NOTEWhy did Hegel, in his lectures on Aesthetics, so treat of tragedy as to suggest the idea that the kind of tragedy which he personally preferred (let us for the sake of brevity call it ‘ancient’) is also the most adequate embodiment of the idea of tragedy? This question can be answered, I think, only conjecturally, but some remarks on it may have an interest for readers of Hegel (they are too brief to be of use to others).One answer might be this. Hegel did not really hold that idea. But he was lecturing, not writing a book. He thought the principle of tragedy was more clearly and readily visible in ancient works than in modern; and so, for purposes of exposition, he emphasised the ancient form. And this fact, with his personal enthusiasm for certain Greek plays, leads the reader of theAesthetikto misconstrue him.Again, we must remember the facts of Hegel’s life. He seems first to have reflected on tragedy at a time when his enthusiasm for the Greeks and their ‘substantial’ ethics was combined, not only with a contemptuous dislike for much modern ‘subjectivity’ (this he never ceased to feel), but with a certain hostility to the individualism and the un-political character of Christian morality. His first view of tragedy was thus, in effect, a theory of Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy; and it appears in the early essay onNaturrechtand more fully in thePhaenomenologie. Perhaps, then, when he came to deal with the subject more generally, he insensibly regarded the ancient form as the typical form, and tended to treat the modern rather as a modification of this type than as an alternative embodiment of the general idea of tragedy. The note in theRechtsphilosophie(p. 196) perhaps favours this idea.But, whether it is correct or no, I believe that the impression produced by theAesthetikis a true one, and that Hegel did deliberately consider the ancient form the more satisfactory. It would not follow, of course, from that opinion that he thought the advantage was all on one side, or considered this or that ancient poet greater than this or that modern, or wished that modern poets had tried to write tragedies of the Greek type. Tragedy would, in his view, be in somewhat the same position as Sculpture. Renaissance sculpture, he might say, has qualities in which it is superior to Greek, and Michael Angelo may have been as great an artist as Pheidias; but all the same for certain reasons Greek sculpture is, and probably will remain, sculpturepar excellence. So, though not to the same extent, with tragedy.And such a view would cohere with his general view of Art. For he taught that, in a sense, Classical Art is Artpar excellence, and that in Greece beauty held a position such as it never held before and will not hold again. To explain in a brief note how this position bears upon his treatment of modern tragedy would be impossible: but if the student of Hegel will remember in what sense and on what grounds he held it; that he describes Beauty as the ‘sinnlichesScheinen der Idee’; that for him the new idea that distinguished Christianity and Romantic Art from Greek religion and Classical Art is that ‘unendlicheSubjektivität’ which implies a negative, though not merely negative, relation to sense; and that in Romantic Art this idea is not only exhibited in the religious sphere, but appears in the position given to personal honour, love, and loyalty, and indirectly in what Hegel calls ‘die formelle Selbstständigkeit der individuellen Besonderheiten,’ and in the fuller admission of common and un-beautiful reality into the realm of Beauty,—he will see how all this is connected with those characteristics of modern tragedy which Hegel regards as necessary and yet as, in part, drawbacks. This connection, which Hegel has no occasion to work out, will be apparent even from consideration of the introductory chapter on ‘die romantische Kunstform,’Aesthetik, ii. 120-135.There is one marked difference, I may add, between ancient and modern tragedy, which should be considered with reference to this subject, and which Hegel, I think, does not explicitlypoint out. Speaking roughly, we may say that the former includes, while the latter tends to ignore, the accepted religious ideas of the time. The ultimate reason of this difference, on Hegel’s view, would be that the Olympian gods are themselves the ‘sinnlichesScheinen der Idee,’ and so are in the same element as Art, while this is, on the whole, not so with modern religious ideas. One result would be that Greek tragedy represents the total Greek mind more fully than modern tragedy can the total modern mind.
NOTE
Why did Hegel, in his lectures on Aesthetics, so treat of tragedy as to suggest the idea that the kind of tragedy which he personally preferred (let us for the sake of brevity call it ‘ancient’) is also the most adequate embodiment of the idea of tragedy? This question can be answered, I think, only conjecturally, but some remarks on it may have an interest for readers of Hegel (they are too brief to be of use to others).
One answer might be this. Hegel did not really hold that idea. But he was lecturing, not writing a book. He thought the principle of tragedy was more clearly and readily visible in ancient works than in modern; and so, for purposes of exposition, he emphasised the ancient form. And this fact, with his personal enthusiasm for certain Greek plays, leads the reader of theAesthetikto misconstrue him.
Again, we must remember the facts of Hegel’s life. He seems first to have reflected on tragedy at a time when his enthusiasm for the Greeks and their ‘substantial’ ethics was combined, not only with a contemptuous dislike for much modern ‘subjectivity’ (this he never ceased to feel), but with a certain hostility to the individualism and the un-political character of Christian morality. His first view of tragedy was thus, in effect, a theory of Aeschylean and Sophoclean tragedy; and it appears in the early essay onNaturrechtand more fully in thePhaenomenologie. Perhaps, then, when he came to deal with the subject more generally, he insensibly regarded the ancient form as the typical form, and tended to treat the modern rather as a modification of this type than as an alternative embodiment of the general idea of tragedy. The note in theRechtsphilosophie(p. 196) perhaps favours this idea.
But, whether it is correct or no, I believe that the impression produced by theAesthetikis a true one, and that Hegel did deliberately consider the ancient form the more satisfactory. It would not follow, of course, from that opinion that he thought the advantage was all on one side, or considered this or that ancient poet greater than this or that modern, or wished that modern poets had tried to write tragedies of the Greek type. Tragedy would, in his view, be in somewhat the same position as Sculpture. Renaissance sculpture, he might say, has qualities in which it is superior to Greek, and Michael Angelo may have been as great an artist as Pheidias; but all the same for certain reasons Greek sculpture is, and probably will remain, sculpturepar excellence. So, though not to the same extent, with tragedy.
And such a view would cohere with his general view of Art. For he taught that, in a sense, Classical Art is Artpar excellence, and that in Greece beauty held a position such as it never held before and will not hold again. To explain in a brief note how this position bears upon his treatment of modern tragedy would be impossible: but if the student of Hegel will remember in what sense and on what grounds he held it; that he describes Beauty as the ‘sinnlichesScheinen der Idee’; that for him the new idea that distinguished Christianity and Romantic Art from Greek religion and Classical Art is that ‘unendlicheSubjektivität’ which implies a negative, though not merely negative, relation to sense; and that in Romantic Art this idea is not only exhibited in the religious sphere, but appears in the position given to personal honour, love, and loyalty, and indirectly in what Hegel calls ‘die formelle Selbstständigkeit der individuellen Besonderheiten,’ and in the fuller admission of common and un-beautiful reality into the realm of Beauty,—he will see how all this is connected with those characteristics of modern tragedy which Hegel regards as necessary and yet as, in part, drawbacks. This connection, which Hegel has no occasion to work out, will be apparent even from consideration of the introductory chapter on ‘die romantische Kunstform,’Aesthetik, ii. 120-135.
There is one marked difference, I may add, between ancient and modern tragedy, which should be considered with reference to this subject, and which Hegel, I think, does not explicitlypoint out. Speaking roughly, we may say that the former includes, while the latter tends to ignore, the accepted religious ideas of the time. The ultimate reason of this difference, on Hegel’s view, would be that the Olympian gods are themselves the ‘sinnlichesScheinen der Idee,’ and so are in the same element as Art, while this is, on the whole, not so with modern religious ideas. One result would be that Greek tragedy represents the total Greek mind more fully than modern tragedy can the total modern mind.
