Wordsworth

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It was passages such as this, perhaps, which led Canning to declare
that Wordsworth's pamphlet was the finest piece of political
eloquence which had appeared since Burke. And yet if we compare it
with Burke, or with the great Greek exemplar of all those who would
give speech the cogency of act,--we see at once the causes of its
practical failure. In Demosthenes the thoughts and principles are
often as lofty as any patriot can express; but their loftiness, in
his speech, as in the very truth of things, seemed but to add to
their immediate reality. They were beaten and inwoven into the facts
of the hour; action seemed to turn, on them as on its only possible
pivot; it was as though Virtue and Freedom hung armed in heaven
above the assembly, and in the visible likeness of immortal
ancestors beckoned upon an urgent way. Wordsworth's mood of mind, on
the other hand, as he has depicted it in two sonnets written at the
same time as his tract, explains why it was that that appeal was
rather a solemn protest than an effective exhortation. In the first
sonnet he describes the surroundings of his task,--the dark wood and
rocky cave, "the hollow vale which foaming torrents fill with
omnipresent murmur:"--

Here mighty Nature! In this school sublime
I weigh the hopes and fears of suffering Spain;
For her consult the auguries of time,
And through the human heart explore my way,
And look and listen, gathering whence I may
Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain.

And then he proceeds to conjecture what effect his tract will produce:--

I dropped my pen, and listened to the wind,
That sang of trees uptorn and vessels tost;
A midnight harmony, and wholly lost
To the general sense of men, by chains confined
Of business, care, or pleasure,--or resigned
To timely sleep. Thought I, the impassioned strain
Which without aid of numbers I sustain
Like acceptation from the world will find.

This deliberate and lonely emotion was fitter to inspire grave
poetry than a pamphlet appealing to an immediate crisis. And the
sonnets dedicated _To Liberty_ (1802-16) are the outcome of many
moods like these.

It is little to say of these sonnets that they are the most
permanent record in our literature of the Napoleonic war. For that
distinction they have few competitors. Two magnificent songs of
Campbell's, an ode of Coleridge's, a few spirited stanzas of Byron's--
strangely enough there is little besides these that lives in the
national memory, till we come to the ode which summed up the long
contest a generation later, when its great captain passed away. But
these _Sonnets to Liberty_ are worthy of comparison with the noblest
passages of patriotic verse or prose which all our history has
inspired--the passages where Shakespeare brings his rays to focus on
"this earth, this realm, this England,"--or where the dread of
national dishonour has kindled Chatham to an iron glow,--or where
Milton rises from the polemic into the prophet, and Burke from the
partisan into the philosopher. The armoury of Wordsworth, indeed,
was not forged with the same fire as that of these "invincible
knights of old." He had not swayed senates, nor directed policies,
nor gathered into one ardent bosom all the spirit of a heroic age.
But he had deeply felt what it is that makes the greatness of nations;
in that extremity no man was more staunch than he; no man more
unwaveringly disdained unrighteous empire, or kept the might of
moral forces more steadfastly in view. Not Stein could place a
manlier reliance on "a few strong instincts and a few plain rules;"
not Fichte could invoke more convincingly the "great allies" which
work with "Man's unconquerable mind."

Here and there, indeed, throughout these sonnets are scattered
strokes of high poetic admiration or scorn which could hardly be
overmatched in AEschylus. Such is the indignant correction--

Call not the royal Swede unfortunate,
Who never did to Fortune bend the knee!

or the stern touch which closes a description of Flamininus'
proclamation at the Isthmian games, according liberty to Greece,--

A gift of that which is not to be given
By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven!

