FOOTNOTES

“The light that never was on sea or land,”

which gives to these a peculiar charm, but which is less present in his later productions. This idealizing light was drawn either from remembrances of that dream-like vividness and splendor above noticed, which in childhood he saw resting on all things, or from occasional returns of the same vivid emotion and quick flashings from within, which his restored happiness in Nature for a time brought back. This peculiar light culminates in the “Ode on Immortality,” though there it is rather a remembrance of somethinggone than a present possession. Perhaps the last powerful recurrence of this visionary gleam which he felt is that recorded in the lines composed upon “An Evening of Extraordinary Beauty and Splendor,” seen from the little mount in front of his Rydal home in the year 1818.[17]

But these high instincts, and all the impulses akin to them, what are they, what is their worth and meaning, what are we to think about them? Are they merely erratic flashes, garnishing for a moment our sky in early years, soon to be lost forever in the gray light of common day? This is the way in which most poets have regarded them, and so they have sung many a sad depressing strain over the vanished illusions of youth. But this was not the way with Wordsworth. Mr. Leslie Stephens, in a recent essay of great value, has admirably pointed out how his whole philosophy is based on “the identity between the instincts of our childhood and our enlightened reason,” and is busied with expounding the processby which “our early intuitions may be transformed into settled principles of feeling and action.” Those vague instincts, Wordsworth believed, come to man from a divine source, and are given to him not merely for pleasure’s sake, but that he may condense them into permanent principles by thought, by the faithful exercise of the affections, by contemplation of Nature, and by high resolve. The outer world was best and most truly seen when viewed, not as a solitary existence apart from man, but as the background of human life, and looked at through the human emotions of awe, reverence, and love. Thus, though those early ideal lights might disappear, something else, as precious and more permanent, would be wrought into character as the vague emotions became transmuted into what he calls “intellectual love,” “feeling intellect,” “hopeful reason,” all of which are but different names for that state of consciousness which he held to be the organ or eye that sees all highest truth.

“This spiritual love acts not nor existsWithout imagination, which, in truth,Is but another name for absolute powerAnd clearest insight, amplitude of mind,And reason in her most exalted mood.”

“This spiritual love acts not nor exists

Without imagination, which, in truth,

Is but another name for absolute power

And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,

And reason in her most exalted mood.”

It may be said, perhaps, This philosophy is all well enough for those who have in childhood known such ideal experiences in the presence of Nature. But these are the few; most men knownothing of them. Be it so. But to these, too, this philosophy has a word to speak. If the many have been insensible to Nature, most surely they have known the first home affections, to father and mother, to brother and sister. In early youth they have felt the warm glow of friendship, and later in life the first domestic affections may have revived more deeply when manhood has made for itself a second home. Of these emotions time must needs make many of them past experiences. Are they then to be no more than fond memories without influence on our present selves? Wordsworth teaches, and all wise men agree with him, that if we allow these to pass from us, as sunbeams from a hill-side, the character is lowered and worsened; if they are retained in thought and melted into our being, they become the most fruitful sources of ennobled character. The firm purpose not to

“Break faith with those whom he has laidIn earth’s dark chambers,”

“Break faith with those whom he has laid

In earth’s dark chambers,”

—to how many a man has this become the chief incentive to perseverance in high endeavor!

This is a philosophy which will wear. It suits not only the visionary in his solitude, but is fitted as well for the counting-house and the market-place.

Again, it may be said, This way of looking at Nature and life may suit a man in the heyday of life, when his nerves are strong, his hopes high,and all things wear their summer mood. In such a time he may well sing

“Naught shall prevail against us or disturbOur cheerful faith that all which we beholdIs full of blessings.”

“Naught shall prevail against us or disturb

Our cheerful faith that all which we behold

Is full of blessings.”

