RYDAL MOUNT.

“Hast thou then survivedMild offspring of infirm humanity?.... Hail to thee!Frail, feeble monthling.... On thy faceSmiles are beginning, like the beams of dawn,To shoot, and circulate. Smiles have there been seen;Tranquil assurances that heaven supportsThe feeble motions of thy life, and cheersThy loveliness; or shall those smiles be calledFeelers of love, put forth as if to exploreThis untried world, and to prepare thy wayThrough a strait passage intricate and dim?”

In the autumn of the same year we find him writing the lines “The Kitten and the Falling Leaves,” suggested by the delight of his dear Dora at the pretty frolics of a kitten on the wall, playing with the leaves of autumn.

“Such a light of gladness breaksPretty kitten! from thy freaks;Spreads with such a living grace,O’er my little Dora’s face.”

then the poet resolves that he will have his glee out of life:—

“I will have my careless season,Spite of melancholy reason;Will walk thro’ life in such a way,That, when time brings on decay,Now and then, I may possessHours of perfect gladsomeness;Keep the sprightly soul awake,And have faculties to take,Even from things by sorrow wrought,Matter for a jocund thought;Spite of care and spite of grief,To gambol with life’s falling leaf.”

He likewise addresses “The Longest Day” to her; and what a contrast to the last poem! Instead of gambolling with the falling leaves, and making life a grand holiday, he exhorts his child, now grown older, to think of higher matters:—

“Summer ebbs; each day that followsIs a reflex from on high,Tending to the darksome hollows,Where the frosts of winter lie.Now, even now, e’er wrapped in slumber,Fix thine eyes upon the sea,That absorbs time, space, and number,—Look thou to eternity!”

And a little later, when the possibility of blindness came like a gloomy shadow to darken his more thoughtful moments; he anticipates the time when his own Dora shall guide his lonely steps. Poor Dora! she died of consumption, after trying, in vain, the warmsouth of Portugal. And yet she is not dead, and cannot die. In Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoirs, second volume, there is a fine portrait of her, and a sweet, mild, gentle, and spiritual girl she is; the eye singularly beautiful, and full of deep mystic fire. The poet has also drawn a portrait of her:—

“Open, ye thickets! let her fly,Swift as a Thracian nymph, o’er field or height!For she, to all but those who love her, shy,Would gladly vanish from a stranger’s sight;Tho’ where she is beloved, and lovesLight as the wheeling butterfly she moves;Her happy spirit as a bird is free,That rifles blossoms on a tree,Turning them inside out, with rich audacity.”

And all this sweet surfeit of painting is true to the spirit of the beautiful girl; the spirit which stirs her thoughts, and makes all her movements an impulsive comminglement of music and poetry. A more airy, celestial form could not be imagined than hers. It seems to float on the atmosphere. And then she is so happy, and loving to those who love her.

“Alas! how little can a moment showOf an eye where feeling playsIn ten thousand dewy rays;A face o’er which a thousand shadows go!—She stops—is fastened to that rivulet’s side;And these (while, with sedater mienO’er timid waters that have scarcely leftTheir birthplace in the rocky cleft,She bends) at leisure may be seenFeatures to old ideal grace allied,Amid their smiles and dimples dignified—Fit countenance for the soul of primal truth;The bland composure of eternal youth!What more changeful than the sea?But over his great tidesFidelity presides;And this light-hearted maiden constant is as he.High is her aim, as heaven above,And wide as ether her good will;And like the lowly reed, her loveCan drink its nurture from the scantiest rill;Insight as keen as frosty starIs to her charity no bar,Nor interrupts her frolic gracesWhen she is far from those wild places,Encircled by familiar faces.O the charms that manners draw,Nature, from thy genuine law!If from what her hand would doHer voice would utter, aught ensueUntoward or unfit;She in benign affections pureIn self-forgetfulness, secure,Sheds round the transient harm, or vague mischanceA light unknown to tutored elegance:Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken,But her blushes, are joy-flushes;And the fault, if fault it be,Only ministers to quickenLaughter-loving gaiety,And kindly sportive wit,Leaving this daughter of the mountains freeAs if she knew that Oberon, king of faeryHad crossed her purpose with some quaint vagary,And heard his viewless bandsOver their mirthful triumph clapping hands.”