Space forbids me to dwell in detail on these noble poems,--on the
well-known sonnets to Venice, to Milton, &c.; on the generous
tributes to the heroes of the contest,--Schill, Hoffer, Toussaint,
Palafox; or on the series which contrast the instinctive greatness
of the Spanish people at bay, with Napoleon's lying promises and
inhuman pride. But if Napoleon's career afforded to Wordsworth a
poetic example, impressive as that of Xerxes to the Greeks, of
lawless and intoxicated power, there was need of some contrasted
figure more notable than Hoffer or Palafox from which to draw the
lessons which great contests can teach of unselfish valour. Was
there then any man, by land or sea, who might serve as the poet's
type of the ideal hero? To an Englishman, at least, this question
carries its own reply. For by a singular destiny England, with a
thousand years of noble history behind her, has chosen for her
best-loved, for her national hero, not an Arminius from the age of
legend, not a Henri Quatro from the age of chivalry, but a man whom
men still living have seen and known. For indeed England and all the
world as to this man were of one accord; and when in victory, on his
ship _Victory_, Nelson passed away, the thrill which shook mankind
was of a nature such as perhaps was never felt at any other death,--
so unanimous was the feeling of friends and foes that earth had lost
her crowning example of impassioned self-devotedness and of heroic
honour.

And yet it might have seemed that between Nelson's nature and
Wordsworth's there was little in common. The obvious limitations of
the great Admiral's culture and character were likely to be strongly
felt by the philosophic poet. And a serious crime, of which Nelson
was commonly, though, as now appears, erroneously, [4] supposed to be
guilty, was sure to be judged by Wordsworth with great severity.

[Footnote 4: The researches of Sir Nicholas Nicolas, (_Letters and
Despatches of Lord Nelson_, vol. vii. Appendix), have placed Lord
Nelson's connexion with Lady Hamilton in an unexpected light.]

Wordsworth was, in fact, hampered by some such feelings of
disapproval. He even tells us, with that naive affectionateness
which often makes us smile, that he has had recourse to the
character of his own brother John for the qualities in which the
great Admiral appeared to him to have been deficient. But on these
hesitations it would be unjust to dwell. I mention them only to bring
out the fact that between these two men, so different in outward
fates,--between "the adored, the incomparable Nelson" and the homely
poet, "retired as noontide dew,"--there was a moral likeness so
profound that the ideal of the recluse was realized in the public
life of the hero, and, on the other hand, the hero himself is only
seen as completely heroic when his impetuous life stands out for us
from the solemn background of the poet's calm. And surely these two
natures taken together make the perfect Englishman. Nor is there any
portrait fitter than that of _The Happy Warrior_ to go forth to all
lands as representing the English character at its height--a figure
not ill-matching with "Plutarch's men."

For indeed this short poem is in itself a manual of greatness; there
is a Roman majesty in its simple and weighty speech. And what eulogy
was ever nobler than that passage where, without definite allusion
or quoted name, the poet depicts, as it were, the very summit of
glory in the well-remembered aspect of the Admiral in his last and
greatest hour?

Whose powers shed round him. In the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life.
A constant influence, a peculiar grace:
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for human kind,
_Is happy as a Lover, and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired_.

Or again, where the hidden thought of Nelson's womanly tenderness,
of his constant craving for the green earth and home affections in
the midst of storm and war, melts the stern verses into a sudden
change of tone:--

He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence.
_Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes_;
Sweet images! Which, wheresoe'er he be,
Are at his heart; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve;--
More brave for this, that he hath much to love.

Compare with this the end of the _Song at Brougham Castle_, where,
at the words "alas! The fervent harper did not know--" the strain
changes from the very spirit of chivalry to the gentleness of
Nature's calm. Nothing can be more characteristic of Wordsworth than
contrasts like this. They teach us to remember that his accustomed
mildness is the fruit of no indolent or sentimental peace; and that,
on the other hand, when his counsels are sternest, and "his voice is
still for war," this is no voice of hardness or of vainglory, but
the reluctant resolution of a heart which fain would yield itself to
other energies, and have no message but of love.

There is one more point in which the character of Nelson has fallen
in with one of the lessons which Wordsworth is never tired of
enforcing, the lesson that virtue grows by the strenuousness of its
exercise, that it gains strength as it wrestles with pain and
difficulty, and converts the shocks of circumstance into an energy
of its proper glow. The Happy Warrior is one,

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower;
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;
By objects which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;--

and so further, in words which recall the womanly tenderness, the
almost exaggerated feeling for others' pain, which showed itself
memorably in face of the blazing _Orient_, and in the harbour at
Teneriffe, and in the cockpit at Trafalgar.