No doubt, through “The Prelude,” and through all Wordsworth’s poetry contemporary with it, that is, all his poetry composed before the age of thirty-five, there runs a vein of Optimism. But a man’s views of life are not complete at that age. Though he never expressly recanted any of the views expressed in “The Prelude,” yet he added to them new elements when time and grief showed him other sides of life. Hitherto, human sorrow had been to him but a “still sad music” far away. But when, in 1805, Nature, with her night and tempest, drove his favorite brother’s ship on the Shambles of Portland Head, and wrecked the life he greatly loved, then he learned that she was not always serene, but could be stern and cruel. Then sorrow came home to him, and entered into his inmost soul. In that bereavement we find him writing—“Why have we sympathies that make the best of us afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet we see dealt about so lavishly by the Supreme Governor? Why should our notions of right towards each other, and to all sentient beings within our influence, differ so widely from what appears to be his notion and rule, if everything were to end here? Would it not be blasphemous to say that... we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition of another and a better world, I do not see.” This is not the language of a pantheist, as he has been often called, nor of an optimist, one blind to the dark side of the world, as his poetry would sometimes make us fancy him. From that time on, the sights and sounds of Nature took to Wordsworth a soberer hue, a more solemn tone. The change of mood is grandly expressed in the “Elegiac Stanzas on a Picture of Peele Castle,” where he says that he now could look no more on

“A smiling sea, and be what I have been.”

Yet he gives way to no weak or selfish lamentation, but sets himself to draw from the sorrow fortitude for himself, sympathy and tenderness for others:—

“Then welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,And frequent sights of what is to be borne;Such sights, or worse, as are before me here;—Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.”

“Then welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,

And frequent sights of what is to be borne;

Such sights, or worse, as are before me here;—

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.”

That is manly and health-giving sorrow. It was his happiness, more than of most men, to use all that came to him for the end it was meant for. Early ideal influences from Nature, the first home affections, sorrows of mature manhood—none of them were lost. All melted into him, and did their part in educating his heart to a more feeling and tender wisdom. But they could not have done this, they could not have so deepened andpurified him, had they not been received into a spirit based in firm faith on God, from whom all these things came, whose purpose for himself and others they subserved. This discipline of sorrow was increased when, a few years after the loss of his brother, he laid in Grasmere church-yard two infant children. Those trials of his home affections sank deep into him,—more and more humanized his spirit, and made him feel more distinctly the power of those Christian faiths which, though never denied by him, were present in his early poems rather as a latent atmosphere of sentiment than as expressed beliefs. It cannot be denied that in his pure, but perhaps too confident youth, the Naturalistic spirit, so to call it, is stronger in his poetry than the Christian. He expected more from the teaching of Nature, combined with the moral intuitions of his soul, than these in themselves, and unaided, can give. He did not enough see that man needs other supports than these for the trials he has to endure. This is not a matter of positive assertion or of positive denial,—rather of comparative emphasis and proportion. We may say that the Christian view of life and Nature does not at first receive the prominence which is its due. But under the pressure of sorrow, and the sense of his own weakness, he more and more turned to the Christian consolations. This change was a very gradual one, and he has left no direct record of it. Only it is perceptible here and there in his laterpoems, and, what is most to our purpose, it colors the eye with which he looked on Nature. This cannot, perhaps, better be illustrated than by comparing two poems composed in the same region at an interval of thirty years. In 1803, in his buoyant youth, during an evening walk by the shores of Loch Katrine, with his face toward a glowing sunset, he composed the exquisite lines “Stepping Westward,” in which the scene around him and a chance word addressed to him suggested

“The thoughtOf traveling through the world that layBefore me in my endless way.”

“The thought

Of traveling through the world that lay

Before me in my endless way.”