1See, primarily,Aesthetik, iii. 479-581, and especially 525-581. There is much inAesthetik, i. 219-306, and a good deal in ii. 1-243, that bears on the subject. See also the section on Greek religion inReligionsphilosophie, ii. 96-156, especially 131-6, 152-6; and the references to the death of Socrates inGeschichte der Philosophie, ii. 81 ff., especially 102-5. The works so far cited all consist of posthumous redactions of lecture-notes. Among works published by Hegel himself, the early essay on ‘Naturrecht’ (Werke, i. 386 ff.), andPhaenomenologie d. Geistes, 320-348, 527-542, deal with or bear onGreektragedy. See alsoRechtsphilosophie, 196, note. There is a note onWallensteininWerke, xvii. 411-4. These references are to the second edition of the works cited, where there are two editions.2His theory of tragedy is connected with his view of the function of negation in the universe. No statement therefore which ignores his metaphysics and his philosophy of religion can be more than a fragmentary account of that theory.3I say ‘might,’ because Hegel himself in thePhaenomenologieuses those very terms ‘divine’ and ‘human law’ in reference to theAntigone.4See Note at end of lecture.5This interpretation of Hegel’s ‘abstract’ is more or less conjectural and doubtful.6Hegel’s meaning does not fully appear in the sentences here condensed. The ‘blessedness’ comes from the sense of greatness or beauty in the characters.7Hegel himself expressly guards against this misconception.8The same point may be put thus, in view of that dangerous word ‘personality.’ Our interest in Macbeth may be called interest in a personality; but it is not an interest in some bare form of self-consciousness, nor yet in a person in the legal sense, but in a personality full of matter. This matter is not an ethical or universal end, but it must in a sense be universal—human nature in a particular form—or it would not excite the horror, sympathy, and admiration it does excite. Nor, again, could it excite these feelings if it were not composed largely of qualities on which we set a high value.9In relation tobothsides in the conflict (though it may not need to negate life in both). For the ultimate agent in the catastrophe is emphatically not the finite power of one side. It is beyond both, and, at any rate in relation to them, boundless.
1See, primarily,Aesthetik, iii. 479-581, and especially 525-581. There is much inAesthetik, i. 219-306, and a good deal in ii. 1-243, that bears on the subject. See also the section on Greek religion inReligionsphilosophie, ii. 96-156, especially 131-6, 152-6; and the references to the death of Socrates inGeschichte der Philosophie, ii. 81 ff., especially 102-5. The works so far cited all consist of posthumous redactions of lecture-notes. Among works published by Hegel himself, the early essay on ‘Naturrecht’ (Werke, i. 386 ff.), andPhaenomenologie d. Geistes, 320-348, 527-542, deal with or bear onGreektragedy. See alsoRechtsphilosophie, 196, note. There is a note onWallensteininWerke, xvii. 411-4. These references are to the second edition of the works cited, where there are two editions.
2His theory of tragedy is connected with his view of the function of negation in the universe. No statement therefore which ignores his metaphysics and his philosophy of religion can be more than a fragmentary account of that theory.
3I say ‘might,’ because Hegel himself in thePhaenomenologieuses those very terms ‘divine’ and ‘human law’ in reference to theAntigone.
4See Note at end of lecture.
5This interpretation of Hegel’s ‘abstract’ is more or less conjectural and doubtful.
6Hegel’s meaning does not fully appear in the sentences here condensed. The ‘blessedness’ comes from the sense of greatness or beauty in the characters.
7Hegel himself expressly guards against this misconception.
8The same point may be put thus, in view of that dangerous word ‘personality.’ Our interest in Macbeth may be called interest in a personality; but it is not an interest in some bare form of self-consciousness, nor yet in a person in the legal sense, but in a personality full of matter. This matter is not an ethical or universal end, but it must in a sense be universal—human nature in a particular form—or it would not excite the horror, sympathy, and admiration it does excite. Nor, again, could it excite these feelings if it were not composed largely of qualities on which we set a high value.
9In relation tobothsides in the conflict (though it may not need to negate life in both). For the ultimate agent in the catastrophe is emphatically not the finite power of one side. It is beyond both, and, at any rate in relation to them, boundless.
WORDSWORTH
WORDSWORTH1
‘Neverforget what, I believe, was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen.... My ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to these petty stings.’ These sentences, from a letter written by Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont in 1807, may remind us of the common attitude of his reviewers in the dozen years when most of his best poetry was produced. A century has gone by, and there is now no English poet, either of that period or of any other, who has been the subject of criticism more just, more appreciative, we may even say more reverential. Some of this later criticism might have satisfied even that sense of wonder, awe, and solemn responsibility with which the poet himself regarded the operation of the spirit of poetry within him; and if we desire an interpretation of that spirit, we shall find a really astonishing number of excellentguides. Coleridge, Hazlitt, Arnold, Swinburne, Brooke, Myers, Pater, Lowell, Legouis,—how easy to add to this list of them! Only the other day there came another, Mr. Walter Raleigh. And that the best book on an English poet that has appeared for some years should be a study of Wordsworth is just what might have been expected. The whirligig of time has brought him a full revenge.
I have no idea of attempting in these two lectures another study, or even an estimate, of Wordsworth. My purpose is much more limited. I think that in a good deal of current criticism, and also in the notions of his poetry prevalent among general readers, a disproportionate emphasis is often laid on certain aspects of his mind and writings. And I should like to offer some words of warning as to this tendency, and also some advice as to the spirit in which he should be approached. I will begin with the advice, though I am tempted at the last moment to omit it, and simply to refer you to Mr. Raleigh, who throughout his book has practised what I am about to preach.
1.
There have been greater poets than Wordsworth, but none more original. He saw new things, or he saw things in a new way. Naturally, this would have availed us little if his new things had been private fancies, or if his new perception had been superficial. But that was not so. If it had been, Wordsworth might have won acceptance more quickly, but he would not have gained his lasting hold on poetic minds. As it is, those in whom he creates the taste by which he is relished, those who learn to love him (and in each generation they are not a few), never let him go. Their love for him is of the kind that he himself celebrated, a settled passion, perhaps‘slow to begin,’ but ‘never ending,’ and twined around the roots of their being. And the reason is that they find his way of seeing the world, his poetic experience, what Arnold meant by his ‘criticism of life,’ to be something deep, and therefore something that will hold. It continues to bring them joy, peace, strength, exaltation. It does not thin out or break beneath them as they grow older and wiser; nor does it fail them, much less repel them, in sadness or even in their sorest need. And yet—to return to our starting-point—it continues to strike them as original, and something more. It is not like Shakespeare’s myriad-mindedness; it is, for good or evil or both, peculiar. They can remember, perhaps, the day when first they saw a cloud somewhat as Wordsworth saw it, or first really understood what made him write this poem or that; his unique way of seeing and feeling, though now familiar and beloved, still brings them not only peace, strength, exaltation, but a ‘shock of mild surprise’; and his paradoxes, long known by heart and found full of truth, still remain paradoxes.