What more changeful than the sea?But over his great tidesFidelity presides;And this light-hearted maiden constant is as he.High is her aim, as heaven above,And wide as ether her good will;And like the lowly reed, her loveCan drink its nurture from the scantiest rill;Insight as keen as frosty starIs to her charity no bar,Nor interrupts her frolic gracesWhen she is far from those wild places,Encircled by familiar faces.

O the charms that manners draw,Nature, from thy genuine law!If from what her hand would doHer voice would utter, aught ensueUntoward or unfit;She in benign affections pureIn self-forgetfulness, secure,Sheds round the transient harm, or vague mischanceA light unknown to tutored elegance:Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken,But her blushes, are joy-flushes;And the fault, if fault it be,Only ministers to quickenLaughter-loving gaiety,And kindly sportive wit,Leaving this daughter of the mountains freeAs if she knew that Oberon, king of faeryHad crossed her purpose with some quaint vagary,And heard his viewless bandsOver their mirthful triumph clapping hands.”

A fairer drawn portrait—a more beautiful poem, as a whole—does not, I think, exist. Alas! sweet Dora.

To return, however, to the narrative. When Wordsworth was living at Allan Bank, and during the time that Coleridge sojourned with him, two prose works appeared, by these two poets, which are memorable to all scholars. The former wrote his famous “Essay on the Convention of Cintra,” and the latter dictated (for he did not write it) his still more famous work entitled “The Friend.” Notwithstanding Wordsworth’s devotion, therefore, to poetry, itwill be seen that he was not indifferent to the passing events which were writing their history in the blood of nations. Speaking of his “Convention of Cintra,” in a letter to Southey, he says, “My detestation, I may say abhorrence, of that event, is not at all diminished by your account of it. Bonaparte had committed a capital blunder in supposing that when he hadintimidatedtheSovereignsof Europe, he hadconqueredthe several nations. Yet it was natural for a wiser than he was to have fallen into this mistake; for the old despotisms had deprived the body of the people of all practical knowledge in the management, and of necessity of all interest in the course of affairs. The French themselves were astonished at the apathy and ignorance of the people whom they had supposed they had utterly subdued, when they had taken their fortresses, scattered their armies, entered their capital cities, and struck their cabinets with dismay. There was no hope for the deliverance of Europe till the nations had suffered enough to be driven to a passionate recollection of all that was honourable in their past history, and to make appeal to the principles of universal and everlastingjustice. These sentiments the authors of that Convention most unfeelingly violated; and as to the principals, they seemed to be as little aware even of the existence of such powers, for powers emphatically may they be called, as the tyrant himself. As far, therefore, as these men could, they put an extinguisher upon the star that was then rising! It is in vain to say that after the first burst of indignation was over, the Portuguese themselves were reconciled to the event, and rejoiced in their deliverance. We may infer from that, the horror which they must have felt in the presence of their oppressors; and we may see in it to what a state of helplessness their bad government had reduced them. Our duty was to have treated them with respect, as the representatives of suffering humanity, beyond what they were likely to look for themselves, and as deserving greatly, in common with their Spanish brethren, for having been the first to rise against that tremendous oppression, and to show how, and how only, it could be put an end to.” The poet apologises for the seeming inconsistency of his conduct in opposing the war against France at its commencement, and in urging thenecessity of it in the later affairs of Spain and Portugal, by showing that he, and those who thought with him, “proved that they kept their eyes steadily fixed upon principles; for though there was a shifting or transfer of hostility in their minds, as far as regarded persons, they only combated the same enemy opposed to them under a different shape; and that enemy was the spirit of selfish tyranny and lawless ambition.”

So far, then, the “Essay on the Convention of Cintra.” Coleridge’s prose work, “The Friend,” was a serial, composed of papers upon various subjects, written mostly by Coleridge himself, with occasional assistance from Wordsworth, Professor Wilson, and others. In the seventeenth number of “The Friend,” the latter writer, in a letter to the Editor, speaks of Wordsworth as a “great teacher,” and a “mighty voice not poured out in vain.” “There are hearts,” he says, “that have received into their inmost depths all its varying tones; and even now there are many to whom the name of Wordsworth calls up the recollection of their weakness and the consciousness of their strength.” The letter was signed “Mathetes,” and might be called a warning voice to the young upon the illusions and popular fallacies of the age. It insisted likewise upon the dues belonging to antiquity; combated the notion that human nature is gradually advancing to perfection, and that the present time is wiser than the past. “Mathetes” maintained that reliance on contemporary judgment had grown into contempt for antiquity, and argued that the youth of his time could only be rescued from this perilous condition by the warning voice of some contemporary teacher; and that this teacher he imagined Wordsworth to be.