In the autumn of 1831, when he was in his sixty-second year, he again passed through the Trossachs, and this was the sentiment that then arose within him. It may, as he himself suggests, have been colored by the remembrance of his recent parting with Sir Walter Scott and the thought of his decay, but it is altogether in keeping with his own habitual mood at that time—

“There’s not a nook within this solemn Pass,But were an apt confessional for oneTaught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,That life is but a tale of morning grassWithered at eve. From scenes of art which chaseThat thought away, turn, and with watchful eyesFeed it, ’mid Nature’s old felicities,Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glassUntouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest.If from a golden perch of aspen spray(October’s workmanship to rival May),The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast,That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest.”

“There’s not a nook within this solemn Pass,

But were an apt confessional for one

Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,

That life is but a tale of morning grass

Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase

That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes

Feed it, ’mid Nature’s old felicities,

Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass

Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest.

If from a golden perch of aspen spray

(October’s workmanship to rival May),

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast,

That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,

Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest.”

There is another poem of the same date, 1831, which, though it is seldom quoted, shall be given here in full, since it well illustrates Wordsworth’s later phase of feeling about natural objects. It is entitled “The Primrose of the Rock,” and refers to a rock which stands on the right hand, a little way up the middle road leading from Rydal to Grasmere:—

“A Rock there is whose homely frontThe passing traveler slights;Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,Like stars, at various heights;And one coy Primrose to that RockThe vernal breeze invites.“What hideous warfare hath been waged,What kingdoms overthrown,Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft,And marked it for my own;A lasting link in Nature’s chainFrom highest heaven let down!“The flowers, still faithful to the stems,Their fellowship renew;These stems are faithful to the rootThat worketh out of view;And to the rock the root adheresIn every fibre true.“Close clings to earth the living rockThough threatening still to fall;The earth is constant to her sphere;And God upholds them all:So blooms this lonely Plant, nor fearsHer annual funeral.“Here closed the meditative strain,But air breathed soft that day,The hoary mountain-heights were cheered.The sunny vale looked gay,And to the Primrose of the RockI gave this after-lay.“I sang—Let myriads of bright flowers,Like thee, in field and groveRevive unenvied; mightier far,Than tremblings that reproveOur vernal tendencies to hopeIs God’s redeeming love;“That love which changed—for wan disease,For sorrow that had bentO’er hopeless dust—for withered age—Their moral element,And turned the thistles of a curseTo types beneficent.“Sin-blighted though we are, we too,The reasoning Sons of Men,From our oblivious winter calledShall rise, and breathe again,And in eternal summer loseOur threescore years and ten.“To humbleness of hearts descendsThis prescience from on highThe faith that elevates the just,Before and when we die,And makes each soul a separate heaven,A court for Deity.”

“A Rock there is whose homely frontThe passing traveler slights;Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,Like stars, at various heights;And one coy Primrose to that RockThe vernal breeze invites.

“A Rock there is whose homely front

The passing traveler slights;

Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,

Like stars, at various heights;

And one coy Primrose to that Rock

The vernal breeze invites.

“What hideous warfare hath been waged,What kingdoms overthrown,Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft,And marked it for my own;A lasting link in Nature’s chainFrom highest heaven let down!

“What hideous warfare hath been waged,

What kingdoms overthrown,

Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft,

And marked it for my own;

A lasting link in Nature’s chain

From highest heaven let down!

“The flowers, still faithful to the stems,Their fellowship renew;These stems are faithful to the rootThat worketh out of view;And to the rock the root adheresIn every fibre true.

“The flowers, still faithful to the stems,

Their fellowship renew;

These stems are faithful to the root

That worketh out of view;

And to the rock the root adheres

In every fibre true.

“Close clings to earth the living rockThough threatening still to fall;The earth is constant to her sphere;And God upholds them all:So blooms this lonely Plant, nor fearsHer annual funeral.

“Close clings to earth the living rock

Though threatening still to fall;

The earth is constant to her sphere;

And God upholds them all:

So blooms this lonely Plant, nor fears

Her annual funeral.

“Here closed the meditative strain,But air breathed soft that day,The hoary mountain-heights were cheered.The sunny vale looked gay,And to the Primrose of the RockI gave this after-lay.