If this is so, the road into Wordsworth’s mind must be through his strangeness and his paradoxes, and not round them. I do not mean that they are everywhere in his poetry. Much of it, not to speak of occasional platitudes, is beautiful without being peculiar or difficult; and some of this may be as valuable as that which is audacious or strange. But unless we get hold of that, we remain outside Wordsworth’s centre; and, if we have not a most unusual affinity to him, we cannot get hold of that unless we realise its strangeness, and refuse to blunt the sharpness of its edge. Consider, for example, two or three of his statements; the statements of a poet, no doubt, and not of a philosopher, but still evidently statements expressing, intimating, or symbolising, what for him was the most vital truth. He said that the meanestflower that blows could give him thoughts that often lie too deep for tears. He said, in a poem not less solemn, that Nature was the soul of all his moral being; and also that she can so influence us that nothing will be able to disturb our faith that all that we behold is full of blessings. After making his Wanderer tell the heart-rending tale of Margaret, he makes him say that the beauty and tranquillity of her ruined cottage had once so affected him
That what we feel of sorrow and despairFrom ruin and from change, and all the griefThe passing shows of Being leave behind,Appeared an idle dream, that could not liveWhere meditation was.
That what we feel of sorrow and despair
From ruin and from change, and all the grief
The passing shows of Being leave behind,
Appeared an idle dream, that could not live
Where meditation was.
He said that this same Wanderer could read in the silent faces of the clouds unutterable love, and that among the mountains all things for him breathed immortality. He said to ‘Almighty God,’
But thy most dreaded instrumentFor working out a pure intentIs Man arrayed for mutual slaughter;Yea, Carnage is thy daughter.
But thy most dreaded instrument
For working out a pure intent
Is Man arrayed for mutual slaughter;
Yea, Carnage is thy daughter.
This last, it will be agreed, is a startling statement; but is it a whit more extraordinary than the others? It is so only if we assume that we are familiar with thoughts that lie too deep for tears, or if we translate ‘the soul of all my moral being’ into ‘somehow concordant with my moral feelings,’ or convert ‘all that we behold’ into ‘a good deal that we behold,’ or transform the Wanderer’s reading of the silent faces of the clouds into an argument from ‘design.’ But this is the road round Wordsworth’s mind, not into it.2
Again, with all Wordsworth’s best poems, it is essential not to miss the unique tone of his experience. This doubtless holds good of any true poet, but not in the same way. With many poems there is little risk of our failing either to feel what is distinctive of the writer, or to appropriate what he says. What is characteristic, for example, in Byron’s lines,On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year, or in Shelley’sStanzas written in dejection near Naples, cannot escape discovery, nor is there any difficulty in understanding the mood expressed. But with Wordsworth, for most readers, this risk is constantly present in some degree. Take, for instance, one of the most popular of his lyrics, the poem about the daffodils by the lake. It is popular partly because it remains a pretty thing even to those who convert it into something quite undistinctive of Wordsworth. And it is comparatively easy, too, to perceive and to reproduce in imagination a good deal thatisdistinctive; for instance, the feeling of the sympathy of the waves and the flowers and the breeze in their glee, and the Wordsworthian ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’ expressed in the lines (written by his wife),
They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude.
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
But there remains something still more intimately Wordsworthian:
I wandered lonely as a CloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills.
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills.
It is thrust into the reader’s face, for these are the opening lines. But with many readers it passes unheeded, because it is strange and outside theirown experience. And yet it is absolutely essential to the effect of the poem.
This poem, however, even when thoroughly conventionalised, would remain, as I said, a pretty thing; and it could scarcely excite derision. Our point is best illustrated from the pieces by which Wordsworth most earned ridicule, the ballad poems. They arose almost always from some incident which, for him, had a novel and arresting character and came on his mind with a certain shock; and if we do not get back to this through the poem, we remain outside it. We may, of course, get back to this and yet consider the poem to be more or less a failure. There is here therefore room for legitimate differences of opinion. Mr. Swinburne sees, no doubt, as clearly as Coleridge did, the intention ofThe Idiot BoyandThe Thorn, yet he calls them ‘doleful examples of eccentricity in dullness,’ while Coleridge’s judgment, though he criticised both poems, was very different. I believe (if I may venture into the company of such critics) that I see why Wordsworth wroteGoody Blake and Harry Gilland theAnecdote for Fathers, and yet I doubt if he has succeeded in either; but a great man, Charles James Fox, selected the former for special praise, and Matthew Arnold included the latter in a selection from which he excludedThe Sailor’s Mother.3Indeed, of all the poems at first most ridiculed there is probably not one that has notbeen praised by some excellent judge. But they were ridiculed by men who judged them without attempting first to get inside them. And this is fatal.
I may bring out the point by referring more fully to one of them.Alice Fellwas beloved by the best critic of the nineteenth century, Charles Lamb; but the general distaste for it was such that it was excluded ‘in policy’ from edition after edition of Wordsworth’s Poems; many still who admireLucy Graysee nothing to admire inAlice Fell; and you may still hear the question asked, What could be made of a child crying for the loss of her cloak? And what, I answer, could be made of a man poking his stick into a pond to find leeches? What sense is there in asking questions about the subject of a poem, if you first deprive this subject of all the individuality it possesses in the poem? Let me illustrate this individuality methodically. A child crying for the loss of her cloak is one thing, quite another is a child who has an imagination, and who sees the tattered remnants of her cloak whirling in the wheel-spokes of a post-chaise fiercely driven by strangers on lonesome roads through a night of storm in which the moon is drowned. She was alone, and, having to reach the town she belonged to, she got up behind the chaise, and her cloak was caught in the wheel. And she is fatherless and motherless, and her poverty (the poem is calledAlice Fell, or Poverty) is so extreme that for the loss of her weather-beaten rag she does not ‘cry’; she weeps loud and bitterly; weeps as if her innocent heart would break; sits by the stranger who has placed her by his side and is trying to console her, insensible to all relief; sends forth sob after sob as if her grief could never, never have an end; checks herself for a moment to answer a question, and then weeps on as if she had lost her only friend, and the thought would choke her very heart.It wasthispoverty andthisgrief that Wordsworth described with his reiterated hammering blows. Is it not pathetic? And to Wordsworth it was more. To him grief like this is sublime. It is the agony of a soul from which something is torn away that was made one with its very being. What does it matter whether the thing is a woman, or a kingdom, or a tattered cloak? It is the passion that counts. Othello must not agonise for a cloak, but ‘the little orphan Alice Fell’ has nothing else to agonise for. Is all this insignificant? And then—for this poem about a child is right to the last line—next day the storm and the tragedy have vanished, and the new cloak is bought, of duffil grey, as warm a cloak as man can sell; and the child is as pleased as Punch.4
2.
I pass on from this subject to another, allied to it, but wider. In spite of all the excellent criticism of Wordsworth, there has gradually been formed, I think, in the mind of the general reader a partial and misleading idea of the poet and his work. This partiality is due to several causes: for instance, to the fact that personal recollections of Wordsworth have inevitably been, for the most part, recollections of his later years; to forgetfulness of his position in the history of literature, and of the restricted purpose of his first important poems; and to the insistence of some of his most influential critics, notably Arnold, on one particular source of his power—an insistence perfectly just, but accompanied now and then by a lack of sympathy with other aspects of his poetry. The result is an idea of him which is mainly true and really characteristic, but yet incomplete, and so, in a sense, untrue; a picture, I might say, somewhat like Millais’ first portrait of Gladstone, which renders the inspiration,the beauty, the light, but not the sternness or imperiousness, and not all of the power and fire. Let me try to express this idea, which, it is needless to say, I do not attribute, in the shape here given to it, to anyone in particular.