Wordsworth replied, in numbers seventeen and twenty, acknowledging that we are too apt to value contemporary opinion, to the neglect of antiquity; but denying that the doctrine of progress is injurious; and exhorting the young to rely upon themselves, and their own independent efforts; cherishing along with this, an abiding sense of personal responsibility. I cannot, however, analyse the fine treatise which follows, and must refer the reader to the treatise itself; merely adding, that a sounder or more philosophical discourse—so practical withal—has rarely been written. An “Essay onEpitaphs,” was subsequently written by Wordsworth in “The Friend,” February 22nd, 1810, and was afterwards republished by him, as a note to “The Excursion.” Wordsworth regarded epitaphs as holy memorials, and censured the epigramatic efforts of Pope, and other writers of this species of composition. A bad man, he says, should have no epitaph; and that which the poet wrote over his own child, in the churchyard of Grasmere, may be instanced as illustrating his own idea of what epitaphs should be.

In the year 1810, Wordsworth wrote an introduction to, and edited the text of, a folio volume entitled, “Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire;” by the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson, which were afterwards printed in his volume of “Sonnets on the River Duddon,” and still later, as a separate publication. This introduction and text consisted of a description of the Lake Country, which is finer than anything of the kind existing, if we except the delicate and beautiful picture-writing of Gray, the poet, who visited this district in October 1767. And here end the chief incidents in the personal and literarylife of Wordsworth, up to the time of his removal to Rydal Mount.

I musthere borrow the only picture which I find in Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,”—viz., that of the poet’s residence, which I transcribe from vol. I., p. 19.

“The house stands on the sloping summit of a rocky hill, called Nab’s Scar. It has a southern aspect. In front of it is a small semicircular area of grey gravel, fringed with shrubs and flowers, the house forming the diameter of the circle. From this area is a descent of a few stone steps southward, and then a gentle ascent to a grassy mound. Here let us rest a little.—At your back is the house; in front, a little to the left of the horizon, is Wansfell, on which the light of the evening sun rests, and to whichthe poet has paid a grateful tribute in two of his sonnets:—

‘Wansfell! this household has a favoured lot,Living with liberty on thee to gaze.’

Beneath it the blue smoke shews the place of the town of Ambleside. In front is the lake Windermere, shining in the sun; also in front, but more to the right, are the fells of Loughrigg, on which the poet’s imagination pleased to plant a solitary castle:

‘Ærial rock, whose solitary browFrom this low threshold daily meets the sight.’

Looking to the right, in the garden, is a beautiful glade, overhung with rhododendrons, in beautiful leaf and bloom. Near them is a tall ash-tree, in which a thrush has sung for hours together, during many years. Not far from it is a laburnum, in which the osier cage of the doves was hung. Below, to the west, is the vegetable garden, not planted off from the rest, but blended with it by parterres of flowers and shrubs.

Returning to the platform of grey gravelbefore the house, we pass under the shade of a fine sycamore, and ascend to the westward by fourteen steps of stones, about nine feet long, in the interstices of which grow the yellow flowering poppy, and the wild geranium, or Poor Robin,

‘GayWith his red stalks, upon a sunny day,’

a favourite with the poet, as his verses show.—The steps above, northward, lead to an upwardsloping terrace, about two hundred and fifty feet long. On the right side it is shaded by laburnums, Portugal laurels, mountain-ash, and fine walnut-trees and cherries; on the left it is flanked by a low stone wall, coped with rude slates, and covered with lichens, mosses, and wild-flowers. The fern waves on the walls, and at its base grows the wild-strawberry and foxglove. Beneath this wall, and parallel to it, on the left, is alevel terrace, constructed by the poet for a friend most dear to him and his,—who, for the last twenty years of Mr. Wordsworth’s life, was often a visitor at Rydal Mount. The terrace was a favourite resort of the poet, being more easy for pacing to and fro, when oldage began to make him feel the acclivity of the other terrace to be toilsome. Both these terraces command beautiful views of the vale of the Rothsay, and the banks of the lake of Windermere.”