“Here closed the meditative strain,

But air breathed soft that day,

The hoary mountain-heights were cheered.

The sunny vale looked gay,

And to the Primrose of the Rock

I gave this after-lay.

“I sang—Let myriads of bright flowers,Like thee, in field and groveRevive unenvied; mightier far,Than tremblings that reproveOur vernal tendencies to hopeIs God’s redeeming love;

“I sang—Let myriads of bright flowers,

Like thee, in field and grove

Revive unenvied; mightier far,

Than tremblings that reprove

Our vernal tendencies to hope

Is God’s redeeming love;

“That love which changed—for wan disease,For sorrow that had bentO’er hopeless dust—for withered age—Their moral element,And turned the thistles of a curseTo types beneficent.

“That love which changed—for wan disease,

For sorrow that had bent

O’er hopeless dust—for withered age—

Their moral element,

And turned the thistles of a curse

To types beneficent.

“Sin-blighted though we are, we too,The reasoning Sons of Men,From our oblivious winter calledShall rise, and breathe again,And in eternal summer loseOur threescore years and ten.

“Sin-blighted though we are, we too,

The reasoning Sons of Men,

From our oblivious winter called

Shall rise, and breathe again,

And in eternal summer lose

Our threescore years and ten.

“To humbleness of hearts descendsThis prescience from on highThe faith that elevates the just,Before and when we die,And makes each soul a separate heaven,A court for Deity.”

“To humbleness of hearts descends

This prescience from on high

The faith that elevates the just,

Before and when we die,

And makes each soul a separate heaven,

A court for Deity.”

Is not this more in keeping with the whole of Nature, more true to human life in all its aspects, than poetry which dwells merely on the bright and cheerful side of things? If Nature has itsvernal freshness, and its “high midsummer pomps,” has it not as well autumnal decay, bleakness of winter, and dreary visitations of blighting east wind? What are we to make of these? Are not suffering and death forever going on throughout animated creation? What meaning are we to attach to this? As for man, if he has his day of youth and strength and success, what are we to say of failure, disappointment, bereavement, and life’s swift decay? This last, the dark and forlorn side of things, is as real as the bright side. How are we to interpret it? Surely, without attempting any theory which will explain it, nothing is more in keeping with these manifold and seemingly conflicting aspects of life than the faith that He who made and upholds the Universe does not keep coldly aloof, gazing from a distance on the sufferings of his creatures, but has himself entered into the conflict, has himself become the great Sufferer, the great Bearer of all wrong, and is working out for his creatures some better issue through a redemptive sorrow which is Divine. Such a faith, though it does not explain the ills of life, gives them another meaning, and helps men to bear them as no other can. This view of suffering, latent in much of Wordsworth’s poetry, if not fully uttered, at last found full expression in these, which are among his latest lines.

No doubt this, and the few other meditative poems, composed in the same strain at that laterday, have not the magic charm, the ethereal beauty, of those songs sung in buoyant youth, when before the transfiguring power of his imagination the earth appeared to be

“An unsubstantial faery place.”

That passed with youth, and could not return; but another sedater, more moralizing, yet sweetly gracious mood came on,—a mood which is in keeping with that earlier, its natural product representative in one, whose days and whose moods were as he himself wished them to be, “linked each to each by natural piety.” As there is in character a grace that becomes every age, so there is a poetry. And Wordsworth’s later expressions about Nature and life are, I venture to think, as becoming in an old man, matured by much experience and by sorrow, as his earlier more ideal poems became a young man just restored from a great mental crisis, but still with youth on his side. If the poems of the maturer age lost something that belonged to the earlier ones, they also gained new elements,—they contain words which are a support amid the stress of life, and a benediction for its decline.

