At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a prouder heart than Luke’s. When Isabel had to her house returned, the old man said, “He shall depart to-morrow.” To this word the housewife answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, and Michael was at ease.
At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a prouder heart than Luke’s. When Isabel had to her house returned, the old man said, “He shall depart to-morrow.” To this word the housewife answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, and Michael was at ease.
Is this prose or verse? We have printed it as prose. Wordsworth wrote it as verse, and Mr. Arnold has reproduced it as poetry. Had all Wordsworth’s compositions been of this calibre, and a painfully large number of them are, well might John Stuart Mill affirm that any man of good abilities might become as good a poet as Wordsworth by giving his mind to it, and we will add that a man of good abilities could hardly employ them worse. Yet this passage, and fourteen pages of verse not one whit better than it, are to be met with inMichael, one of the narrative poems Mr. Arnold, with special emphasis, begs us to admire. “The right sortof verse,” he says, “to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is a line like this fromMichael:
And never lifted up a single stone.
There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, strictly so called; yet it is expressive of the highest and most expressive kind.” Of course, in order to properly appreciate it, we must know the context, which fortunately is easily compressed. Michael and his son Luke were to build a sheepfold; but, as told in the passage we have printed, Luke is sent to a kinsman, who will advance him in life. Before he goes, Michael takes him to lay the first stone of the sheepfold. The lad then leaves home, falls into dissolute courses, and at last hides himself beyond the seas. After that, it is narrated of Michael:
And to that hollow dell from time to timeDid he repair, to build the Fold of whichHis flock had need. ’Tis not forgotten yetThe pity which was then in every heartFor the Old Man—and ’tis believed by allThat many and many a day he thither went,And never lifted up a single stone.
We have asked several disinterested lovers of poetry, some of them ardent admirers of Wordsworth, what they think of this; and we are bound to say that most of them failed to see anything in it whatsoever. That is not our case. We feel the force of the situation, and the apt simplicity of the concluding line. Yet repeat it, dwell on it, and surrender ourselves to it as we will, we fail to persuade ourselves that it merits the lofty eulogy pronounced on it by Mr. Arnold. It is with hesitation that we presume, on such a point, and wherethe issue is so direct, to place our opinion in seeming competition with his; but we can only leave the decision to thecommunis sensusof disinterested lovers of poetry. But nothing—not even Mr. Arnold’s authority—could satisfy us that this line suffices to lend the wings of poetry to fourteen closely printed pages of such pedestrian verse as that of whichMichaelfor the most part consists.
The only other poem in the “Narrative” section of the volume isThe Leech-Gatherer; and it, besides containing many lines of admirable poetry, is itself a coherently beautiful poem. But when, resuming our analysis, we enquire how much poetry there is in the 112 pages, or in more than the third portion of the volume we have as yet examined, what do we find? Exactly 20, and only 20, which we honestly believe the disinterested lover of poetry, the critic to whom Mr. Arnold makes appeal, would recognise as strictly deserving that description. We can seriously assert that this is the amount we should save from the wreck, if we were editing a selection from Wordsworth, were disengaging his good work from his bad, and were seeking to obtain for him readers who care nothing whatever about him personally, and who only wish ever and anon to steep themselves in the atmosphere of native and sterling poetry. We are well aware that, from another and a more extended point of view, Wordsworth never wrote a line, in verse or in prose, which is not worth preserving, and worth reading. But that is not at present the question. We are dealing with the critical contention of a great and influential critic, that “what strikes me with admiration, what establishes in my opinion Wordsworth’s superiority”—to Byron, be it understood, and to every English poetsince Milton—“is the great and ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even after all his inferior work has been cleared away.” This it is which renders it necessary to clear away the inferior work, in order that we may see if the body of “powerful” work that remains be really “ample” or not.
The “Lyrical Poems” contain the best, the most characteristic, and the most valuable of the compositions of Wordsworth. For our part, we should have excludedTo a Sky-Lark, at page 126—not the beautiful one with the same title at page 142—Stray Pleasures, the two poemsAt the Grave of Burns,Yarrow Visited,Yarrow Revisited, in spite of their vogue with Wordsworthiansquand même,To May, andThe Primrose of the Rock. There would then be left 33 pages containing the best poemsof their kindanywhere to be found, and of inestimable value to the disinterested lover of poetry. The fervid lover of poetry knows them by heart, and carries them with him through life. Is it necessary to give their names?She was a Phantom of Delight,The Solitary Reaper,Three Years She Grew,To the Cuckoo,I Wandered lonely as a Cloud—these, and their companions, to be found about the middle of Mr. Arnold’s volume, are among the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for their authors byChilde HaroldorHamlet. But to conclude that Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. It would be to imitatethe filial and uxorious fondness of the late Mr. Carlyle, who gravely tells us that his father had a larger intellect than Burns, and that his amiable, long-suffering wife wrote letters of greater value and insight than the works of George Sand and George Eliot, and “all the pack of scribbling women from the beginning of time.” To love Wordsworth is pardonable; nay, it is inevitable to those who are intimate with his tenderest work. But the critic must disengage his judgment from his affections, if he is not to mislead the persons he aspires to instruct, and to injure the art of whose dignity he is bound to be jealous.
