sceneOn which they gazed themselves away.——There was a hardness in his cheek,There was a hardness in his eye,As if the man had fixed his face,In many a solitary place,Against the wind and open sky.

He roved among the vales and streams,

In the green wood and hollow dell;

They were his dwellings night and day,—

But nature ne’er could find the way

Into the heart of Peter Bell.

In vain, through every changeful year,

Did Nature lead him as before;

A primrose by the river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.

——

At noon, when by the forest’s edge

He lay beneath the branches high,

The soft blue sky did never melt

Into his heart;he never felt

The witchery of the soft blue sky.

On a fair prospect some have looked

And felt, as I have heard them say,

As if the moving time had been

A thing as steadfast as the scene

On which they gazed themselves away.

——

There was a hardness in his cheek,

There was a hardness in his eye,

As if the man had fixed his face,

In many a solitary place,

Against the wind and open sky.

“The Wagoner,” is altogether unworthy of Wordsworth’s genius. It is an attempt of a poet without humor to be gay and jocular, and very dismal gayety it is. But even this poem is not to be dismissed without a reference to its one exquisite passage—that in which he describes the obligation upon him to write it:

Nor is it I who play the part,But ashy spiritin my heart,That comes and goes—will sometimes leapFrom hiding-places ten year’s deep;Or haunts me with familiar face,Returning, like a ghost unlaid,Until the debt I owe be paid.

Nor is it I who play the part,

But ashy spiritin my heart,

That comes and goes—will sometimes leap

From hiding-places ten year’s deep;

Or haunts me with familiar face,

Returning, like a ghost unlaid,

Until the debt I owe be paid.

The next volume of Wordsworth was a series of sonnets, under the general title of “The River Duddon,” published in 1820, and singularly pure in style and fresh in conception. This was followed, in 1821, by “Itinerary Sonnets,” chronicling a journey to the Continent; “Ecclesiastical Sonnets,” in 1822, celebrating events and characters in the history of the English church; and “Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems,” in 1834. In old age he still preserved his young love for nature, and lost none of his power of interpreting her teachings. In a poem entitled “Devotional Incitements,” written at the age of sixty-two, and distinguished for the delicate keenness of its insight, no less than its lyric rapture, it will be perceived that natural objects were still visible and audible to his heart and imagination. “Where,” he exclaims,

Where will they stop, those breathing powers,Thespiritsof the new-born flowers?They wander with the breeze, they windWhere’er the streams a passage find;Up from their native ground they riseIn mute aërial harmonies;From humble violet—modest thyme—Exhaled, theessential odorsclimb,As if no space below the skyTheir subtle flight could satisfy:Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride—If like ambition betheirguide.Roused by the kindliest of May-showers,The spirit quickener of the flowers,That with moist virtue softly cleavesThe buds, and freshens the young leaves,The birds pour forth their souls in notesOf rapture from a thousand throats—Here checked by too impetuous haste,While there the music runs to waste,With bounty more and more enlargedTill the whole air is overcharged.Give ear, O man, to their appeal,And thirst for no inferior zeal,Thou, who canstthinkas well asfeel.——Alas! the sanctities combinedBy art to unsensualize the mind,Decay and languish; or, as creedsAnd humors change, are spurned like weeds:And priests are from their altars thrust;Temples are leveled with the dust;And solemn rites and awful formsFounder amid fanatic storms,Yet evermore, through years renewedIn undisturbed vicissitude,Of seasons balancing their flightOn the swift wings of day and night,Kind Nature keeps a heavenly doorWide open for the scattered Poor,Where flower-breathed incense to the skiesIs wafted in mute harmonies;And ground fresh cloven by the ploughIs fragrant with a humbler vow;Where birds and brooks from leafy dellsChime forth unwearied canticles,And vapors magnify and spreadThe glory of the sun’s bright head—Still constant in her worship, stillConforming to the eternal Will,Whether men sow or reap the fieldsDivine monition Nature yields,That not by bread alone we live,Or what a hand of flesh can give;That every day should leave some partFree for a sabbath of the heart.