Then we have a description of Rydal Lake, and of the “long, wooded, and rocky hill of Loughrigg beyond, and above it,” as seen from an orifice on the ascending terrace; of the beautiful sycamore close to the arbour, the fine firs in the foreground, and the dark woods of fir, ash, oak, hazel, holly, and birch, on the right and left; of the “Far Ferrdelon the mountain’s side,” a little to the right of the “ascending terrace”—which, after a serpentine course of one hundred and fifty feet, terminates at a little gate, close to the “Nab Well,” where the poet was wont to quaff his daily libations. Another walk from the arbour leads to a field, sloping down to the valley, called “Dora’s field,” and on the right is a rude stone, bearing this inscription—

“In these fair vales hath many a treeAt Wordsworth’s suit been spared;And from the builder’s hand this stone,For some rude beauty of its own,Was rescued by the bard.So let it rest, and time will come,When here, the tender-hearted,May heave a gentle sigh for him,As one of the departed.”

A pond containing gold fish, underneath a large oak, close to the gate which leads to this “Dora’s field,” completes the inventory of the external features of Rydal Mount.

It was in the spring of 1811 that Wordsworth left Allan Bank, and took up his temporary residence at the Parsonage, Grasmere. But the death of his children, Catharine and Thomas, which occurred in 1812, threw so melancholy a gloom over the neighbourhood, that he resolved to quit it altogether. It was not, however, without many painful feelings of regret that he bade adieu to the beautiful scenery in the vale of Grasmere—scenery which he had so long loved—every feature of which was as familiar to him as the faces of the dear children whom he had committed for ever to its quiet keeping. The step, however, was absolutely necessary, as he himself says in a letter to the Earl of Lonsdale, for the recurrence of that tranquillity of mind which it washis duty, and that of his surviving family, to strive for. Accordingly he removed to Rydal Mount, in 1813, where he resided until his death, in 1850. It was in that year—1813—that he received the appointment of Distributor of Stamps in the County of Westmoreland, which has already been alluded to, in the extracts made from the “Reminiscences” of De Quincy.

This appointment, for which he was mainly indebted to Lord Lonsdale, placed the poet in easy if not affluent circumstances, and enabled him to follow his art without anxiety respecting worldly matters,—a condition which the poet improved to his own honour, and to the public advantage. Some time after this good fortune had befallen him, he was offered the collectorship of the town of Whitehaven, an office far more lucrative than the other; but the poet declined it. He had now sufficient for his necessities, and no pecuniary inducement could avail with him to quit the sweet retirement of the lakes. He was fortunate, also—and De Quincy was right in saying that he wasalwaysfortunate, for Good Luck “threw her old shoe after him” wherever he went—in securingabout this time the services of Mr. John Carter, as coadjutor in the stamp-office. Dr. Wordsworth speaks in the highest terms of this gentleman, who, for thirty-seven years, served the poet “faithfully and zealously, and who added to his business qualifications, those of sound scholarship and judicious criticism.”

Thus happily circumstanced, Wordsworth continued to write poetry, and to make more tours, as his fancy dictated. In 1814, he again visited Scotland, in company with his wife, his wife’s sister, and Miss Mary Hutchinson. The poems produced on this tour were “The Brownie’s Cell,” “Cora Linn,” “Effusions on the Banks of the Bran, near Dunkeld,” and “Sonnet to Mr. Gillies.” The following note, upon the poem “Yarrow Visited,” is of great interest. It is Wordsworth who writes.