Briefly, then, and pursuing to the end the “disinterested-lover-of-poetry” method recommended to us by Mr. Arnold, and of which we think we have already given illustrations to enable any one to decide for himself whether we pursue it with equity and candour, we reach the conclusion that, of the 317 pages composing Mr. Arnold’s collection, only 103, on a liberal estimate, contain what is worth preserving as poetry; or at least, if there be any dispute as to whether it is poetry, there can be none, outside the specially Wordsworthian circle, as to its being very inferior poetry indeed, and in no degree calculated to confer, extend, or uphold any man’s reputation as a poet. That it is admirable in sentiment and laudable in moral purpose, may at once be granted. But the purest of sentiments and the loftiest of purposes do not constitute poetry, even when apparelled in verse. Indeed we may say of them what Mr. Arnold himself says of those portions of Wordsworth’s writings which he discards, that they are “doctrine such as we hear in church, religious and philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves passages of such doctrine,and brings them forward in proof of his poet’s excellence. But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, more of the characters ofpoetictruth, the kind of truth we require from a poet.”
It may possibly seem an ungracious part to dwell upon the inferior portions of Wordsworth work, and to play therôleof Devil’s Advocate in the case of one who is assured beforehand of the honours of canonisation. But it should be remembered that this invidious task has been imposed upon us by Mr. Arnold, who has asserted, and challenged contradiction to the assertion, that in Wordsworth is to be found “an ampler body of powerful work,” which constitutes his superiority over every English poet since Milton. It is he who has rendered it necessary, in justice to other poets, to enquire with accuracy, whatisthe amount of powerful work to be found in Wordsworth; and this cannot be done without careful and judicial scrutiny. Our object is the same as Mr. Arnold’s; not to decry Wordsworth, but to ascertain his proper place in relation to other poets. If we seem to have spoken of him harshly, then so must Mr. Arnold; the only difference between us being that he thinks a certain proportion of Wordsworth’s verse poor stuff, while we view a yet larger portion of it in that light. Nor is it the example of Mr. Arnold alone that can be cited in exoneration of perfect outspokenness. M. Scherer is a distinguished French critic, whom Mr. Arnold quotes, and M. Scherer has in turn introduced Mr. Arnold’sSelectionsfrom Wordsworth to the French public in the pages of theTemps. He is a warm admirer of Wordsworth, and, as Mr. Arnold tells us, an excessive depreciator of Byron. From him, therefore, we may, with all the less scruple, cite the following avowals:
The simplicity of Wordsworth’s subjects and manner too often degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds, but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of “the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever with him as he paces along.”The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a hymn of Watts.The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the prosaic, often lapses into it altogether.
The simplicity of Wordsworth’s subjects and manner too often degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds, but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of “the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever with him as he paces along.”
The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a hymn of Watts.
The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the prosaic, often lapses into it altogether.
This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude that M. Scherer would reject at least all that we have rejected? But, in any case, that there is substantial agreement between us and him, so far, is evident.
What, then, is the “ample body of powerful work” that is left of Wordsworth after the eliminating process has been applied to it by the disinterested lover of poetry? Between three and four thousand lines; rather more than the amount of matter in the third and fourth cantos ofChilde Harold, rather less than the amount of matter inHamlet. The quantity therefore, the “body” of work left, is not very large. Still weshould not contest that it was “ample” enough to establish the superiority of Wordsworth over Byron, if it happened to be sufficiently “powerful” for the purpose. Though quantity must count for something, even in the comparison of poet with poet, since quantity implies copiousness, and usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration of quantity altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be sufficiently great. If, for example, the four thousand lines, or thereabouts, of poetry Wordsworth has written, had been embodied, say, in aHamlet, then work so powerful would have been ample to establish his superiority not only over every English poet since Milton, but over every poet since the one who has left us, so to speak, severalHamlets.
For what is it that rendersHamletso great and so powerful? Is it single lines of beautiful poetry? Is it detached passages of profound and elevated thought presented in poetic guise? These go for much, more especially when we consider them in connection with that of which they are the drapery. But what would they be, and what should we think of them, detached from the conception of the drama itself, without the plot, action, and progress of the piece, without the invention and unfolding of its characters, without its varied and forcible situations, without its wit, its irony, its humour? What should we think ofHamletif divested of the panorama of moving human passions, of its merciless tragedy, and, finally, of its utter absence of moral so complete, that moralists have been for a hundred years wrangling what the moral is? These are the qualities, and these alone, which make great poetry and great poets.