Where will they stop, those breathing powers,

Thespiritsof the new-born flowers?

They wander with the breeze, they wind

Where’er the streams a passage find;

Up from their native ground they rise

In mute aërial harmonies;

From humble violet—modest thyme—

Exhaled, theessential odorsclimb,

As if no space below the sky

Their subtle flight could satisfy:

Heaven will not tax our thoughts with pride—

If like ambition betheirguide.

Roused by the kindliest of May-showers,

The spirit quickener of the flowers,

That with moist virtue softly cleaves

The buds, and freshens the young leaves,

The birds pour forth their souls in notes

Of rapture from a thousand throats—

Here checked by too impetuous haste,

While there the music runs to waste,

With bounty more and more enlarged

Till the whole air is overcharged.

Give ear, O man, to their appeal,

And thirst for no inferior zeal,

Thou, who canstthinkas well asfeel.

——

Alas! the sanctities combined

By art to unsensualize the mind,

Decay and languish; or, as creeds

And humors change, are spurned like weeds:

And priests are from their altars thrust;

Temples are leveled with the dust;

And solemn rites and awful forms

Founder amid fanatic storms,

Yet evermore, through years renewed

In undisturbed vicissitude,

Of seasons balancing their flight

On the swift wings of day and night,

Kind Nature keeps a heavenly door

Wide open for the scattered Poor,

Where flower-breathed incense to the skies

Is wafted in mute harmonies;

And ground fresh cloven by the plough

Is fragrant with a humbler vow;

Where birds and brooks from leafy dells

Chime forth unwearied canticles,

And vapors magnify and spread

The glory of the sun’s bright head—

Still constant in her worship, still

Conforming to the eternal Will,

Whether men sow or reap the fields

Divine monition Nature yields,

That not by bread alone we live,

Or what a hand of flesh can give;

That every day should leave some part

Free for a sabbath of the heart.

On the death of Southey, Wordsworth was appointed Poet Laureate. The latter years of his life were passed in undisturbed serenity, and he appears to have retained his faculties to the last. His old age, like his youth and mature manhood, illustrated the truth of his poetic teachings, and proves that poetry had taught him the true theory of life. One cannot contemplate him during the last ten years of his existence, without being forcibly impressed with his own doctrine regarding the lover of nature:

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,Nor leave thee when old age is nighA melancholy slave;But an old age serene and bright,And lovely as a Lapland night,Shall lead thee to thy grave.

Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,

Nor leave thee when old age is nigh

A melancholy slave;

But an old age serene and bright,

And lovely as a Lapland night,

Shall lead thee to thy grave.

The predominating characteristic of Wordsworth’s poetry is thoughtfulness, a thoughtfulness in which every faculty of his mind and every disposition of his heart meet and mingle; and the result is an atmosphere of thought, giving a softening charm to all the objects it surrounds and permeates. This atmosphere is sometimes sparklingly clear, as if the airs and dews and sunshine of a May morning had found a home in his imagination; but, in his philosophical poems, where he penetrates into a region of thought above the ken of ordinary mortals, this atmosphereis touched by an ideal radiance which slightly obscures as well as consecrates the objects seen through it, and occasionally it thickens into mystical obscurity. No person can thoroughly enjoy Wordsworth who does not feel the subtle spirit of this atmosphere of thought, as it communicates an air of freshness and originality even to the commonplaces of his thinking, and apparels his loftier conceptions in celestial light—

“The gleam,The light that never was on sea or land,The consecration and the poet’s dream.”

“The gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the poet’s dream.”