It was not Wordsworth’s function to sing, like most great poets, of war, or love, or tragic passions, or the actions of supernatural beings. His peculiar function was ‘to open out the soul of little and familiar things,’ alike in nature and in human life. His ‘poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which he feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties.’ His field was therefore narrow; and, besides, he was deficient in romance, his moral sympathies were somewhat limited, and he tended also to ignore the darker aspects of the world. But in this very optimism lay his strength. The gulf which for Byron and Shelley yawned between the real and the ideal, had no existence for him. For him the ideal was realised, and Utopia a country which he saw every day, and which, he thought, every man might see who did not strive, nor cry, nor rebel, but opened his heart in love and thankfulness to sweet influences as universal and perpetual as the air. The spirit of his poetry was also that of his life—a life full of strong but peaceful affections; of a communion with nature in keen but calm and meditative joy; of perfect devotion to the mission with which he held himself charged; and of a natural piety gradually assuming a more distinctively religious tone. Some verses of his own best describe him, and some verses of Matthew Arnold his influence on his readers. These are his own words (fromA Poet’s Epitaph):
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 noon-day 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 has viewed;And impulses of deeper birthHave come to him in solitude.In common things that round us lieSome random truths he can impart,—The harvest of a quiet eyeThat broods and sleeps on his own heart.But he is weak; both man and boy,Hath been an idler in the land:Contented if he might enjoyThe things which others understand.
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 noon-day 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 has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.
In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,
—The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
But he is weak; both man and boy,
Hath been an idler in the land:
Contented if he might enjoy
The things which others understand.
And these are the words from Arnold’sMemorial Verses:
He too upon a wintry climeHad fallen—on this iron timeOf doubts, disputes, distractions, fearsHe found us when the age had boundOur souls in its benumbing round—He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.He laid us as we lay at birthOn the cool flowery lap of earth;Smiles broke from us and we had ease.The hills were round us, and the breezeWent o’er the sunlit fields again;Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.Our youth returned: for there was shedOn spirits that had long been dead,Spirits dried up and closely furled,The freshness of the early world.Ah, since dark days still bring to lightMan’s prudence and man’s fiery might,Time may restore us in his courseGoethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;But where will Europe’s latter hourAgain find Wordsworth’s healing power?Others will teach us how to dare,And against fear our breast to steel;Others will strengthen us to bear—But who, ah who, will make us feel?The cloud of mortal destiny,Others will front it fearlessly—But who, like him, will put it by?Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,O Rotha! with thy living wave.Sing him thy best! for few or noneHears thy voice right, now he is gone.
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen—on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round—
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth;
Smiles broke from us and we had ease.
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o’er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned: for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah, since dark days still bring to light
Man’s prudence and man’s fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;
But where will Europe’s latter hour
Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear—
But who, ah who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha! with thy living wave.
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
Those last words are enough to disarm dissent. No, that voice will never again be heard quite right now Wordsworth is gone. Nor is it, for the most part, dissent that I wish to express. The picture we have been looking at, though we may question the accuracy of this line or that, seems to me, I repeat, substantially true. But is there nothing missing? Consider this picture, and refuse to go beyond it, and then ask if it accounts for all that is most characteristic in Wordsworth. How did the man in the picture ever come to write the ImmortalityOde, orYew-trees, or why should he say,
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sinkDeep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worldsTo which the heaven of heavens is but a veil?
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil?
How, again, could he say that Carnage is God’s daughter, or write theSonnets dedicated to National Liberty and Independence, or the tract on the Convention of Cintra? Can it be true of him that many of his best-known poems of human life—perhaps the majority—deal with painful subjects, and not a few with extreme suffering? Should we expect him to make an ‘idol’ of Milton, or to show a ‘strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo’? He might easily be ‘reserved,’ but is it not surprising to find him described as haughty, prouder than Lucifer, inhumanly arrogant? Why should his forehead have been marked by the ‘severe worn pressure of thought,’ or his eyes have looked so ‘supernatural ... like fires, half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acridfixture of regard, and seated at the further end of two caverns’? In all this there need be nothing inconsistent with the picture we have been looking at; but that picture fails to suggest it. In that way the likeness it presents is only partial, and I propose to emphasise some of the traits which it omits or marks too faintly.5
And first as to the restriction of Wordsworth’s field. Certainly his field, as compared with that of some poets, is narrow; but to describe it as confined to external nature and peasant life, or to little and familiar things, would be absurdly untrue, as a mere glance at his Table of Contents suffices to show. And its actual restriction was not due to any false theory, nor mainly to any narrowness of outlook. It was due, apart from limitation of endowment, on the one hand to that diminution of poetic energy which in Wordsworth began comparatively soon, and on the other, especially in his best days, to deliberate choice; and we must not assume without question that he was inherently incapable of doing either what he would not do, or what, in his last five and thirty years, he could no longer do.
There is no reason to suppose that Wordsworth undervalued or objected to the subjects of such poets as Homer and Virgil, Chaucer and Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. And when, after writing his part of theLyrical Ballads, he returned from Germany and settled in the Lake Country, the subjects he himself revolved for a great poem were not concerned with rural life or humble persons. Some old ‘romantic’ British theme, left unsung by Milton; some tale of Chivalry, dire enchantments, war-like feats; vanquished Mithridates passing north and becoming Odin; the fortunes of the followers of Sertorius; de Gourgues’ journey ofvengeance to Florida; Gustavus; Wallace and his exploits in the war for his country’s independence,—these are the subjects he names first. And, though his ‘last and favourite aspiration’ was towards
Some philosophic songOf Truth that cherishes our daily life,
Some philosophic song
Of Truth that cherishes our daily life,
—that song which was never completed—yet, some ten years later, he still hoped, when it should be finished, to write an epic. Whether at any time he was fitted for the task or no, he wished to undertake it; and his addiction, by no means entire even in his earlier days, to little and familiar things was due, not at all to an opinion that they are the only right subjects or the best, nor merely to a natural predilection for them, but to the belief that a particular kind of poetry was wanted at that time to counteract its special evils. There prevailed, he thought, a ‘degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation.’ The violent excitement of public events, and ‘the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies,’ had induced a torpor of mind which only yielded to gross and sensational effects—such effects as were produced by ‘frantic novels,’ of the Radcliffe or Monk Lewis type, full of mysterious criminals, gloomy castles and terrifying spectres. He wanted to oppose to this tendency one as far removed from it as possible; to write a poetry evenmorealien to it than Shakespeare’s tragedies or Spenser’s stories of knights and dragons; to show men that wonder and beauty can be felt, and the heart be moved, even when the rate of the pulse is perfectly normal. In the same way, he grieved Coleridge by refusing to interest himself in the Somersetshire fairies, and declared that he desired for his scene no planetbut the earth, and no region of the earth stranger than England and the lowliest ways in England. And, being by no means merely a gentle shepherd, but a born fighter who was easily provoked and could swing his crook with uncommon force, he asserted his convictions defiantly and carried them out to extremes. And so in later days, after he had somewhat narrowed, when in the Seventh Book of theExcursionhe made the Pastor protest that poetry was not wanted to multiply and aggravate the din of war, or to propagate the pangs and turbulence of passionate love, he did this perhaps because the world which would not listen to him6was enraptured byMarmionand the earlier poems of Byron.