What has Wordsworth of all these? The answer, if candid and disinterested, must be, Absolutely nothing. He has written no epic, no drama, no poem of any kind in which so much as an attempt is made to deal with the clashing of the various passions that “stir this mortal frame.” Of Action he is utterly devoid. Of Invention, he seems absolutely unconscious. He has no wit; he has no humour. He has conceived no character, he has portrayed no character. If he can be said to deal with situations at all, they are of the simplest and most elementary kind, and he does not in any sense create them. He finds them at his door. No one blames him for making use of them, where he makes use of them well; but this is a very different thing from the invention shown inMacbethorThe Tempest, or even inCain, inManfred, and inThe Siege of Corinth. Sardanapalus is not a Lear, nor is Myrra a Cordelia. But, as exhibitions and portraitures of human character and human passion in poetry they are as much beyondLucy Gray, orMichael, or the little Child inWe are Seven, as Lear and Cordelia are beyond them in turn.
Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer:
We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fiftyyears ago. Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed upon Nature and much analysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning and speculative element. Even the title of thinker only half becomes him. He is a contemplative.
We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fiftyyears ago. Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed upon Nature and much analysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning and speculative element. Even the title of thinker only half becomes him. He is a contemplative.
It is true that, at the end of his review of Wordsworth, and without any previous admonition that he is going to do so, M. Scherer says, in one brief sentence, “Wordsworth seems to me to come after Milton, notably below him in my opinion, but withal the first after him”; thus endorsing the judgment of Mr. Arnold. But, unlike Mr. Arnold, he makes no attempt to establish or justify this view, but throws it out, as anobiter dictum, after writing a long essay, every argument and every phrase of which tend towards a diametrically opposite conclusion. So thoroughly is this the case, that we can honestly say we agree with every word in his essay, with the exception of the one brief sentence we have just cited.
But in the longer and more detailed passage quoted above, is not everything conceded for which we are contending? According to M. Scherer, Wordsworth has knowledge neither of the human heart nor of the interior drama of the passions. He has no broad views of history and society. He is a stranger to love, hatred, ambition, and the disquietudes they cause, as well as to the disquietudes caused by deep thought; and not having passed through these, he has necessarily not “come out upon the other side,” and is equally a stranger to the tranquillity of complete knowledge andcomplete experience. He is not a philosopher; he is hardly a thinker. He is a contemplative solitary, who has consorted much with woods, lakes, and mountains, and has dwelt much upon the sensations they excite in himself. Verily, this is a sorry equipment for a great poet. Is it an exaggeration to say that, if all this be true, Wordsworth is destitute of most of the qualities which in a great poet have hitherto been deemed indispensable? If, in spite of these remarkable deficiencies, he really be the greatest English poet since Milton, we shall be forced to conclude that English poets since Milton have been far less powerful, of far lower calibre, and of far less value, than has generally been supposed.
What then is the precise value, the real calibre, the particular kind of power, of that “ampler body of powerful work” which Wordsworth has given us? We have seen it is not an epic, nor a drama, nor one great comprehensive poem of any kind. It consists of lyrics, ballads, sonnets, and odes; of many of which it would not be just or critical to say more than that they are very sweet and charming, several of which must be pronounced exquisite, and a few, very few, of which may be designated sublime. We own we share the general opinion that the greatest composition of Wordsworth is theOde on Intimations of Immortality. We are surprised and disappointed to find Mr. Arnold speaking rather coldly of it; and M. Scherer likewise refers to it in a depreciatory tone, though he gives different reasons for his conclusion. M. Scherer thinks it “sounds a little false,” and adds that he “cannot help seeing in it a theme adopted with reference to the poetic developments of which Wordsworth was susceptible, rather than a very serious belief of the author.” We confess we think the judgment harsh, and thereasons given for it insufficient, if not indeed irrelevant. The objection Mr. Arnold entertains for it is that “it has not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no real solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful.”
Now, with all deference to Mr. Arnold, which is due to him in a special manner when he is expounding Wordsworth, Wordsworth does not say this. In the first place, Wordsworth, after describing the comparative and temporary diminution of this instinct, describes its revival and transfiguration in another guise. But what is far more important to note is, Wordsworth doesnotsay the instinct is universal. He is writing as a poet, not as a psychologist; and though he treats of an objective infant for a time, and uses the pronoun “ourinfancy,” he in reality is describing his own experience, and letting it take its chance of being the experience of a certain number of other people. What, we may well ask, can a poet do more than this, when he gets into the higher range, the upper atmosphere of poetry? When Shakespeare talks of “the shade of melancholy boughs,” he does not mean that everybody feels them to be melancholy. That is the privilege—the melancholy privilege, if any one wills it so—of the higher natures. That what Wordsworth describes in his splendidOdenot only was true of himself, but is true likewise of all great poetic spirits, we entertain no doubt; and it will become true of an ever-increasing number of persons, if mankind is to make progress in the intimate and integral union of intellectual and poetic sentiment. In our opinion, the highest note ofWordsworth is struck in this Ode, and maintained through a composition of considerable length and of argumentative unity of purpose. It is struck by him elsewhere—indeed in the lines on Hartley Coleridge, we have a distinct overture, so to speak, to the Ode; but nowhere is it sustained for so long, or with such oneness, definiteness, and largeness of aim. There is, perhaps, no finer poem, of equal length, in any language. We could well understand any one maintaining that there exists no other so fine.