In such lessons as these,--such lessons as _The Happy Warrior_ or
the Patriotic Sonnets teach,--there is, of course, little that is
absolutely novel. We were already aware that the ideal hero should
be as gentle as he is brave, that he should act always from the
highest motives, nor greatly care for any reward save the
consciousness of having done his duty. We were aware that the true
strength of a nation is moral and not material; that dominion which
rests on mere military force is destined quickly to decay, that the
tyrant, however admired and prosperous, is in reality despicable,
and miserable, and alone; that the true man should face death itself
rather than parley with dishonour. These truths are _admitted_ in
all ages; yet it is scarcely stretching language to say that they
are _known_ to but few men. Or at least, though in a great nation
there be many who will act on them instinctively, and approve them
by a self-surrendering faith, there are few who can so put them
forth in speech as to bring them home with a fresh conviction and an
added glow; who can sum up, like AEschylus, the contrast between
Hellenic freedom and barbarian despotism in "one trump's peal that
set all Greeks aflame;" can thrill, like Virgil, a world-wide empire
with the recital of the august simplicities of early Rome.

To those who would know these things with a vital knowledge--a
conviction which would remain unshaken were the whole world in arms
for wrong--it is before all things necessary to strengthen the inner
monitions by the companionship of these noble souls. And If a poet,
by strong concentration of thought, by striving in all things along
the upward way, can leave us in a few pages as it were a summary of
patriotism, a manual of national honour, he surely has his place
among his country's benefactors not only by that kind of courtesy
which the nation extends to men of letters of whom her masses take
little heed, but with a title as assured as any warrior or statesman,
and with no less direct a claim.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHILDREN--LIFE AT RYDAL MOUNT--"THE EXCURSION."

It may be well at this point to return to the quiet chronicle of the
poet's life at Grasmere; where his cottage was becoming too small
for an increasing family. His eldest son, John, was born in 1803;
his eldest daughter, Dorothy or Dora, in 1804. Then came Thomas, born
1806; and Catherine, born 1808; and the list is ended by William,
born 1810, and now (1880) the only survivor. In the spring of 1808
Wordsworth left Townend for Allan Bank,--a more roomy, but an
uncomfortable house, at the north end of Grasmere. From thence he
removed for a time, in 1811, to the Parsonage at Grasmere.

Wordsworth was the most affectionate of fathers, and allusions to
his children occur frequently in his poetry. Dora--who was the
delight of his later years--has been described at length in _The
Triad_. Shorter and simpler, but more completely successful, is the
picture of Catherine in the little poem which begins "Loving she is,
and tractable, though wild," with its homely simile for childhood--
its own existence sufficient to fill it with gladness:

As a faggot sparkles on the hearth
Not less if unattended and alone
Than when both young and old sit gathered round
And take delight in its activity.

The next notice of this beloved child is in the sonnet, "Surprised
by joy, impatient as the wind," written when she had already been
removed from his side. She died in 1812, and was closely followed by
her brother Thomas. Wordsworth's grief for these children was
profound, violent, and lasting, to an extent which those who imagine
him as not only calm but passionless might have some difficulty in
believing. "Referring once," says his friend Mr. Aubrey de Vere,
"to two young children of his who had died about _forty years_
previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an
exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might
have been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few
weeks before. The lapse of time seemed to have left the sorrow
submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness. Yet I
afterwards heard that at the time of the illness, at least in the
case of one of the two children, it was impossible to rouse his
attention to the danger. He chanced to be then under the immediate
spell of one of those fits of poetic inspiration which descended on
him like a cloud. Till the cloud had drifted, he could see nothing
beyond."