There were many who knew Wordsworth’s poetry well while he was still alive, who felt its power, and the new light which it threw on the material world. But though they half-guessed they did not fully know the secret of it. They got glimpses of part, but could not grasp the whole of the philosophy on which it was basedBut when, after his death, “The Prelude” was published, they were let into the secret, they saw the hidden foundations on which it rests, as they had never seen them before. The smaller poems were more beautiful, more delightful, but “The Prelude” revealed the secret of their beauty. It showed that all Wordsworth’s impassioned feeling towards Nature was no mere fantastic dream, but based on sanity, on a most assured and reasonable philosophy. It was as though one who had been long gazing on some building grand and fair, admiring the vast sweep of its walls, and the strength of its battlements, without understanding their principle of coherence, were at length to be admitted inside by the master builder, and given a view of the whole plan from within, the principles of the architecture, and the hidden substructures on which it was built. This is what “The Prelude” does for the rest of Wordsworth’s poetry.

For all his later phases of thought, all that followed the republicanism of “The Prelude,” Wordsworth, I know, has been well abused. Shelley bemoaned him, Mr. Browning has flouted him, and following these all the smaller fry of Liberalism have snarled at his heels. But all his changes of thought are self-consistent, and if fairly judged, the good faith and wisdom of them all can well be justified. For a few years during the Revolution he had hoped for a sudden regeneration from that great catastrophe. He foundhimself deceived, and gradually unlearnt the fallacies whence that deception had sprung. He ceased to look for the improvement of mankind from violent convulsions. Neither did he expect much from gradual political change, nor from those formalities which we nickname education, not from a revised code and payment by results, not from these nor from any outward machinery. But he hoped much from whatever helps forward the growth, the expanding, and the deepening, in all the grades of men, of the “feeling soul,” by which they may become more sensitive to the face of Nature, more sensitive towards their fellow-men and the lower creatures, and more open to influences which are directly divine. In these things he believed, for these he wrought consistently, till his task was done.

I have dwelt thus fully on the growth of Wordsworth’s character, the moral discipline through which he passed, and the ultimate maturity of soul to which he attained, in order that we may understand his doctrine regarding Nature. He held that it was only through the soul that the outer world is rightly apprehended—only when it is contemplated through the human emotions of admiration, awe, and love. This he held all his life through. But yet in his way of dealing with Nature, taken as a whole, we shall not be wrong if we note two different, though not conflicting, phases. In his earlier poetic period he was mainly absorbed in the unity andlarge livingness of Nature—in feeling and interpreting the life that is in each individual thing, as well as in the whole, in substituting for a mere machine,—a universe of death,—one which

“Moves with light, and light informed,Actual, divine, and true.”

“Moves with light, and light informed,

Actual, divine, and true.”

In doing this it is not too much to say that his poetry is the most powerful protest which English literature contains against the views of the world engendered by a mechanical deism—the best witness to the spiritual element that exists both in Nature and in man. Nor less is it our surest antidote to the exclusively analytic and microscopic view of Nature, so tyrannous over present thought, the end of which is universal disintegration. This was the work he did when he worked more in his earlier, what has been called, his naturalistic vein.

In his later period the moral tendency became predominant, not that it had ever been absent from his thought. Even at a comparatively early time he had been wont to take the sights and sounds of the sensible world as symbols and correspondences of the invisible. In 1806, hearing the cuckoo’s voice echo from Nab-scar, as he walked on the opposite side of Rydal Mere, he exclaimed:—

“Have not we too? yes, we haveAnswers and we know not whenceEchoes from beyond the grave,Recognized intelligence!“Often as thy inward earCatches such rebounds, beware—Listen, ponder, hold them dear;For of God—of God they are.”

“Have not we too? yes, we haveAnswers and we know not whenceEchoes from beyond the grave,Recognized intelligence!

“Have not we too? yes, we have

Answers and we know not whence

Echoes from beyond the grave,

Recognized intelligence!

“Often as thy inward earCatches such rebounds, beware—Listen, ponder, hold them dear;For of God—of God they are.”