But, if this Ode be struck out of the account, what remains to represent an “ample body of powerful work”? For, after all, in criticism, if we criticise at all, we must use words with some definite meaning. Perhaps Mr. Arnold would tell us that it is not the business of true Culture to be too definite; and we should heartily agree with him. One of the things that makes prose so inferior to poetry is its inaccurate precision. But it is Mr. Arnold himself who, on this occasion, compels us to be precise. He has elected to compare Wordsworth with every poet since Milton, and, in doing so, he has been obliged to use language which, to be of any use, must be more or less definite. What is meant by “ample”? Still more, what is meant by “powerful”? Does he mean that Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Poems,” which we think to be the best of Wordsworth’s compositions after the Ode, and which he thinks the best, before the Ode, are “powerful”? Let us quote perhaps the best of them, already quoted elsewhere, but that can never be read too often:
Behold her, single in the field,Yon solitary Highland Lass!Reaping and singing by herself;Stop here, or gently pass!Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,And sings a melancholy strain;O listen! for the Vale profoundIs overflowing with the sound.No Nightingale did ever chauntSo sweetly to reposing bandsOf Travellers in some shady haunt,Among Arabian sands:A voice so thrilling ne’er was heardIn spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,Breaking the silence of the seasAmong the farthest Hebrides.Will no one tell me what she sings?Perhaps the plaintive numbers flowFor old, unhappy, far-off things,And battles long ago:Or is it some more humble lay,Familiar matter of to-day?Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,That has been, and may be again?Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sangAs if her song could have no ending;I saw her singing at her work,And o’er the sickle bending;—I listened till I had my fill,And when I mounted up the hill,The music in my heart I bore,Long after it was heard no more.
This is exquisite; and of the sort of exquisiteness that leads one, in private, and in uncritical colloquies, to fall, as the phrase runs, into ecstasies. But can it, with any regard to accuracy of speech, be described as “powerful” work? We submit that it cannot.Learis powerful. The first six books ofParadise Lostare powerful. The first four cantos ofDon Juanare powerful. TheOde on Intimations of Immortalityis powerful. But unless we are to lose ourselves in alabyrinth of critical confusion, we must no more allege or allow thatThe Solitary Reaperis powerful, than we can affirm thatWhere the Bee Sucksis powerful, that Milton’s sonnet,To the Nightingaleis powerful, or that Byron’sShe Walks in Beauty like the Nightis powerful. They are all very beautiful; but that is another matter, and it will not do to confound totally different things.
How many lyrics, as perfect as the one we have quoted, has Wordsworth written? We can count but nine; and the most liberal computation could not extend them beyond twelve. To these would have to be added perhaps twice as many, very inferior to these, but still very beautiful, a certain number, but a very limited number, of first-rate sonnets, the Odes we have referred to, and detached lines and passages from other poems, notably the passage in the poemOn Revisiting Tintern Abbey. The result would be about a third of the amount we ourselves should altogether extract from Wordsworth, and of which alone it could justly be said that some of it was powerful, and all of it was very beautiful work.
This is what, we venture to assert, remains, after rigid scrutiny, of “the ampler body of powerful work” which Wordsworth has given us. These are the compositions which, according to Mr. Arnold, “in real poetical achievement ... in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness,” establish Wordsworth’s superiority.