How great Wordsworth’s success might have been in fields which he deliberately avoided, it is perhaps idle to conjecture. I do not suppose it would have been very great, but I see no reason to believe that he would have failed. With regard, for instance, to love, one cannot read without a smile his reported statement that, had he been a writer of love-poetry, it would have been natural to him to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been approved by his principles, and which might have been undesirable for the reader. But one may smile at his naïveté without disbelieving his statement. And, in fact, Wordsworth neither wholly avoided the subject nor failed when he touched it. The poems about Lucy are not poems of passion, in the usual sense, but they surely are love-poems. The verses’Tis said that some have died for love, excluded from Arnold’s selection but praised by Ruskin, are poignant enough. And the following lines fromVaudracour and Juliamake one wonder how this could be toArnold the only poem of Wordsworth’s that he could not read with pleasure:
Arabian fiction never filled the worldWith half the wonders that were wrought for him.Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;Life turned the meanest of her implements,Before his eyes, to price above all gold;The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;Her chamber-window did surpass in gloryThe portals of the dawn; all paradiseCould, by the simple opening of a door,Let itself in upon him:—pathways, walks,Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,Surcharged, within him, overblest to moveBeneath a sun that wakes a weary worldTo its dull round of ordinary cares;A man too happy for mortality!
Arabian fiction never filled the world
With half the wonders that were wrought for him.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring;
Life turned the meanest of her implements,
Before his eyes, to price above all gold;
The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine;
Her chamber-window did surpass in glory
The portals of the dawn; all paradise
Could, by the simple opening of a door,
Let itself in upon him:—pathways, walks,
Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sank,
Surcharged, within him, overblest to move
Beneath a sun that wakes a weary world
To its dull round of ordinary cares;
A man too happy for mortality!
As a whole,Vaudracour and Juliais a failure, but these lines haunt my memory, and I cannot think them a poor description of that which they profess to describe. This is not precisely ‘passion,’ and, I admit, they do not prove Wordsworth’s capacity to deal with passion. The main reason for doubting whether, if he had made the attempt, he would have reached his highest level, is that, so far as we can see, he did not strongly feel—perhaps hardly felt at all—that thepassionof love is a way into the Infinite; and a thing must be no less than this to Wordsworth if it is to rouse all his power. Byron, it seemed to him, had
dared to takeLife’s rule from passion craved for passion’s sake;7
dared to take
Life’s rule from passion craved for passion’s sake;7
and he utterly repudiated that. ‘The immortal mind craves objects that endure.’
Then there is that ‘romance’ which Wordsworth abjured. In using the word I am employing the familiar distinction between two tendencies of the Romantic Revival, one called naturalistic and one called, in a more special sense, romantic, andsignalised, among other ways, by a love of the marvellous, the supernatural, the exotic, the worlds of mythology. It is a just and necessary distinction: theAncient MarinerandMichaelare very dissimilar. But, like most distinctions of the kind, it becomes misleading when it is roughly handled or pushed into an antithesis; and it would be easy to show that these two tendencies exclude one another only in their inferior examples, and that the better the example of either, the more it shows its community with the other. There is not a great deal of truth to nature inLalla Rookh, but there is plenty in theAncient Mariner: in certain poems of Crabbe there is little romance, but there is no want of it inSir Eustace Greyor inPeter Grimes. Taking the distinction, however, as we find it, and assuming, as I do, that it lay beyond Wordsworth’s power to write anAncient Mariner, or to tell us of
magic casements opening on the foamOf perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,
magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,
we are not therefore to conclude that he was by nature deficient in romance and incapable of writing well what he refused to write. The indications are quite contrary. Not to speak here of his own peculiar dealings with the supernatural, his vehement defence (in thePrelude) of fairy-tales as food for the young is only one of many passages which show that in his youth he lived in a world not haunted only by the supernatural powers of nature. He delighted in ‘Arabian fiction.’ The ‘Arabian sands’ (Solitary Reaper) had the same glamour for him as for others. His dream of the Arab and the two books (Prelude, v.) has a very curious romantic effect, though it is not romancein excelsis, likeKubla Khan. His love of Spenser; his very description of him,
Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heavenWith the moon’s beauty and the moon’s soft pace;
Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the moon’s beauty and the moon’s soft pace;
the very lines, so characteristic of his habitual attitude, in which he praises the Osmunda fern as
lovelier, in its own retired abodeOn Grasmere’s beach, than Naiad by the sideOf Grecian brook, or Lady of the MereSole-sitting by the shores of old romance,8
lovelier, in its own retired abode
On Grasmere’s beach, than Naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance,8
—these, and a score of other passages, all point the same way. He would not carry his readers to the East, like Southey and Moore and Byron, nor, like Coleridge, towards the South Pole; but when it suited his purpose, as inRuth, he could write well enough of un-English scenery:
He told of the magnolia, spreadHigh as a cloud, high overhead,The cypress and her spire;Of flowers that with one scarlet gleamCover a hundred leagues, and seemTo set the hills on fire.
He told of the magnolia, spread
High as a cloud, high overhead,
The cypress and her spire;
Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire.
He would not choose Endymion or Hyperion for a subject, for he was determined to speak of what Englishmen may see every day; but what he wrote of Greek religion in theExcursionis full of imagination and brought inspiration to Keats, and the most famous expression in English of that longing for the perished glory of Greek myth which appears in much Romantic poetry came from Wordsworth’s pen:
Great God! I’d rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
As for war, Wordsworth neither strongly felt, nor at all approved, that elementary love of fighting which, together with much nobler things, is gratified by some great poetry. And assuredly he could not, even if he would, have rivalled the last canto ofMarmion, nor even the best passages in theSiege of Corinth. But he is not to be judged by his intentional failures. The martial parts of theWhite Doe of Rylstoneare, with few exceptions, uninteresting, if not painfully tame. The former at least they were meant to be. TheLay of the Last Minstrelwas on every tongue. The modest poet was as stiff-necked a person as ever walked the earth; and he was determined that no reader of his poem who missed its spiritual interest should be interested in anything else. Probably he overshot his mark. For readers who could understand him the effect he aimed at would not have been weakened by contrast with an outward action narrated with more spirit and sympathy. But, however that may be, he did what he meant to do. In theSong at the Feast of Brougham Castle, again, the war-like close of the Song was not written for its own sake. It was designed with a view to the transition to the longer metre, the thought of peace in communion with nature, and the wonderful stanza ‘Love had he found in huts where poor men lie.’ But, for the effect of this transition, it was necessary for Wordsworth to put his heart into the martial close of the Song; and surely it has plenty of animation and glory. Its author need not have shrunk from the subject of war if he had wished to handle itcon amore.
The poet whose portrait we drew when we began might have been the author of theWhite Doe, and perhaps ofBrougham Castle, and possibly of theHappy Warrior. He could no more have composed thePoems dedicated to National Independence and Libertythan the political sonnets of Milton. And yet Wordsworth wrote nothing more characteristic than these Poems, which I am not going to praise, since Mr. Swinburne’s praise of them is, to my mind, not less just than eloquent. They are characteristic in many ways. The later are, on the whole, decidedly inferior to the earlier. Even in this little series,which occupies the first fifteen years of the century, the decline of Wordsworth’s poetic power and the increasing use of theological ideas are clearly visible. The Odes, again, are much inferior to the majority of the Sonnets. And this too is characteristic. The entire success of theOde to Dutyis exceptional, and it is connected with the fact that the poem is written in regular stanzas of a simple metrical scheme. The irregular Odes are never thus successful. Wordsworth could not command the tone of sustained rapture, and where his metrical form is irregular his ear is uncertain. The Immortality Ode, likeKing Lear, is its author’s greatest product, but not his best piece of work. The Odes among thePoemswhich we are now considering are declamatory, even violent, and yet they stir comparatively little emotion, and they do not sing. The sense of massive passion, concentrated, and repressing the utterance it permits itself, is that which most moves us in his political verse. And the Sonnet suited this.