“As mentioned in my verses on the death of the Ettrick Shepherd, my first visit to Yarrow was in his company. We had lodged the night before at Traquhar, where Hogg had joined us, and also Dr. Anderson, the editor of ‘The British Poets,’ who was on a visit at the manse. Dr. Anderson walked with us till we came in view of the Vale of Yarrow, and beingadvanced in life he then turned back. The old man was passionately fond of poetry, though with not much of a discriminating judgment, as the volumes he edited sufficiently shows; but I was much pleased to meet with him, and to acknowledge my obligation to his collection, which had been my brother John’s companion in more than one voyage to India, and which he gave me before his departure from Grasmere—never to return. Through these volumes I became first familiar with Chaucer; and so little money had I then to spare for books, that in all probability, but for this same work, I should have known little of Drayton, Daniel, and other distinguished poets of the Elizabethan age, and their immediate successors, till a much later period of my life. I am glad to record this, not for any importance of its own, but as a tribute of gratitude to this simple-hearted old man, whom I never again had the pleasure of meeting. I seldom read or think of this poem without regretting that my dear sister was not of the party, as she would have been so much delighted in recalling the time when, travelling together in Scotland, we declined going in search of this celebrated stream,not altogether, I will frankly confess, for the reasons assigned in the poem on the occasion.”

At last, in 1814, the great poem was published upon which Wordsworth’s fame is built, viz., “The Excursion.” It was met, as usual, with tremendous and most indiscriminate abuse, especially by Jeffrey, in his “This won’t do” article. But despite all this, the poem grew deeply into the public mind, and is still growing there; and ranks, at last, with our highest poetry. All the characters and scenes in it are drawn from life, and there are few more interesting papers than the memoranda which the poet has left respecting these characters and their localities. “The Wanderer,” he acknowledges, is chiefly an embodied idea of what he fanciedhis own character might have becomein the saidWanderer’s circumstances. His sister, with her gentle love and sweet remonstrances,—although ready to follow him to the ends of the earth—did in reality save him from this wild nomadic life, by fixing his thoughts upon ahome, and the genial influences which domestic life would produce and exercise upon his poetic genius. And then his wife, children, and the rich harvests of fortune,which were reaped without any sowing of his, and dropped into his lap, finished the work his sister had begun, and finally settled him as a citizen and a family man. Otherwise, being strong in body, I should, he says, very probably, have “taken to the way of life such as that in which my ‘Wanderer’ passed the greater part of his days.” Much, however, of what the “Wanderer” says and does, was the result, in verse, of the poet’s experience; was what he had actually heard and seen, although refined, of course, as it passed through his imagination. He was fond of talking to all kinds of strange characters;—now treading on the outskirts of social life, or wandering with a wild, vagabond independence amongst the highways of towns and cities. Whatever of romance and adventure they had known, he wormed out of them, orcharmedout of them; and he partially instances, as an illustration of this prying curiosity—this insatiable longing after experience, and the history of men—an old Scotchman, who married finally a relation of his wife’s, and settled down at Kendal, and a travelling packman, from whom he learned much, and whose adventures and wisdom are embodied in thecharacter of the “Wanderer.” “The Solitary,” “The Pastor,” “Pedlar,” “Margaret,” “Miser,” and all the dramatis personæ of the poem, are made up of veritable human materials, and had their architypes in the great world of humanity. The reader, however, must go to Dr. Wordsworth for a full relation respecting these matters. All I can add here, respecting the “Excursion,” is that only 500 copies were disposed of in six years; and when, in 1827, another edition, of the same number of copies, was printed, it took seven years more to exhaust it. The poet, however, was not daunted by this culpable neglect of his immortal lines; but conscious of his own greatness, he wrote, in a letter to Southey,—“Let the age continue to love its own darkness; I shall continue to write, with, I trust, the light of heaven upon me.” Jeffrey, in the pride and arrogance of his position, as Executioner General of the Courts of Critical Assize, boasted thatHE—poor devil!—hadcrushedthe “Excursion;” and the boast was repeated to Southey:—“Tell him,” said he, Southey “that he could as soon crush Skiddaw!” Bernard Barton,—a writer whose chief merit consists in a letter written to Wordsworth,expressive of his homage and reverence for the Bard of Rydal—alludes, in the said letter, to Jeffrey: “He has taken,” says Wordsworth, in reply, “a perpetual retainer, from his own incapacity, to plead against my claims to public approbation.” So, we see, that the good poet could hit hard if he liked; although he rarely descended to this literary pugilism, thinking it beneath the dignity of his art and character.