“Often as thy inward ear

Catches such rebounds, beware—

Listen, ponder, hold them dear;

For of God—of God they are.”

Again, in that Evening ode composed in 1818, to which reference has been already made, as he gazes on

“The silent spectacle—the gleam—The shadow—and the peace supreme,”

“The silent spectacle—the gleam—

The shadow—and the peace supreme,”

he exclaims—

“Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad,And see to what fair countries ye are bound!”

“Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad,

And see to what fair countries ye are bound!”

In his latest phase, as seen in the two poems of 1831, quoted above, the moral has so overpowered the naturalistic mood that this spiritualizing of all Nature into symbols of things unseen is rather obviously obtruded than delicately hinted. However this may be, to do this, to treat Nature in this way, so to interpret it that it shall touch the moral heart of the most thoughtful and apprehensive men—this is one of the two highest functions of inspired Poetry. And in the exercise of this function, too, Wordsworth has taught us much.

It would be interesting to continue this investigation, and to trace the different phases of the great movement towards Nature, as it manifests itself in the poets who were Wordsworth’s contemporaries, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott, and Keble; and in the poets of the present generation,and in other writers still living, who in prose works have treated of æsthetics. But to do so would require at least another volume. With Wordsworth, however, as the great leader of that movement, one may, with propriety, pause for the present. For however various and interesting have been the aspects of Nature that have been presented by his contemporaries, or by more recent poets, none of them has rendered those aspects he has essayed more truly, broadly, and penetratingly. And Wordsworth alone, adding the philosopher to the poet, has speculated widely and deeply on the relation in which Nature stands, to the soul of man, and on the truths suggested by this relation. In that relation, and along the lines of thought that radiate from it, is to be found the true interpretation of Nature—that interpretation which man still craves, after Science has said its last word. This interpretation, however, is a truth which can only be apprehended by the moral imagination, that is, the imagination filled with moral light, and which will commend itself only to the most thoughtful men in their most feeling moods. It is not likely ever to be vindicated by logical processes, or tabulated in scientific registers. Not the less for that is it a vital truth, attesting itself, as all vital truths do, by the harmony it brings into all our thoughts—by the response it finds in the inner man.

FOOTNOTES[1]Quarterly Review, October, 1870, pp. 143, 144.[2]Wordsworth, Preface to Second Edition ofLyrical Ballads.[3]Myosotis Alpestris.[4]S. T. Coleridge,Lit. Biog.vol. ii. p. 23.[5]Since writing the above passage, I have been pleased to find in Mr. Hamerton’sSylvan Year, the following passage, which expresses more fully the same thought. He speaks (page 68) of “the delight of the citizen in green leaves, and the intensity of sensation about Nature which we find in poets who were bred in towns; whilst those who have lived much in the country, though they know and observe more, seem to feel more equably, and to go to Nature with less of sensuous thirst and excitement.”[6]Life of Sir Isaac Newton, by Sir David Brewster, vol. ii. pp. 407, 408.[7]Mozley’sUniversity Sermons, p. 141.[8]See Müller’sLectures on Language, 2d series, pp. 435, 436.[9]Miss Wordsworth, p. 228.[10]Essay on Keble.[11]Trench on Parables, p. 13.[12]Born 1621, died 1695.[13]Dawson,Nature and the Bible, pp. 23, 24.[14]Odyssey, B. vii. 112; Worsley, B. vii. 17th stanza.[15]To this assertion I must make one exception. Since these remarks were written, my attention has been kindly drawn by Professor Campbell of St. Andrews to a passage in the ninth book ofParadise Lost, in which Milton for a moment reverts to the old rural freshness in something of the manner of his youth. It is the place where the Tempter first catches sight of Eve:—“Much he the place admired, the person more.As one who long in populous city pent,Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,Forth issuing on a summer’s morn to breatheAmong the pleasant villages and farmsAdjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,She most, and in her look seems all delight:Such pleasure took the Serpent to beholdThis flowery flat, the sweet recess of EveThus early, thus alone.”[16]From Dr. Clerk’s new translation of Ossian.[17]How greatly to be desired is an edition of Wordsworth’s entire works, in which the poems should be printed in the exact chronological order of their composition, along with those notes on them which the poet dictated late in life. Such an arrangement of them is absolutely essential to a right understanding of their meaning, and those who desire to attain such an understanding are obliged to make the chronological arrangement for themselves, at great trouble, and at best very imperfectly. The time when such an edition can be made, with the fullest means for accuracy, is fast passing, if it is not already past. Is there no hope that those in whose hands the thing lies will still render this great and much-needed service to the great poet’s memory?