Now can this claim possibly be allowed, unless, as we have said, all previous canons of criticism, and all previous estimates of poetry are to be cast to the winds? If it is to be allowed, then Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, must come down from their pedestals, and be regarded by us with verydifferent eyes from those with which we have hitherto scanned them. For what are the marks, what the qualities, which have distinguished these poets above their fellows, and by reason of which the world has extolled their genius? It is not merely for poetic diction, for tenderness of sentiment, for elevation of feeling, for apt simile, appropriate metaphor, illuminating imagery, and the play of fancy as exhibited in subordinate detail, that we estimate them as we do. Neither is it, as we have already pointed out, but as we must repeat, for detached passages of sublimity, nor yet for short poems of exquisite beauty, that they have been assigned the rank they occupy. They occupy that rank by reason of their great conceptions, by reason of their capacity to project long and comparatively complex poems dedicated to a lofty theme, and to conduct these through all their intricate windings from first to last, by employing all the arts, all the expedients, all the resources of Imagination, chief among which are Action, Invention, and Situation. To these, of course, must be added copious, elastic, and dignified language, melody, pathos, and just imagery; for, without these, a man is not a poet at all. These are the very instruments of his craft, the very credentials of his profession; and if he has these, no one will challenge his right to be called a poet. But, unless the higher qualities, the greater credentials are also his, he must be content with an inferior place, no matter how many beautiful or sublime things he may have said, and no matter how excellent the doctrines he may have taught. He has failed to show his mastery over the great materials, his familiarity with the great purposes, of his art. Wordsworth projected two long poems,The PreludeandThe Excursion; and, practically, these two are one.They are of portentous length; and that is their only claim to be considered great. They have no Action, no Situation, no Invention, no Characters. They consist of pages upon pages, nay, of books upon books, of interminable talk, in which in reality Wordsworth himself is the only talker. Little of the talk is poetry. Much of it is, as Mr. Arnold says, “abstract verbiage.” But we need not pursue the theme. Mr. Arnold candidly confesses that when Jeffrey said ofThe Excursion, “this will never do,” he was quite right.
Unquestionably, he was right; and he would still have been right, even hadThe Excursioncontained a far greater number of passages of true poetry than it does. It will be an evil day for poetry, and for the readers of poetry, if it ever comes to be allowed that the sole or the main function of poetry is totalk aboutthings, and that a man can get himself accepted as a great poet by pursuing this course. Unfortunately, it was Wordsworth’s theory that he could. It would be fatal if critics became of the same opinion. It is their bounden duty, on the contrary, to protest against such a theory. Wordsworth sets it down, in black and white, both in prose and verse, over and over again:
O Reader! had you in your mindSuch stores as silent thought can bring,O gentle Reader! you will findA tale in everything.What more I have to say is short,And you must kindly take it:It is no tale; but, should you think,Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.
Here is the theory full-blown. The poet is not to tell the tale, the reader is to make it one, by thinking; and if he only thinks enough, he will find a tale ineverything! Could anything be more grotesque, or more utterly opposed to any sane canon of the function of an author, and his relation to his readers? It is the business of the poet to tell the tale, and thereby to set the reader thinking; an altogether different process from the one here suggested. “Wordsworthians against whom we must be upon our guard,” often cite the following stanza with admiration:
The moving accident is not my trade;To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:’Tis my delight, alone in summer shade,To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts!
Have they forgotten the “moving accidents by flood and field,” or do they not know whose trade it was to unfold a tale that
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood?
Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing this makes a man as great a poet as doing what Wordsworth did not and plainly could not do. In the last book ofThe Excursion, he says:
Life, death, eternity! momentous themesAre they—and might demand a seraph’s tongue,Were they not equal to their own support;And therefore no incompetence of mineCould do them wrong....Ye wished for art and circumstance, that makeThe individual known and understood;And such as my best judgment could selectFrom what the place afforded, could be given.
Butnosubject is equal to its own support, where the poet is concerned, however it may be with the preacher and the moralist. The poet himself must support it.Wedowish for act and circumstance, in poetry; and when Wordsworth tells us that he has, inThe Excursion, given us the best of these he can, we can only answer that this best is not enough, but wholly insufficient and inadequate.
That Mr. Arnold would deny all this, if put to him plainly, we do not believe. It is all the more to be regretted that he should have expressed himself in such a manner as to encourage others in forming judgments and holding opinions which imply affirmation to the contrary. When he quotes from Wordsworth the following lines,
Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope,And melancholy fear subdued by faith,Of blessëd consolation, in distress,Of moral strength and intellectual power,Of joy in widest commonalty spread,
and adds that “here we have a poet intent on the best and master thing,” and wishes us to infer Wordsworth’s superiority from that fact, does he not perceive that he is not only misleading his readers, but flagrantly contradicting what he himself avers in the selfsame essay? Being “intent” on these subjects is not enough. A further question remains to be answered; viz. how has the poet dealt with them? Nowhere has Wordsworth dealt with them so completely, so ambitiously, so exhaustively, as inThe Excursion. Yet what does Mr. Arnold say of it? He says thatThe Excursioncan never be a satisfactory work to the disinterested lover of poetry, and that much of it is “a tissue of elevated but abstract verbiage, alien to the very nature of poetry.” It is plain, therefore, that being “intent” even on “the best and master thing” does not suffice.The passage Mr. Arnold quotes, leaving the incautious reader to infer that itdoessuffice, is merely the
Life, death, eternity! momentous themes,
and their being “equal to their own support” over again. Wordsworth is perpetually telling us that his subject is Man, and wishes us to infer that, the subject being great, what is written on it must be great. Unfortunately, Man, with him, is like Love with the Scotch girl; it is Man “in the abstract.” Shakespeare also treats of Man; but he treats of himin men, and Wordsworth does not. In fact, he communes. As M. Scherer says, he is a Solitary, a Contemplative. In a word, he is essentially, and before all things a subjective poet, and reader after reader has complained, and critic after critic has confessed, that to be subjective, not objective, to reflect instead of to act, to think rather than to narrate, is the bane of modern poetry, and the conclusive mark of the inferiority of so large a proportion of it.