The patriotism of thesePoemsis equally characteristic. It illustrates Wordsworth’s total rejection of the Godwinian ideas in which he had once in vain sought refuge, and his belief in the necessity and sanctity of forms of association arising from natural kinship. It is composed, we may say, of two elements. The first is the simple love of country raised to a high pitch, the love of ‘a lover or a child’; the love that makes it for some men a miserable doom to be forced to live in a foreign land, and that makes them feel their country’s virtues and faults, and joys and sorrows, like those of the persons dearest to them. We talk as if this love were common. It is very far from common; but Wordsworth felt it.9The other element in his patriotism I must call by the dreaded name of ‘moral,’ a name which Wordsworth did notdread, because it meant for him nothing stereotyped or narrow. His country is to him the representative of freedom, left, as he writes in 1803,
the only lightOf Liberty that yet remains on earth.
the only light
Of Liberty that yet remains on earth.
This Liberty is, first, national independence; and that requires military power, the maintenance of which is a primary moral duty.10But neither military power nor even national independence is of value in itself; and neither could be long maintained without that which gives value to both. This is the freedom of the soul, plain living and high thinking, indifference to the externals of mere rank or wealth or power, domestic affections not crippled (as they may be) by poverty. Wordsworth fears for his country only when he doubts whether this inward freedom is not failing;11but he seldom fears for long. England, in the war against Napoleon, is to him almost what the England of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth was to Milton,—an elect people, the chosen agent of God’s purpose on the earth. His ideal of life, unlike Milton’s in the stress he lays on the domestic affections and the influence of nature, is otherwise of the same Stoical cast. His country is to him, as to Milton,
An old and haughty nation, proud in arms.12
An old and haughty nation, proud in arms.12
And his own pride in it is, like Milton’s, in the highest degree haughty. It would be calumnious to say that it recalls the description of the English given by the Irishman Goldsmith,
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,I see the lords of human kind pass by;
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by;
for Wordsworth had not the faintest wish to see his countrymen the lords of human kind, nor is there anything vulgar in his patriotism; but thereispride in his port and defiance in his eye. And, lastly, the character of his ideal and of this national pride, with him as with Milton, is connected with personal traits,—impatience of constraint, severity, a certain austere passion, an inclination of imagination to the sublime.
3.
These personal traits, though quite compatible with the portrait on which I am commenting, are not visible in it. Nor are others, which belong especially, but not exclusively, to the younger Wordsworth. He had a spirit so vehement and affections so violent (it is his sister’s word) as to inspire alarm for him. If he had been acquainted with that excuse for impotent idleness and selfishness, ‘the artistic temperament,’ he might have made out a good claim to it. He was from the beginning self-willed, and for a long time he appeared aimless. He would not work at the studies of his university: he preferred to imagine a university in which hewouldwork. He had a passion for wandering which was restrained only by want of means, and which opened his heart to every pedlar or tramp whom he met. After leaving Cambridge he would not fix on a profession. He remained, to the displeasure of his relatives, an idler in the land or out of it; and as soon as he had £900 of capital left to him he determinednotto have a profession. Sometimes he worked hard at his poetry, even heroically hard; but he did not work methodically, and often he wrote nothing for weeks, but loafed and walked and enjoyed himself. He was not blind like Milton, but the act of writing was physically disagreeable to him, and he made his woman-kind write to his dictation.He would not conform to rules, or attend to the dinner-bell, or go to church (he made up for this neglect later). ‘He wrote hisOde to Duty,’ said one of his friends, ‘and then he had done with that matter.’ He never ‘tired’ of his ‘unchartered freedom.’ In age, if he wanted to go out, whatever the hour and whatever the weather, he must have his way. ‘In vain one reminded him that a letter needed an answer or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary for him to do what he liked.’ If the poetic fit was on him he could attend to nothing else. He was passionately fond of his children, but, when the serious illness of one of them coincided with an onset of inspiration, it was impossible to rouse him to a sense of danger. At such times he was as completely possessed as any wild poet who ruins the happiness of everyone dependent on him. But he has himself described the tyranny of inspiration, and the reaction after it, in hisStanzas written in Thomson’s Castle of Indolence. It is almost beyond doubt, I think, that the first portrait there is that of himself; and though it is idealised it is probably quite as accurate as the portrait inA Poet’s Epitaph. In thePreludehe tells us that, though he rarely at Cambridge betrayed by gestures or looks his feelings about nature, yet, when he did so, some of his companions said he was mad. Hazlitt, describing his manner of reading his own poetry in much later years, says, ‘It is clear that he is either mad or inspired.’
Wordsworth’s lawlessness was of the innocuous kind, but it is a superstition to suppose that he was a disgustingly well-regulated person. It is scarcely less unjust to describe his poetic sympathies as narrow and his poetic morality as puritanical. The former, of course, had nothing like the range of minds like Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or Browning, or the great novelists. Wordsworth’s want of humour would by itself have made that impossible;and, in addition, though by no means wanting in psychological curiosity, he was not much interested in complex natures. Simple souls, and especially simple souls that are also deep, were the natures that attracted him: and in the same way the passions he loved to depict are not those that storm themselves out or rush to a catastrophe, but those that hold the soul in a vice for long years. But, these limitations admitted, it will not be found by anyone who reviews the characters in the smaller poems and theExcursion(especially Book vii.), that Wordsworth’s poetic sympathies are narrow. They are wider than those of any imaginative writer of his time and country except Scott and perhaps Crabbe.
Nor is his morality narrow. It is serious, but it is human and kindly and not in the least ascetic. ‘It is the privilege of poetic genius,’ he says in his defence of Burns, ‘to catch a spirit of pleasure wherever it can be found—in the walks of nature and in the business of men. The poet, trusting to primary instincts, luxuriates among the felicities of love and wine, and is enraptured while he describes the fairer aspects of war: nor does he shrink from the company of the passion of love though immoderate—from convivial pleasure though intemperate—nor from the presence of war though savage and recognised as the handmaid of desolation. Who but some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan in works of art ever read without delight the picture which Burns has drawn of the convivial exaltation of the rustic adventurer Tam o’ Shanter?’ There is no want of sympathy in Wordsworth’s own picture of the ‘convivial exaltation’ of his Waggoner. It is true that he himself never describes a scene in which, to quote his astonishing phrase, ‘conjugal fidelity archly bends to the service of general benevolence,’ and that his treatment of sexual passion is always grave and, in a true sense, moral; but it is plain and manly and perfectlyfree from timidity or monkishness. It would really be easier to make out against Wordsworth a charge of excessive tolerance than a charge of excessive rigidity. A beggar is the sort of person he likes. It is all very well for him to say that he likes the Old Cumberland Beggar because, by making people give, he keeps love alive in their hearts. It may be so—he says so, and I always believe him. But that was not his only reason; and it is clear to me that, when he met the tall gipsy-beggar, he gave her money because she was beautiful and queenly, and that he delighted in her two lying boys because of their gaiety and joy in life. Neither has he the least objection to a thief. The grandfather and grandson who go pilfering together, two infants separated by ninety years, meet with nothing but smiles from him. The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale, after thirty years of careless hospitality, found himself ruined. He borrowed money, spent some of it in paying a few of his other debts, and absconded to London.