This anecdote illustrates the fact, which to those who knew
Wordsworth well was sufficiently obvious, that the characteristic
calm of his writings was the result of no coldness of temperament
but of a deliberate philosophy. The pregnant force of his language
in dealing with those dearest to him--his wife, his sister, his
brother--is proof enough of this. The frequent allusions in his
correspondence to the physical exhaustion brought on by the act of
poetical composition indicate a frame which, though made robust by
exercise and temperance, was by nature excitable rather than strong.
And even in the direction in which we should least have expected it,
there is reason to believe that there were capacities of feeling in
him which never broke from his control. "Had I been a writer of
love-poetry," he is reported to have said, "it would have been
natural to me to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly
have been approved by my principles, and which might have been
undesirable for the reader."

Wordsworth's paternal feelings, at any rate, were, as has been said,
exceptionally strong; and the impossibility of remaining in a house
filled with sorrowful memories rendered him doubly anxious to obtain
a permanent home. "The house which I have for some time occupied," he
writes to Lord Lonsdale, in January 1813, "is the Parsonage of
Grasmere. It stands close by the churchyard, and I have found it
absolutely necessary that we should quit a place which, by recalling
to our minds at every moment the losses we have sustained in the
course of the last year, would grievously retard our progress
towards that tranquillity which it is our duty to aim at." It
happened that Rydal Mount became vacant at this moment, and in the
spring of 1813 the Wordsworths migrated to this their favourite and
last abode.

Rydal Mount has probably been oftener described than any other
English poet's home since Shakespeare; and few homes, certainly,
have been moulded into such close accordance with their inmates'
nature. The house, which has been altered since Wordsworth's day,
stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar, above Rydal
Lake. The garden was described by Bishop Wordsworth immediately
after his uncle's death, while every terrace-walk and flowering
alley spoke of the poet's loving care. He tells of the "tall ash-tree,
in which a thrush has sung, for hours together, during many years;"
of the "laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung;" of
the stone steps "in the interstices of which grow the yellow
flowering poppy, and the wild geranium or Poor Robin,"--

Gay
With his red stalks upon a sunny day.

And then of the terraces--one levelled for Miss Fenwick's use, and
welcome to himself in aged years; and one ascending, and leading to
the "far terrace" on the mountain's side, where the poet was wont to
murmur his verses as they came. Within the house were disposed his
simple treasures: the ancestral almery, on which the names of unknown
Wordsworths may be deciphered still; Sir George Beaumont's pictures
of "The White Doe of Rylstone" and "The Thorn," and the cuckoo clock
which brought vernal thoughts to cheer the sleepless bed of age, and
which sounded its noonday summons when his spirit fled.

Wordsworth's worldly fortunes, as if by some benignant guardianship
of Providence, were at all times proportioned to his successive needs.
About the date of his removal to Rydal (in March 1813) he was
appointed, through Lord Lonsdale's interest, to the distributorship
of stamps for the county of Westmoreland, to which office the same
post for Cumberland was afterwards added. He held this post till
August 1842, when he resigned it without a retiring pension, and it
was conferred on his second son. He was allowed to reside at Rydal,
which was counted as a suburb of Ambleside: and as the duties of the
place were light, and mainly performed by a most competent and
devoted clerk, there was no drawback to the advantage of an increase
of income which released him from anxiety as to the future. A more
lucrative office--the collectorship of Whitehaven--was subsequently
offered to him; but he declined it, "nor would exchange his Sabine
valley for riches and a load of care."

Though Wordsworth's life at Rydal was a retired one, it was not
that of a recluse. As years went on he became more and more
recognized as a centre of spiritual strength and illumination, and
was sought not only by those who were already his neighbours, but by
some who became so mainly for his sake. Southey at Keswick was a
valued friend, though Wordsworth did not greatly esteem him as a poet.
De Quincey, originally attracted to the district by admiration for
Wordsworth, remained there for many years, and poured forth a
criticism strangely compounded of the utterances of the
hero-worshipper and the _valet-de-chambre_. Professor Wilson, of the
_Noctes Ambrosianae_, never showed, perhaps, to so much advantage
as when he walked by the side of the master whose greatness he was
one of the first to detect. Dr. Arnold of Rugby made the
neighbouring home at Fox How a focus of warm affections and of
intellectual life. And Hartley Coleridge, whose fairy childhood had
inspired one of Wordsworth's happiest pieces, continued to lead
among the dales of Westmoreland a life which showed how much of
genius and goodness a single weakness can nullify.