The first and grandest exercise, therefore, of his imagination is the creation of this harmonizing atmosphere, enveloping as it does the world of his creation with that peculiar light and air, indescribable but unmistakable, which enable us at once to recognize and to class a poem by Wordsworth. We do not hesitate to say that, in its peculiarity, there is nothing identical with it in literature—that it constitutes an absolutely new kind of poetry, in the Platonic sense of the word kind. An imagination which thus fuse all the faculties and emotions into one individuality, so that all the vital products of that individuality are characterized by unity of effect, is an imagination of the highestkind. The next question to be considered is the variety which this unity includes; for Shakspeare himself, the most comprehensively creative of human beings, never goes beyond the unity of his individuality, his multifarious variety always answering to the breadth of his personality. He is like the banyan tree in the marvelous fertility of his creativeness, and the province of humanity he covers; but the fertility all comes from one root and trunk, and indicates simply the greatness of thekind, as compared with otherkindsof trees. The variety in the operation of Wordsworth’s imagination we will consider first in its emotional, and second in its intellectual, manifestation—of course, using these words as terms of distinction, not of division, because when we employ the word imagination we desire to imply a fusion of the whole nature of the man into one living power. In the emotional operation of Wordsworth’s imagination we discern his Sentiment. No term has been more misused than this, its common acceptation being a weak affectionateness; and, at best, it is considered as an instinct of the sensibility, as a simple, indivisible element of humanity. The truth is that sentiment is a complex thing, the issue of sensibility and imagination; and without imagination sentiment is impossible. We often meet excellent and intelligent people, whose affections are warm, whose judgments are accurate, and whose lives are irreproachable, but who lack in their religion, morality and affections an elusive something which is felt to be the grace of character. The solution of the problem is found in their want of sentiment—in their want of that attribute by which past scenes and events, and absent faces, and remote spiritual realities, affect the mind like objects which are visibly present. Now, without this Sentiment no man can be a poet, either in feeling or faculty; and Wordsworth has it in a transcendent degree. In him it is revealed, not only in his idealizing whatever in nature or life had passed into his memory, but in his religious feeling and in his creative art. Scenes which he had viewed years before, he tells us, still

Flashupon thatinward eye,Which is the bliss of solitude.

Flashupon thatinward eye,

Which is the bliss of solitude.

Thus Sentiment is that operation of imagination which recalls, in a more vivid light, things absent from the bodily eye, and makes them act upon the will with more force and inspiration than they originally exerted in their first passionate or thoughtful perception; and from its power of extracting the essence and heightening the beauty of what has passed away from the senses and passed into memory, it gives the impulse which sends the creative imagination far beyond the boundaries of actual life into the regions of the ideal, to see what is most beautiful here

—Imaged thereIn happier beauty; more pellucid streams,An ampler ether, a diviner air,And fields invested with purpureal gleams,Climes, which the sun, who sheds the brightest dayEarth knows,is all unworthyto survey.

—Imaged there

In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,

An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams,

Climes, which the sun, who sheds the brightest day

Earth knows,is all unworthyto survey.

It is needless to adduce passages to prove the depth and delicacy of Wordsworth’s sentiment, sanctifying as it does natural objects and the humblest life, and lending to his religious faith a mysterious, ineffable beauty and holiness. In our view of the quality it must necessarily be the limitation of a poet’s creativeness, for the imagination cannot represent or create objects to which it does not tend by a sentiment; and Wordsworth, while he has a sentiment for visible nature, a religious sentiment, a sentiment of humanity, is still confined to the serious side of things, and has no sentiment of humor. If he had humor as a sentiment, he, dowered as he is with imagination, would have it as a creative faculty, for humor is the intellectual imagination inspired by the sentiment of mirth.

Let us now survey the power and scope of Wordsworth’s imagination, considered in its intellectual manifestation. Here nothing bounds its activity but its sentiments. It is descriptive, pictorial, reflective, shaping, creative, and ecstatic; it can body forth abstract ideas in sensible imagery; it can organize, as in “The White Doe,” a whole poem round one central idea; it can make audible in the melody of words, shades of feeling and thought which elude the grasp of imagery; it can fuse and diffuse itself at pleasure, animating, coloring, vitalizing every thing it touches. In description it approaches near absolute perfection, giving not only the scene as it lies upon the clear mirror of the perceptive imagination, but representing it in its life and motion as well as form. The following, from “The Night Piece,” is one out of a multitude of instances:

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