It was Wordsworth’s custom to compose in the open air; and as his servant once said to a visitor, “This, sir, is my master’s library—his study is out of doors.” He had a great and sickening dread of writing; and his sister, or some other member of his family was always at hand to perform for him the office of amanuensis. In the year 1807, when on a visit to his wife’s brother at Stockton-on-Tees, the weather being very boisterous, and the winds rough, he used to pace up and down under the lee of a row of corn-stacks in a field near that town—and it was here that he composed the earlier part of “White Doe of Ryletone,” chaunting his verses aloud to the astonished stacks. The poem was not published until 1815, and has been much misinterpreted, and consequentlyabused. The truth is, that Wordsworth wrote always upon principle, and a carefully premeditated plan; there was always a high purpose in his poems, both moral and intellectual. His poetical canons were likewise his own, and his mode of treating a subject was always in conformity with them, or illustrations of them. Superficial readers, who had been accustomed to theobjectivepoetry of Scott, could not understand Wordsworth, therefore; for he was studiouslysubjective, and the interest of his poems hangs nearly always upon the development of mere spiritual forces, and their progress, if I may so speak,outwards, in the subjugation of the external world or in the strengthening of the soul to bear the ills and mishaps of life with a sublime fortitude. “The White Doe” is a memorable example of this spiritual aim. “Every thing,” says Wordsworth, ‘attempted by the principal personages in this poemfails, so far as its object is external and substantial; so far as it is moral and spiritual itsucceeds. The heroine of the poem knows that her duty is not to interfere with the current of events, either to forward or delay them; but

“To abideThe shock, and finally secureO’er pain and grief a triumph pure.”

This she does in obedience to her brother’s injunction, as most suitable to a mind and character that, under previous trials, had been proved to accord with his. She achieves this, not without aid from the communication with the inferior creature which often leads her thoughts to revolve upon the past with a tender and humanising influence that exalts rather than depresses her. Her anticipated beatification of the mind, and the apotheosis of the companion of her solitude, are the points at which the poem aims, and constitutes its legitimate catastrophe.” All this is widely different from the usual mode of conducting dramatic action, and yet the action of the poem in question is complete and satisfactory, and is artistically developed from its own spiritual germ, or starting point.

Whilst walking, and composing “The White Doe,” Wordsworth received a wound in his foot; and it is curious to remark that, even when he ceased walking, theact of compositionincreased the irritation of the wound, whilst amental holiday produced a rapid cure. “Poetic excitement,” he says, “when accompanied by protracted labour in composition, has throughout my life brought on more or less of bodily derangement. Nevertheless I am, at the close of my seventy-third year, in what may be called excellent health. But I ought to add, that my intellectual labour has generally been carried on out of doors.”

The next group of poems—and two of them certainly amongst the grandest triumphs of poetic art, were composed respectively as follows:—“Laodamia,” in 1814; “Dion,” in 1816; and the “Ode to Lycoris,” in 1817. The first and second of these poems were entirely Greek in their character and form, and Keates’ “Hyperion” is the only modern poem (and this a fragment) which is worthy to be placed in comparison with them. It is singular how the idea of these poems originated in the mind of the poet. He had been preparing his son for the University, and had to read up his old classics for this purpose. Hence the Classic Spirit took up its abode with him, and urged him to these beautiful and plastic productions. About this time, and with the same object in view—viz.,the education of his son—he translated one of the earlier books of the “Æneid” into rhyme. Coleridge, in writing to the author respecting this translation, says, he has attempted an impossibility, and regrets he should have wasted his time on a work (viz., of translation) so much below him. Wordsworth was always attached to the classics; and before he read Virgil, he was so fond of Ovid, that he invariably got into a passion when he found this author placed below Virgil. He was never weary of travelling over the scenes through which Homer led him. “Classical literature,” he says, “affected me by its own beauty.”