Yet, this notwithstanding, Mr. Arnold tells us that Wordsworth “deals with that in which life really consists”; and, not content with this, he actually goes on to declare that “Wordsworth deals with more of life than they do”;—“they” being every English poet since Milton, and indeed every poet of every tongue since Milton, with the exception of Goethe! We can only say that such an assertion is astounding; the most startling paradox, indeed, we ever encountered in a criticism by a critic of authority. To argue upon it against Mr. Arnold is, happily, superfluous; for Mr. Arnold has anticipated and categorically answered his own paradox. Let him open his own poems; lethim turn toStanzas In Memory Of Obermann, and let him read on until he comes to the following couplet:
But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken,From half of human fate.
Has he forgotten the passage? or would he now expunge it? Mr. Arnold the poet, and Mr. Arnold the critic, are evidently at issue. But we think no one will experience much difficulty in deciding which of two has “hit the nail on the head,” and whether it be sound criticism to affirm that Wordsworth deals with that in which life really consists, or sound criticism to affirm that with one half of life he does not deal at all. At any rate, these rival criticisms are not to be reconciled, and Mr. Arnold must elect between the two.
What is the first and broad conclusion to be drawn from all that has been said? It is this: that Wordsworth, as a poet, has treated great subjects with marked and striking inadequacy, and smaller subjects with marked and striking success. Now we submit that no man deserves to be called or considered a great poet who has not treated some great subject in a great manner. This is the mark, this is the test, of a great poet; and if we once surrender this distinction, this standard, we soon lose ourselves in hopeless critical confusion and entanglement. But no great subjectcanbe greatly or adequately treated in poetry, save objectively, and with the help of action, passion, incident, of all the expedients, in fact, we have enumerated. It never can be treated adequately or greatly by merely writingaboutit. This is all that Wordsworth has done with his great subjects, with “truth, grandeur, beauty, love,” and the rest of them;and therefore, as far as great subjects are concerned, he has failed, and failed conspicuously. Where he has succeeded, and succeeded conspicuously, succeeded admirably, succeeded perfectly, is in smaller subjects, such asThe Solitary Reaper,The Cuckoo,Three Years She Grew, and their companions. This is to have done much; but it is not to have left behind “an ample body of powerful work.” Much less is it to have left behind an “ampler” body of powerful work than every English poet since Milton, Byron included.
For what is the “ample body of powerful work” that Byron has left? If Byron had failed as completely as Wordsworth in the treatment of his larger themes, in a word, of his great subjects, then, in spite of much fine lyrical work in Byron, the palm would have to be adjudged to Wordsworth. But what critic of authority, who means to retain it, will come forward and assert that Byron has failed in the treatment of his larger themes, of his great subjects? IsChilde Harolda failure? IsManfreda failure? IsCaina failure? IsDon Juana failure? We, like Mr. Arnold, can honestly say that though we “felt the expiring wave of Byron’s mighty influence,” we now “regard him, and have long regarded him, without illusion”; in fact, with just as little illusion as we regard Wordsworth, which is perhaps more than Mr. Arnold can yet say. We are unable to assert, with Scott, that, inCain, “Byron has matched Milton on his own ground.” It would have been very wonderful if he had, as wonderful as if Virgil had matched Homer on Homer’s own ground. “Sero venientibus ossa”; or, as some one put it during the controversy between the respective merits of the Ancients and the Moderns, “The Ancients have stolen all our best ideas.” Besides, though Byron hasnot matched Milton on the ground Milton occupied first and pretty nigh exhausted, Byron has done many other things that Milton has not done. We are equally unable to say that Byron, “as various in composition as Shakespeare himself, has embraced every topic in human life”; though we strongly incline to think that a dispassionate and exhaustive survey would show him to be more various in composition, and to have embraced a greater number of topics appertaining to human life, than any poet, English or foreign, ancient or modern, except Shakespeare.[1]Equally unable are we to accept the dictum of Goethe, which Mr. Arnold vainly endeavours to explain away, by trying to prove that Goethe did not mean what he certainly said, viz. that Byron “is in the main greater than any other English poet.”