But this he did all in theeaseof his heart.
But this he did all in theeaseof his heart.
And for this reason, and because in London he keeps the ease of his heart and continues to love the country, Wordsworth dismisses him with a blessing. What he cannot bear is torpor. He passes a knot of gipsies in the morning; and, passing them again after his twelve hours of joyful rambling, he finds them just as they were, sunk in sloth; and he breaks out,
Oh, better wrong and strife,Better vain deeds and evil than such life.
Oh, better wrong and strife,
Better vain deeds and evil than such life.
He changed this shocking exclamation later, but it represents his original feeling, and he might have trusted that only an ‘impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan’ would misunderstand him.13
Wordsworth’s morality is of one piece with his optimism and with his determination to seize and exhibit in everything the element of good. But this is a subject far too large for treatment here, and I can refer to it only in the most summary way. What Arnold precisely meant when he said that Wordsworth ‘put by’ the cloud of human destiny I am not sure. That Wordsworth saw this cloud and looked at it steadily is beyond all question. I am not building on such famous lines as
The still sad music of humanity,
The still sad music of humanity,
or
the fierce confederate stormOf Sorrow, barricadoed evermoreWithin the walls of cities;
the fierce confederate storm
Of Sorrow, barricadoed evermore
Within the walls of cities;
or
Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills,The generations are prepared; the pangs,The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strifeOf poor humanity’s afflicted willStruggling in vain with ruthless destiny;
Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills,
The generations are prepared; the pangs,
The internal pangs, are ready; the dread strife
Of poor humanity’s afflicted will
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny;
for, although such quotations could be multiplied, isolated expressions, even when not dramatic,14would prove little. But I repeat the remark already made, that if we review the subjects of many of Wordsworth’s famous poems on human life,—the subjects, for example, ofThe Thorn,The Sailor’s Mother,Ruth,The Brothers,Michael,The Affliction of Margaret,The White Doe of Rylstone, the story of Margaret inExcursion, i., half the stories told inExcursion, vi. and vii.—we find ourselves in the presence of poverty, crime, insanity, ruined innocence, torturing hopes doomed to extinction, solitaryanguish, even despair. Ignore the manner in which Wordsworth treated his subjects, and you will have to say that his world, so far as humanity is concerned, is a dark world,—at least as dark as that of Byron. Unquestionably then he saw the cloud of human destiny, and he did not avert his eyes from it. Nor did he pretend to understand its darkness. The world was to him in the end ‘this unintelligible world,’ and the only ‘adequate support for the calamities of mortal life’ was faith.15But he was profoundly impressed, through the experience of his own years of crisis, alike by the dangers of despondency, and by the superficiality of the views which it engenders. It was for him (and here, as in other points, he shows his natural affinity to Spinoza) a condition in which the soul, concentrated on its own suffering, for that very reason loses hold both of its own being and of the reality of which it forms a part. His experience also made it impossible for him to doubt that what he grasped
At times when most existence with herselfIs satisfied,
At times when most existence with herself
Is satisfied,
—and these are the times when existence is most united in love with other existence—was, in a special sense or degree, the truth, and therefore that the evils which we suffer, deplore, or condemn, cannot really be what they seem to us when we merely suffer, deplore, or condemn them. He set himself toseethis, as far as he could, and to show it. He sang of pleasure, joy, glee, blitheness, love, wherever in nature or humanity they assert their indisputable power; and turning to pain and wrong, and gazing at them steadfastly, and setting himself to present the facts with a quiet but unsparing truthfulness, he yet endeavoured to show what he had seen, that sometimes pain and wrong are the conditions of ahappiness and good which without them could not have been, that no limit can be set to the power of the soul to transmute them into its own substance, and that, in suffering and even in misery, there may still be such a strength as fills us with awe or with glory. He did not pretend, I repeat, that what he saw sufficed to solve the riddle of the painful earth. ‘Our being rests’ on ‘dark foundations,’ and ‘our haughty life is crowned with darkness.’ But still what he showed was what hesaw, and he saw it in the cloud of human destiny. We are not here concerned with his faith in the sun behind that cloud; my purpose is only to insist that he ‘fronted’ it ‘fearlessly.’
4.
After quoting the lines fromA Poet’s Epitaph, and Arnold’s lines on Wordsworth, I asked how the man described in them ever came to write theOdeon Immortality, orYew-trees, or why he should say,
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sinkDeep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worldsTo which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink
Deep—and, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds
To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil.
The aspect of Wordsworth’s poetry which answers this question forms my last subject.
We may recall this aspect in more than one way. First, not a little of Wordsworth’s poetry either approaches or actually enters the province of the sublime. His strongest natural inclination tended there. He himself speaks of his temperament as ‘stern,’ and tells us that
to the very going out of youth[He] too exclusively esteemedthatlove,And soughtthatbeauty, which, as Milton says,Hath terror in it.
to the very going out of youth
[He] too exclusively esteemedthatlove,
And soughtthatbeauty, which, as Milton says,
Hath terror in it.
This disposition is easily traced in the imaginativeimpressions of his childhood as he describes them in thePrelude. His fixed habit of looking
with feelings of fraternal loveUpon the unassuming things that holdA silent station in this beauteous world,
with feelings of fraternal love
Upon the unassuming things that hold
A silent station in this beauteous world,
was only formed, it would seem, under his sister’s influence, after his recovery from the crisis that followed the ruin of his towering hopes in the French Revolution. It was a part of his endeavour to find something of the distant ideal in life’s familiar face. And though this attitude of sympathy and humility did become habitual, the first bent towards grandeur, austerity, sublimity, retained its force. It is evident in the political poems, and in all those pictures of life which depict the unconquerable power of affection, passion, resolution, patience, or faith. It inspires much of his greatest poetry of Nature. It emerges occasionally with a strange and thrilling effect in the serene, gracious, but sometimes stagnant atmosphere of the later poems,—for the last time, perhaps, in that magnificent stanza of theExtempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg(1835),
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,Or waves that own no curbing hand,How fast has brother followed brotherFrom sunshine to the sunless land!
Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land!
Wordsworth is indisputably the most sublime of our poets since Milton.
We may put the matter, secondly, thus. However much Wordsworth was the poet of small and humble things, and the poet who saw his ideal realised, not in Utopia, but here and now before his eyes, he was, quite as much, what some would call a mystic. He saw everything in the light of ‘the visionary power.’ He was, for himself,
The transitory being that beheldThis Vision.
The transitory being that beheld
This Vision.
He apprehended all things, natural or human, as the expression of something which, while manifested in them, immeasurably transcends them. And nothing can be more intensely Wordsworthian than the poems and passages most marked by this visionary power and most directly issuing from this apprehension. The bearing of these statements on Wordsworth’s inclination to sublimity will be obvious at a glance.