“Peter Bell” appeared in 1819. It was composed twenty years before, as already related; and sold better than any of Wordsworth’s previous poems, notwithstanding the abuse of the critics. Five hundred copies were exhausted before one month, between April and May of this one year (1819). “The Waggoner” was published at the same time, but was not so successful, perhaps on account of its mere local interest. The “Sonnets on the River Duddon” appeared about the same time, and were dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, the poet’s brother, who was at that time Rector of Lambeth. “The river Duddon has its main source[J]in the mountain range near the “Three Shire Stones,” as they were called, where the three counties, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire meet. It flows to the south through Seathwaite, by Broughton, to the Duddon Sands, and into the Irish Sea.”—Wordsworth’s first acquaintance with this stream commenced in his boyhood, during the time that he was so passionately fond of angling: upon one of his fishing excursions he joined an old weather-beaten man, and went far away from home, seduced by the dear delight of his art. On their return, the embryo poet was so wearied, that the old man had to carry him on his back. He says that his earliest recollections of this stream were full of distress and disappointment; but in later times he visited it with so many beloved persons, that its waters flowed through him in streams of music—in anthems of affectionate song.

In 1820 Wordsworth made another tour to the Continent, in company with his wife andsister, Mr. and Mrs. Monkhonse, then just married, and Miss Herricks. They left these two ladies at Berne, while Mr. Monkhouse went with the poet and his retinue, on an excursion amongst the Alps, as far as Milan. They were joined at Lucerne by Mr. H. C. Robinson; and the two ladies, whom they had left at Berne, rejoined them at Geneva, when the whole party went to Paris, where they remained five weeks.

In 1822 Wordsworth published a volume of Sonnets, and other Poems, as the result of this tour, entitled, “Memorials of a Tour on the Continent.”

In two letters to Lord Lonsdale—one dated from Lucerne, August 19th, 1820, and the other from Paris, dated October 7, 1820,—the poet has given a general outline of this tour and its incidents.[K]I ought to add that Wordsworth visited Waterloo, amongst other places of interest, at this time. The party returned by way of Boulogne, November 2nd, and had a narrow escape of shipwreck,—the vessel striking upon a sand-bank, and being thendriven with violence on a rocky road in the harbour, where she was battered about until the ebbing of the tide set her at liberty—at least from the violence of the sea; “and, blessed be God,” says Wordsworth, in his Journal, “for our preservation!”

They arrived at Dover on the 7th, and at London on the 9th, where they met Rogers, Lamb, and Talfourd, amongst other noted persons and friends. Wordsworth walked on to visit Coleridge, from Hampstead Heath, on the 18th, and then went down to Cambridge, to congratulate his brother, Dr. Wordsworth, on his appointment to the Mastership of Trinity College.

They returned to Rydal Mount on Christmas Eve, visiting Sir George and Lady Beaumont, at Coleorton, by the way. Sir George was then about to build a church on his estate, and this fact led to conversation on Church History, and eventually to the production of the “Ecclesiastical Sonnets.” In the third part of the first of these Sonnets occurs the following line:—

“I saw the figure of a lovely maid.”

And the note attached to it, by the poet, is so interesting, that I must transcribe it:—

“When I came to this part of the series, I had the dream described in this sonnet. Thefigure was that of my daughter, and the whole passed exactly as here represented. The sonnet was composed on the middle road leading from Grasmere to Ambleside; it was began as I left the last house in the vale, and finished, word for word, as it now stands, before I came in view of Rydal. I wish I could say the same of the five or six hundred I have written; most of them were frequently retouched, in the course of composition, and not a few laboriously.”

Here is the sonnet in question:—

“I saw the figure of a lovely maid,Seated, alone, beneath a darksome tree,Whose fondly-overhanging canopySet off her brightness with a pleasing shade.No spirit was she; that my heart betrayed,For she was one I loved exceedingly;But while I gazed in tender reverie(Or was it sleep that with my fancy played?),The bright corporeal presence—form and face—Remaining still distinct, grew thin and rare,Like sunny mists; at length the golden hair,Shape, limbs, and heavenly features, keeping pace,Each with the other, in a lingering raceOf dissolution, melted into air.”