Other friends there were, too, less known to fame, but of
exceptional powers of appreciation and sympathy. The names of
Mrs. Fletcher and her daughters, Lady Richardson and Mrs. Davy,
should not be omitted in any record of the poet's life at Rydal. And
many humbler neighbours may be recognized in the characters of the
_Excursion_ and other poems. _The Wanderer_, indeed, is a picture
of Wordsworth himself--"an idea," as he says, "of what I fancied my
own character might have become in his circumstances." But the
_Solitary_ was suggested by a broken man who took refuge in
Grasmere from the world in which he had found no peace; and the
characters described as lying in the churchyard among the mountains
are almost all of them portraits. The clergyman and his family
described in Book VII were among the poet's principal associates in
the vale of Grasmere. "There was much talent in the family," says
Wordsworth in the memoranda dictated to Miss Fenwick; "and the
eldest son was distinguished for poetical talent, of which a
specimen is given in my Notes to the _Sonnets on the Duddon_. Once
when, in our cottage at Townend, I was talking with him about poetry,
in the course of our conversation I presumed to find fault with the
versification of Pope, of whom he was an enthusiastic admirer. He
defended him with a warmth that indicated much irritation;
nevertheless I could not abandon my point, and said, 'In compass and
variety of sound your own versification surpasses his.' Never shall
I forget the change in his countenance and tone of voice. The storm
was laid in a moment; he no longer disputed my judgment; and I
passed immediately in his mind, no doubt, for as great a critic as
ever lived."

It was with personages simple and unromantic as these that
Wordsworth filled the canvas of his longest poem. Judged by ordinary
standards the _Excursion_ appears an epic without action, and with
two heroes, the Pastor and the Wanderer, whose characters are
identical. Its form is cumbrous in the extreme, and large tracts of
it have little claim to the name of poetry. Wordsworth compares the
_Excursion_ to a temple of which his smaller poems form subsidiary
shrines; but the reader will more often liken the small poems to gems,
and the _Excursion_ to the rock from which they were extracted. The
long poem contains, indeed, magnificent passages, but as a whole it
is a diffused description of scenery which the poet has elsewhere
caught in brighter glimpses; a diffused statement of hopes and
beliefs which have crystallized more exquisitely elsewhere round
moments of inspiring emotion. The _Excursion_, in short, has the
drawbacks of a didactic poem as compared with lyrical poems; but,
judged as a didactic poem, it has the advantage of containing
teaching of true and permanent value.

I shall not attempt to deduce a settled scheme of philosophy from
these discourses among the mountains. I would urge only that as a
guide to conduct Wordsworth's precepts are not in themselves either
unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us
amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be
something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in
the second. Asceticism, quietism, enthusiasm, ecstasy--all systems
which imply an unnatural repression or an unnatural excitation of
our faculties--are ill-suited for the mass of mankind. And on the
other hand, if we are told to follow nature, to develope our
original character, we are too often in doubt as to which of our
conflicting instincts to follow, what part of our complex nature to
accept as our regulating self. But Wordsworth, while impressing on
us conformity to nature as the rule of life, suggests a test of such
conformity which can be practically applied. "The child is father of
the man,"--in the words which stand as introduction to his poetical
works, and Wordsworth holds that the instincts and pleasures of a
healthy childhood sufficiently indicate the lines on which our
maturer character should be formed. The joy which began in the mere
sense of existence should be maintained by hopeful faith; the
simplicity which began in inexperience should be recovered by
meditation; the love which originated in the family circle should
expand itself over the race of men. And the calming and elevating
influence of Nature--which to Wordsworth's memory seemed the
inseparable concomitant of childish years--should be constantly
invoked throughout life to keep the heart fresh and the eyes open to
the mysteries discernible through her radiant veil. In a word, the
family affections, if duly fostered, the influences of Nature, if
duly sought, with some knowledge of the best books, are material
enough to "build up our moral being" and to outweigh the less
deep-seated impulses which prompt to wrong-doing.

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