Now we may prefer the Wordsworth of the daffodils to the Wordsworth of the yew-trees, and we may even believe the poet’s mysticism to be moonshine; but it is certain that to neglect or throw into the shade this aspect of his poetry is neither to take Wordsworth as he really was nor to judge his poetry truly, since this aspect appears in much of it that we cannot deny to be first-rate. Yet there is, I think, and has been for some time, a tendency to this mistake. It is exemplified in Arnold’s Introduction and has been increased by it, and it is visible in some degree even in Pater’s essay. Arnold wished to make Wordsworth more popular; and so he was tempted to represent Wordsworth’s poetry as much more simple and unambitious than it really was, and as much more easily apprehended than it ever can be. He was also annoyed by attempts to formulate a systematic Wordsworthian philosophy; partly, doubtless, because he knew that, however great the philosophical value of a poet’s ideas may be, it cannot by itself determine the value of his poetry; but partly also because, having himself but little turn for philosophy, he was disposed to regard it as illusory; and further because, even in the poetic sphere, he was somewhat deficient in that kind of imagination which is allied to metaphysical thought. This is one reason of his curious failure to appreciate Shelley, and of the evident irritation which Shelley produced in him. Andit is also one reason why, both in hisMemorial Versesand in the introduction to his selection from Wordsworth, he either ignores or depreciates that aspect of the poetry with which we are just now concerned. It is not true, we must bluntly say, that the cause of the greatness of this poetry ‘is simple and may be told quite simply.’ It is true, and it is admirably said, that this poetry ‘is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties.’ But this is only half the truth.
Pater’s essay is not thus one-sided. It is, to my mind, an extremely fine piece of criticism. Yet the tendency to which I am objecting does appear in it. Pater says, for example, that Wordsworth is the poet of nature, ‘and of nature, after all, in her modesty. The English Lake country has, of course, its grandeurs. But the peculiar function of Wordsworth’s genius, as carrying in it a power to open out the soul of apparently little and familiar things, would have found its true test had he become the poet of Surrey, say! and the prophet of its life.’ This last sentence is, in one sense, doubtless true. The ‘function’ referred to could have been exercised in Surrey, and was exercised in Dorset and Somerset, as well as in the Lake country. And this function was a ‘peculiar function of Wordsworth’s genius.’ But that it wasthepeculiar function of his genius, or more peculiar than that other function which forms our present subject, I venture to deny; and for the full exercise of this latter function, it is hardly hazardous to assert, Wordsworth’s childhood in a mountain district, and his subsequent residence there, were indispensable. This will be doubted for a moment, I believe, only by those readers (and they are not a few) who ignore thePreludeand theExcursion. But thePreludeand theExcursion, though there are dullpages in both, contain much of Wordsworth’s best and most characteristic poetry. And even in a selection like Arnold’s, which, perhaps wisely, makes hardly any use of them, many famous poems will be found which deal with nature but not with nature ‘in her modesty.’
My main object was to insist that the ‘mystic,’ ‘visionary,’ ‘sublime,’ aspect of Wordsworth’s poetry must not be slighted. I wish to add a few remarks on it, but to consider it fully would carry us far beyond our bounds; and, even if I attempted the task, I should not formulate its results in a body of doctrines. Such a formulation is useful, and I see no objection to it in principle, as one method of exploring Wordsworth’s mind with a view to the better apprehension of his poetry. But the method has its dangers, and it is another matter to put forward the results as philosophically adequate, or to take the position that ‘Wordsworth was first and foremost a philosophical thinker, a man whose intention and purpose it was to think out for himself, faithfully and seriously, the questions concerning man and nature and human life’ (Dean Church). If this were true, he should have given himself to philosophy and not to poetry; and there is no reason to think that he would have been eminently successful. Nobody ever was so who was not forced by a special natural power and an imperious impulsion into the business of ‘thinking out,’ and who did not develope this power by years of arduous discipline. Wordsworth does not show it in any marked degree; and, though he reflected deeply and acutely, he was without philosophical training. His poetry is immensely interesting as an imaginative expression of the same mind which, in his day, produced in Germany great philosophies. His poetic experience, his intuitions, his single thoughts, even his large views, correspond in a striking way, sometimes in a startling way, with ideas methodically developedby Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer. They remain admirable material for philosophy; and a philosophy which found itself driven to treat them as moonshine would probably be a very poor affair. But they are like the experience and the utterances of men of religious genius: great truths are enshrined in them, but generally the shrine would have to be broken to liberate these truths in a form which would satisfy the desire to understand. To claim for them the power to satisfy that desire is an error, and it tempts those in whom that desire is predominant to treat them as mere beautiful illusions.
Setting aside, then, any questions as to the ultimate import of the ‘mystic’ strain in Wordsworth’s poetry, I intend only to call attention to certain traits in the kind of poetic experience which exhibits it most plainly. And we may observe at once that in this there is always traceable a certain hostility to ‘sense.’ I do not mean that hostility which is present inallpoetic experience, and of which Wordsworth was very distinctly aware. The regular action of the senses on their customary material produces, in his view, a ‘tyranny’ over the soul. It helps to construct that every-day picture of the world, of sensible objects and events ‘in disconnection dead and spiritless,’ which we take for reality. In relation to this reality we become passive slaves;16it lies on us with a weight ‘heavy as frost and deep almost as life.’ It is the origin alike of our torpor and our superficiality.Allpoetic experience frees us from it to some extent, or breaks into it, and so may be called hostile to sense. But this experience is, broadly speaking, of two different kinds. The perception of the daffodils as dancing in glee, and in sympathy with other gleeful beings, shows us a living, joyous, loving world, and so a ‘spiritual’ world, not a merely ‘sensible’ one. Butthe hostility to sense is here no more than a hostility tomeresense: this ‘spiritual’ world is itself the sensible world more fully apprehended: the daffodils do not change or lose their colour in disclosing their glee. On the other hand, in the kind of experience which forms our present subject, there is always some feeling of definite contrast with the limited sensible world. The arresting feature or object is felt in some wayagainstthis background, or even as in some way a denial of it. Sometimes it is a visionary unearthly light resting on a scene or on some strange figure. Sometimes it is the feeling that the scene or figure belongs to the world of dream. Sometimes it is an intimation of boundlessness, contradicting or abolishing the fixed limits of our habitual view. Sometimes it is the obscure sense of ‘unknown modes of being,’ unlike the familiar modes. This kind of experience, further, comes often with a distinct shock, which may bewilder, confuse or trouble the mind. And, lastly, it is especially, though not invariably, associated with mountains, and again with solitude. Some of these bald statements I will go on to illustrate, only remarking that the boundary between these modes of imagination is, naturally, less marked and more wavering in Wordsworth’s poetry than in my brief analysis.
We may begin with a poem standing near this boundary, the famous versesTo the Cuckoo, ‘O blithe new-comer.’ It stands near the boundary because, like the poem on the Daffodils, it is entirely happy. But it stands unmistakably on the further side of the boundary, and is, in truth, more nearly allied to theOdeon Immortality than to the poem on the Daffodils. The sense of sight is baffled, and its tyranny broken. Only a cry is heard, which makes the listener look a thousand ways, so shifting is the direction from which it reaches him. It seems to come from a mere ‘voice,’ ‘an invisiblething,’ ‘a mystery.’ It brings him ‘a tale of visionary hours,’—hours of childhood, when he sought this invisible thing in vain, and the earth appeared to his bewildered but liberated fancy ‘an unsubstantial fairy place.’ And still, when he hears it, the great globe itself, we may say, fades like an unsubstantial pageant; or, to quote from the ImmortalityOde, the ‘shades of the prison house’ melt into air. These words are much more solemn than the Cuckoo poem; but the experience is of the same type, and ‘the visionary gleam’ of the ode, like the ‘wandering voice’ of the poem, is the expression through sense of something beyond sense.