FOOTNOTES

[1]Quarterly Review, October, 1870, pp. 143, 144.

[2]Wordsworth, Preface to Second Edition ofLyrical Ballads.

[3]Myosotis Alpestris.

[4]S. T. Coleridge,Lit. Biog.vol. ii. p. 23.

[5]Since writing the above passage, I have been pleased to find in Mr. Hamerton’sSylvan Year, the following passage, which expresses more fully the same thought. He speaks (page 68) of “the delight of the citizen in green leaves, and the intensity of sensation about Nature which we find in poets who were bred in towns; whilst those who have lived much in the country, though they know and observe more, seem to feel more equably, and to go to Nature with less of sensuous thirst and excitement.”

[6]Life of Sir Isaac Newton, by Sir David Brewster, vol. ii. pp. 407, 408.

[7]Mozley’sUniversity Sermons, p. 141.

[8]See Müller’sLectures on Language, 2d series, pp. 435, 436.

[9]Miss Wordsworth, p. 228.

[10]Essay on Keble.

[11]Trench on Parables, p. 13.

[12]Born 1621, died 1695.

[13]Dawson,Nature and the Bible, pp. 23, 24.

[14]Odyssey, B. vii. 112; Worsley, B. vii. 17th stanza.

[15]To this assertion I must make one exception. Since these remarks were written, my attention has been kindly drawn by Professor Campbell of St. Andrews to a passage in the ninth book ofParadise Lost, in which Milton for a moment reverts to the old rural freshness in something of the manner of his youth. It is the place where the Tempter first catches sight of Eve:—“Much he the place admired, the person more.As one who long in populous city pent,Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,Forth issuing on a summer’s morn to breatheAmong the pleasant villages and farmsAdjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,She most, and in her look seems all delight:Such pleasure took the Serpent to beholdThis flowery flat, the sweet recess of EveThus early, thus alone.”

“Much he the place admired, the person more.As one who long in populous city pent,Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,Forth issuing on a summer’s morn to breatheAmong the pleasant villages and farmsAdjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,She most, and in her look seems all delight:Such pleasure took the Serpent to beholdThis flowery flat, the sweet recess of EveThus early, thus alone.”

“Much he the place admired, the person more.

As one who long in populous city pent,

Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,

Forth issuing on a summer’s morn to breathe

Among the pleasant villages and farms

Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,

The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,

Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;

If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,

What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,

She most, and in her look seems all delight:

Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold

This flowery flat, the sweet recess of Eve

Thus early, thus alone.”

[16]From Dr. Clerk’s new translation of Ossian.

[17]How greatly to be desired is an edition of Wordsworth’s entire works, in which the poems should be printed in the exact chronological order of their composition, along with those notes on them which the poet dictated late in life. Such an arrangement of them is absolutely essential to a right understanding of their meaning, and those who desire to attain such an understanding are obliged to make the chronological arrangement for themselves, at great trouble, and at best very imperfectly. The time when such an edition can be made, with the fullest means for accuracy, is fast passing, if it is not already past. Is there no hope that those in whose hands the thing lies will still render this great and much-needed service to the great poet’s memory?

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