Therefore, as we say, we look upon Byron without any illusion, and without any wish to extol him above his real rank, by calling on his behalf even such witnesses as Scott and Goethe. We look at his works with the same detachment and dispassionateness as we look at the Parthenon or on the Venus of Milo. But, so looking on them, looking on them not through any pet theories of our own, not with any moral, theological, or sectarian bias, but simply with the same “dispassionate-lover-of-poetry” eyes with which we look onAntigone, theÆneid, theFairy Queen, orFaust, we find ourselves unable to resist the conclusion, that, like them,Childe Harold,Manfred,Cain, andDon Juanare great poems, are great themes, greatly treated. This is not to say that they are perfect, thatthey are in every way satisfactory. Is theFairy Queenperfectly satisfactory? Is theÆneidperfectly satisfactory? No critic has ever found them so. Is theIliadperfectly satisfactory? It would be very odd if it were, seeing that, as no one but Mr. Gladstone any longer doubts, it is the work, not of one poet, but of several poets. But when all has been urged against them that can be urged by the most judicial criticism, they remain great subjects greatly executed. In the same manner, so do Byron’s greater poems. Roughly and broadly speaking, theyaresatisfactory; whereas in no sense canThe PreludeandThe Excursionbe said to be satisfactory. On the contrary, they are entirely unsatisfactory. In a word, of Byron’s larger works, it may be said that they will “do”; of Wordsworth’s, on the contrary, as Jeffrey said, and as Mr. Arnold himself allows, they “won’t.” That is the distinction; and it is an immense one.
Byron is not Shakespeare; for he lags considerably behind Shakespeare in Invention, Action, and Character, by dint of which, and in conjunction with which, the highest faculties of the poet are displayed. But a poet may lag considerably behind Shakespeare, and yet exhibit these in a conspicuous degree. It is in Character, no doubt, that Byron is more particularly weak, as compared with Shakespeare, though he is by no means so weak, in himself, and as compared with others, as people have come to assume, by hearing the point so superficially iterated. It is not that Byron cannot depict character; but he does not depict a sufficient number of characters. They are not numerous and various enough. When M. Scherer says that “Byron has treated hardly any subject but one—himself,” he is repeating the parrot-cry of veryshallow people, and is doing little justice to his own powers as a critic. Indeed, had Shakespeare never lived, it is probable that it would never have occurred to any one to urge against Byron his deficiencies in this respect. It is because he is so great a poet, because he is so great in other respects, and because some critics have therefore inadvertently attempted to place him on a level with Shakespeare, that his inferiority in this particular suggested itself to those holding a juster view. Once suggested, it was harped upon, exaggerated, and, we may fairly say, has now been done to death. We presume, however, that no one would suggest that, even in the poetic presentation of Character, Byron, however inferior to certain other writers, is not immeasurably superior to Wordsworth, who never even attempted to portray Character.
When we turn from the consideration of the power shown by Byron in the presentation of Character, to his power shown in Action, Invention, and Situation, the account becomes a very different one. In brisk and rapid narrative, in striking incident, in prompt and perpetual movement—qualities in which not only is Wordsworth deficient, but of which he is absolutely devoid—Byron exhibits his true greatness as a poet. Even in theTales, inThe Giaour,The Bride of Abydos,The Corsair,The Siege of Corinth,The Prisoner of Chillon, which it has of late been the fashion, we had almost said the affectation, to depreciate, there is a stir, a “go,” a swift and swirling torrent of action, a current of animation, a full and foaming stream of narrative, a tumult and conflict of incident, which will never cease to be regarded as among the best, the highest, and the most indispensable elements of poetry, until we are all laid up in lavender, until we all take tomoping and brooding over our own feelings, until we all confine ourselves to “smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought”; until we all become content
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,In the loved presence of the cottage-fire.And listen to the flapping of the flame,Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.
Even if one confined oneself merely to Byron’sTales, the assertion that Wordsworth “deals with more of life” than Byron, would be startling. Love, hatred, revenge, ambition, the rivalry of creeds, travel, fighting, fighting by land and fighting by sea, almost every passion, and every form of adventure, these are the “life” they deal with; and we submit that it is to deal with a considerable portion of it; with far more of life at any rate than Wordsworth deals with in the whole of his poems. Listen to his own confession:
And thus from day to day my little boatRocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.
Now turn to Byron:
O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,Survey our empire, and behold our home.These are our realms, no limit to their sway!
That is precisely the difference. The horizon of Byron is so much larger. Far from it being true that Wordsworth deals with more of life than Byron does, the precise opposite is the truth, that Byron deals with far more of life than Wordsworth does, if by life we mean the life of men, of men of action, of men of the world, and not the life, as M. Scherer says, of Solitaries, Contemplatives, and Recluses.