In 1823, Wordsworth again visited the Continent, making a short tour, with his wife, in Belgium and Holland. As usual, a journal of travel was kept by the poet, and is printed, partly at least, in the “Memoirs.” At the close of the summer, in the next year, he made a short excursion in North Wales, the records of which are contained in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, dated Hindwell, Radnor, September 20, 1824.[L]Again, in 1828, the poet, accompanied by his daughter, Dora, made an excursion to see Coleridge, through Belgium, and up the Rhine. And it was at this time that the “Incident at Bruges” was written, concerning which the poet says:—“Dora and I, while taking a walk along a retired part of the town, heard the voice as here described, and were afterwards informed that it was a Convent, in which were many English. We were both much touched, I may say, affected, and Dora moved, as appears in the verses.” The “Lineson a Jewish Family,” were likewise written on this tour. The poet, his daughter, and Coleridge were at St. Goar, when they first saw this family. They had provided themselves with a basket of provisions for the day, and offered the poor people a share of them. The mother refused for the rest, because it was a fast-day, adding, that whether such observances were right or wrong, it was her duty to keep them. They were all poor, ragged, and hungry, but exceedingly beautiful, and the self-command, self-respect, and self-sacrifice of the woman is the moral of this little story, I think, although no allusion is made to it in the poem.

In 1829, Wordsworth made a tour in Ireland, with J. Marshall, Esq., M.P. of Leeds. All through his life Wordsworth had a horror of Popery; and this journey, with his Continental tours, tended to confirm it with still greater intensity. He hated Popery because it was the avowed enemy of freedom, and he would not sanction the Catholic Emancipation Bill, because he thought that by giving freedom to the Catholic religion, the Government were but paving the way for a frightful domination over the souls and bodies of men. Still heloved freedom—as his sonnets to “Liberty,” and his enthusiastic sympathies with republican France, at the outbreak of the first revolution sufficiently show. He was a Churchman, however, devotedly attached to the traditions, forms, and doctrines of the Church, and there was no moving him from these foundations. He attributed the distress and misery of Ireland to the priests—Catholic, of course—and to the false tenures of the land. The country, he said, had never been fully conquered, and this was another and a chief cause of the degradation of Ireland. The people were under the control—absolute control—of the priests, ready to do their bidding, let that bidding be what it might. And he trembled—as well he might—for the power of the Irish Church! God forgive us, we are all at the best but short-sighted mortals, and few can see the truth, save through the medium of prejudice. The Irish Church, ifmyvision be clear, is one of the many stumbling blocks, and rubbish heaps in the way of Irish civilization; and certainly the Roman Catholic Church is another.

This tour supplied Wordsworth with very few materials for poetry. The lines, however,in the fine poem on the “Power of Sound,” one of thefinestpoems which Wordsworth has written, commencing

“Thou too be heard, lone eagle!”

were, he says, suggested near the Giant’s Causeway, where he saw a pair of eagles wheel over his head, and then dart off “as if to hide themselves in a blaze of sky made by the setting sun.”

It was about this time also that the sweet poem, entitled “The Triad,” was written, in which the daughters of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, are bound together in the most musical and flowery forms, as the three Graces. Wordsworth often promised these fair children to send them down to immortality in his verses, but it was long before the mood seized him, and themodus operandiwas made plain to him. At last the ideas embodied in “The Triad” struck him, and the result is something finer than the most vivid sculpture. The poet commences—

“Shew me the noblest youth of present time,Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth;Some god or hero from the Olympian climeReturned to seek a consort upon earth;Or, in no doubtful prospect let me see,The brightest star of ages yet to be,And I will mate and match him blissfully.”

So confident is he of the beauty and virtue of the three fair girls hidden amongst the recesses of the hills, that he boasts of their worthiness to match even the noblest of gods or heroes. And then he invokes them to appear, whilst a youth expectant at his side, and breathless as they,

“Looks to the earth and to the vacant air;And with a wandering air that seems to chide,Asks of the clouds what occupants they hide.”

And now the poet will fulfil his promise, and show the golden youth this beautiful triad of Graces.

“Fear not a constraining measure!—Yielding to the gentle spell,Lucida! from domes of pleasure,Or from cottage-sprinkled dell,Comes to regions solitary,Where the eagle builds her aery,Above the hermit’s long-forsaken cell!—She comes!—beholdThat figure, like a ship with silver sail!Nearer she draws; a breeze uplifts her veil;Upon her coming waitAs pure a sunshine, and as soft a gale,As e’er, on herbage-covering earthly mold,Tempted the bird of Juno to unfoldHis richest splendour,—when his veering gait,And every motion of his starry train,Seem governed by a strainOf music, audible to him alone.”

And then we have a picture of the lady:—

Back to Index Next