If we turn to Byron’s Dramas, toSardanapalus, toThe Two Foscari, toThe Doge of Venice, no doubt we crave for yet more action, more incident, more situation, than Byron gives us. But we do so because Shakespeare has accustomed us to crave for more; and the craving has been intensified by the sensational character of modern novels and modern stage-plays. Nevertheless these are present, in no small amount, in the plays we have named; and whether people choose to consider the amount great or small, surely it is immeasurably greater than the amount of action, invention, and situation Wordsworth exhibits in any and every poem, of any and every kind, he ever wrote.
We have more than once mentionedChilde Harold, but we must refer to it once more and finally, in support and illustration of what we have been urging. The persons who are of opinion that Byron never treated any subject but himself, will perhaps likewise be of opinion that, inChilde Harold, Byron treats only of himself, and that it is a purely contemplative and subjective poem. A more superficial opinion could not well be held. In form contemplative, it is in substance a poem full of action, situation, and incident; in a word, it is a poem essentially and notably objective. It is the only poem, ostensibly contemplative, of which this can be said; and it assumes this complexion and character by dint of Byron’s own character, which was above all things active, and could not be content without action. InChilde Harold, Byron summons dead men and dead nations from their sepulchres, and makes them live and act again. He revivifies Athens, he resuscitates Rome. He makes Cicero breathe and burn; he makes the fallen columns and shattered pillars of the Forum as eloquent as Tully. Petrarchonce more waters the tree that bears his lady’s name. The mountains find a tongue. Jura answers from her misty shroud. The lightning becomes a word. Rousseau tortures himself afresh; Gibbon afresh saps solemn creeds with solemn sneer; afresh Egeria visits Numa in the silence of the night, his breast to hers replying. Lake Leman woos, and kisses away the cries of the Rhone, as they awake. Then she reproves like a sister’s voice. The boats upon the lake are wings to waft us from distraction. The stars become the poetry of Heaven. Waterloo is fought before our very eyes. The defiles fatal to Roman rashness are again crowded with Numidian horse, and Hannibal and Thrasymene flash before our eyes. A soul is infused into the dead; a spirit is instilled into the mountains. The torrents talk; the sepulchres act. Movement never ceases, and the situation is perpetually shifting. Its incidents are almost the whole of History. In it we have—what M. Scherer justly says Wordsworth has not—the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, the interior drama of the passions which a man can describe well only on condition of having been their victim, and those general views upon History and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of affairs. All this, too, we have, in the third and fourth cantos—for the first and second are very inferior—presented, in language, imagery, and music, of the noblest and most elevated kind; till, swelling, as an organ swells, before it closes, the poem concludes with that magnificent address to the Ocean, which rounds it off and completes it, even as the physical ocean rounds off and completes the physical earth. In no other poem that was ever written are Nature and man—not Man in the abstract,but men as they act, strive, feel, and suffer—so thoroughly interfused and interwoven; and they are interwoven and interfused as they are interwoven and interfused in actual life, not by men contemplating and talking, but by men doing and acting, in a word, by living. And if the reference be to men in general and life in general, and not to a particular sort of man living a particular sort of life away from other men, then we make bold to say, though in doing so we contradict Mr. Arnold roundly, that inChilde Haroldalone there is “an ampler body of powerful work,” and thatChilde Haroldalone “deals with more of life,” than all Wordsworth’s poems, not even selected from, but taken in their integrity, without the diminution of a single passage or the omission of a single line.
At this point, Mr. Arnold steps in with a notable plea. It may be that much of what Wordsworth has written is trivial, and that still more of it is abstract verbiage, or doctrine we hear in church, perfectly true, but wanting in the sort of truth we require, poetic truth. It may also be that Wordsworth has written no one great poem, and that the poem he fancied to be great will not do, and can never be satisfactory to the disinterested lover of poetry. It may furthermore be the case that in Wordsworth’s poems we have to lament a deficiency, if not indeed a total absence of Action, Invention, Situation, and Character, and that he is only a Contemplative, a Recluse, a Solitary, analysing the sensations produced upon himself by dwelling upon mountains, woods, and waters. All this may be so. But, says Mr. Arnold, “Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life,” the greatness of a poet depends upon his criticism of life, and Wordsworth’s criticism of life is more complete, more powerful, andmore sound, than that of any English poet since Milton, indeed than that of any poet since Milton, with the one exception of Goethe.
The great and the justly acquired authority of Mr. Arnold must not deter us from saying that to no canon of criticism upon poetry with which we are acquainted do so many objections present themselves. We suspect Mr. Arnold himself has discerned some of these since he first propounded it; for while in his Prefatory Essay upon Wordsworth he urges it with absolute confidence, in his Prefatory Essay on Byron he does so more hesitatingly, and exhibits more anxiety to explain it. But does he not explain it away, when he says, “We are not brought much on our way, I admit, towards an adequate definition of poetry as distinguished from prose by that truth”? Upon this point M. Scherer, an admirer, like ourselves, of both Wordsworth and Mr. Arnold, has some just observations: