828
W930
H&9

ARTES
LIBRARY
WAJA
1817
VERITAS
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SE PLUNIBUS UMUNC
S
TUEBOR
SI-QUÆRIS PENINSULAM·AMŒNAM
SCIENTIA
OF THE
CIRCUMSPICE
KIKIXIKIKING7 (37.39
1999)978)(8) 37:3778),
LILITHU
MAURITIUSELMETT
328
W930
H89
Mat Syr
ا ما را می تر.
PREFATORY NOTE.
THE principal part of this volume, that on WORDS-
WORTH, was put into its present shape mainly for
reading, and most of it was read, to a small circle of
intelligent and thoughtful people, gathered for that
purpose at the residence of Mrs. Martha B. Cilley, in
Cambridge, Mass. For the sake of greater variety in
the readings, and also for occasional relief to the listen-
ers, the biographical matter was distributed through
two or three chapters, instead of being massed together
in one.
It may well be thought that recent writers on the
Poet are quoted rather more than is in good taste. In
excuse for this, I can but plead that my one paramount
and controlling aim throughout was to prompt and fur-
ther the study of Wordsworth's poetry just as much as
I possibly could; and it seemed to me that reasonable
people would be influenced far more by the weight and
number of the judgments cited than by any words I
could speak from myself.
Of the other papers in the volume, I have nothing
to say they will of course have to take their chance,
and so may as well be left to speak for themselves.
CAMBRIDGE, Sept. 1, 1884.
CONTENTS.
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
CHAPTER I.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN HUMANITY
SCIENCE AND POETRY
MISSION OF WORDSWORTH
MASTER-PROPHETS OF SONG
FRESHNESS OF HIS POETRY
HIS FAULTS
HIS MORAL PURPOSE
AS A TEXT-BOOK IN SCHOOL
HOW MY LOVE OF HIM BEGAN
EFFECT OF HIS POETRY ON OTHERS
HIS IDEAL OF A POET.
•
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL-LIFE AT HAWKSHEAD
COLLEGE-LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE
TOUR ON THE CONTINENT
RESIDENCE IN FRANCE
RAISLEY CALVERT
DISAPPOINTED and BEWILDERED
•
•
PAGE
1
5
8
9
12
14
19
22
25
29
30
35
41
46
49
52
53
vi
CONTENTS.
THE POET AND HIS SISTER
MRS. WORDSWORTH .
WHY POSITIVISTS LIKE HIM
HIS REALISM
•
CHAPTER III.
CONTEMPORARY POETS.
RESIDENCE AT RACEDOWN
RESIDENCE AT GRASMERE
THE POET AND HIS REVIEWERS
HIS FINAL TRIUMPH
HIS LIFE AT RYDAL MOUNT
DECLINE OF HIS FAME
RESURGENCE
HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SCOTT
RECENT WRITERS UPON HIM
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY
CHAPTER IV.
REACTION FROM THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL
POETRY OF HUMBLE LIFE
THE POETRY OF HOME
HIS MASTER-VISION. - GOD IN NATURE
CHAPTER V.
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE
THE RELIGION OF NATURE
•
•
→
•
>
•
•
PAGE
57
60
62
70
ང་
78
79
83
90
92
95
97
99
102
105
117
122
127
135
158
185
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
HIS PLACE AMONG ENGLISH POETS
HIS ORIGINALITY
INFLUENCE OF CUMBRIAN SCENERY
THEORY AND USE OF LANGUAGE
QUALITIES OF STYLE
IIIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST
OFFICE OF CRITICISM.
The Ode on IMMORTALITY
INDEX.
•
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY
PARTING ADDRESS
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
·
•
•
vii
PAGE
202
201
. 208
211
219
226
230
240
•
. 259
296
307
313
LARATIECENNUS
339
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
CHAPTER I.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN HUMANITY.
IT has long been a settled article in my creed that
the line of apostles, or of teachers divinely fur-
nished and appointed for special purposes, did not end
with those whose names are recorded as such in the
New Testament; though of course I hold the term
to have been applied to these in a very high and
peculiar sense, a sense in which it is not rightly
applicable to any that have since appeared. For I
cannot conceive of the Author of Nature and the
Father of the Human Race as having launched these
in their respective orbits of being, and then left them
to go their way without further superintendence and
On the contrary, I think I cannot choose
but think of Him as living and breathing omnipres-
ently in the goings-on of Nature, as the quickening
and animating soul of all her forms and movements;
and as, through these, expressing or signifying His
thoughts to the thinking part of His creation. But
His thinking is creative, omnipresently so; ours is
merely receptive; all our intelligence, all our capaci-
care.
C
1
2
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
ties of intelligence, being but the effect of His intelli-
gent breathing within us or upon us. So that, to my
sense, Nature is emphatically God's language; her
works are the veritable words of His mouth, in and
through which He communicates to His rational
and moral creatures so much of the Divine mind
or the Divine thought as they are capable of receiv-
ing. And so, to quote from the last great English
prophet of Nature,
My mind hath look'd
Upon the speaking face of Earth and Heaven
As her prime teacher; intercourse with man
Establish'd by the sovereign Intellect,
Who through that bodily image hath diffused,
As might appear to th' eye of fleeting time,
A deathless spirit.
But this Divine oratory is a language that compara-
tively few of us can understand or read without help:
many of us indeed, perhaps most of us, can see
the words, but can perceive no thought, no reason, no
intelligent significance in them. And, so far as this
is the case with us, there is, of course, no communi-
cation from the creative Mind to the creature mind:
the forms of sense pass for nothing more than what
they appear to the sense; that is to say, we catch, we
apprehend, nothing in them but what the sensuous
vision can grasp so that there is no God in Nature
to us; we may believe that "the heavens declare the
glory of God," if we have been told so, but we cannot
see it.
Now, that the thoughts clothed in the language of
Nature may be made intelligible to us; that we may
be enabled to read understandingly at least a few
pages or sentences in the volume of God's works; we
DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN HUMANITY.
3
need translators and interpreters, men so gifted
with the seeing eye and the understanding heart, that
they can, as it were, touch and elicit the Divine mean-
ings embodied in the forms of sense. Accordingly,
all along the tract of history, there has been a suc-
cession of real apostles, prophets, seers, teachers
divinely raised up and kindled to translate some
portion of Nature's language into the languages of
men; to catch at least a few notes or touches of the
Divine breathing in Nature, and interpret them down
to our plane of thought: and according as they have
been severally elected to interpret this or that part
of the book, so they have been each fittingly endowed
and inspired for the interpretation. So, to my think-
ing, it has been, so it is, in philosophy and science;
so in poetry and art; so in regard to the moral, social,
civil, and political affairs of mankind.
Thus the Divine hand is to be recognized as crea-
tively or formatively present in history, in the events
of the past, no less than in the perennial workings of
Nature. For instance, to pass by the roll of
Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime,
And all that fetch'd the flowing rhyme
From genuine springs,
in the days of classic fame,-to pass by these, can
we think of the grand old builders, the anonymous
immortals of what we call the Dark Ages, who con-
ceived and constructed those monumental orators
of Christianity, those sublime architectural volumes.
of eloquence, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, - can
we think of these otherwise than as true apostles
specially touched and inspired for the work? How
4
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
else could they have had soul-power enough to project
those stupendous erections?
So, in due time, rose up Martin Luther all armed
and mounted to save the Catholic Church from rotting
away in the foul steam of her own corruptions. So,
too, John Wesley was sent forth to rouse the Church
of England from her deathlike trance of apathy, and
pour a baptismal current of fire through her torpid
veins. And so I look upon Edmund Burke as a great
apostle, specially gifted with just the right powers,
and inspired in just the right kind, to preserve and
extend the British rule in India, by scourging its hid-
eous cruelties and iniquities, by reforming its mon-
strous abuses and corruptions, and by infusing into
it a spirit of humanity and justice, that so the forces.
of Christian civilization might get a firm foothold
and gradually diffuse their efficacy among the nations
and peoples of Asia. And so, again, in this coun-
try, when certain deep and far-reaching causes were
secretly preparing the dangers of Nullification and
Secession, a great apostle of law and order was also
in secret course of preparation to meet the exigency;
a man rightly armed and attempered and ensouled to
expound and defend the Constitution of our Fathers,
to knit the understandings and hearts of the Ameri-
can people firmly to our national Union; so that,
when at length Slavery forced itself into a mortal
duel with that Union, and it became evident that one
of them must die, the Union was strong enough to
outwrestle and crush its mighty assailant.
And so, in different ages of the world, great invent-
ors, teachers, reformers, founders of arts and insti-
tutes, missionaries of light and health, have been
SCIENCE AND POETRY.
5
divinely fitted out and provided, to sustain or to
further the progressive development, improvement,
enrichment of humanity. In this way, when mighty
issues have been gathering and fermenting in secret,
issues involving the dearest interests of mankind,
but which no human eye could foresee, another Eye,
also working unseen and unsuspected, has been pro-
spectively arranging for them, secretly forming, train-
ing, guiding, and inspiring fitting ministers for the
work; so that, when the time came, there stood the
man, nobody could tell how or why. For, when ex-
traordinary occasions thus arise, and extraordinary
men are at hand exactly suited to them, can any one
seriously doubt this to be the ordering of a Mind
that has had them both in view long before, and has
providentially designed and fashioned the one for the
other? However speculative refinement may intri-
cate and obscure the matter, still a reason, deeper
than logic can fathom, will tell us that such mighty
harmonies are the work of the Divine Composer, cre-
atively present in the shaping of human history.
G
SCIENCE AND POETRY.
All through the eighteenth century the genius of
modern science was secretly preparing the vast train
of achievements with which she has since armed the
hand and enriched the head, but now, by engrossing
men too much in material aims and regards, is, in the
opinion of many, threatening to swamp the heart and
soul, of humanity. Doubtless many are familiar with
the fact, for such I believe it to be, — that at one
time the revelations of the telescope were greatly
6
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
overloading one side of the ship of human thought,
insomuch that they seemed likely to sink the whole
cargo in the bottomless gulf of atheism and irreligion;
until at length and in good time the invention of the
microscope restored the balance, righted the ship,
and sent her onwards, duly poised upon her keel. In
like manner science, by her conquests daily gained in
the world of sense, and by leading men to mistake
a part of Nature for the whole, has of late been so
overweighting the earthy and perishable part of our
being, as to be in some apparent danger of tilting
the ship clean over upon one side, and spilling all
her riches. For so science, if put in exclusive occu-
pancy of the human mind, and she has lately
seemed to be claiming nothing less, would not
only "untenant creation of its God," but would also
so sensualize the whole man, so jug up the soul,
if indeed any soul should remain, in the dungeons
of earth, and would so empty our intellectual house
of its best treasures, that we should have nothing
left to distinguish us inwardly from the beasts, or to
make our life worth living. Were science allowed.
to shut us up entirely in her own methods and
findings, we should then have nothing to ground
morality or virtue upon but the profound axiom, that
pleasure is pleasant, and money will buy it; and out
of this pregnant germ our Whole Duty of Man would
have to be evolved. For the mere understanding, or
the faculty of scientific demonstration, repudiating,
as it sometimes does, the authority of our moral,
imaginative, and emotional being, knows and can
know of no other source of practical legislation.
But science was not to have exclusive occupancy
SCIENCE AND POETRY.
7
of the human mind: that issue was to be forestalled
by timely premunition: and the demands of science
in that behalf were to be prospectively met, tempered,
neutralized, by a due provision for upholding and
cherishing the moral and spiritual elements of our
being. Alongside, or rather in advance, of the scien-
tific interpretation of Nature, there came a poetical,
imaginative, and spiritual interpretation, to offset, to
assuage, to counterpoise, to correct the materializing
and secularizing tendencies of science. In short, the
new upgrowths of science were to be balanced by new
outbursts of poetry,-poetry all alive with that very
efficacy which science, assuming itself to be the one
sole organ of Reason, and the only rightful dominator
of thought, arrogantly discredits or ignores. And
indeed against such a tyranny of demonstrative logic
our rational instincts of faith and freedom are sure
to rebel. For the human soul can nowise set up its
rest in any scheme of thought that dissects and
unsouls the Universe into a mere piece of mech-
anism, and resolves the Author of it into a sort
of omnipotent diagram. The spiritualities of our
being will have, must have a spiritual atmosphere to
breathe in, and therefore will sooner or later shatter
into splinters the exhausted receiver in which it is
sought to imprison them. In other words, however
men may undertake to live exclusively in the head,
Reason herself will in due time assert the rights of
the heart and the conscience to share in their life:
or, if the vital circulation between heart and head
be indeed wholly cut off, the head itself will in no
long time be dried or frozen up. Science may insist
on dissecting the bird in order to find out where the
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
music comes from and how it is got up; but the heart
of man will insist on having the living bird, with the
songs gushing or bubbling from its throat. And so
the great poet-soul, with its fresh human-heartedness,
and as a lute stringed with the tremulous chords of
emotion, instead of using the language of the scalpel
and the microscope, will run over, very unscientifi-
cally, somewhat as follows, the Green Linnet being
its theme:
While birds and butterflies and flowers
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:
A Life, a Presence like the air,
Scattering thy gladness without care,
Too blest with any one to pair ;
Thyself thy own enjoyment.
My dazzled sight he oft deceives,
A brother of the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;
As if, by that exulting strain,
He mock'd and treated with disdain
The voiceless form he chose to feign,
While fluttering in the bushes.
MISSION OF WORDSWORTH.
Here, then, comes in the mission and apostleship
of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, who has proved, in fact,
a teacher and prophet just suited to the forthcoming
need, insomuch that I make no scruple of regarding
him as having been specially, providentially, raised up
and sent forth to that end. He is the most spiritual
and the most spiritualizing of all the English poets,
not Shakespeare, no, nor even Milton, excepted: in-
MASTER-PROPHETS OF SONG.
9
deed, so far as I know or believe, the world has no
poetry outside the Bible that can stand a comparison
with his in this respect. And, with all his surpass-
ing spirituality of thought, he carries a genius so
powerful and so penetrating, his poetry breathes a
music so deep and so sweet, that even the hardest-
headed science is constrained to recognize it, to feel
and own its power, and to draw refreshment from
it; or, to speak more fairly, the two seem drawn, at
length, to a recognition of each other; and both are
now working, apparently, to a mutual interchange of
services. For it is very remarkable that, while Words-
worth is our most spiritual and most religious inter-
preter of Nature, yet some of his most loving and
appreciative students are now found among the Posi-
tivists,men who have been supposed to be, and
indeed have been, specially intent on disrobing and
denuding the human soul of all its spiritual and re-
ligious apparelling. This is to me, I confess, a very
surprising and also a most gratifying fact, causing
me to think the better both of him and of them.
The fact is indeed deeply suggestive, and the reason
of it is by no means very apparent; nor can I now
stay to discuss it, but purpose returning to it at a
future time.
..
MASTER-PROPHETS OF SONG.
Of course it is not to be supposed that the men
whom I am regarding as apostles providentially fur-
nished and assigned were free from faults and blem-
ishes, free either as teachers or as men: doubtless
most of them, perhaps all, have had in them things
10
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
enough for regret and censure to fasten upon. The
greatest men are not always great, the wisest not
always wise, the best not always good: the firmest
have their lapses, the strongest their frailties, the
brightest their spots. I dare not say that even St.
Paul was altogether faultless; certainly he was him-
self very far from saying so: nevertheless he seems
to me to have been a peerless gentleman, a man
of gigantic intellect, and at the same time clothed
with an almost angelic sweetness and loveliness of
character. King David, as we all know, had his
life stained with shocking crimes and corruptions:
yet, surely, he was "a mighty orb of song"; surely
he pours about our paths the genuine melodies of
Heaven, singing with a rapture so inspiring and up-
lifting, that we must needs conclude his soul to have
been immediately touched by the finger of God.
But yet, so far as we know or have reason to
believe, all the world's master-prophets of song, from
Homer to Wordsworth, have been, in the main, good
and pure men, men of strong and tender hearts,-
great, simple, earnest, pious souls, - men of lofty
aims and benign affections, gentle, just, and honor-
able in their lives. But there has also been another
race of poets, far more numerous indeed, but gen-
erally of transient note, not prophets at all, nor
charged with any Divine message to mankind; mere
melodious or impassioned singers at the best; many
of them men of strong heads and impure hearts, with
genius enough to be proud and profligate, but too little
to be humble and devout: and such as these have
sometimes made the very name of poet a theme of
mockery and reproach.
A
MASTER-PROPHETS OF SONG.
11
Of those whom I have termed the world's master-
prophets of song, there have been several, no doubt,
who had a wider reach and compass of vision, and a
finer, or a richer, or a grander harmony of tone, than
Wordsworth; but, the Bible apart, I question whether
any one has laid open a fresher or more original tract
of thought, or made a solider or more quickening
addition to the world's stock of soul-power, or sent a
deeper, a more renovating, a more invigorating thrill
along the nerves of man's spiritual being. And cer-
tainly none of them has left a record of greater moral
sanity and rectitude, or of a purer, simpler, manlier,
or more benignant course of life. The touch of his
genius has put new life into the veins, given a richer
bloom to the cheeks, and changed the whole complex-
ion, of English poetry; its efficacy being, withal, so
subtile and perfusive, that ever since his day the best
authorship throughout the English-speaking world has
been catching and propagating its motions without
being conscious of it; or, as our Mr. Whittier with
kindred felicity describes it,
The sunrise on his breezy lake,
The rosy tints his sunset brought,
World-seen, are gladdening all the vales
And mountain-peaks of thought.
Assuredly he was endowed, in very large measure,
with "the vision and the faculty divine"; his genius
streams forth
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the Poet's dream,
“
in a kind, or to a degree, that, before his coming,
had not been conceived. I can well understand how
12
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Keats, with certain of his poems in hand, should have
been moved to pen the lines,
Great spirits now on Earth are sojourning ;-
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide-awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing.
For, indeed, when Wordsworth is rightly and fully
himself, his poetry has a freshness as if Spring her-
self had breathed her very soul into it; a freshness
that "
age cannot wither nor custom stale," because it
opens, or keeps open, a kindred fountain of freshness
in the reader's mind: so that he who worthily dwells
with it is ever inhaling the virtue of perennial inward
youth; and he can no more grow weary of it than of
Summer's morning minstrelsy or Summer's evening
calm.
FRESHNESS OF HIS POETRY.
This quality is exemplified in many of Wordsworth's
smaller poems, and also in not a few passages of The
Prelude and The Excursion; but perhaps I cannot
give a better taste of it than by quoting from one of
his "Poems on the Naming of Places," written in the
year 1800:
It was an April morning: fresh and clear
The Rivulet, delighting in its strength,
Ran with a young man's speed; and yet the voice
Of waters which the Winter had supplied
Was soften'd down into a vernal tone.
The spirit of enjoyment and desire,
And hopes and wishes, from all living things
Went circling, like a multitude of sounds.
The budding groves seem'd eager to urge on
The steps of June; as if their various hues
FRESHNESS OF HIS POETRY.
13
Were only hindrances that stood between
Them and their object: but, meanwhile, prevail'd
Such an entire contentment in the air,
That every naked ash, and tardy tree
Yet leafless, show'd as if the countenance
With which it look'd on this delightful day
Were native to the Summer. Up the brook
I roam'd in the confusion of my heart,
Alive to all things and forgetting all.
At length I to a sudden turning came
In this continuous glen, where down a rock
The Stream, so ardent in its course before,
Sent forth such sallies of glad sound, that all
Which I till then had heard appear'd the voice
Of common pleasure: beast and bird, the lamb,
The shepherd's dog, the linnet and the thrush
Vied with this waterfall, and made a song,
G
Which, while I listen'd, seem'd like the wild growth
Or like some natural produce of the air,
That could not cease to be.
If we duly bear in mind the exanimate, frozen con-
dition of English poetry when Wordsworth appeared,
and put in comparison therewith a few of the live
poems in question, perhaps we shall feel no exaggera-
tion in the following lines describing the effects of his
workmanship:
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round ;
He spoke, and loosed our hearts 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 return'd: for there was shed,
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furl'd,
The freshness of the early world.
M
Mak
14
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
All this proceeds, at least in part, from Words-
worth's peculiar mode of viewing or reading the coun-
tenance of external Nature. So strong and so free
is the creative soul within him, that he is ever finding
or feeling an omnipresent responsive creative soul in
the objects around him. What that peculiar mode is,
I must leave for consideration at another time.
HIS FAULTS.
Before proceeding further in commendation of
Wordsworth, I must frankly advert to certain faults,
-faults so obvious indeed that it were hardly worth
the while to notice them, but that passing them by in
silence might seem to argue a spirit of blind or indis-
criminate praise. And I the rather do so, inasmuch
as critics of a certain stamp are fond of skulking
behind these faults in order to screen their ice-bound
insensibility to the Poet's greatest merits. Because
he is not always inspired, they eagerly catch at this
fact, and work it up in such a way as to hide, from
themselves at least, perhaps from some others also,
their stolid impenetrability to his highest inspirations.
Of course such critics seldom have anything but scoffs
and contempt for that which they do not understand:
airs which, sweeping over susceptive spirits, kindle
divinest melodies, touch them to nothing but cynic
howls and agonies.
A considerable portion of Wordsworth's matter,
a fourth at least, perhaps a third, may well be set
down as little better than worthless; mere slag, for
the most part, with a few grains, here and there, and
sometimes a small nugget, of pure gold. I cannot
HIS FAULTS.
15
say that these are quite like Gratiano's "two grains
of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek
all day ere you find them; and when you have them
they are not worth the search": but they are so over-
laid with ashes and dross, that few will take the pains
to find them. For instance, his tragedy of The Bor-
derers is, to my sense, hardly worth the paper it is
printed on; except that something of a psychological
interest may attach to it as a sample of a great poet's
apprentice work. For it was written in his youth.
Yet even here we have a few detached thoughts and
images which I would not willingly part with, and
which give clear earnest of the grand fruitage that
was to follow. But, in truth, of right dramatic power
Wordsworth had little or none; though he was not
wanting in the power to conceive and discriminate
individual character. Playful he is indeed at times,
and, I think, commonly graceful in his play: but of
humor he has none at all, any more than Milton;
and he comes off better than Milton in this respect at
least, that he never attempts to be humorous; whereas
Milton attempts it repeatedly, and always makes a
sorry failure of it.
What I have said of The Borderers holds equally
of several other early pieces; which fall as much below
the right Wordsworthian standard as The Comedy of
Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona fall below
the right Shakespearian standard. In some of his
shorter pieces, also, perhaps from a too premeditated
or too conscious quest of simplicity, he flattens into
simpleness and puerility: what should have been
childlike turns out sheer childish platitude, or some-
thing little better than that. I could pardon much
16
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
more in this kind for the sake of that unwithering
little poem, so perfect in its tender pathos and in its
pure childlike simplicity, entitled We are Seven:
Then did the little Maid reply,
"Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.
My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem ;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
And often after sunset, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there."
And here I recall a little incident which it may be
worth the while to relate. Several years ago, I then
having a class in Wordsworth in the Boston School
of Oratory, it fell to a certain lady to read this piece
of childish nonsense. As I had never been able to
read it with dry eyes,
at least never since I came
to years of indiscretion, I thought she would cer
tainly like it. I was mistaken. She made out, in-
deed, to get through the reading; but was so disgusted,
that she forthwith shot out of the room, and never
showed herself in my class again; in fact, I believe she
soon after left the School. She evidently took it in
high dudgeon, that she, a full-grown woman, should
have been put to reading such puerile trash. She
was a rather light-timbered vessel, I should think, yet
freighted, apparently, with an uncommon cargo of
illumination. Though considerably past her teens,
she was still a maiden lady, and so had never wept
HIS FAULTS.
17
such tears as mothers often have to weep. Though
I could not teach her, she taught me. And the lesson
she taught me was this, you may have heard some-
thing like it before: "Seest thou a man wise in his
own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of
him."
In Wordsworth's two longest poems, again, The
Prelude and The Excursion, we have not a few strains
of mere versified prose, sometimes running to con-
siderable length, and tedious enough. But I cannot
say that these are more in number or much poorer
in quality than are found in Paradise Lost and Par-
adise Regained; especially where Milton spins his
theological yarns, and weaves the Five Points of Cal-
vinism into the texture of his mighty Epic. In such
poems some prosaic thoughts always have to be
admitted; and the difference between a great poet
and a small one here is just this: the former, if he
has a prosaic thing to say, is content to say it pro-
saically, and let it pass for just what it is; if the
latter has a prosaic thing to say,- and he seldom
has anything else, he so pranks it up in the fineries
of what is called "poetic diction" as to make it pass
for something grand.
Other pieces, also, as The Idiot Boy and Peter Bell,
are tediously drawn out to great over-length; many
trifling items being retained, that ought to have been
fused or burnt out by the poet's creative fire. So, in
Peter Bell, while the Prologue and the description of
the hero are in Wordsworth's finest vein, the narra-
tive part is about twice as long as it should be, and
tedious in full proportion to its length. Yet here we
have, now and then, sprinklings of genuine star-dust,
2
18
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
strong jets of poetic ecstacy, that instantaneously
send the thoughts aloft as on the wings of a rocket.
Here is one:
And now is Peter taught to feel
That man's heart is a holy thing;
And Nature, through a world of death,
Breathes into him a second breath,
More searching than the breath of Spring.
And we have like jets of rapture in The Idiot Boy.
I quote one of these, where the mother, in great trepi-
dation of heart, is hurrying abroad at midnight,
searching for her truant innocent:
She listens, but she cannot hear
The foot of horse, the voice of man ;
The streams with softest sound are flowing,
The grass you almost hear it growing, —
You hear it now, if e'er you can.
Finally: In some of his later poems, Wordsworth
seems to have mistaken the workings of his sensitive,
yet healthy and earnest moral nature for the stirrings
of poetic inspiration; the same error that has given
the world so many pious or philosophic homilies in
verse, books which nothing but a mistaken sense
of duty could induce any person of taste to read.
Such, for instance, is his series of "Sonnets on the
Punishment of Death," -a piece of thoughtful and
well-meant moralizing, all sound and orthodox enough,
no doubt, only it happens to be little more than the
mere form of poetry, without the soul. And there
are several other like strains of prosing didacticism,
all the work of his old age, when his genius was
flickering in the socket, and his wonted fires but
faintly glimmering through the ashes of time.
HIS MORAL PURPOSE.
19
HIS MORAL PURPOSE.
Nearly connected with this latter fault stands one
of Wordsworth's greatest excellences. He always
writes with a high moral purpose; though sometimes,
as in the cases just pointed out, rather obtrusively so:
for, as he himself tells us, he wished to be received
as a teacher, or not at all; his supreme desire being
to "arouse the sensual from their sleep of death, and
win the vacant and the vain to noble raptures." And
he has a great many poems, perfectly original and
perfectly beautiful, in which the moral meaning, how-
ever paramount in his thought, is nevertheless kept
from all approach to mere didacticism by the auroral
freshness of imagery, and the strong, deep current of
poetic rapture which transfigures them. The thought,
however moral affinities may have drawn him to it,
or drawn it to him, yet no sooner enters his conscious-
ness than it becomes impassioned, kindles and glows
into a flame; and the imaginative delight of it so
absorbs and fills his mind as to sweep him onwards,
leaving all other regards behind. And the genial
reader loses all sense of the moral purpose in the
strong emotion stirred within him; while at the same
time the emotion sweetens that very purpose into his
mind, and does this all the better for his being quite
carried away with the sweetness. This is indeed the
highest function of poetry, so to invest what is noble
with sweetness, so to accomplish virtue with loveli-
ness, that delight and joy shall be inseparable from
her presence. Here is an apt instance of what I mean,
from his second poem of The Wishing Gate:
20
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
:
Not Fortune's slave is Man: our state
Enjoins, while firm resolves await
On wishes just and wise,
That strenuous action follow both,
And life be one perpetual growth
Of heavenward enterprise.
So taught, so train'd, we boldly face
All accidents of time and place;
Whatever props may fail,
Trust in that sovereign law can spread
New glory o'er the mountain's head,
Fresh beauty through the vale.
Still better is this, To a Sky-Lark, which we all
ought to be familiar with:
Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
Leave to the nightingale her shady wood :
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine ;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam,
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!
66
Very different indeed, but perhaps not inferior either
in wisdom or in poetry; is the following, from “ Lines
left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree," where the Poet
describes a man of genius who, because, as he thought,
the world slighted him, "turned himself away," and,
in a chronic disease of egotism, "with the food of
pride sustained his soul in solitude":
If thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure,
HIS MORAL PURPOSE.
21
Stranger, henceforth be warn'd; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser, thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love ;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.
Wordsworth was a very self-conscious man, but he
was also rigidly self-exacting; his intellect being,
withal, so strong and clear that no fond illusions born
of egotism could fasten upon him; and, while taking
a severe measure of his powers, and holding himself
to a strict account in the forum of conscience, he at
the same time formed a high estimate of himself and
of his work; which estimate, however, now stands.
in the main approved by time, and is generally con-
ceded to have been just. So the whole moral scope
and spirit of his poetry, as he himself viewed it, has,
perhaps, fullest expression in a short piece written
as late as 1842, when he was seventy-two years old.
He there describes the poet's mission as
a mission best fulfill'd
When and wherever, in this changeful world,
Power hath been given to please for higher ends
Than pleasure only; gladdening, to prepare
For wholesome sadness; troubling, to refine;
Calming, to raise; and, by a sapient art
Diffused through all the mysteries of our being,
S
22
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Softening the toils and pains that have not ceased
To cast their shadows on our mother Earth
Since the primeval dawn.
And he adds,
such is the grace
Which, though unsued-for, fails not to descend
With heavenly inspiration; such the aim
That Reason dictates.
He then gives serene and modest utterance to the
hope, that
A voice devoted to the love whose seeds
Are sown in every human breast, to beauty
Lodged within compass of the humblest sight,
To cheerful intercourse with wood and field,
And sympathy with man's substantial griefs,
that such a voice “will not be heard in vain." This
brief retrospect of his own work is touched with a
calm so deep, so steadfast, and so bracing, that I am
never weary of returning to it.
AS A TEXT-BOOK IN SCHOOL.
By way of completing this instalment of my present
undertaking, it may not be amiss to work out some-
thing in the line of my own personal experience.
I have now been using Wordsworth as a text-book
in schools and classes for some fourteen years; and,
so far as I know, I was the first to make such use
of him. I felt tolerably confident, from the start,
that the thing would be a success; and such it has
proved to be, eminently so. I have had a great many
pleasant classes communing with Wordsworth under
my guidance and instruction; most of them young
ladies, with whom I have certainly been very happy,
AS A TEXT-BOOK IN SCHOOL.
23
whatever may have been the case with them. Of
course I cannot say that success has reached every
individual pupil; that all have taken to his poetry,
and grown to love it; this were too much to expect:
but I can say that with no class has the thing proved
a failure, or anything near it. And people are now
often making me returns of gratitude - very precious
and dear they are to me-for having first put them
in communication with this almost divine source of
light and strength and joy. For they who once begin
to love Wordsworth never cease to love him: let his
power once get a roothold in the heart, and it is not
to be ousted on the contrary, it keeps striking its
roots deeper and deeper, and growing stronger and
stronger, within them to the end of life. And so
a long experience has fully satisfied me that, next
after Shakespeare, he is the best of all the English
poets for use as a text-book in school; and this
because, with fair handling, he kindles a deeper,
stronger, purer enthusiasm, and penetrates the mind
with a more potent and enduring charm. There-
withal, to those who rightly catch the genius and
taste the idiom of his poetry, he makes the world
a more beautiful and happier place, human life a
nobler and diviner thing; ever pouring new radiance
about their paths and their homes, giving to the
flowers a richer bloom, to the fields a softer verdure,
to the woods a sweeter music; and last, not least,
as a concord that elevates the mind and stills," ever
calming their fears and supporting their souls in view
of the King of Terrors. His poems have now been
my inseparable companions for nearly fifty years;
and every year has but strengthened their hold on
<<
24
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
me; every year has added to my reverence for their
author, and to my gratitude for the unspeakable
benediction they have been to me. If I can do a little,
ever so little, towards diffusing a knowledge and love
of this priceless inheritance, I shall think I have not
lived altogether in vain.
For use as a text-book in school, Shakespeare has at
least one great advantage over Wordsworth. His fame
is so vast, it has been growing so long, it has struck its
roots so deep, thrown out its branches so far, reared
its top so high, and is indeed the shadow of a great-
ness so unapproachable, that even young people, even
our young America of both sexes, are rather apt to
let fall their crests before him, to suspect that he may
be wiser than they, though still somewhat behind the
age, to admit that they ought to love him, that it is a
shame not to love him, and that, if they cannot get
up a taste for him, so much the worse for them. Yet
Shakespeare is far from being a popular book; com-
paratively few, after all, have any real taste for him;
though, to be sure, not many are willing to own it.
If indeed a taste for his poetry were general, many
thousands of books which are now greedily devoured
by the reading public would find a very lean market.
In talking with people on this subject, I have repeat-
edly been challenged to justify my statement. I have
commonly met the challenge by asking the challengers
whether they had ever read Cymbeline. In at least
five cases out of six, they have confessed that they
had not. Yet Cymbeline is one of the Poet's richest,
wisest, sweetest plays; hardly any of them are more
highly charged with his incomparable idiom: so that
no one having a real taste for Shakespeare could pos-
sibly leave that play unread.
HOW MY LOVE OF WORDSWORTH BEGAN. 25
HOW MY LOVE OF WORDSWORTH BEGAN.
As, all through my later life, I have had a very
strong desire to interest people in Wordsworth's
poetry; and as I have often found some account of
my own experience helpful to that end; I will now,
at the risk of seeming rather too egotistical, venture
to relate, briefly, how my love of Wordsworth began.
During my first year in college, which was forty-
eight years ago, I got mightily enamored of Lord
Byron, who was certainly a great poet, though a de-
testably bad man. Byron wove his spells and very
potent they were thick and tight about me. Sev-
eral of his poems, in particular Childe Harold and
Manfred, I read again and again; it seemed as if I
never could read them enough. At length I became
sensible that his lordship was injuring me; infusing
into me his own acidulated egotism, and steeping my
thoughts full of his morbid, cynical, misanthropic
humor. Repeatedly I caught myself in fits of down-
right Byronizing; worrying myself into sulky fer-
mentings; conceiving myself to be very miserable,
yet fondly nursing and cosseting the fancied wounds
that made me so, and thus using the surest means to
make them fester and gangrene into real wounds. I
bethought myself that the thing would not do, and
ought not to be: but how break the spell? how shake
off the fascination? Meanwhile I somehow came to
have faith in Coleridge, hardly knowing as yet that
there was any such poet as Wordsworth.
I read,
more than once, the superb critique on Wordsworth
contained in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria. This
convinced me that I ought to love Wordsworth; that
*
26
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
it would be a kind of sin not to love him: accord-
ingly I made up my mind that I must and would learn
to love him. But there were none, or hardly any about
me, either students or teachers, who knew or cared
anything about him; and he was never or seldom
spoken of but in ridicule or reproach. So far as I
knew, not a single volume of his poems was to be
found anywhere in or about the college. I had small
means of procuring books, but managed to purchase
a fair copy of Wordsworth's poems. I went at them,
having no guidance in the reading but what Coleridge
gave me; and one has peculiar need of guidance in
his first study of this poet. The thing, I confess,
went rather hard for a while; but I persevered, and
it was not very long before the poetry began to take
hold of me; and, once a-hold, it stuck: its healing
power, its regenerative efficacy, its inevitable sweet-
ness, gradually stole into me. In due time, it went
all round me, it went all through me, it took com-
plete possession of me; and it washed my Lord By-
ron clean out of me: I have never cared anything
for his lordship's poetry since. I keep a prime copy
of his poems on my shelves; and for a good many
years I was wont to take it in hand for an hour or
so, as often as once a year: for the last few years,
my custom has been to read him considerably more,
perhaps not less than six or eight hours; and I am
glad that I have done so. For Lord Byron is still a
great poet, though only a poet of the second order,
if, indeed, his place be so high as that: in power of
expression, he has, I am apt to think, no equal since
Shakespeare; in power of thought, Shelley is, I think,
somewhat above him, as Wordsworth is also far above
HOW MY LOVE OF WORDSWORTH BEGAN.
27
Shelley. Wordsworth is reported to have said that
Byron's poetry could not live, because it had no holi-
ness in it. Most of it is indeed unholy enough; and
I believe that no poetry can live without something
of holiness in it: but I must still think that some of
Byron's rapturous descriptions of Nature, and also
some of his lyrical strains, are not without that indis-
pensable virtue. Probably I took to Wordsworth the
more quickly and the more strongly for my previous
study of Byron; the subtile poison his lordship had
infused into me having prepared me, as by a kind of
instinct, to relish and absorb the antidote; very much
as in some animals certain natural diseases draw them
instinctively to the natural remedies.
I well remember the particular poem with which
Wordsworth first caught and nailed me. It is very
short, very simple, but intensely Wordsworthian, thor-
oughly permeated with his most idiomatic sap: I had
never seen, had never dreamed of, anything at all like
it; and it had an extraordinary effect upon me. It is
as follows:
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran ;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trail'd its wreaths;
And 't is my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
28
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
1.
The birds around me hopp'd and play'd,
Their thoughts I cannot measure ;
But the least motion which they made,
It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from Heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
At that time I could not analyze the feelings this
little piece kindled within me, nor did I attempt to
do so: what "Nature's holy plan," as here so briefly
touched upon, is, I did not then understand, had no
intellectual conception of; but I felt it, or at least
something of it. The effect was a mystery, but it was
deep and abiding. For so, poetry, at least the highest
poetry, is more a thing of the heart than of the head:
rather say, its constituent order is thought vitalized,
made all alive, all throbbing with passion or feeling.
So that poetry has a perfect right to be felt, and felt
deeply, before it is fully understood, or before, by a
reflex process of mind, it grows to a conscious logical
justification. To put the same in other words, poetry
has its proper freehold, its natural home, in our emo-
tional nature; and it does its best when, through the
emotions, it kindles and inspires the intellect.
Το
justify it logically, is the business of criticism; and
the critic will do well, if, by the usurped predominance
of the logical faculty, he does not just kill the thing
which emotion or passion has made alive; as the fra-
EFFECT OF HIS POETRY ON OTHERS.
29
grance of a flower is killed by chemical analysis or
solution.
To return to the poem just quoted: I think I under-
stand it better now, and shall hope to do something
towards explaining it and helping others to under-
stand it at a future time. For the present, suffice it
to say that, what with this piece and what with many
others full of the same spirit, Wordsworth put my
heart into a world then entirely new to me: in due
time, my heart drew my head into the same world;
and there both have lived ever since. He did indeed
find in me, or enable me to find in myself, "faculties
which I had never used." So that I may almost say
of him what he says of his sister:
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.
Thus his poetry has kept a perpetual Spring within
me; with December on the head, I still have May
laughing and singing in the heart: so that now, with
few friends, little cash, and no popularity, I consider
myself one of the very happiest creatures on the
planet.
EFFECT OF HIS POETRY ON OTHERS.
Nor was the effect of Wordsworth's poetry on me by
any means peculiar or even uncommon. At the time
I have been referring to, I knew nothing of the late
Mr. William Cullen Bryant, now so distinguished
F
among our American lords of song, nor of Mr. Rich-
ard Henry Dana, so long and so widely known as the
patriarch of American letters, and with whom I have
30
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
since held a close personal acquaintance of some
thirty-four years' duration. These two gifted and
good men were among the first finders and lovers
of Wordsworth in this country. As far back as 1819,
Mr. Dana reviewed his poetry in the North American,
writing so wisely, so genially, and so well, that very
little if anything better has since been written on
the same theme. Some years after my study of
Wordsworth began, I learned that his poetry, long
before I ever heard of it, had produced much the
same effect, stirred much the same feelings, in both
these men, as at a later time it did in me and I now
recall the matter for the one sole purpose of making
out as strong an inducement to you as may be to
take Wordsworth as a part of your viaticum in the
journey of life. Mr. Dana, in his Preface to the edi-
tion of his Idle Man published in 1833, has the
following:
I shall never forget with what feeling my friend Bryant,
some years ago, described to me the effect produced upon him
by his meeting for the first time with Wordsworth's Ballads.
He lived, when quite young, where but few works of poetry
were to be had; at a period, too, when Pope was still the
great idol in the Temple of Art. He said that, upon opening
Wordsworth, a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in
his heart, and the face of Nature, of a sudden, to change into
a strange freshness and life. He had felt the sympathetic
touch from an according mind; and you see how instantly
his powers and affections shot over the Earth and through
his kind.
HIS IDEAL OF A POET.
I probably shall not have a more fitting occasion for
unfolding, briefly, Wordsworth's own ideal conception
HIS IDEAL OF A POET.
31
of a poet. Among the poems which I have referred
to as having first caught me in their "strong toils," is
a short one entitled A Poet's Epitaph, written in 1799;
where the author sings out his ideal in the following
lines:
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 view'd;
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.
Now what is the Poet's meaning in the last two of
these lines? or how can it be rightly said or supposed
that enjoying the things in question is better than
understanding them? For the passage seems to
imply that Nature, or rather God in Nature, cares
more to fill the soul with joy than to fill the mind
with knowledge.
Perhaps the matter may be not unfittingly com-
mented on something thus: To enjoy the things of
32
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Nature is, in the Poet's thought, to sympathize with
them, to be in the heart of them, and therefore in the
highest and the rightest sense to understand them:
in other words, to find delight and happiness in con-
versing with Nature's works, to drink in a pure and
refining pleasure from their order and their eloquence,
is to have the deepest and truest knowledge of them:
for it is nothing less than to "feel the soul of Nature,
and see things as they are"; and what is this but to
recognize God in them, and to share, unconsciously
perhaps, but not the less truly, in the joy of the
Divine creative transport? For so Wordsworth, in
all his most characteristic poetry, conceives of God
as renewing every moment His "ancient rapture" in
the continuous work of creation. And the enjoy-
ment that I have been speaking of,- what is it but,
as Mr. Stopford Brooke says, "the result of that pre-
established harmony which God has set between His
thought in us and His thought in Nature"? And
Professor Shairp speaks to the like sense: "If, as we
have been often told, sympathy is the secret of all
insight, this holds especially true of poetic insight,
which more than any other derives its power of see-
ing from sympathy with the object seen." I must
quote once more from the same: "Such is the kin-
ship between man and all that exists, that, whenever
the soul comes vividly in contact with any fact, truth,
or existence, whenever it realizes and takes them
home to itself with more than common intensity,
out of that meeting of the soul and its object there
arises a thrill of joy, a glow of emotion."
Now one of the prime characteristics of Words-
worth's poetry is that, literally and in the fullest
HIS IDEAL OF A POET.
33
sense, it springs new joys upon us, or rather it opens
new wells of joy both within and around us, — joys
that are deep, solid, tonic, and enduring,-joys re-
plete with healing, strengthening, purifying, and ele-
vating potency. And so I would fain believe, and
why should we not believe? that there are or may
be joys within our reach, which have, at least in
some degree, a truly chastening and sanctifying virtue
in them,-joys that have more or less of power to
work through in us that discipline of the soul in
righteousness which it is the special appointment of
suffering to effect.
Again: What does Wordsworth mean, when, in the
forecited lines, he speaks of the poet's gatherings of
truth from Nature as "the harvest of a quiet eye
that broods and sleeps on his own heart"? This is
an apt instance of the deep, strong undercurrents
which, when Wordsworth is at his best, roll on be-
neath the surface of his poetry, and which are barely
suggested by the smoothness and stillness of that
surface. And the meaning in question is, that the
mental vision pierces deepest and does its best when
it is drawn into a brooding and restful calm by a
heart that is at peace in its own strength and in its
vital harmony with the truth of things. For so emo-
tion that is at one with Nature soothes and charms
the eye into repose, while the eye in turn kindles and
intensifies the emotion. This is indeed one of Words-
worth's favorite thoughts; and perhaps his roundest
and clearest expression of it is in the well-known
poem entitled "Lines composed above Tintern Ab-
bey"; where he describes the still rapture of medi-
tative insight as
3
34
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
that serene and blessèd mood
In which th' affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While, with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
All this may prepare us for a juster reception of a
passage that has been a stumbling-block to some and
a perplexity to others. I mean that rapturous strain
in The Excursion where the Poet describes the emo-
tions of his hero on beholding a sunrise among the
mountains:
For the growing youth,
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the Sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He look'd,
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy: the clouds were touch'd,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him; they swallow'd up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.
No thanks he breathed, he proffer'd no request;
Rapt into still communion that transcends
Th' imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the Power
That made him; it was blessedness and love
M
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL-LIFE AT HAWKSHEAD.
WORDSWORTH W
WORDSWORTH was born the 7th of April, 1770,
in the town of Cockermouth, county of Cum-
berland; the second of five children, one of them a
daughter, of whom I shall have occasion to speak
again, as she became a very potent and decisive influ-
ence in shaping his mind and work. His father,
John Wordsworth, was an attorney-at-law, and was
law-agent for Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of
Lonsdale. The Poet's mother, a sage, calm, thought-
ful woman, died when he was eight years old. She
told a friend that William was the only one of her
children about whom she felt anxious, and that he
would be "remarkable either for good or for evil."
This was probably from what he himself calls his
“stiff, moody, and violent temper." In after-life he
had but faint recollections of his mother; enough,
however, to inspire him with a deep and tender rever-
ence. He speaks of her as "the heart and hinge of
all our learnings and our loves"; and he adds that
she
Was not puff'd up by false unnatural hopes,
Nor with impatience from the season ask'd
More than its timely produce; rather loved
The hours for what they are than from regard
36
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Glanced on their promises in restless pride.
Such was she; not from faculties more strong
Than others have, but from the times, perhaps,
And spot in which she lived, and through a grace
Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness,
A heart that found benignity and hope,
Being itself benign.
At the age of nine, William, along with his elder
brother, Richard, was put to school at Hawkshead, a
town in Westmoreland, just over the southern bor-
der of Cumberland. In his fourteenth year, when he
and Richard were at home for the Christmas holi-
days, their father died; he having never recovered
heart after the death of his wife. The old home was
now broken up, and the orphan children, being poorly
provided for, were scattered among the family rela-
tives. The Earl of Lonsdale appears to have been a
rather hard, cranky sort of man, and somewhat mean
withal. Knowing that his law-agent had some £5,000
in bank, he managed to extort a loan of it, that he
might have the owner under his thumb for political
uses; and he never till death loosed his hold of it.
Nevertheless the two elder boys returned to school,
the needed means being supplied by some of the kin-
dred. There the Poet continued till his eighteenth
year, when he entered St. John's College, Cambridge.
At Hawkshead Wordsworth led a free, joyous,
healthful life. High-pressure in education was then
not at all the order of the day it was held that the
chief business of young minds was to grow, the chief
duty of parents and teachers to furnish the natural
means and conditions of growth; postponing the show-
off business till the process of a sound and vigorous
growth has time to run its course. The boys boarded
SCHOOL-LIFE AT HAWKSHEAD.
37
and lived with the people of the village, and, when
out of school, were left mainly unchecked, to pursue
their sports and pleasures as their boyish tastes and
impulses prompted them. Near by the village is
Esthwaite Lake, a delightful sheet of water some
five miles in circumference; which the embryo poet
often surrounded on foot in the morning before.
school-time. For play-grounds, the boys had the
fields, the woods, the hillsides, all at large and in
the dressing of Nature herself: their games were
climbing crags for ravens' nests, setting springs for
woodcocks, in Summer rowing, in Winter skating, on
the lake.
Wordsworth's birthplace lies on the Derwent, which
was to him "the fairest of all rivers," and which, as
he says, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And, from his alder shades and rocky falls,
And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice
That flow'd along my dreams;
and he then adds how the stream,
winding among grassy holms,
Where I was looking on, a babe in arms,
Made ceaseless music that composed my thoughts
To more than infant softness, giving me,
Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm
That Nature breathes among the hills and groves.
The process thus begun at Cockermouth was hap-
pily continued at Hawkshead. There, not overmuch
chained down to dull task-work, his mind had a
"fair
seed-time," and the poet's soul was with him; there,
amid his rough sports and gambols, and his boister-
ous merry-makings, even more than in his studies, the
38
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH. :
boy's heart was secretly gathering in the germs of
the man's thoughts; and,
'mid that giddy bliss
Which, like a tempest, works along the blood
And is forgotten; even then I felt
Gleams like the flashing of a shield; the Earth
And common face of Nature spake to me
Rememberable things.
How the still growth and budding-forth of his
genius was nourished amid the free pleasures of that
time, is characteristically hinted in his description of
a skating-frolic:
All shod with steel,
We hiss'd along the polish'd ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the West
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopp'd short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheel'd by me, even as if the Earth had roll'd
With visible motion her diurnal round :
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watch'd
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.
SCHOOL-LIFE AT HAWKSHEAD.
3.9
Again he tells us, "happy time it was indeed for all
of us; for me it was a time of rapture."
Of course all this tumultuous gladness was mainly
the outcome of bounding and redundant animal spir-
its. Yet, amid these giddy pastimes, and while his
conscious thoughts were all eager and intent upon
the sport, strange illuminations were ever and anon
flashing upon him, he knew not how or why, and the
great joy of Nature was stealing into him unawares;
rather say, Nature often caught him with her inevi-
table mastery, and surprised him into fits of strong
entrancement. The intense brooding rapture, that
used thus to seize the Poet and hold him as in a
trance, is shown repeatedly in the poem just quoted.
Here is an instance: A troop of boys sailed across
lake Winander to a famous inn, and there spent the
afternoon in large jollity and mirth, so that "bursts
of glee made all the mountains ring." Returning in
the twilight, they stopped at an island, and, when they
had there left the minstrel of the troop,
And row'd off gently, while he blew his flute
Alone upon the rock, O, then the calm
And dead still water lay upon my mind
wic
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
Never before so beautiful, sank down
Into my heart, and held me like a dream!
Again, he tells a like story of a playmate, which, how-
ever, exactly hits off his own moods. This boy's home
was among the "cliffs and islands of Winander," and
there, in the evening, often "blew mimic hootings to
the silent owls," and drew them into "concourse wild
of jocund din"; and, when a pause of silence came,
Then sometimes, in that silence while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
40
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind,
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.
These passages are indeed supremely characteristic ;
no other English poet has anything at all like them;
and so Coleridge, quoting the latter one, said, “Had
I met these lines running wild in the deserts of
Arabia, I should instantly have screamed out-
Wordsworth!"
But all this was because of certain most vital and
most peculiar susceptibilities in the Poet, latent apti-
tudes of surpassing depth and fineness, which, though
still dumb within him, were already quivering into and
through his exultations of sense. And so we are given
to see that, even at that early time, in these wild trans-
ports of animal life, his native genius, while yet bound
up in sleep, was dreaming of the things which, long
afterwards, came to vocal utterance in his raptures of
song. His recollections of those joyous years occupy
the first two books of The Prelude, making them one
of the most original and most extraordinary poems the
world has ever seen. I must quote one more of the
passages which register how, even there and then,
the strength and fragrance, the bloom and verdure of
his poetry were in secret course of preparation, like
lilac-buds in winter-time; albeit the process, as indeed
behoved, was long in coming to full fruitage:
Ye Presences of Nature in the sky
And on the Earth! ye Visions of the hills!
And Souls of lonely places! can I think
A vulgar hope was yours when ye employ'd
COLLEGE-LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE.
41
Such ministry, when ye, through many a year
Haunting me thus among my boyish sports,
On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills,
Impress'd upon all forms the characters
Of danger or desire; and thus did make
The surface of the universal Earth
With triumph and delight, with hope and fear,
Work like a sea?
COLLEGE-LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE.
Very different was it with the Poet after his trans-
fer to Cambridge. His native Cumberland, together
with the neighboring Westmoreland and Lancashire,
is all a region of hills and mountains, with many
beautiful lakes cradled in among them; thus afford-
ing endless variety, and also unfailing grandeur and
loveliness of scenery and prospect. And, while
Wordsworth was at Hawkshead, the larger and better
part of his culture came from the living presences
of Nature, and in his rambles, social or solitary, over
the hills and beside the lakes and streams. This was
his most congenial school; here was everything to
kindle and feed his imagination; here, in his own
words, Nature was with him "as a teacher of truth
through joy and through gladness, and as a creatress
of the faculties by a process of smoothness and de-
light." At Cambridge he had nothing of this. There
the surrounding country is, for the most part, a dead
level, or nearly so, with no local grandeur and not
much local beauty of outlook or prospect. The same
heavens were indeed above him there, with their sun-
shine and clouds by day, and their starry splendors
by night; but there were no uprising and responsive
42
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
glories beneath, to speak to his soul in harmony with
these celestial eloquences.
Wordsworth was at no time a very close and ardent
student of books. At Hawkshead he had gathered
enough of Latin to enable him to read with pleasure
the chief Roman poets, and also a sufficient outfit in
other studies to secure him a respectable standing
in college. Beyond this he seems not to have aspired.
For college honors he had no thirst; while the rival-
ries and jealousies commonly attendant on the quest
of them were not to his taste: besides, he thought the
mental benefit was not enough to offset the moral
detriment. For one of the strongest instincts of the
born poet-mind is to pursue truth for its own sake,
and for the mere delight and joy of it, and not for
any ulterior ends. So that there was little at Cam-
bridge to stir and fix his interest. On the whole, his
mind was not much at home there: he had, so he
tells us, “a feeling that he was not for that hour, nor
for that place." Of course, with his native stock of
inward strength, fostered as it had been by the large
freedom of his earlier school-life, he was something
wayward and headstrong, and not so pliant to the
curbings of academic order as might be wished. So,
slighting off the graver duties of the time, he "slipp'd
into the ordinary works of careless youth"; and, per-
haps, as he happened to be William Wordsworth, it
was well, or at least not ill, that he did so. Here
is his account of the way things went with him
generally:
Companionships,
Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all.
We saunter'd, play'd, or rioted; we talk'd
Unprofitable talk at morning hours;
COLLEGE-LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE.
43
I
Drifted about along the streets and walks,
Read lazily in trivial books, went forth
To gallop through the country in blind zeal
Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast
Of Cam sail'd boisterously, and let the stars
Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.
Still Cambridge performed no unimportant part
towards educating Wordsworth for the high ministry
appointed him. She added much that was needful for
the due accomplishing of his intellectual make-up;
while his mind instinctively absorbed whatever of
good there was in his surroundings, and left the bad
behind, as bees suck sweetness "out of spurn'd or
dreaded weeds." A mere residence in that ancient
seat of learning, with its long roll of illustrious names
and the thousand inspiring associations linked to
them, could not but tell powerfully on a nature so
susceptive as his. His own words must tell how
these things touched him:
I could not print
Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps
Of generations of illustrious men,
Unmoved; I could not always lightly pass
Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,
Wake where they had waked, range that enclosure old,
That garden of great intellects, undisturb’d.
If he had there learned no more than what is indi-
cated by the following, the time would hardly have
been misspent:
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of Moon or favoring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind forever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
44
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
And the august sanctities of Time there clustered,
the harmonies, the majesties, the reverences looking
out and smiling upon him from groves and sculp-
tured forms, from architecture and music and storied
window, all these sank deeply into his heart, and
there lived as pregnant seed-points of future poetry.
Witness his two magnificent sonnets, written long
after, describing that "glorious work of fine intel-
ligence," the inside of King's College Chapel; which
description he winds up by exclaiming, as he well
might, "They dreamt not of a perishable home who
thus could build." Therewithal the society of the
place had sage and touching lessons for him. And
so he fitly asks,
Could I behold, with undelighted heart,
So many happy youths, so wide and fair
A congregation in its budding-time
Of health and hope and beauty, all at once
So many divers samples from the growth
Of life's sweet season, could I see, unmoved,
That miscellaneous garland of wild flowers
Decking the matron temples of a place
So famous through the world?
M
Then too, if he was there severed from the local
grandeurs and beauties of his native region, even this
loss was not without rich compensations: for so his
thoughts were the more turned to those still grander
aspects and poetries of Nature which are of no place,
but are everywhere the same. And here, once more,
he must speak for himself:
I look'd for universal things; perused
The common countenance of Earth and sky;
Earth, nowhere unimbellish'd by some trace
Of that first Paradise whence man was driven;
COLLEGE-LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE.
45
And sky, whose beauty and bounty are express'd
By the proud name she bears, the name of Heaven
I call'd on both to teach me what they might;
Or, turning the mind in upon herself,
G
Pored, watch'd, expected, listen'd, spread my thoughts,
And spread them with a wider creeping; felt
Incumbencies more awful, visitings
Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul,
That tolerates th' indignities of Time,
And, from the centre of Eternity
All finite motions overruling, lives
In glory immutable.
I am in danger of dwelling too long on this part
of the Poet's life; yet must further note that, as he
himself tells us, he "did not love the timid course
of their scholastic studies; could have wished to see
the river flow with ampler range and freer pace."
Accordingly even his more thoughtful and studious
interest ran a good deal outside of the prescribed cur-
riculum; Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, all Cambridge
scholars in their time, being far more attractive to
him than the paths of classical and mathematical
learning. And all through his time of youth, both
before and after going to Cambridge, he had frequent
conscious stirrings and fermentings of the poetic
life that was in him; but all so dim and fitful that
nothing memorable came of them: for, in truth,
his genius was slow and backward of development;
growing too deep and strong inwardly to play out in
early expression. How the native leaven was work-
ing in him, is well shown in the account he gives of
what befell on his revisiting Hawkshead during the
first summer vacation. 66
'Mid a throng of maids and
youths, old men, and matrons staid," he had "passed
the night in dancing, gayety, and mirth." The frolic
46
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
was prolonged "till the eastern sky was kindling,"
when all retired, and he turned his steps homeward.
Doubtless the social entrancement of the night, tin-
gling in his veins, had raised his spirits, and so pre-
pared him to see and feel whatever there was to be
seen and felt in the dawn that awaited him. Here is
his retrospect of it:
Magnificent
The morning rose, in memorable pomp,
Glorious as e'er I had beheld : in front,
The sea lay laughing at a distance; near,
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drench'd in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn,
Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds,
And laborers going forth to till the fields.
Ah! need I say, dear Friend, that to the brim
My heart was full? I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated spirit. On I walk'd
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.
G
TOUR ON THE CONTINENT.
During his last summer vacation, the Poet, together
with a college friend of kindred tastes, made a tour on
the Continent, footing it through France and Switzer-
land into Italy. Of course the Alps brought him a
large and fresh instalment of education, greatly en-
hancing his fund of thought and matter, and crowning
his conceptions with a majesty unknown to him before.
Some of his descriptions of Alpine scenery are exceed-
ingly powerful, evincing how deeply and with what
uplifting effect its potencies had entered into his mind.
TOUR ON THE CONTINENT.
47
Still more profound, if possible, was the impression
made on him by the lakes of Northern Italy, lakes so
vastly larger than those he was used to at home, and
so utterly unlike them in character and surroundings.
The mighty ravishment of them, and what new riches
they poured into him, are recorded in a strain of
poetry that is poetry indeed:
Locarno, spreading out in width like Heaven,
How dost thou cleave to the poetic heart,
Bask in the sunshine of the memory!
And Como, thou, a treasure whom the Earth
Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth
Of Abyssinian privacy! Like a breeze
Or sunbeam over your domain I pass'd
In motion without pause; but ye have left
Your beauty with me, a serene accord
Of forms and colors, passive, yet endow'd
In their submissiveness with power as sweet
And gracious, almost, might I dare to say,
As virtue is, or goodness; sweet as love,
Or the remembrance of a generous deed,
Or mildest visitations of pure thought,
When God, the giver of all joy, is thank'd
Religiously, in silent blessedness.
".
Wordsworth's passage through France was in the
Summer of 1790, when the whole nation was boiling
and heaving with the early fervors of the Revolution.
His sympathies were then all with this stormful resur-
gence of the popular heart from its long death-like
trance of misery and oppression. For, at that time,
voices of exultant joy and hope and gratulation filled
the air on every side; every tongue was jubilant with
prophecies of the good time coming, nay, already
come. The Poet, what wonder? caught the infec-
48
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
tion, and was whirled away with the prevailing
enthusiasm:
Among sequester'd villages we walk'd,
And found benevolence and blessedness
Spread like a fragrance everywhere, when Spring
Hath left no corner of the land untouch'd.
Yet even then Wordsworth saw outcropping signs of
an impious warfare against the noblest and loveliest
monuments reared by ancient virtue; and both his
taste and his feelings of ancestral reverence, his love
of what was great and good in the bequeathings of the
past, were deeply shocked. So that, while holding
fast by his faith in the movement, he was still not
without strong revulsions of heart at what was going
on, nor untouched with dark presages and forebodings
of what was to come.
In January, 1791, Wordsworth took his leave of
Cambridge, what was called a common degree being
conferred upon him. He then passed several months
in London, where he had ample room and endless
matter for observation and thought, and conversed
with many forms of woe and splendor, of meanness
and dignity, and hung with rapture on the eloquence
of Burke and other "tongue-favor'd men" in the
British Senate. Already familiar with some of
Nature's greatest and loveliest works, here he stood
face to face with some of the greatest and loveliest
works of man. This, too, was no mean part of his
education. For London, though he did not fall much
in love with her, taught him many things which it
highly concerned him to know, and which bore good
fruit to him in his later life.
RESIDENCE IN FRANCE.
49
RESIDENCE IN FRANCE.
In the following Autumn, he went again into France,
where, at a fair distance from Paris, he spent upwards
of a year, learning the French language, and com-
muning deeply with one of the noblest and gentlest of
Frenchmen on the all-absorbing subject of the time,
the unparalleled drama with which the Nation was
surprising, astonishing, appalling, bewildering the
whole European world. There and then began the
great trial of his life. The course of things was
rushing headlong and with fearful swiftness from
good to bad, and from bad to worse. The tremendous
upheaval, which at first Wordsworth had hailed as
auspicious of all that the widest philanthropy could
wish for, which had seemed to him big with promises
of universal freedom and righteousness and brother-
hood, the grand inauguration of a reign of peace and
good-will to man everywhere, was now growing rapidly
into a monstrous and horrible tragedy; and, some
months before the Poet's residence there came to an
end, the ruling powers, with a fierce mobocracy behind
them, shot off into a mad carnival of butchery and
lawlessness and terrorism. This was indeed a con-
summation he had not looked for! and many and bitter
were the pangs of disappointment which it brought
upon him; holding him in a long, long agony of
blasted hopes and shattered faiths, with hard tug-
gings of the brain and sore wringings of the spirit.
Deep were the furrows ploughed into his being by the
horrors of that time: for many years the remem-
brance haunted even his dreams, and lay upon him.
as a dead, stifling weight, a very nightmare of the
.
4
50
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
soul. No language but his own can fitly voice the
state of mind into which he was cast. The following
is from the tenth book of The Prelude:
Most melancholy at that time
Were my day-thoughts; my nights were miserable :
Through months, through years, long after the last beat
Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep
To me came rarely charged with natural gifts,
Such ghastly visions had I of despair,
And tyranny, and implements of death;
And innocent victims sinking under fear,
Each in his separate cell, or penn'd in crowds,
And levity in dungeons, where the dust
Was laid with tears. Then suddenly the scene
Changed, and th' unbroken dream entangled me
In long orations, which I strove to plead
Before unjust tribunals, with a voice
Laboring, a brain confounded, and a sense,
Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt
In the last place of refuge, my own soul.
C
Here it may not be amiss to turn aside for a moment,
and see how, after many years of hoping against hope,
Wordsworth at last came to view the thing which had
so long held him under its spell. In an Ode written
as late as 1806, we have the following:
Who rises on the banks of Seine,
And binds her temples with the civic wreath?
What joy to read the promise of her mien !
How sweet to rest her wide-spread wings beneath !
But they are ever playing,
And twinkling in the light,
And, if a breeze be straying,
That breeze she will invite;
And stands on tiptoe, conscious she is fair,
And calls a look of love into her face,
And spreads her arms, as if the general air
Alone could satisfy her wide embrace.
RESIDENCE IN FRANCE.
51
Melt, Principalities, before her melt !
Her love ye hail'd, her wrath have felt!
But she through many a change of form hath gone,
And stands amidst you now an armèd creature,
Whose panoply is not a thing put on,
But the live scales of a portentous nature;
That, having forced its way from birth to birth,
Stalks round, — abhorr'd by Heaven, a terror to the Earth!
Have we not known, and live we not to tell,
That Justice seem'd to hear her final knell ?
Faith buried deeper in her own deep breast
Her stores, and sigh'd to find them insecure !
And Hope was madden'd by the drops that fell
From shades, her chosen place of short-lived rest.
Shame follow'd shame, and woe supplanted woe,
Is this the only change that time can show?
Ką
But the Poet's experiences growing out of the French
Revolution were also a part, no doubt a necessary part,
of the discipline by which Providence was searching,
scouring, moulding him into greater fitness for his
mission. And so, to be sure, the deepest and most
precious lesson which his poetry teaches us is, how,
out of evil, to educe a higher good; how, out of ruined
hopes and broken plans, to build a home of calmer,
purer happiness; and how, by the potent alchemy
of a love and faith long furnace-tried, to transmute
suffering and sorrow into sources of strength and joy.
These are indeed the best things that Wordsworth
teaches; and he must needs first do them for himself,
as in truth he did, before he could rightly teach them
to others.
At length, the Poet's friends at home- knowing
how deeply he was interested in what was going on,
and fearing that, in the hot war of rival factions, each
striving to make itself popular by outdoing the others
P
52
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
in philanthropic butchery, his head might be swept
into the service of the "holy guillotine" - hit upon
the plan of stopping off supplies, and thus forcing him
to return to England. Once more at home, he was
still quite undetermined what course of life to follow.
He had not prepared himself for any bread-winning
pursuit, yet the necessity of winning his bread was
looking him sternly in the face. He thought of many
things, but could settle upon none. Truth was, im-
pulse and condition were badly at odds in him. In
1793, he published two poems, An Evening Walk and
Descriptive Sketches, each of considerable length, and
both written in pentameter rhyming couplets; a rather
tame imitation of Pope. For his genius had not yet
found itself, and indeed was still using up its strength
in mute inward growth. The poems brought him
neither cash nor fame; though Coleridge, then quite
unknown to Wordsworth, saw in them "some sparks
of better hope, which elder days might happily bring
forth." Referring to the Descriptive Sketches, he says,
seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original
poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently
announced."
66
RAISLEY CALVERT.
While the Poet was still hanging in doubt as to how
he should make a living, relief, all unlooked-for, came
to him from the hands of friendship. Among the
earliest lovers of his poetry was Raisley Calvert; and
the two men grew into a warm mutual attachment.
In 1794, Calvert was taken down with consumption.
Wordsworth nursed him tenderly and assiduously all
through his sickness, and at his death found himself
DISAPPOINTED AND BEWILDERED.
53
heir to the sum of £900 left him by his friend. Im-
pulse and condition now shook hands for him; and
he felt himself free for the course of life on which
his choice had become strongly fixed. The debt is
feelingly acknowledged by the Poet in a sonnet “To
the Memory of Raisley Calvert":
This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem, -
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where'er I liked; and finally array
My temples with the Muse's diadem.
In the strength of that legacy, he ventured to set up
a home of his own. His great soul was all bound
up with his sister in a friendship strong as life, and
tender as infancy. But, with rare and brief intervals
of reunion, they had been separated ever since the
death of their mother. Henceforth she was to share
his home; it may even be said that for several years
she was to be his home. She proved a housekeeper
so neat, so wise, so deft, so frugal, that the income
from the £900, slightly supplemented, as it was, by
what the Poet got from his poems and by teaching,
long sufficed for making their ends meet.
DISAPPOINTED AND BEWILDERED.
But prudent and skilful housekeeping was the least
of the services which Miss Wordsworth did for her
brother. She was a breathing benediction to his mind
and soul. With a sensitiveness of intelligence proba-
bly never surpassed, and with thoughts and eyes of
preternatural brightness, she fully sympathized with
all his moods and tastes, and was keenly responsive
54
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
to every note of his genius. And so she broke the
malignant spell, she sweetened off the dreadful night-
mare, which the upshot of things in France had fas-
tened upon him. But this was a work of time; it
could not be done at once: for, as Wordsworth had
grown into his state of mind, so there was, for him,
no getting out of it but by growth.
Now, so sure and so clear was he in the truth and
rightness of the principles out of which the French
movement grew, that he still clung with the most
rigid tenacity to his faith in the cause. That faith
was indeed a thing rooted in the very foundations
of his mind, so that he could not put it off. But,
if it was certain that the principles were right and
good, it was no less certain that the actual outcome
of them was, somehow, a frightful mass of evil. If
Heaven was in the planting, Hell was in the reaping.
How all this could be, how such good principles could
bear such bad fruit, this was a problem that he could
neither solve nor put by. And the effect was, to
launch him in a long course of brain-cracking endeav-
ors to scoop and think and speculate his way through
the whole vast mystery of man's social being; that
so he might get at the secret why, in France, the seed
and the crop spoke in such fierce and bloody contra-
diction. The mere pain of this dilemma served only
to tighten his hold on it, so that he became dogged
and impracticable; and, as the cause waxed more
and more desperate, instead of lowering his tenets,
he strained them all the higher for the assaults made
upon them. So he was drawn, at length, into a down-
right fanaticism of analysis and dissection; thus work-
ing in fellowship with those who, as he says, " throned
<
DISAPPOINTED AND BEWILDERED.
55
the human Understanding paramount, and made of
that their God." Under this malign possession, noth-
ing would do but to anatomize the social organism
of humanity, breaking up all its parts and elements,
and scanning each part with microscopic closeness,
and weighing it in the nicest scales of logical distinc-
tion; the whole process to result in an ideal science
explaining the how and the why of all things that men
should do, to reach a state of perfect social welfare
and felicity.
So Wordsworth tried very hard to live altogether in
and by the understanding, and so, in his case,
The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way.
His own account of the matter is as follows:
So I fared,
Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds,
Like culprits, to the bar; calling the mind,
Suspiciously, to establish in plain day
Her titles and her honors; now believing,
Now disbelieving; endlessly perplex'd
With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground
Of obligation, what the rule, and whence
The sanction; till, demanding formal proof,
And seeking it in everything, I lost
All feeling of conviction, and, in fine,
Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
Yielded up moral questions in despair.
He returns to this topic again in the twelfth book of
The Prelude, speaking as follows:
In such strange passion, I warr'd against myself,
Zealously labor'd to cut off my heart
From all the sources of her former strength;
And as, by simple waving of a wand,
The wizard instantaneously dissolves
56
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Palace or grove, even so could I unsoul
As readily by syllogistic words
Those mysteries of being which have made,
And shall continue evermore to make,
Of the whole human race one brotherhood.
Of course the mental habit thus engendered did not
stay within the bounds of its original subject-matter,
but transferred itself to that living and speaking
Nature which had been such a happy passion with
the Poet in his youth. And here, again, his rage for
analysis and dissection, what effect could it have but
to split and splinter Nature all into "disconnection
dead and spiritless," thus unsouling the things that
had been, to him, so full of soul? what but to criticise.
and scare all the life and poetry and meaning out of
natural forms and scenes and objects? And so he
tells us how he fell
To a comparison of scene with scene,
Bent overmuch on superficial things,
Pampering myself with meagre novelties
Of color and proportion; to the moods
Of time and season, to the moral power,
The spirit of the place, insensible.
And so, he further says,
The bodily eye, in every stage of life
The most despotic of our senses, gain'd
Such strength in me as often held my mind
In absolute dominion.
I roam'd from hill to hill, from rock to rock,
Still craving combinations of new forms,
New pleasure, wider empire for the sight,
Proud of her own endowments, and rejoiced
To lay the inner faculties asleep.
Thus his early love of Nature, in her integrities and
her harmonies, was going into extinguishment; his
THE POET AND HIS SISTER.
57
mind was getting quite unsphered from its native
orbit, and swept off into an inane of abstractions,
where his more genial faculties could not breathe.
And this misplaced stress of logic was not only dry-
ing the blood all out of his imagination, but was also
totally demoralizing his feelings and his taste.
THE POET AND HIS SISTER.
It was while the Poet was in this state of exile
from his right intellectual home, and while he was
breaking his heart against the hard problems of the
speculative understanding, that his sister became to
him an angel of succor and relief and restoration.
Her influence gradually won him back to his proper
self. In their reunion, those parts of his being which
had been put into a forced and unnatural sequestra-
tion, broke loose from their prison, and reclaimed
their natural rights. The despotic usurpation of logic
being at length melted off by that warm, sunshiny
presence, he began to live afresh in his heart; his
early love of Nature revived, his old healthy tastes
resumed their sway, and he found how "peace settles
where the intellect is meek." So his genius, released
from its hard thraldom of abstractions, and restored
to its native air, became itself again, and grew on in
due course to the consummate flower.
What his sister did for him, how in "the crisis of
that strong disease," in "the soul's last and lowest
ebb," her wise and loving counsels drew him back to
light and health, is recorded by him in sundry strains
of grateful acknowledgment. The later books of The
Prelude are mainly occupied with the causes and the
58
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
process of his timely deliverance. Thus he tells us
that, at the time when his depression and bewilder-
ment were at the worst,
then it was
That the beloved Sister in whose sight
Those days were pass'd, now speaking in a voice
Of sudden admonition, - like a brook
That did but cross a lonely road, and now
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,
Maintain❜d for me a saving intercourse
With my true self.
•
She whisper'd still that brightness would return;
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon Earth.
The healing process being thus well started by her
influence, other influences soon came in to second
hers; and so he tells us further that
Nature's self,
By all varieties of human love
Assisted, led me back through opening day
To those sweet counsels between head and heart
Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace,
Which, through the later sinkings of the cause,
Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now.
We have a still higher tribute of gratitude to his
sister in the last book of The Prelude, as follows:
Child of my parents! Sister of my soul !
Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere
Pour'd out for all the early tenderness
Which I from thee imbibed: and 't is most true
That later seasons owed to thee no less;
For, to the very going-out of youth,
I too exclusively esteem'd that love,
And sought that beauty which, as Milton sings,
Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down
THE POET AND HIS SISTER.
59
This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend!
My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood
In her original self too confident,
Retain'd, too long, a countenance severe ;
A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
Familiar, and a favorite of the stars :
But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
And teach the little birds to build their nests
And warble in its chambers. At a time
When every day brought with it some new sense
Of exquisite regard for common things,
And all the Earth was budding with these gifts
Of more refined humanity, thy breath,
Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler Spring
That went before my steps.
But the Poet's indebtedness to his sister has still
another aspect which must not be left out of view;
for as she was content to live in and for him, so her
genius and worth ought to share with his in the love
and honor of mankind. And here the best thing I
can do is to quote from Professor Shairp, who in 1874
set forth an edition of Miss Wordsworth's Journal of
the Tour she made with her brother in Scotland in 1803.
In the Editor's Preface we have the following:
In the year 1829, Miss Wordsworth was seized by a severe
illness, which so prostrated her, body and mind, that she
never recovered from it. The unceasing strain of years had
at last worn out that buoyant frame and fervid spirit. She
had given herself to one work, and that work was done.
With original powers which, had she chosen to set up on her
own account, might have won for her high literary fame, she
was content to forget herself, to merge all her gifts and all
her interests in those of her brother. She thus made him
other and higher than he could have been had he stood alone,
串
​60
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
and enabled him to render better service to the world than
without her ministry he could have done. It is sad to think
that, when the world at last knew him for what he was, the
great original Poet of this century, she who had helped to
make him so was almost past rejoicing in it. It is said that
during those years he never spoke of her without his voice
being sensibly softened and saddened. The return of the day
when they two first came to Grasmere was to him a solemn
anniversary. But, though so enfeebled, she still lived on, and
survived her brother nearly five years.
MRS. WORDSWORTH.
By way of closing this part of my theme, I must
quote a strain of The Prelude, where the Poet, after
describing his own sick mind, puts in strong contrast
therewith the healthy mind of her who was to be his
wife:
And yet I knew a maid,
A young enthusiast, who escaped these bonds:
Her eye was not the mistress of her heart;
Far less did rules prescribed by passive taste,
Or barren intermeddling subtilties,
Perplex her mind; but, wise as women are
When genial circumstance hath favor'd them,
She welcomed what was given, and craved no more :
Whate'er the scene presented to her view,
That was the best, to that she was attuned
By her benign simplicity of life,
And through a perfect happiness of soul,
Whose variegated feelings were in this
Sisters, that they were each some new delight.
Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green field,
Could they have known her, would have loved; methought
Her very presence such a sweetness breathed,
That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills,
And everything she look'd on, should have had
MRS. WORDSWORTH.
61
An intimation how she bore herself
Towards them and to all creatures.
In such a being; for her common thoughts
Are piety, her life is gratitude.
God delights
In his domestic state Wordsworth was destined to
a life of almost ideal felicity: there all things went
well with him; and he was, to a marvel, happy in his
allotments of womankind. In the year 1801, the first
Earl of Lonsdale died. His son and successor was
quite another sort of man; and one of his first acts
was an act of justice to the Wordsworths. As I have
already noted, the original debt to the Poet's father
was £5,000. This, together with interest in full, the
whole amounting to £8,500, was promptly refunded
to the family by the second Earl. And so the Poet
was now fairly in a condition to enrich his home with
another treasure of womanhood. His choice had been
fixed, rather say his allotment had been made, some
years before, in the person of Miss Mary Hutchinson,
a long-time friend and companion of his sister. The
marriage took place in the Fall of 1802. Wordsworth
could not possibly have done better: she proved just
the right woman for him, a true helpmate indeed
in every respect. An unsophisticated Cumberland
maiden, of fine native intelligence, of pure and simple
tastes, thoroughly home-hearted, and of the gentlest
and sweetest disposition, she was well fitted to be,
as indeed she was, the crowning felicity of his life;
a worthy recompense for his steadfast confidence in
true and noble things. Henceforth his home-life
glided on with a soft and tranquil motion; for, indeed,
as Mr. Myers puts it in his charming book on the
Poet, "Mrs. Wordsworth's simple and rustic upbring-
A
62
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
ing had gifted her with a manner so gracious and a
tact so ready, that in her presence all things could
not but go well." The Poet sings her virtues, and
the happiness she blest him with, in many strains
of poetry, some of them among his loveliest things.
Here is a brief but most characteristic instance, writ
ten late in life:
O, my Beloved! I have done thee wrong,
Conscious of blessedness, but, whence it sprung,
Ever too heedless, as I now perceive.
Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve,
And the old day was welcome as the young,
As welcome, and as beautiful, in sooth
More beautiful, as being a thing more holy :
Thanks to thy virtues, to th' eternal youth
Of all thy goodness, never melancholy;
To thy large heart and humble mind, that cast
Into one vision future, present, past.
M
WHY POSITIVISTS LIKE HIS POETRY.
I have before referred to Wordsworth's standing
with some of the leading positivist thinkers. As this
is to me a very interesting matter, I will now try to
work it out with some particularity. And I the rather
do so, because it gives me occasion to speak further
of what probably is to be the most preserving and
persistent efficacy of his workmanship.
Wordsworth's poetry, as I have already observed,
teaches, as no other does, the great, the divine art of
converting incumbrances into helps, impediments into
furtherances, and of so using the ills and pains of life
as to make them fruitful of a higher good and a purer
joy. Nor does he teach this merely as a formal doc-
trine, or a thing for the tongue to play with; but,
WHY POSITIVISTS LIKE HIS POETRY.
63
which is far more, it comes from him with the force
of an inspiration, — a kindling and quickening virtue,
which, if we hold ourselves fairly in communion with
him, will prompt and enable us to put the lesson in
practice, to work it through into life, and make it a
habit of the soul. And this, surely, is just the high-
est service that any poetry can possibly render us;
for it involves nothing less than an unfailing principle
and discipline of moral progress and improvement.
His whole poem of The Happy Warrior is a most
noteworthy example of this teaching. I can quote
but a brief portion of it. The happy warrior, he
writes, is one
Who, doom'd 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, render'd more compassionate ;
Is placable, because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice ;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
The late John Stuart Mill, as is well known, spent
a large part of his great mental force in reasoning
out and drawing up brave schemes of civil and po-
litical arrangement and order, so as to do away the
evils of man's social state, and insure it lasting relief
and betterment. At length, a great mental crisis over-
took him, completely upsetting his most cherished
64
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
ideas. There now seemed to him to be no real and
substantive joy in life; nothing but a perpetual and
fruitless struggle with the hardships of our human
lot. So he quite lost heart and hope. The schemes
on which he had toiled his brain so hard, and from
which he had hoped for so much good, all cracked
to pieces and crumbled into dust. And he frankly
acknowledged that, even if his plans for social better-
ment were to succeed, still the success would yield
him no real inward comfort or satisfaction. In this
state of profound despondency, he betook himself to
the reading of Wordsworth. I quote from his Auto-
biography:
What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state
of mind was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty,
but states of feeling, and of thought colored by feeling,
under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the
very culture of the feelings which I was in quest of. In
them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sym-
pathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in
by all human beings, which had no connection with struggle
or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improve-
ment in the physical or social condition of mankind. From
them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources
of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have
been removed. And I felt myself at once better and hap-
pier as I came under their influence.
Upon this very remarkable passage, Mr. Myers makes
a comment so apt, so firm, so just, that I must needs
quote it:
Words like these, proceeding from a mind so different
from the Poet's own, form perhaps as satisfactory a testi-
mony to the value of his work as any writer can obtain;
WHY POSITIVISTS LIKE HIS POETRY.
65
for they imply that Wordsworth has succeeded in giving his
impress to emotions which may become common to all; that
he has produced a body of thought which is felt to be both
distinctive and coherent, while yet it enlarges the reader's
capacities, instead of making demands upon his credence.
Whether there be theories, they shall pass; whether there be
systems, they shall fail: the true epoch-maker in the history
of the human soul is the man who educes from this bewild-
ering Universe a new and elevating joy.
And Mr. Leslie Stephen, an author of conspicuous
ability and worth, whose thinking seems to be at least
a good deal tinctured with the stern realism of the
Positivist mind, writes in a strain very different in-
deed from that of Mill, yet running in full concurrence
therewith. "Other poetry," says he, "becomes trifling
when we are making our inevitable passages through
the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Wordsworth's
alone retains its power. We love him the more as
we grow older and become more decply impressed
with the sadness and seriousness of life: we are apt
to grow weary of his rivals when we have finally
quitted the regions of youthful enchantment. And I
take the explanation to be, that he is not merely a
melodious writer, or a powerful utterer of deep emo-
tion, but a true philosopher. His poetry wears well
because it has solid substance. He is a prophet and
a moralist as well as sweet singer."
•
Mr. Stephen says a good deal more to the like
effect. I quote him again: "Wordsworth teaches, in
many forms, the necessity of transmuting sorrow into
strength. It is owing to the constant presence of this
thought, to his sensibility to the refining influence of
sorrow, that he is the only poet who will bear reading
5
66
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
in times of distress. Other poets mock us by an im-
possible optimism, or merely reflect the feelings which,
however we may play with them in times of cheerful-
ness, have now become an intolerable burden.”
In all this we can see that, to Mr. Stephen also, as
in the case of Mr. Mill, Wordsworth's poetry has been
a spring or an inlet of illuminating emotion, in which
different minds can share according to the measure of
their capacities or their needs. Whatever theory may
be involved in the workmanship, and whether we be-
lieve or disbelieve in the spirituality that pervades his
poetry, here is a most important fact or result of ex-
perience which will stand quite independent of theory:
so that even the hardest positivism may accept the
fact, and take the benefit of it, letting the beliefs and
the theories go their way.
I must quote a little more from Mr. Stephen: "The
waste of sorrow is one of the most lamentable forms
of waste. Sorrow too often tends to produce bitter-
ness or effeminacy of character. But it may, if rightly
used, serve only to detach us from the lower motives,
and give sanctity to the higher. This is what Words-
worth sees with unequalled clearness, and he there-
fore sees also the condition of profiting." What the
writer here means by the "higher motives," are those
motives which will cause a man, for instance, to be
content with the consciousness of honest work, in-
stead of looking for what is called success"; the
serene and self-supporting consciousness sure to abide
with the man
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won.
Malta -
[
WHY POSITIVISTS LIKE HIS POETRY.
67
Such, then, I take it, is in part the secret of the
hold which Wordsworth's poetry has on the men in
question. But I cannot think it the whole of that
secret.
These men, it scarce need be said, have repudiated
religion, as such; have expressly thrown aside every-
thing that passes under that name; especially have
they discarded Christianity. But the substance of
religion, or at least something of it, comes back to
them in Wordsworth's poetry, comes back in a
form acceptable and even attractive to them, in the
moral and emotional supports and comforts it yields
them; attractive, because, without demanding faith, it
imparts power, and springs upon them a joy that has
no taste or shade of retributive fear. Their spiritual
being, self-exiled from its proper home, and pining
under the desolations of homelessness, finds some-
thing of the healing and refreshment of home in
Wordsworth's spiritualized interpretation of Nature.
For even so, in the wise and sweet words of Archbishop
Leighton, “in this is the excellency of man, that he
is made capable of a communion with his Maker, and,
because capable of it, is unsatisfied without it: the
soul, being cut out to that largeness, cannot be filled
with less." And right glad am I that Wordsworth
touches the men in this sort: as I have said before,
I think the better both of him and of them for the
fact. For, indeed, I know somewhat how to sympa-
thize with them in the unhappy decay of their relig-
ious faith, and in the burden of sorrow which that
decay is letting down upon their spirits.
But this is not all: there is more and better behind.
For as, in the enthusiastic pursuit or contemplation
68
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
of natural law, these men commune with the Poet's
forms and inspirations of love and awe and beauty,
their souls catch a glow of piety without knowing it,
the spirit of worship steals into them, "like music
from unknown quarters," and their hearts uncon-
sciously stream forth incense to "the unknown God."
And it has long been a settled axiom with me, that
every one who earnestly and steadfastly endeavors
"to think and do always such things as are right"
is a true Christian at heart, whatever name he
may give himself or others may give him. For, in-
deed, I can hardly conceive how any one can make
such endeavor unless the Spirit of God be in him;
unconsciously in him, to be sure, on his part, and all
the better for being so, because he is then less apt to
get puffed with spiritual pride. And surely, in these
times of over-conscious and too demonstrative piety,
it is well that some should thus be content simply
to think and do what is right, without crediting them-
selves with any piety at all. When there are so many
who think themselves better than they are, we may
justly be glad to see at least a few who are better
than they think for or care to think; men who, while
honestly disclaiming religious faith in words, do at
the same time no less honestly show it in deeds;
who thus
Adore and worship, when they know it not ;
Pious beyond th' intention of their thought ;
Devout above the meaning of their will.
G
It is a high and delicate service which Wordsworth
does for such men, in thus holding them back uncon-
sciously from the last results of their conscious creed,
-in thus keeping up for them a secret yet saving
WHY POSITIVISTS LIKE HIS POETRY.
69
intercourse between the head and the heart. And I
cannot choose but think that the silent worship of
God in Nature, which his poetry is so potent to kindle,
will sooner or later draw them on to the higher and
holier worship of God in Christ. For, while his voice
thus lifts or surprises them into the deep, tranquil joy
of Nature, and breathes her still rapture upon them,
how can their souls fail to be attuned to "the peace
of God which passes all understanding," and there-
fore to that VOICE which says, "My peace I give unto
you"?
And the new life of joy thus springing up in such
men unawares a life and a joy born of true spirit-
ual stock will naturally charm them into that love
which, after all, is far better than science, and which
will even open upon them the countenance of a truth
higher and larger than the mere faculties of knowledge
can ever reach. Thus, by the blessed contagion of
Wordsworth's spirituality, the spiritualities of their
being will be quietly but inevitably sweetened into
action, so as to escape the danger of being chilled and
frozen by the hard, cold grasp of materializing specu-
lation. In other words, their nature, as kindled and
quickened by his poetry, will prove stronger than their
conscious purpose; their souls being secretly attem-
pered into that state where "love is an unerring light,
and joy its own security."
Now it is in this sense and for this cause that I
regard Wordsworth as a true prophet or evangelist,
specially, providentially, furnished and sent forth to
forestall and counterpoise the secularizing tendencies
of modern science. His poetry was a veritable apoca-
lypse, just such as the world was about to have
70
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
need of, and made in just the right time to meet that
need. For many years I have been watching, and
with no little solicitude, the working of that spiritual-
izing efficacy which his genius has infused into the
mental currents of the age; and I am now pretty
strong in the faith that some, perhaps many, of the
Positivists will one day awake to the consciousness
of having "faculties which they have never used";
will find that their enthusiasm of science, noble as it
is, and fruitful as it has proved, has stifled and kept
latent within them those deeper and finer susceptibil-
ities to which religion appeals.
Such being the case, I can look with tolerable
calmness on the intellectual movements of the time;
confident that, in the upshot of things, the Sun of
Righteousness will outshine the torches of science,
the harmonies of God outsweeten the notes of agnos-
ticism and unbelief, and outvoice the half-knowledge
which is now so fond of dogmatizing about the “ un-
thinkable."
If this great world of joy and pain
Revolve in one sure track;
If freedom, set, will rise again,
And virtue, flown, come back
Woe to the purblind crew who fill
The heart with each day's care;
Nor gain, from past or future, skill
To bear, and to forbear!
HIS REALISM.
But there is, I think, still another reason why the
Positivists take to Wordsworth; and perhaps it is the
main cause of his acceptance with them. His poetry,
HIS REALISM.
71
with all its ethereal fineness of substance and beauty
of thought and sweetness of tone, has a very broad
and solid basis of realism. He shows, none else so
well as he, how much poetry, that too of the finest
grain, may be extracted out of things lying right
about us, and daily, hourly in our sight. Both the
impulses and the materials of his work are drawn
from the common realities of Nature and man. It
was a maxim with him, that a poet's proper business
is to idealize the real, instead of attempting to realize
the ideal. And so, sure enough, although he idealizes
often with surpassing boldness and power, still his
idealizing carries in its hand a firm body of actual
truth, and which is easy to be recognized as actual.
If he spreads before us "the golden exhalations of
the dawn," they are nevertheless the exhalations of
a real dawn, a dawn which we feel and know to be
such. Thus his poetry is steeped full of honest com-
mon sense, and therefore works in and keeps time with
the beatings of honest common sense in natural and
unsophisticated minds. Even when its form is most
penetrated with celestial virtue, and its face most ra-
diant with celestial light, still it breathes, somehow,
an odor of stubborn fact and living experience, a na-
tive, homelike fragrance of Earth. And it is because
he keeps in vital contact with this common mother of
us all, that he is so fresh and strong. For his loftiest
poetry has, notwithstanding, a felt suffusion or inter-
shooting of the lowly in its countenance, a felt pulsing
of real human blood in its veins; and in its most un-
earthly bloom we still have a taste or a sense of its
being rooted in earthly soil, and so drawing its sap
and flavor from the world which we all know.
72
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
And Wordsworth himself meant it should be so,
studied earnestly to make it so, took all possible care
not to have it otherwise; that is to say, the thing was
a deliberate, conscious purpose with him. He thought
the world already had poetry enough, woven up in the
looms of cloud-land, or born of fancy-mist and rocked
in the cradles of dream children,- mere shadows of
things that never were. And so, in the Prologue to
Peter Bell, after an imaginary voyage through the
ethereal spaces and among the stars, addressing the
living and intelligent vehicle that has carried him so
far,
My little vagrant form of light,
My gay and beautiful canoe, -
he speaks these lines:
Then back to Earth, the dear green Earth:
Whole if I here should roam,
ages
The world for my remarks and me
Would not a whit the better be;
I've left my heart at home.
And he works, conscientiously, systematically, in
the scope and spirit of this passage. In the same
piece, a little afterwards, he draws out his poetical
creed more fully, thus:
Long have I loved what I behold,
The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother Earth
Suffices me,
- her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.
Ma
The dragon's wing, the magic ring,
I shall not covet for my dower,
If I along that lowly way
With sympathetic heart may stray,
And with a soul of power.
HIS REALISM.
73
These given, what more need I desire
To stir, to soothe, or elevate?
What nobler marvels than the mind
May in life's daily prospect find,
May find or there create?
A potent wand doth Sorrow wield;
What spell so strong as guilty Fear?
Repentance is a tender Sprite;
If aught on Earth have heavenly might,
'Tis lodged within her silent tear.
And in his Prospectus to The Excursion he speaks
again to the same effect, though in a very different
style, a style of almost Miltonic grandeur :
―――
Beauty a living Presence of the Earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms
Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed
From Earth's materials-waits upon my steps;
Pitches her tents before me as I move,
An hourly neighbor. Paradise, and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fields, - like those of old
Sought in th' Atlantic Main,
A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly Universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
why should they be
▬▬▬▬▬▬
No wonder, then, that poetry spun out of such ma-
terials, and by such a hand, should speak somewhat
persuasively to such minds as the Positivists claim to
be,
men who by the very terms of their creed are
bound to a deep respect and quenchless love for stern,
hard, every-day facts. And well indeed may they stick
fast to these. For, in truth, facts, how meaningless
and dead soever they may appear to unthoughtful
74
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
eyes, are nevertheless, to such as know how to view
them rightly, brimful of life and meaning; carrying,
locked up in their stubborn breasts, a world of riches,
inexhaustible matter of thought and knowledge, - ay,
and of strength and comfort also. But then facts
must be studied with the heart as well as with the
head, else, assuredly, we shall never get at the real
heart of them. And the man who insists on using
nothing but the cold understanding about them, and
is incessantly grinding at them with a bloodless and
unsympathizing analysis, will not only miss the soul
that is in them, but will have the soul all dried out
of himself; and so the best that he gets out of them
will be but "the half-wisdom which half-experience'
gives.
""
But here I must briefly call in Mr. Stephen again:
"The Revolt of Islam or the Prometheus Unbound,
with all their unearthly beauty, weary the imagination
which tries to soar into the thin air of Shelley's dream
world; just as the intellect, trying to apply the ab-
stract formulæ of political metaphysics to any concrete
problem, feels as though it were under an exhausted
receiver. In both cases we seem to have got entirely
out of the region of real human passions and senses
into a world, beautiful perhaps, but certainly impal-
pable. The great aim of moral philosophy is to end
the divorce between reason and experience, and to es-
cape from the alternative of dealing with empty but
symmetrical formulæ or with concrete chaotic facts.
Wordsworth's mode of conceiving the problem shows
how powerfully he grasped the questions at issue.
If his doctrines are not systematically expounded,
they all have a direct bearing upon the real difficulties
HIS REALISM.
75
involved. They are stated so forcibly in his noblest
poems, that we might almost express a complete
theory in his own language.'
""
I have quoted this passage, not that I agree with all
the writer here says, but because it is strong testi-
mony, from a highly competent source, to the value of
Wordsworth's work. Mr. Stephen reads him through
the spectacles of his own prepossession, and so, of
course, reads something of his own mind into him,
or sees him too much by the light of theory; and he
is both a close student and an able writer of systematic
thought. Wordsworth does indeed too often run into
such thought, but whenever he does this he ceases to
be a poet; for this is against the nature of poetry.
He is, to be sure, a great philosopher, but not formally
so, when truly himself,—a great philosopher in the
same sense as Shakespeare and all great poets also
are; who, however, never philosophize, never, that
is, when the true poetic impulse or inspiration is mov-
ing them. So, while Wordsworth has a very broad
and deep philosophy, as all great poets must have,
though they need not be conscious of it, still, in his
characteristic work, the philosophy serves but as a
substratum or underpinning of the poetry, and does
not come up into formal or audible expression. For
theorizing and poetizing do not go together.
Too much of the world's poetry, it is to be feared,
is of such a character, that the study of it naturally
breeds cause for much subsequent disillusionment.
But, if the main characteristics of Wordsworth's
poetry be at all as I have tried to describe them, we
may well judge that science, and even the positivist
way of thinking, will have to dispel no illusions born.
76
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
of it. For it may with strictest truth be said, he lets
us into things that are, he does not wile us away from
them, nor beguile and cheat us with things that are
not. He also makes his appeal to whatever is best
in us, and at the same time puts life and strength into
what he appeals to. And so, to what I have already
said, let it be further added, that his poetry has noth-
ing morbid or mawkish about it, but is always health-
ful, manly, noble; that his very delicacy has in it a
fragrance of strength and downrightness, so that it
invigorates while it charms; that even in his sweet-
est, his tenderest, his most pathetic strains we have a
sense of robust vigor and brave, hardy, native man-
hood underlying them; let all this be added, and I
think the secret of his power with the Positivists is
not, very hard to be understood.
CHAPTER III.
CONTEMPORARY POETS.
THE
HE forty years from 1790 to 1830 is by far the
most illustrious period in English letters, with
the one exception of what is known as the Elizabethan
age, but which I think should rather be termed the
age of Shakespeare. During one part of that period
there were no less than thirteen poets all making
their contributions simultaneously, and all greatly
and perhaps justly distinguished in their time, though
several of them have since gone pretty much if not
altogether out of sight. These, to name them in the
order of their birth, were Crabbe, Joanna Baillie,
Rogers, Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Camp-
bell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Felicia Hemans, and
Keats. And all these singing together made, to be
sure, a mighty flood of song; enough to illustrate any
age or section of the world. There was indeed no
Shakespeare then, and this makes another thing of it
utterly; but, this one name apart, the later period
was, I think, in poetry at least, fully equal, if not su-
perior, to the earlier.
Of this grand cluster of bards, it will hardly be
questioned that Wordsworth was altogether the great-
est; some do not scruple to pronounce him worth all
78
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
the others put together; and such has long been my
estimate of him. Next after him, probably the two
highest names are Scott and Coleridge. Scott, as a
poet, was eclipsed in public favor by Byron; where-
upon he set to work, and quite eclipsed himself by
that splendid series of prose romances with which,
as our Mr. Bryant says, he fairly "bombarded the
world" during the latter part of his life. But his
poetry is still alive, and indeed shows no signs of dy-
ing. Coleridge, poetically a much deeper and finer
genius than Scott, might perhaps have equalled the
best of his brother-bards, but that his creative powers
were too soon strangled by metaphysics and opium.
Nevertheless he has a goodly sum of work which is of
first-rate excellence, which cannot well be spared, and
which the world is indeed nowise minded to spare.
Three others also of this mighty band, Byron, Shel-
ley, and Keats, have not yet lost the rank of great
poets much work of their doing still lives and is
likely to live dear and precious in the world's regard.
Poor Keats, it scarce need be said, died very early,
and before his genius was half blown had time been
given for his large promise to attain performance,
perhaps he would have been the greatest of the
three.
RESIDENCE AT RACEDOWN.
Wordsworth's first home of his own was at Race-
down, Dorsetshire, which is in the southwestern part of
England. There he and his sister set up their rest to-
gether in the Fall of 1795, and lived in such perfect
mutuality of thought, feeling, interest, and pursuit, as
if there had been but one soul in them both. There,
RESIDENCE AT GRASMERE.
79
too, he became acquainted with Coleridge, who was
then living in that neighborhood. The two men had
many deep and fruitful communings together on high
themes of poetry, philosophy, and politics, and so
grew into a fast friendship which lasted without in-
terruption till death put an end to it, or rather to the
visible signs of it. Next after the sister and the wife,
Coleridge was probably the greatest human benedic-
tion of Wordsworth's life. They tried to join hands
in poetical work; but, being each full of original
power, they soon found their native turns of thought
so variant that the joint work would not speed, and
so gave it up. There it was, also, that the well-head
of poetry in Wordsworth first got fairly unsealed, and
that some of his finest work was produced. In June,
1797, Coleridge being on a visit with Wordsworth,
the latter read aloud to him the story of Margaret
as we have it in the first book of The Excursion; and
Coleridge pronounced it "superior to anything in our
language which in any way resembles it." Coleridge,
referring to this time, says, "I felt myself a small man
beside Wordsworth"; and Wordsworth said, "I have
known many men who have done wonderful things,
but the only wonderful man I ever knew was Cole-
ridge."
RESIDENCE AT GRASMERE.
After spending, along with his sister, a Winter in
Germany, where, also, he wrote immortal poems,
Wordsworth returned to his native Cumberland, and
in December, 1799, settled at Grasmere; and there,
in October, 1802, the happy home of brother and
sister was made still happier by addition of the wife.
\
80
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
The Poet was now in the full-blown morning of his
genius, his hand now touched its highest point of
felicity and power. All through his stay at Grasmere,
which continued till 1813, his mind seems to have
been in first-rate trim; the larger part of his best
work being the fruit of those genial years. His study
was in the open air; his talk was not much with
books, but with Nature, face to face, heart to heart:
"by the side of the brook," says he, "that runs
through Easdale I have composed thousands of
verses." In August, 1803, he and his sister made
a tour in Scotland, passing up through the western
part to the Highlands, and returning through the
eastern. There he lighted on many accordant themes,
and, what with the help of grand old Scotland's scenery
and womanhood and historic memories, his harp there
had some of its deepest and sweetest visitings; several
of the poems growing out of that tour not being sur-
passed by anything he ever wrote.
In February, 1805, a great sorrow fell upon Words-
worth in the death of his brother John, who, some
five years before, had spent eight months at the Poet's
home, and was the most loved and the most loving of
all his brothers. John Wordsworth was captain of an
East Indiaman, and a good sailor; and, at the time
in question, was just setting out on what he meant
should be his last voyage, when his ship, through
the blundering of the pilot, struck on the Shambles
of the Bill of Portland, and he perished together
with most of his crew; "dying," says the Poet,
"as he had lived, in the place and point where his
duty had stationed him." For a long time the Poet
was almost inconsolable, and many of his years were
RESIDENCE AT GRASMERE.
81
darkened by this grief; which however seems nowise
to have crippled his poetic faculty. "For myself,"
says he, "I feel that there is something cut out of my
life which cannot be restored. I never thought of
him but with hope and delight. We looked forward to
the time, not distant, as we thought, when he would
settle near us,—when the task of his life would be over,
and he would have nothing to do but reap his reward.
I never wrote a line without a thought of giving him
pleasure; my writings, printed and manuscript, were
his delight, and one of the chief solaces of his long
voyages. But let me stop. I will not be cast down;
were it only for his sake, I will not be dejected. I
have much yet to do, and pray God to give me
strength and power; and I hope, when I shall be able
to think of him with a calmer mind, that the remem-
brance of him dead will even animate me more than
the joy which I had in him living."
This event seems to have had the effect of greatly
deepening the Poet's feelings, without at all untuning
his genius. How earnest and how able he was to turn
sorrow into a discipline of strength in his own case, is
well shown by the poem on Peel Castle, than which he
has, perhaps, no strain of deeper and sweeter music.
It was written soon after his brother's death. Here
are a few lines of it:
I have submitted to a new control:
A
power is gone, which nothing can restore
A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been :
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.
6
82
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
During his residence at Grasmere five children.
were born to him, three sons and two daughters. Of
these one son and one daughter died in childhood;
and, as he was then living in the parsonage, the daily
sight of the graves of his "buried little ones" in the
churchyard became so painful to him that he could
not bear it. So he "found it absolutely necessary to
quit the place"; and, Rydal Mount becoming vacant at
that time, thither he removed in the Spring of 1813,
and there made his home for the rest of his life. And
that was his favorite abode.
Wordsworth did not get fairly before the public till
1798, when his first volume of Lyrical Ballads ap-
peared, he being then twenty-eight years old. The
volume closed with the Tintern Abbey poem, where
what may be called his Master-Vision first came out
in its full strength. A few years later, his second
volume appeared, also called Lyrical Ballads. Thence-
forward, for a long series of years, he continued from
time to time to put forth his volumes under different
titles. The Excursion was published in 1814, much
of it having been written several years before. The
Prelude was never published till after the author's
death. As early, however, as 1805, he read the whole
poem aloud to Coleridge, who was thereupon moved
to write the poem headed "To William Wordsworth,"
surely one of the grandest tributes ever offered by
one great man to another still greater. Coleridge
there describes The Prelude as
an Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted!
THE POET AND HIS REVIEWERS.
83
THE POET AND HIS REVIEWERS.
:
For a long, long while Wordsworth's poetry had
up-hill work decidedly, and made its way very slowly.
He can hardly be said to have found even a "fit audi-
ence, though few" he had to educate his own audi-
ence, and this too from the bottom upwards. So that
his experience was a capital illustration of Coleridge's
fine aphoristic saying, that "every great original
writer, in so far as he is truly original, has to develop
the faculty for understanding him, and create the
taste that is to enjoy him." For so, to be sure, that
a writer both needs and has the power to do this, is
at once the proper test and the just measure of his
originality whereas, on the other hand, weak or un-
original poets, and even those of great power, yet hav-
ing but a mere surface-originality, naturally find an
audience already prepared for them.
Now Wordsworth's poetry was profoundly original
and perfectly genuine, and the very depth of its in-
wardness with Nature made it seem either odd or un-
meaning to the criticism then in vogue, which was all
shut up in rules gathered from preceding writers.
Accordingly the critical law-givers of the time, or
those who passed for such, writing for the Edinburgh
and the London Quarterly Reviews, were out against
him from the first; could see neither truth nor beauty
in his work; had nothing but obloquy and ridicule to
bestow upon it: in fact, all the dogs of criticism, big
and little, “Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart," joined in
barking at him, and kept up their wretched chorus of
vituperation, till they were fairly shamed out of it by
a new generation of thinkers and writers. The spirit
84
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
of this perverse or ignorant treatment came to me in
an apt though rather ludicrous instance, a few years
ago. A sage critic, quoting the line, "The child is
father of the man," was quite sure that the printer
must have tampered with it, perhaps to make fun of
the author; as any one with half an eye might see at
once that Wordsworth meant to say,
"The man is
father of the child." But perhaps I cannot better illus-
trate the spirit in question than by citing a most idio-
matic passage in the description of Peter Bell, which
was pounced upon as specially obnoxious to censure,
and much used as a butt for ridicule :
He roved among the vales and streams,
In the green wood and hollow dell,
They were his dwellings night and day;
But Nature ne'er could find the way
Into the heart of Peter Bell.
In vain, through every changeful year,
Did Nature lead him as before:
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
In vain, through water, earth, and air,
The soul of happy sound was spread,
When Peter on some April morn,
Beneath the broom or budding thorn,
Made the warm earth his lazy bed.
At noon, when by the forest's edge
He lay beneath the branches high,
The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart; he never felt
The witchery of the soft blue sky!
On a fair prospect some have look'd
And felt, as I have heard them say,
THE POET AND HIS REVIEWERS.
85
As if the moving time had been
A thing as steadfast as the scene
On which they gazed themselves away.
Within the breast of Peter Bell
These silent raptures found no place :
He was a Carl as wild and rude
As ever hue-and-cry pursued,
As ever ran a felon's race.
Truly, when such powerful work as this is sneered at,
we may fitly remember the old saying, that "against
stupidity the gods themselves are powerless"!
As Jeffrey's voice through the Edinburgh was then
wellnigh omnipotent with the reading public, his per-
sistent warfare no doubt put off a general recognition
of the Poet's claims for some twenty years. And it is
very mark-worthy that, while Jeffrey was doing this
miserable service for Wordsworth, Brougham, also
speaking through the Edinburgh, by his able but ill-
aimed reasoning and his pungent sarcasm was doing
a like service for Thomas Young, the discoverer of
what is known as "The Undulatory Theory of Light,"
a name which Professor Tyndall, doubtless a com-
petent judge, places next after Newton's in the roll
of English science. In fact, Young got his first recog-
nition abroad; Jean Fresnel espousing his theory, and
spreading his fame through France, from whence it
gradually worked over into England.
Wordsworth, as I have before observed, was a very
self-conscious man, and had a sturdy, valiant, fast-
rooted self-esteem. He was also a strong-based man;
he felt the rock solid beneath his feet. Therewithal
he knew no touch of fear, save the fear to do wrong,
or of being false to his own deep, clear vision of
86
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
:
things. Then too he well understood both the tenacity
and the transiency of literary modes and fashions;
but he had strong faith in human nature, and also,
and perhaps therefore, in himself. And all this was
no more than was fairly needful to bear him up and
hold him steadfastly loyal to the truth he saw, througli
the long pelting of disparagement and reproach. At
all events, stand through it he did; he would not
budge an inch from his propriety in fact, it seems
not so much as to have hurt his patience; and now
the only thing worth remembering about it is the
calm and dignified silence with which he bore it, or,
as Mr. Myers says, "how much abuse this inoffensive
recluse received, and how absolutely he avoided re-
turning it." Nevertheless he lets us know that the
thing put him to stern self-searchings and self-sift-
ings, and to taking stock of himself very severely,
that so he might either get the better of his error or
stand the firmer in his truth. His own solemn words
speak of the process he went through as "a melan-
choly in the soul, a sinking inward into ourselves
from thought to thought, a steady remonstrance, and
a high resolve." So that, in reference to this whole
matter, we may justly say of his inner man, "calm
pleasures there abide, majestic pains." And to bear
such things, as he bore them, is better than escaping
them. Nor did the process work any change of pur-
pose in him; while it may have stiffened him rather
too much in the mood of self-assertion or self-reliance.
That many men were preferred before him, whom he
knew to be far his inferiors, stirred no querulousness
or impatience in him. Feeling sure that he was in
the right, he was therefore content to abide his time,
THE POET AND HIS REVIEWERS.
87
and to let the world take its own time for seeing him
as he was. "I have written," says he, "to give vent to
my own mind, and not without hope that, some time
or other, kindred minds might benefit by my labors.”
In one point, however, and that a very important
one, the prolonged disparagement caused him seri-
ous trouble. It kept his purse very lean, his income
from other sources being so small. Mr. Matthew
Arnold tells us, "I have myself heard him declare
that, for he knew not how many years, his poetry had
never brought him in enough to buy his shoe-strings.'
But he was frugal, abstemious, had no vices, cared
nothing for luxuries nor any but the simplest and
cheapest pleasures, took spontaneously to a course of
"plain living and high thinking," loved his home and
"the household hearts that were his own," never ran
in debt, and was content to live in honest poverty,
with a free conscience, and the Muses smiling upon
him. So he just stayed within his means, and stood
true to himself; and in his case the self was happily so
composed that, by standing true to that, he could best
serve the larger interests of mankind; leaving others
to win the applauses of the day, and the prizes that
die ere they are used.
To do all this, required a stout heart and a soul
well assured of her anchorage. Nor was the Poet
altogether unbraced, unsustained from without. Cole-
ridge, as I have already shown, also Charles Lamb,
Southey, Scott, John Wilson, Thomas Noon Tal-
fourd, Dr. Arnold, and sundry other choice spirits,
felt his power deeply, and spoke his praise warmly :
in particular, Wilson, long known as Christopher
North and Editor of Blackwood, poured out many
88
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
a strain of eloquent appreciation and unflinching
championship: Lamb, on first reading The Excursion,
passed, so he said, "a day in Heaven": Southey
"blessed God" for the poem of The Brothers. At
a later time, James Hogg, then a noted writer, and
widely known as "The Ettrick Shepherd," but now for-
gotten, made a visit to Southey at Keswick, and asked
him if he had read Jeffrey's "crushing review” of
The Excursion: Southey replied, "He crush The Ex-
cursion he might as well think to crush Skiddaw!"
that being the name of the biggest mountain in Cum-
berland. Another of these early friends, and one who
ought not to be passed by, was Sir George Beaumont,
a man of wealth and culture, also an artist of no mean
skill, and a near neighbor of the Poet.
Nor must I omit that some of Wordsworth's ear-
liest and stanchest friends were intelligent and right-
hearted women,-clear, earnest souls, who cared noth-
ing for popularity, who shrank not from anything their
own brave hearts prompted them to, whose faith in
him never faltered, while their affection for him was
but deepened by the wrong that was done him, they
feeling it indeed far more than he did himself; and, as
they dared to have minds of their own, so they were
outspoken in his behalf. Among these were Lady
Beaumont, Mrs. Frances Fermor, Mrs. Hemans the
poetess, Mrs. Fletcher and her daughters, Lady Rich-
ardson, and Lady Davy, wife of Sir Humphrey Davy
the well-known chemist.
In 1807, a new volume of his poems having ap-
peared, Lady Beaumont wrote to him, expressing
great uneasiness on his account. His reply has the
following: "It is impossible that any expectations
THE POET AND HIS REVIEWERS.
89
can be lower than mine concerning the immediate
effect of this little work upon what is called the pub-
lic. It is an awful truth, that there neither is nor
can be any genuine enjoyment of poetry among nine-
teen out of twenty of those persons who live, or wish
to live, in the broad light of the world. This is a
truth and an awful one, because to be incapable of a
feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be
without love of human nature and reverence for God."
Again, to the same friend, wishing her to be as easy-
hearted as himself on the subject, he wrote thus:
"Trouble not yourself upon their present reception:
of what moment is that compared with what I trust
is their destiny? To console the afflicted; to add
sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier;
to teach the young and the gracious of every age to
see, to think, to feel, and therefore to become more
actively and securely virtuous; this is their office,
which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after
we (that is, all that is mortal in us) are mouldered in
our graves." I must cite one passage more, where
the Poet had his eye upon what was called the read-
ing public: "Be assured that the decision of these
persons has nothing to do with the question; they
are altogether incompetent judges. These people, in
the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read
books; they merely snatch a glance at them, that
they may talk about them. To conclude, my ears
are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as in-
sensible as iron to these petty stings; and, after what
I have said, I am sure yours will be the same. I
doubt not you will share with me an invincible con-
fidence that my writings will co-operate with the
90
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
benign tendencies in human nature and society wher-
ever found; and that they will, in their degree, be
efficacious in making men wiser, better, happier."
If this language should seem too self-assertive to
be altogether becoming, let it be remembered that
the Poet was himself under a hard pressure of “rash
judgments," and that he was trying to console a cher-
ished friend, who feared, as she well might, that his
faith in himself might be shaken, and his high pur-
pose constrained to give way.
HIS FINAL TRIUMPH.
And what Wordsworth thus foresaw he was at
length permitted to see. For it was not a great
many years before the virtue of his poetry began to
tell, -tell powerfully, not indeed directly on the gen-
eral public, but on most of the stronger and finer spirits
both in English letters and English society. Grad-
ually, year by year, the hisses of scorn, the voices of
reproach, grew fainter and fainter, and in due time
went silent, or nearly so; the chorus of approval at
the same time swelling up deeper, broader, more varied,
more voluminous. Before 1830, when he was sixty
years old, the entire condition of things in this re-
spect was changed; the current having set even more
strongly in his favor than it had ever run against him,
-so strongly indeed as to sweep everything before it;
and it is hardly a figure of speech to say that he had
the whole English-speaking world, through its intel-
lectual representatives, at his feet. But all this was,
in part at least, a reaction from what had gone before,
and so of course proceeded to something of excess,
HIS FINAL TRIUMPH.
91
rising to a height that could not be permanently
maintained.
Meanwhile, to be sure, his works, as I have already
said, did not bear him much fruit in the shape of
money. This, indeed, is never done by such poetry
as he was minded to write : its direct audience is
always comparatively few, but its diffusive power is
great and lasting; and in the long run it reaches
even the masses, though only at second hand, and by
a kind of secret propagation. And so Wordsworth's
poetry was never popular in our sense of the term,
and I frankly own up to the conviction that it never
will be. For its distinctive qualities are beyond the
receptiveness of the general mind; its light is too
strong for most eyes: its peculiar virtue is so con-
centrated and so potent, that the majority of people
cannot relish it at the fountain-head; they can only
take it in a very diluted or attenuated form, and as
it filters down to them through writers of a lower
grade. So it has been, so it is, so it is likely to be,
with Wordsworth: his mission was and is, to be em-
phatically a teacher of the teachers; his electric en-
ergy being so condensed, the prime-conductor being
so highly charged, that the greater number of minds.
are rather stunned and benumbed than quickened by
immediate contact with it; in fact, not a few
minds, very good ones too in their way, are absolute
non-conductors of the Wordsworth electricity. So
that I should almost as soon expect the saving vir-
tue of Christianity to reach mankind in general with-
out the Christian Church, as expect Wordsworth's
poetry to touch the masses, save through a subordi-
nate priesthood of teachers: for he is, in very truth,
p
92
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
the High Priest of a new poetical dispensation; or,
as Hartley Coleridge, in his sonnet to him, puts it,
Of Nature's inner shrine thou art the priest,
Where most she works when we perceive her least.
HIS LIFE AT RYDAL Mount.
About the time of his removal to Rydal Mount,
Wordsworth was appointed distributor of stamps for
Westmoreland County, which appointment was after-
wards extended over Cumberland. This office secured
him an easy competence, while its conditions were
such as to discharge his mind of private anxieties,
without oppressing him with public cares.
In the Summer of 1839, Wordsworth was at Ox-
ford, and the honorary degree of D.C.L. was con-
ferred upon him by the University, amidst loud
applauses; the audience being stirred to an almost
unprecedented pitch of enthusiasm. Keble, as Pro-
fessor of Poetry, introduced him, and in his speech
of welcome urged it as his special honor, that "he had
shed a celestial light upon the affections, the occupa-
tions, and the piety of the poor." This left nothing
for him to desire in the line of academic recognition.
He was regarded as the most illustrious man of letters
in England, and throughout the empire.
" for
In the Fall of 1842, the Poet was endowed with an
annuity of £300 a year from the Civil List,
distinguished literary merit." This was done by Sir
Robert Peel, who, in the letter informing him of it,
wrote as follows: "I need scarcely add, that the ac-
ceptance by you of this mark of favor from the Crown,
considering the grounds on which it is proposed, will
HIS LIFE AT RYDAL MOUNT.
93
impose no restraint upon your perfect independence,
and involve no obligation of a personal nature."
On the death of Southey, in March, 1843, the office
of Poet Laureate, thus made vacant, was, with the
full approval of the Queen, offered to Wordsworth.
He at first declined the honor on the ground of his
being too far advanced in age to undertake the duties
of the office. This brought him a special letter from
Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister, urging his ac-
ceptance, and assuring him that "the offer was made,
not for the purpose of imposing on him any onerous
or disagreeable duties, but in order to pay him that
tribute of respect which was justly due to the first of
living poets." With this understanding, he accepted
the appointment. The office was, indeed, well be-
stowed: old as he was, and past bearing further fruit
of song, the laureate wreath of England surely never
invested worthier brows. Seven years after, Tenny-
son became his successor, taking, as he himself says,
This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base.
We have seen with what feeling, at the time, Words-
worth stood through the tempest of obloquy that so
long assailed his work. The same feeling, though
somewhat chastened and subdued, kept with him,
upheld him, to the end. Writing to a friend when
his life was near the close, he speaks as follows: "It
is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that
my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause
of virtue and truth, especially among the young. As
for myself, it seems now of little moment how long I
may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his
little boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity,
94
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight
by watchers from the shore.”
:
From the time of his settling at Rydal Mount, the
Poet's life flowed on in an even, tranquil course. His
whole heart was in his home, his whole soul in his
high calling as a poet: every year brought him in-
creasing returns of honor and gratitude from those
who had deeply felt the blessing of his genius and
wisdom his great, simple, earnest mind had all that
it needed for delight and nourishment in the grand
and lovely forms and aspects of Nature that waited
on his steps, and in the widening circle of friends
whom he had himself inspired with congenial thoughts
and congenial tastes: so that he was conducted to an
old age as beautiful and free, perhaps, as ever fell to
the lot of any human being.
One great sorrow, indeed, fell upon his later years,
the death of his daughter Dora, then Mrs. Quilli-
nan, in 1847. This was to him " an immeasurable
loss," and was felt by him with all the depth and
intensity of his great mind; but his serenity was
grown too much the essential form of his soul to be
permanently shaken; and his last days were nothing
but love and peace. So that his life may be fitly
cited as illustrating his own lines, in which he tells
us that, if we keep our memories clear of shames and
remorses,
Retirement then may hourly look
Upon a soothing scene,
Age steal to his allotted nook
Contented and serene;
With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,
In frosty moonlight glistening;
DECLINE OF HIS FAME.
95
Or mountain rivers, where they creep
Along a channel smooth and deep,
To their own far-off murmurs listening.
"What touch," asks Mr. Myers, "What touch has
given to these lines their impress of an unfathomable
peace? For there speaks from them a tranquillity
which seems to overcome our souls; which makes us
feel, in the midst of toil and passion, that we are
disquieting ourselves in vain; that we are travelling
to a region where these things shall not be; that so
shall immoderate fear leave us, and inordinate love
shall die.'”
6
On the 23d of April, 1850, Shakespeare's birthday
and also his death-day, Wordsworth died, his age
being eighty years and sixteen days. The event was
a fitting close of his noble and beautiful life; a deep
peace being in his heart as its beating ceased. In
accordance with his own directions, he was buried in
Grasmere churchyard, the spot where his two little
children, as also his Dora, had been laid. In January,
1855, the Poet's sister followed him to the same rest-
ing-place, she being then eighty-three years old. Four
years later, in 1859, Mrs. Wordsworth was gathered
to his side. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine!
DECLINE OF HIS FAME.
The public estimate of Wordsworth in his life-time
culminated about 1840. Several years before he died
it began to decline; and after his death it continued
for some twenty years to sink lower and lower, inso-
much that many hoped and some feared that the
interest of his works would in no long time pass
96
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
away, and that the world would willingly let them
die. This was an issue that time alone could try,
and time's final award, I think, has now been spoken;
the result being the same that has happened to many
other great men, and which seems indeed to be a
general rule. For so it was even with Shakespeare:
his fame, too, began to fall off before he died; a new
generation of dramatic poets coming into vogue, infi-
nitely below him, of course, yet having the fraud or
the trick of novelty, and therefore able to eclipse him.
in popular repute, and perhaps the better able to do
this even because of his vast superiority. Dead, he
continued to fall more and more, so that he seemed
wellnigh lost out of the world's thought; nor did
things take a turn with him till after the Restoration:
then came a resurgence; his fame went up, up, up,
and, I need not say, it has known no second fall.
And so it was with our own Webster: his reputation,
also, began to fall off before he died, and kept going
down for a long time after: but in his case, too, there
has been a decisive turning, so that he now stands
taller, larger, brighter than ever before; and he, too,
has gone up to stay. This power of self-resurgence
seems, indeed, to be a constituent element in minds
of the first order: that they have it, is the very thing
that makes them so great. In other words, the world
is apt to run after new littleness, apt to run away from
old greatness; and this aptness is too much for any-
thing but what has strength enough to die and come
to life again.
In Wordsworth's case, the posthumous decline may
have been owing in part to disappointment occa-
sioned by The Prelude, which was given to the public
RESURGENCE.
97
I
a few months after the author's death. For myself,
I must confess that I was greatly taken aback on first
reading that work; it disappointed me sadly: but Cole-
ridge's grand poem in its praise had raised very high
expectations in me; which were so far from being
met, and indeed so badly dashed, that I did not ven-
ture upon a second reading for several years. But
I still remembered Coleridge's poem, still had faith
in his judgment, and so committed the rather unu-
sual folly of suspecting that the fault, after all, might
be in myself. So, at length, I gave it a second pe-
rusal, and was then even more disappointed than I
had been at first, but disappointed just the other way;
and so resented my hasty dislike, that I soon after
tried it a third time: this led to a fourth trial, and
this to a fifth. Thus its interest kept mounting
higher and higher on every fresh perusal; and now
for some eighteen years I have not been able to let
a year pass without reading it at least twice. And it
still keeps its hold on me, still keeps pulling me back
to it.
RESURGENCE.
But, notwithstanding this disappointment, I never
could bring myself to doubt that Wordsworth would
live: I believed all the while, nay, I felt sure, that
his poems had that in them which the world could ill
afford and would nowise consent to part with; and
that in no long time the old interest in them would
be revived. It is hardly needful to say that this an-
ticipation has come true. And it has come true even
sooner and stronger than I looked for. Within the
last twelve years, the tide has turned, the current of
7
98
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
approval has set in, not loud indeed, for Wordsworth
does not inspire loudness, but with greater breadth and
volume than ever before. His poetry is read more, his
fame is greater, at this day than it was at any time dur-
ing his life. And he, too, has gone up to stay, he, too,
is to know no second fall. For, indeed, the very things
which, a few years ago, seemed most likely to oust him
from the world's great, wise heart are now giving their
suffrage to enthrone him there. The principal reason
of this is, to my thinking, well enough stated by Pro-
fessor Shairp, as follows: "What Earth's far-off
lonely mountains do for the plains and the cities,
that Wordsworth has done and will do for literature,
and through literature for society; sending down
great rivers of higher truth, fresh purifying winds
of feeling, to those who least dream from what
quarter they come. The more thoughtful of each
generation will draw nearer and observe him more.
closely, will ascend his imaginative heights, and sit
under the shadow of his profound meditations, and,
in proportion as they do so, will become more noble
and pure in heart."
And a like resurgence, I trust, is forthcoming, this
too at no distant day, in the case of Scott, — for his
novels, I mean, not his poems, for in these it seems
to have come already. For he it was who made, or
at least did more than all before him towards making,
the Novel a very great and powerful institution; and
he is still by far the greatest and the loveliest of Brit-
ish novelists. But the decay of interest so apt to fol-
low great authors after their death has, I think, in
his case been protracted much beyond its natural
term, by the very fact of his having put so much
HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SCOTT.
99
•
power and loveliness into the thing. For so the ef-
fect has been to create a prodigious demand, and thus
to raise up a host of successors and rivals, many
of them, too, writers of marked ability and ingenuity,
and some, of strong, varied, and fertile genius, inven-
tive and original to a high degree. But most of their
novels have been attractive merely or mainly because
they were new, so that the charm which draws and
holds us to them is snapped the moment their novelty
is worn off, which is very soon done; whereas Scott's
novels, besides being new, have the grace or the
power of perpetual newness, which is a vastly differ-
ent thing, and as much better as it is different. And
so deep and genial is this perennial freshness in Sir
Walter's best novels, that we find them fresher,
sweeter, more taking on the twentieth reading than
on the first. So that I cannot permit myself to
doubt that the old interest in Scott is to be revived;
and I pray God it may be so.
HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SCOTT.
This leads me to say something of Scott and Words-
worth together. The two men were warm friends, their
friendship beginning early and holding on unbroken
till the death of Scott, a period of nearly thirty years.
For, as Mr. Matthew Arnold says, " Scott, too genu-
ine himself not to feel the profound genuineness of
Wordsworth, and with an instinctive recognition of
his firm hold on Nature, always admired him sin-
cerely, and praised him generously." And Sir Wal-
ter is on record as saying of him, "I do not know a
man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart
....
100
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
AAG1
and loftiness of genius." On the other hand, in the
notes on his poems, dictated to Miss Fenwick in
1843, Wordsworth says, "I first became acquainted
with this great and amiable man in the year 1803,
when my sister and I, making a tour in Scotland,
were hospitably received by him in Lasswade upon
the banks of the Esk, where he was then living."
The words "great and amiable man," coming from
such a source, while they express just what Scott was
indeed, carry much weight of meaning. For Words-
worth was a severe critic both of others and of him-
self; and in praising his contemporaries he always
weighed his words well, and took care to speak even
less than he felt. When the acquaintance began,
Scott was known only as a poet, and by no means at
his best in that, all his greatest poems being still to
come, and his first novel not being published till
eleven years after. In the course of a few years his
thick-coming romances set all the world ablaze with
his fame as "the Wizard of the North." Scott often
quotes Wordsworth, and Wordsworth in his poems.
applies to him such phrases as "the mighty min-
strel," and "great minstrel of the Border," and "the
whole world's darling."
In the Fall of 1831, Wordsworth with his daughter
paid a visit to Scott at Abbotsford. Scott was then
all broken down with intense and prolonged over-
work of brain; and the Poet was deeply touched by
his appearance, so that in the forecited notes he ex-
claims, “How sadly changed did I find him from the
man I had seen so healthy, gay, and hopeful, a few
years before!" Howbeit, the two men spent a day
in reviewing together their long-loved scenes of Yar-
HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH SCOTT.
101
row River and St. Mary's Lake; and there, says the
Poet,
No public and no private care
The freeborn mind enthralling,
We made a day of happy hours,
Our happy days recalling.
The poem of Yarrow Revisited, one of the best of
Wordsworth's later work, was written on that occa-
sion; a strain replete with fine imagery and tender
feeling, all prompted by sincere admiration of Sir
Walter's rich genius and noble character. Scott was
then on the eve of visiting Naples and other parts of
Italy in quest of health. I must quote one stanza of
the poem, referring to this circumstance:
For thou upon a hundred streams,
By tales of love and sorrow,
Of faithful love, undaunted truth,
Hast shed the power of Yarrow;
And streams unknown, hills yet unseen,
Wherever they invite thee,
At parent Nature's grateful call,
With gladness must requite thee.
How Wordsworth felt for the dear dying man, is
delicately suggested in another stanza, which must be
given also:
And if, as Yarrow, through the woods
And down the meadow ranging,
Did meet us with unalter'd face,
Though we were changed and changing ;
If, then, some natural shadows spread
Our inward prospect over,
The soul's deep valley was not slow
Its brightness to recover.
I will close this reference by drawing once more
from the notes: "On our return in the afternoon, we
102
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
had to cross the Tweed directly opposite Abbotsford.
A rich but sad light, of rather a purple than a
golden hue, was spread over the Eildon hills at that
moment; and, thinking it probable that it might be
the last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I
was not a little moved." As the result of that emo-
tion we have the following lines:
A trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain,
Nor of the setting Sun's pathetic light
Engender'd, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height :
Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain
For kindred Power departing from their sight.
Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners! for the might
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes;
Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue
Than sceptred king or laurell'd conqueror knows.
Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true,
Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea,
Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope!
RECENT WRITERS UPON HIM.
A great deal has been written upon Wordsworth,
more indeed than on any other English poet, except
Shakespeare. Of reviews, essays, lectures, critical
discourses, there has been a long, a frequent, a varied
succession; and the work is still going on with un-
flagging force and fervor. Among the recent es-
says, we have a capital one, rich in matter, earnest,
temperate, and judicious in manner, from John Camp-
bell Shairp, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and pub-
lished in his excellent volume of Studies in Poetry
and Philosophy. And in 1872, the Rev. Stopford A.
Brooke, then one of the Queen's Chaplains in Ordi-
nary, delivered in St. James's Chapel, on Sunday
RECENT WRITERS UPON HIM.
103
afternoons, an admirable course of lectures on The-
ology in the English Poets; of which lectures, sixteen
in all, no less than nine are wholly given to Words-
worth, and form one of the best critiques, in some
respects the very best, that we have on the subject.
I the rather mention these, because I must come
under great obligations to the accomplished author
in a subsequent chapter. At the opening of his first
lecture on Wordsworth, he has the following mark-
worthy sentence: "It may seem too much, to those
who know Wordsworth but little, to devote so many
lectures to him; but the only feeling that one who
loves this Poet can have is, that too much time can
scarcely be spent upon him; and that, if only a few
are induced not to glance over but to study his works,
more good may be done than by a hundred sermons.'
Still more recently, not essays merely, but whole vol-
umes have come forth occupied with the theme. The
year 1878 gave us two such volumes, one by Professor
William Knight, of the University of St. Andrews,
Scotland, an eminently readable book, the other by
Mr. George H. Calvert, of this country. Some two
years later, Mr. Andrew James Symington published,
in two small volumes, "A Biographical Sketch of the
Poet, with Selections from his Writings in Poetry
and Prose."
""
Finally, in 1881, the long-expected volume on
Wordsworth in the series of English Men of Letters
was published, written by Mr. Frederick W. H. My-
ers. Mr. Myers is himself no mean poet, and his
well-known name led me to expect a good thing from
him; and when the thing came I found that it was
good indeed, even better than I had dared to expect.
104
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
On the whole, I think it must be pronounced the most
satisfactory presentation of the whole subject, the man
and the poet, that has yet appeared. In thought, in
matter, and in style, it is a very gem, certainly not
below, I dare not say above, Professor Shairp's superb
volume on Burns in the same series; restrained, cir-
cumspective, yet profoundly earnest, and with an enthu-
siasm much stronger in the depths than on the surface.
And what I like best in it is, that the author does
Wordsworth the honor of trying him by a high, a very
high standard; his treatment being so severe and
searching as to give good warrant, that whatever car-
ries his praise must be real, solid gold. Of course he
condemns a good deal of the Poet's work, and, when
he condemns, he does it heartily: this makes his praise
mean something; for it tells us, and with what is
better than words, that the critic has a mind of his
own, and that he knows what is right to be said, be-
fore he says it. Wordsworth can stand this, and
therefore ought to have it; or, if he cannot stand it,
then he must fall, and it is of no use trying to hold
him up.
B
It may well be judged that, such a service having
been done, it is hardly worth the while for any of us
to attempt further service in the same cause. Never-
theless the work, I suspect, is bound to go on, and
perhaps will go on with still-increasing volume and
for an indefinite period. For, if the lovers of Words-
worth are not woefully deceived, the theme is simply
inexhaustible.
Some one has lately observed that Wordsworth has
at least this rare felicity, that those who have written
about him have generally written well. This, I think,
#
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
105
is true. Nor is the reason of it far to seek. For
those who take to Wordsworth at all are pretty sure
to love him with all the heart: he kindles in them
an enthusiasm so pure, so deep, so strong, he pene-
trates them with a charm so potent and so lasting,
that they cannot choose but keep on reading him;
while the perusal is not only ever putting new thoughts
into them, but opening new fountains of thought, un-
sealing fresh springs of life, within them: so that, in
whatever minds his poetry gains a lodgement, it can
hardly fail to stir up and elicit all that is best in them.
In other words, the infection of his profound genuine-
ness is so catching, so subtile, so mighty, that it just
goes all through them, and works them into its own
likeness, makes them genuine too. And I hope it
need not be said, that genuineness is the first princi-
ple of all good writing, as it also is of all good taste.
This, too, is both where and why good taste and good
morals are perfectly at one.
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
Wordsworth's poetry, I believe, is commonly thought
to be unimpassioned and tame, with little fervor or
glow of feeling in it; a rather sluggish stream, that
has not life or force enough to break into an impet-
uous and headlong torrent. But the truth, as it seems
to me, is, that the life of that stream runs too deep
and strong for such a result. This makes it needful,
apparently, that I should say somewhat touching the
place which passion holds in his poetry, what he re-
gards as its legitimate function in such work, and
why he so regards it.
106
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
G
Now it is a cardinal principle with him, that the
rightful office of passion in poetry is not to be para-
mount, not to dominate the work, drawing and shap-
ing all things else to its own uses; but, on the contrary,
however strong it may be, still to be firmly controlled,
and kept subordinate and ministrant to something
greater and better than itself. So he teaches ex-
pressly, and in plain prose. "The Sun," says he,
"was personified by the ancients as a charioteer driv-
ing four fiery steeds over the vault of heaven; and
this solar charioteer was called Phoebus, or Apollo,
and was regarded as the god of poetry, of prophecy,
and of medicine. Phoebus combined all these charac-
ters. And every poet has a similar mission on Earth:
he must also be a Phoebus in his own way; he must
diffuse health and light; he must prophesy to his
generation; he must teach the present age by coun-
selling with the future; he must plead for posterity;
and he must imitate Phoebus in guiding and govern-
ing all his faculties, fiery steeds though they be, with
the most exact precision, lest, instead of being a Pho-
bus, he prove a Phaeton, and set the world on fire,
and be hurled from his car: he must rein-in his fancy,
and temper his imagination, with the control and di-
rection of sound reason, and drive on in the right
track with a steady hand."
Another part or aspect of the same doctrine is, that
what is lowest in our human loves must be at once
restrained and ensouled by what is highest, else it
will soon turn to loathing and disgust; while, again,
this highest, unless it be fed and sustained by some-
thing higher still, unless it live in sympathy with
what is truly Divine, must needs fall away from its
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
107
native form, and be finally quenched and lost in what
is lowest. So, with him, the love that draws to mar-
riage is in the fullest sense a religion: to be “true to
the kindred points of Heaven and home" is both its
inspiration and its law; this, too, as if from an in-
stinctive feeling that, unless God be sanctified in the
heart, the heart cannot retain its proper life. Shake-
speare repeatedly puts forth the same thought, and is
moved to his utmost sweetness when he does so. Thus
the heroine of Cymbeline would have charged her ban-
ished husband,
At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,
T'encounter me with orisons, for then
I am in Heaven for him.
And so with Ferdinand and Miranda, in The Tempest,
the same power that binds them to each other in the
sacraments of love also binds them both in devout
allegiance to the Author of their being; whose pres-
ence is most felt by them in the sacredness of their
mutual truth. And Wordsworth has a fine passage
directly to this point in the last book of The Prelude:
By love subsists
All lasting grandeur, by pervading love;
That gone, we are as dust. - Behold the fields
In balmy spring-time full of rising flowers
M
And joyous creatures; see that pair, the lamb
And the lamb's mother, and their tender ways
Shall touch thee to the heart: thou call'st this love,
And not inaptly so, for love it is,
Far as it carries thee. In some green bower
Rest, and be not alone, but have thou there
The One who is thy choice of all the world :
There linger, listening, gazing, with delight
Impassion'd, but delight how pitiable !
Unless this love by a still higher love
Be hallow'd, love that breathes not without awe;
108
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Love that adores, but on the knees of prayer,
By Heaven inspired; that frees from chains the soul,
Lifted, in union with the purest, best
Of earth-born passions.
Such is Wordsworth's explicit doctrine on this sub-
ject; and his practice everywhere runs in implicit
accordance therewith. The result is that passion is
never allowed to have the mastery in his work he
sternly controls it and lets it act only as a subordi-
nate power, admits it only as an undercurrent; so
that it is not directly seen, but has to be inferred;
and because it does not flow in plain sight, therefore
many think it is not there. Now passion naturally
becomes the deeper and the stronger for being thus
restrained; the fire burns the hotter and the longer
within, that it cannot have its own way, and so spend
itself in direct and visible expression; and it scarce
need be said that, if passion be kept under reason, the
stronger it is the more it exalts reason.
What, then, would be the natural outcome of such
a process? Just what, as it seems to me, we have in
Wordsworth. The passion is too great for the proper
language of passion to carry: it has to voice itself in
the language of thought, and so is lost in the intel-
lectual power and working which itself evokes. The
whole of his Ode to Duty is a good example of what
I mean, and I give one stanza of it, where the thing
in question comes out most clearly :
Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
109
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh
and strong.
Here we have, to my sense, great energy of passion,
which, however, does not speak itself out directly as
passion: it fires the mental powers, stirs them to in-
tense action, and is itself hidden under deep, pure elo-
quence of thought. But, in such work, the effect of
passion is a soul-music too inward to be heard by
minds which, alive only in their surface and suburbs,
and so regarding poetry as but a pastime for idle
hours, do not think or feel deeply enough to be touched
by its proper harmonies. Such minds are too weak to
be moved by that which is so strong. At all events,
Wordsworth's poetry seems to me more impassioned
than any other since Shakespeare. Of course most
people will dissent widely from me in this; neverthe-
less I take the right explanation to be somewhat as
follows:
There have been poets, plenty of them, in whom
passion was stronger than mind,- men who, instead
of holding the passion in hand, just drift before it.
And such poets may naturally seem more impas-
sioned than those in whom stronger passion is never-
theless kept down by mental power and sanity of will.
Now, with a strong heart Wordsworth unites a stronger
head; and the strength of head absorbs and assimi-
lates the heart-strength into itself; so that passion
hides itself in intellect, or perhaps I should rather
say, reveals itself as intellect. He perceives and
thinks first, then feeling springs up in the footsteps,
and grows by the measures, of thought. Such ap-
pears to have been the native drift, the inward law,
110
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
of his genius. Partly from instinct, but partly also,
I think, from conscious purpose, emotive heat is, by
sheer force of will, repressed into latency, and made
to appear as intellectual light. Nay, more; the deeper
and stronger his passion was at any time, the more
careful he was lest it should master him and run away
with him, the more intent on holding it in and keep-
ing the upper hand of it, till, by predominance of in-
tellect, the passion became strained and transmuted
into pure intelligence. And so he told a friend that
he had never written love-poetry, because he dared
not; it would have been too passionate. What a heart
of fire was in him by nature, how much of inward
storm he held shut up beneath his outward calm, did
not fail to impress those who knew him best. And so
one writing from Rydal Mount, when he was in his
sixty-ninth year, speaks thus: "What strange work-
ings are there in his great mind! How fearfully
strong are all his feelings and affections! If his in-
tellect had been less powerful, they must have de-
stroyed him long ago." The hot, fierce passion-steam
which would shatter a vessel of less toughness, this he
holds down with a firm and strong hand, till it cools
and condenses into a clear, serene, solid, yet liquid
flow of mind.
Perhaps a brief instance will make this plainer.
Miss Sarah Hutchinson, the Poet's sister-in-law, after
sharing his home many years, died there in June,
1836. Her death raised a great passion of sorrow in
him. But he held the sorrow in with firm hand, and
brought his powerful intellect to bear upon it, till he
gained a calm and lucid image of it in the mirror of
a placid mind. Observe, now, what a blending of
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
111
strong passion and clear vision there is in the follow-
ing, written on that occasion:
Even so for me a vision sanctified
The
sway of Death, long ere mine eyes had seen
Thy countenance - the still rapture of thy mien —
When thou, dear Sister! wert become Death's bride.
No trace of pain or languor could abide
That change age on thy brow was smooth'd, thy cold
Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold
A loveliness to living youth denied.
O, if within me hope should e'er decline,
The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn,
Then may that Heaven-revealing smile of thine
The bright assurance visibly return;
And let my spirit in that power divine
Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.
This heart of fire within him was no doubt one
cause, perhaps the chief cause, of his great physical
restlessness, impelling him to sturdy and even violent
bodily exercise, and striving to work itself off in long
and lonely rambles over the mountains. So in the
description he gives of himself in the stanzas written
in a copy of The Castle of Indolence:
Full many a time, upon a stormy night,
His voice came to us from the neighboring height :
Oft could we see him driving full in view
At mid-day when the Sun was shining bright :
What ill was on him, what he had to do,
A mighty wonder bred among our quiet crew.
Great wonder to our gentle tribe it was
Whenever from our valley he withdrew ;
For happier soul no living creature has
Than he had, being here the long day through.
Some thought he was a lover, and did woo :
Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong:
But verse was what he had been wedded to ;
And his own mind did like a tempest strong
Come to him thus, and drove the weary wight along.
112
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
!
Still more to the point, perhaps, is a passage in
The Excursion where he describes the Wanderer a
good deal out of himself:
And thus, before his eighteenth year was told,
Accumulated feelings press'd his heart
With still increasing weight; he was o'erpower'd
By Nature; by the turbulence subdued
Of his own mind; by mystery and hope,
And the first virgin passion of a soul
Communing with the glorious Universe.
Full often wish'd he that the winds might rage
When they were silent: far more fondly now
Than in his earlier season did he love
the conflict and the sounds
Tempestuous nights,
That live in darkness. From his intellect
And from the stillness of abstracted thought
He ask'd repose; and, failing oft to win
The peace required, he scann'd the laws of light
Amid the roar of torrents, where they send
From hollow clefts up to the clearer air
A cloud of mist, that smitten by the Sun
Varies its rainbow hues. But vainly thus,
And vainly by all other means, he strove
To mitigate the fever of his heart.
Many thought Wordsworth cold; but his seeming
coldness all came of his prodigious self-control. The
state of mind which he praises most, and oftenest
speaks of, is tranquillity; and his doing so was doubt-
less because this was what he craved most, and also
what he found it the hardest to gain or to keep. But
he saw the thing to be right, and therefore was deter-
mined to have it, and was always schooling himself
into it. Yet the inward turbulence kept driving him
for relief to the very things most likely to increase
it. But this was only a part or a symptom of "that
fine madness which rightly should possess a poet's
brain."
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
113
It would seem indeed that the direct utterance of
passion did not approve itself either to his judg-
ment or his taste, while he also "had pride in thoughts
whose sternness made them sweet. Still there the
passion was, always strong, often stormy, within him,
and must have vent in some way; and an instinctive
rectitude of genius seems to have taught him to hold
it speechless till, by brooding intently upon it, he had
thoroughly impregnated it with intellectual life, and
so tempered it into placid thought, the passion appear-
ing only in the intensity of thought which it had kin-
dled. All this is, I think, well shown in a short poem
headed "September, 1819," five stanzas of which are
as follows:
""
Yet will I temperately rejoice:
Wide is the range, and free the choice
Of undiscordant themes
Which, haply, kindred souls may prize
Not less than vernal ecstasies,
And passion's feverish dreams.
For deathless powers to verse belong,
And they like Demi-gods are strong
On whom the Muses smile ;
But some their function have disclaim'd,
Best pleased with what is aptliest framed
To enervate and defile.
Not such th' initiatory strains
Committed to the silent plains
In Britain's earliest dawn :
Trembled the groves, the stars grew pale,
While all-too-daringly the veil
Of Nature was withdrawn !
Nor such the spirit-stirring note
When the live chords Alcæus smote,
*****
8
114
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Inflamed by sense of wrong:
Woe! woe to Tyrants! from the lyre
Broke threateningly, in sparkles dire
Of fierce, vindictive song.
And not unhallow'd was the page
By winged Love inscribed, to assuage
The pangs of vain pursuit ;
Love listening while the Lesbian Maid
With finest touch of passion sway'd
Her own Æolian lute.
In the first two of these stanzas we may see the Poet's
purpose of so using passion as I have said, while in
the other three we have a fine upworking and out-
working of passion through a very transport of intel-
lectual and imaginative energy.
Thus, in all the Poet's best work, thought and feel-
ing, mind and passion, are held true to their normal
relations, held in that order which man's intellec-
tual house rightly craves. To attain that order is
indeed a hard thing for most of us; and surely he
who helps us, however little, towards such attain-
ment, deserves well of us. But, as Wordsworth firmly
maintains that order, so it must needs be that, when
he is most impassioned, he appears, to unthoughtful
readers, least so; for the passion is nowise to be come
at but by thought. That is to say, intense emo-
tion is with him rigidly curbed in and compressed,
and thus made to take on the form of meditative in-
tensity. The "fiery heart," instead of flaming out
directly and in its proper force, works upon his pow-
ers of thought, kindling and exciting them, till,
through them, it presses itself into utterance as in-
tellectual force.
All this partly explains why it is that, to those who
PLACE OF PASSION IN HIS POETRY.
115
once put themselves in the right attitude towards
Wordsworth's poetry, the interest of it is literally
inexhaustible: they cannot wear it out, cannot out-
grow its power. The more they become at home with
it, the newer and fresher it is to them, always carry-
ing the music of Spring in its mouth, the verdure and
bloom of Spring in its face: nor can they return to
it.so often, or stay with it so long, but that new wells
of strength and joy will still keep opening up to
them.
But, because the passion of his poetry is so pressed
and held down in a deep under-current, and so robed
with a strong over-current of intellect and thought,
therefore it is that, to careless or superficial readers,
its depths of feeling, the underlying wealth and might
and sweetness of it, can make no report of them-
selves: in a word, it is a music too deep and sweet
for them to hear. So it may most truly be said of
Wordsworth," you must love him, ere to you he will
seem worthy of your love": we must think, must re-
flect, must meditate ourselves into sympathy with his
poetry, else we cannot come at its heart; and though,
as Keats says of him, he "catches his freshness from
archangel's wing," yet we shall soon distaste his
work as a thing so tame and vapid, or at the least so
cold and passionless, that we can nowise take fire at
the touch of it.
And Wordsworth himself knew it would be so,
meant it should be so. It was in the spirit of this
purpose that he wrote to Lady Beaumont, what I have
already quoted," to be incapable of a feeling of poetry,
in
my sense of the word, is to be without love of human
nature and reverence for God." And so he had no
116
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
heart, his mind was not built, for that sort of poetry
in which the moral and intellectual man just wastes
itself in lawless eruptions of passion. On the con-
trary, it was a part of his faith, a main article of his
poetical as well as his moral creed, that "the Gods
approve the depth, and not the tumult, of the soul”;
and that "passion itself is highest reason in a soul
sublime."
Accordingly, his ideal of poetry stands in that per-
fect harmony where each thing knows and loves its
rightful place; where Passion, freely submitting it-
self to law, goes linked in happy wedlock with Reason,
and so is chastened into the rightness and serenity of
truth, is disciplined and deepened into the self-sus-
taining calm of a raised and transfigured intelligence.
Hence the deep, still enthusiasm, the hushed and hush-
ing rapture of impassioned meditation, in a word,
the calm intensity of married intellect and emotion,
thought steeped in feeling, and feeling sublimed by
thought, which flows through his most characteristic
strains. English poetry has nothing else like them;
yet it may safely be affirmed that all the best English
poetry written since they appeared has caught its fin-
est inspiration from them; not, indeed, that the poets
consciously stole his fire, but that his fire stole itself
into them. And the habit of his Muse is best de-
scribed in his own words:
•
As the year runs round,
Apart she toils within the chosen ring;
While the stars shine, or while day's purple eye
Is gently closing with the flowers of Spring;
Where even the motion of an Angel's wing
Would interrupt th' intense tranquillity
Of silent hills, and more than silent sky.
CHAPTER IV.
REACTION FROM THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL.
WORDSWORTH'S poetry was, in some of its
most distinctive lines, a reaction from what is
known as the Artificial School, the school founded
by Dryden, but finished and dominated by Pope.
The reaction cannot, indeed, be justly said to have
been started by Wordsworth: this was done by Cow-
per, Crabbe, and Burns. Here, however, Burns stands
by himself, and may well enough be passed by in any
account of the matter. He spoke, with perfect free-
dom, out of his native strength and plenitude of gen-
ius, himself blessedly ignorant of poetic codes and
schools, and speaking to minds that were in the same
happy state of ignorance. And in the case of Cowper
and Crabbe the reaction can hardly be said to have
got beyond what may be called a silent protest; cer-
tainly it did not reach the stress or the decisiveness
of a frank revolt. Perhaps they did not quite dare,
perhaps they thought it hardly right, to break openly
with the accepted order. At all events, the move-
ment, in their hands, was timid and faltering, as if
they were hesitating between I would and I must not,
or as if they had a feeling that the old thing was some-
how not right, yet did not quite see the way clear to
118
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
anything better. So that while drawing-in, or let-
ting-in, some elements, or some dim sproutings, of
a new upgrowth, still they did this stealthily, and per-
haps without being themselves aware of it. Be this
as it may, the beginnings of the reaction were, with
them, rather faint and fitful, and not so pronounced
as to disturb the self-appointed watchmen on the walls
of the English poetical Zion.
These authors, however, did one thing which meant
a good deal more than was commonly supposed: they
showed that poetry could grow amid the works of God
as well as amid those of man. They took it out of
the town into the country; though, to be sure, they
carried and kept with them as much of the town as
they could, and were somewhat shy, apparently, of
permitting the country winds to blow too much of
rustic vigor and freshness into their work. Never-
theless here was a great point gained: the change, if
small in immediate result, was full of rich promise.
So that a good deal was done by Cowper and Crabbe
towards preparing the way for what was forthcoming.
For poetry, after its many years of urban faintness,
or of brick-and-mortar existence, could not long so
rusticate without catching and absorbing more or less
of the spirit and virtue of its whereabout; while it
was breathing rural airs and conversing with green
fields, something of the green must needs creep into
its veins, whether it would or no. And probably their
work was even the more effective in the end, that its
operation was unseen and unsuspected. The thing
was the surer to come, that men did not know what
was coming. For so it appears that, without offend-
ing the public taste, it silently and insensibly loosened
REACTION FROM THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 119
that taste off from the style of poetry then in vogue,
and surprised it into a freer receptiveness for the
fresh, hearty, outspoken voices of reality and truth.
It scarce need be said that with Wordsworth the
process was very different. Whether the time had
come or not for an open breach with the Artificial
School, the man had certainly come. What with
Cowper and Crabbe had been only a blind sense of
something not right, in him grew to a strong, con-
scious disgust. At first, indeed, his purpose ran in
the old course, but his genius was radically at odds
with it, and, too strong for his purpose, would not
let him rest till he flew away from it. And he knew
right well what he was doing and why; for he was
a man of clear insight, deep convictions, earnest
thought, and unshrinking courage. So he just came
to an open, decided, uncompromising rupture with
the reigning code: directly, distinctly, unmistakably
he broke away from the old regime, threw its shackles
clean off, and declared his independence. Thus, with
him, the reaction, instead of working under ground or
in the dark, all at once "leaped to light," and walked
abroad in plain day; offering, withal, no apologies for
daring to be, but claiming an everlasting frankpledge
in the truth of things. And so poetry, in his hands,
boldly renewed its ancient, honest, impassioned love-
making with Nature, using the plain, natural, birth-
right language of that love, a speech born of the
individual heart, and not of conventional lips. No
studied phrase-making, no falsetto, nothing got up for
effect; all "simple and pure soul." Scholastic forms,
drawing-room airs, the time-worn tricks of the trade,
and all the self-applauding fineries of the poetic toilet,
'
120
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
-these it put away utterly, and drew into a full-souled
fellowship with man as man, shook hands cordially
with common, actual things, and set up its home in
a life of frank, genial, vigorous human-heartedness.
All this was a new departure indeed, the upspring
of a veritable renascence, a proceeding in which the
most cherished peculiarities of the Artificial School
were set at nought altogether. What those peculiari-
ties were, has been so often and so fully discussed
that it can hardly be worth the while to pause long
upon them now. Suffice it to say that the poetry of
that school was always keenly mindful of its own dig-
nity, and could not put up with any swerving from
the approved lines of respectability: whatever else it
might be, it was bound to be genteel: whatever body
it took, or whether it had any body at all, it was sure
to go well dressed: if it laughed or if it wept, if it
played or if it preached, all was done punctually by
rule alike in its matter and its manner, alike in its
choice of subjects and its mode of treating them, it
was rigidly select and self-regardful, was sensitively
decorous all round, and had a nervous dread of rub-
bing against anything hard-handed or stained with
sweat in a word, it was held in what may be termed a
chronic suffocation of millinery and starch. In such
a house, real nativeness and home-bred sense had but
a cold welcome at the best; and the chances were as
ten to one that the door was peremptorily shut against
them as things undignified, ill-mannered, rude.
This, to be sure, is but a one-sided view of the
thing, and therefore does it less than justice; for the
poetry in question was not without good qualities;
only what was poorest in it, of this it was most
REACTION FROM THE ARTIFICIAL SCHOOL. 121
tenacious and insistent. Goldsmith is probably the
fairest example of all that was good in the school;
and, if his work has nothing of what is positively bad
in poetry, it has little of what is best. At all events,
it was high time that the Genius of Poetry should be
thawed out from the elaborate frost-work of rule and
precept in which it had so long been bound, and re-
stored to its native freedom.
Now a decisive reaction, such as was needful, from
this poetry of mechanism and polished dryness and
pressed or painted flowers, to a poetry instinct with life
and sparkling with dews and breathing of flowers fresh-
blown and laughing out their matin joy,— such a re-
action could hardly take place without going too far.
And so, to be sure, it was with Wordsworth; though,
all things considered, to a degree remarkably slight.
For the very qualities that were made most of by the
poets then highest in public favor, these he was most
anxious to avoid; and this anxiety sometimes carried
him over into the opposite extreme. So, for example,
his strong love of what is native and genuine, and of
plain, simple, home-born thought and feeling, drew
him into the flatness and insipidity, and what may
perhaps be not unfitly called downright baby-talk,
which we have quite too much of in Goody Blake,
The Idiot Boy, and a few other pieces: though the
worst qualities of these are, I must think, a hundred
times better, or rather a hundred times less bad, than
the strained magniloquence and hyperbolical windi-
ness of Dryden's Alexander's Feast and Pope's Mes-
siah; which, notwithstanding, have, by I know not
what irony of the Gods or the Fates, been accounted
high poetry. But Wordsworth was not often caught
122
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
nor long held in that excess. For his mind was too
well poised, its powers too smoothly attempered each
to all and all to each, to set up its rest in any house
of error or even of intemperate truth. And I could
easily put up with a great deal more of the fault in
question, with such poems before me as Ruth, Mi-
chael, The Brothers, The Blind Highland Boy, and
many others; all born of his just and healthy re-
vulsion from the poetry of the reigning school.
POETRY OF HUMBLE LIFE.
Much of the adverse criticism on Wordsworth has
avowedly stood upon the circumstance of his having
written so much on common, homely, and familiar
themes, and given so much prominence to obscure
and lowly persons, like the poor Leech-Gatherer and
the Female Vagrant; the critics holding these to be
vulgar and low. That The Excursion, for instance,
had a retired pedlar for its hero, and that his Simon
Lee told of a decrepit old man who had ankles, and
whose ankles were (6 swoln and thick," - this of it-
self was enough to stamp those poems as flat contra-
band. Now, with the reservations already noted, I
account this one of his greatest merits, the source of
some of his deepest and most regenerative inspira-
tions. And herein he is thoroughly at one with
Burns, whom he expressly honors as his teacher in
this respect; telling how his genius
Rose like a star that touching Earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.
POETRY OF HUMBLE LIFE.
123
The instincts of Wordsworth's genius, fed and nur-
tured as they were both by the felicities of Cumbrian
Nature and the simplicities of Cumbrian women and
men, predisposed him to receive, in fullest measure
and while yet a youth, the inspirations of the great
rustic poet-soul of Scotland. Of course the influence
of Burns did much to deepen and confirm the re-
ceptiveness that welcomed it; falling in with, and
therefore drawing out, his native bent, and so not
only keeping him what he already was, but mak-
ing him more so. Especially was this the case in
reference to the matter now in hand. For Burns
found the elements of his best poetry in just those
common and homely things where no poetic elements
were supposed to exist. Wordsworth was in his
twenty-seventh year when Burns died. And in one
of his beautiful poems on the Scottish bard, written
after his visit to the poet's home and grave in 1803,
he lets us know how much he felt indebted to him
for that characteristic of his poetry which is here
in question:
I mourn'd with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for he was gone
Whose light I hail'd when first it shone,
And show'd my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.
The three short poems, from one of which this is
quoted, are altogether the finest tribute ever paid to
that great, frail darling of the Muses. I must cite
one more passage, first explaining that the image he
is speaking of is that of Burns at his humble fireside,
where,
124
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
With mirth elate,
Or in his nobly-pensive mood
The Rustic sate.
Proud thoughts that Image overawes :
Before it humbly let us pause,
And ask of Nature, from what cause
And by what rules
She train'd her Burns to win applause
That shames the Schools.
Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen ;
He rules 'mid winter snows, and when
Bees fill their hives ;
Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.
Of course Wordsworth knew, as all right-minded
men know, that the abodes of elegance and refinement
and culture are nowise wanting in the best materials
of poetry; that the palace, as well as the cottage, may
have hearts that beat highly, bravely, heroically, re-
sponsive to all that is greatest and loveliest in human
nature; that in the homes of the wealthy and the hon-
ored there are deep sorrows, patient virtues, tender
ministries, sweet compassions, meek and gentle char-
ities, strong, clean, simple, earnest souls, men and
women who will do anything, who will dare anything,
that the cause of truth or of humanity may call them
to. But of these poetry had at all times been amply
mindful, and indeed had given them more than their
just share of its regard. It was full time that other
sections of humanity should have their turn with the
just and sacred Muses; that their soft and consecrat-
ing light should shine upon the obscure and lowly
sons and daughters of toil. For the homes, also, of
the poor and the unhonored have their brave, true,
POETRY OF HUMBLE LIFE.
125
tender hearts, their treasures of modest, gentle, he-
roic virtue; and the poetries that haunt these pre-
cincts have perhaps this special advantage, that they
strike down deeper into the soul for being less sup-
plied with the means of expression.
Such, at all events, was Wordsworth's thought.
And he set himself deliberately to the task of devel-
oping these unknown or neglected springs of poetic
wealth. And well might he do so, for his youth had
been spent in daily converse with the plain, homely,
and home-loving people of his native Cumberland,
sober, frugal, hard-working, God-fearing men and
women there his deepest loves had grown, there his
dearest memories had been gathered. And because
he had a living well of truth and beauty within him,
therefore he felt the true and beautiful in the untar-
nished souls of the shepherd with his flock, the weaver
at his loom, the maiden at her spinning-wheel: nor did
he suffer any plainness of garb, not even a beggar's
rags, to intercept or mar his vision of the common
human heart beating within them.
In all this our Poet has indeed done a great service
for the poor, but yet, surely, a still greater service for
the rich. For the rich can hardly reap a higher good
than by being brought to know and to feel that, in all
their best treasures, the poor may be as rich as they,
and even richer. And if any rich man cannot be
brought to know and feel this, then, assuredly, his
riches are a greater curse to him than poverty can be
to any poor man. And not only does the spirit of this
lesson run in the depths of nearly all Wordsworth's
poetry, but the words thereof are often in its mouth;
nor has it any nobler or sweeter language than when
126
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
such is its theme. Of this I could give many in-
stances: here is a brief one, the Poet having a High-
land hut in his eye:
The limpid mountain rill avoids it not ;
And why shouldst thou? If rightly train'd and bred,
Humanity is humble, finds nó spot
Which her Heaven-guided feet refuse to tread.
The walls are crack'd, sunk is the flowery roof,
Undress'd the pathway leading to the door;
But love, as Nature loves, the lonely Poor;
Search, for their worth, some gentle heart wrong-proof,
Meek, patient, kind, and, were its trials fewer,
Belike less happy. - Stand no more aloof!
Upon the whole, then, it may well be set down to
the credit of Wordsworth's Muse, that she does not
affect"the perfumed chambers of the great"; that
she lets the sumptuous chariots and equipages wheel
by unnoticed, and sets before us "clear images of
Nature's unambitious underwood, and flowers that
prosper in the shade"; and that, all untravelled as
she is, she rather shuns than seeks the "canopies of
costly state," the proud saloons of fashion and high
life, preferring the lowly cottage, where modest worth
and "honorable brows bedew'd with toil" have their
abode, and eat their daily bread in purity and gentle-
ness of heart; or the quiet lake or stream where the
genius of the place persuades
To reverent watching of each still report
That Nature utters from her rural shrine.
And so, in one of his sonnets, the Poet gives a char-
acteristic expression of his thoughts on this matter:
Not Love, nor War, nor the tumultuous swell
Of civil conflict, nor the wrecks of change,
Nor Duty struggling with affliction strange,
THE POETRY OF HOME.
127
Not these alone inspire the tuneful shell
But where untroubled peace and concord dwell,
There also is the Muse not loath to range,
Watching the twilight smoke of cot or grange,
Skyward ascending from a woody dell.
Meek aspirations please her, lone endeavor,
And sage content, and placid melancholy ;
She loves to gaze upon a crystal river,
Diaphanous because it travels slowly;
Soft is the music that would charm forever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
K
THE POETRY OF HOME.
Nor, again, does Wordsworth care to be making
excursions in any far-away regions of romance: ideal
fairy-lands, cloud-lands, dream-lands, are nowise his
favorite haunts. The bold, lofty eagle-flights of some
other poets, especially
that gentle Bard,
Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State,
Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the Moon's beauty and the Moon's soft pace,
A
these he can indeed spend a happy hour with now and
then but, for his own work, and even for his deeper
joy, he gladly returns to the things that lie nearer at
hand, to "the low and wren-like warblings, made for
cottagers and spinners at the wheel," or to what he
calls the "simple produce of the common day":
Nor will I praise a cloud, however bright,
Disparaging Man's gifts, and proper food.
Grove, isle, with every shape of sky-built dome,
Though clad in colors beautiful and pure,
Find in the heart of man no natural home :
Th' immortal mind craves objects that endure :
These cleave to it; from these it cannot roam,
Nor they from it: their fellowship is secure.
128
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
1
Still less is it his choice to traffic in tales of distant,
stirring adventure, in the exploits of corsairs, or the
feats of a daring and high-pitched knight-errantry, or
in the turbulent raptures and intoxications of love,
and "passion's feverish dreams," or in any of the
common materials of what may be termed high-pres-
sure poetry. His sound and valiant human-hearted-
ness rather prompts him to shun all such, and to
string his harp to the music of the calm, steady,
gentle, and serene affections, whatever is most benign
and tender and healing in the human breast:
The moving accident is not my trade;
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts:
"T is my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.
Of course he is a passionate lover of flowers, and he
tells us that these,
whate'er their hue,
With all their fragrance, all their glistening,
Call to the heart for inward listening;
but there is no one of them that he praises so often
or so eloquently as that "wee, modest, crimson-tippèd
flower," whose "glinting-forth amid the storm” is so
sweetly sung by Burns. Here is a sample of what he
learns from the Daisy:
A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;
Some steady love; some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight ;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right;
Or stray invention.
THE POETRY OF HOME.
129
If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure ;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.
Thus our Poet loves to be at home with the thoughts,
the emotions, the language of simple-minded people,
and to voice the hitherto unspoken poetries that dwell
in them their unpampered tastes, their unjaded sen-
sibilities, their cheap, natural, homely pleasures, the
joys that spring up to them free and unsought by the
wayside of life's ordinary cares and duties, to these
his sympathies are thoroughly attuned, out of these
he chooses to weave the main fabric of his singing.
So that, beyond all other poets, he is the poet of the
home, and of the affections that sanctify and sweeten
the home, the loves that are, indeed, seldom ecstatic
and never voluble, but are deep and firm, so deep, in-
deed, as to be hardly conscious. . For in his inmost
heart he felt the truth of what has been so well said
of the home, and it is a saying I am never tired of
repeating, that "all other pleasures are not worth
its pains." And well might it be so with him; for he
himself had one of the sweetest homes that ever man
was blest with; and, loving it as he did, he could not
choose but do his best to make it lovely: wherein, to
be sure, “the household hearts that were his own” all
flowed in full concert with his own heart. There he
conversed, the live-long year, and year after year, with
"thoughts motherly and meek as womanhood"; there
he learned, at first hand, that" Wisdom doth live with
¿
9
130
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
children round her knees"; there he was wont to
share in "the talk man holds with week-day man in
th' hourly walk of the mind's business." And all the
sweetness of his home distils itself into and through
his poetry, sometimes in direct articulation, oftener in
deep, soft undertones.
Wordsworth's settled preference of the still loves
and the silent heart to the vocal and the loud dis-
covers itself in many passages, but perhaps nowhere
more intelligibly than in the following:
O Nightingale! thou surely art
(6
A creature of a fiery heart":
These notes of thine, they pierce and pierce ;
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!
Thou sing'st as if the God of wine
Had help'd thee to a Valentine;
A song in mockery and despite
Of shades, and dews, and silent night;
And steady bliss, and all the loves
Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.
I heard a Stock-dove sing or say
His homely tale, this very day;
His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come-at by the breeze :
He did not cease; but coo'd and coo'd ;
And somewhat pensively he woo'd :
He sang
of love, with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith, and inward glee :
That was the song the song for me!
In a previous chapter, I quoted Wordsworth as hav-
ing said that "he had never written love-poetry be-
cause he dared not; it would have been too passion-
ate." He gives us, however, one brief taste of his
power in that kind, just enough to show what he
THE POETRY OF HOME.
131
I
might have done, but that he "dared not." It is
in the poem of Vaudracour and Julia. The lovers,
though he was of patrician, she of plebeian stock, had
been "twins in pleasure from their cradles up," and
so their love had been born so early that they had no
memory of its birth. Here is the taste:
His present mind
Was under fascination : he beheld
A vision, and adored the thing he saw.
Arabian fiction never fill'd the world
With half the wonders that were wrought for him.
Earth breathed in one great presence of the Spring;
Life turn'd 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,
Swarm'd 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!
I must quote a few lines more, merely premising that
the lovers, being forced asunder by parental interdict,
managed, nevertheless, to have a stolen interview:
I pass the raptures of the pair ;- such theme
Is, by innumerable poets, touch'd
In more delightful verse than skill of mine
Could fashion; chiefly by that darling bard
Who told of Juliet and her Romeo,
And of the lark's note heard before its time,
And of the streaks that laced the severing clouds
In th' unrelenting East.
So I suspect Wordsworth felt, as indeed he well
132
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
might feel, that the world already had a surfeit of
love-poetry, and that this prolonged too-much of “the
tender passion" should at length give place to an-
other kind of song, the softer and holier music of
"such love as spirits feel in worlds whose course is
equable and pure." In illustration of this point, I
must cite one other strain, where he more than hints
why it is that those calmer because deeper and diviner
emotions of the human heart breathe such a sweet
under-song in his poetry:
As often as I murmur here
My half-form'd melodies,
Straight from her osier mansion near
The Turtledove replies :
Though silent as a leaf before,
The captive promptly cooes;
Is it to teach her own soft lore,
Or second my weak Muse?
I rather think the gentle Dove
Is murmuring a reproof,
Displeased that I from lays of love
Have dared to keep aloof;
That I, a Bard of hill and dale,
Have caroll'd, fancy-free,
As if nor dove nor nightingale
Had heart or voice for me.
If such thy meaning, O, forbear,
Sweet Bird, to do me wrong!
Love, blessed Love, is everywhere
The spirit of my song :
'Mid grove, and by the calm fireside,
Love animates my lyre,
That coo again ! 't is not to chide,
I feel, but to inspire.
The sum of what I have been saying is, that our
Poet, in the joint strength of genial instinct and con-
THE POETRY OF HOME.
133
scious purpose, chose the good part, which is not to be
taken from him, of dealing with plain, common, home-
felt realities, realities lying right about his path,
things that others had scorned to touch,- because
he discerned meanings, springs of interest, in them,
which others had not suspected.
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
In further token of all which, I add one more strain,
where the main lesson of the foregoing extracts is set
forth in language still more solemn and impressive:
Here might I pause, and bend in reverence
To Nature, and the power of human minds,
To men as they are men within themselves.
How oft high service is perform'd within,
When all th' external man is rude in show,
Not like a temple rich with pomp and gold,
But a mere mountain chapel, that protects
Its simple worshippers from sun and snow.
Of these, said I, shall be my song; of these,
If future years mature me for the task,
Will I record the praises, making verse
Deal boldly with substantial things; in truth
And sanctity of passion, speak of these,
That justice may be done, obeisance paid
Where it is due: thus haply shall I teach,
Inspire, through unadulterated ears
Pour rapture, tenderness, and hope; my theme
No other than the very heart of man,
As found among the best of those who live,
Not unexalted by religious faith,
Nor uninform'd by books, good books, though few,
In Nature's presence: thence may I select
Sorrow, that is not sorrow, but delight ;
And miserable love, that is not pain
To hear of, for the glory that redounds
Therefrom to human kind, and what we are.
134
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
In fine, Wordsworth's poetry, while its countenance
beams with celestial light, and its head is crowned
with auroral beauty, and its hands are full of benedic-
tions and star-like virtues, nevertheless stands firmly
rooted in a soil of true, substantive manifest realism;
so that in its loveliest bloom and foliage we still have
the unmistakable taste and odor of a sap drawn from
the bosom of that strong, honest, generous old Earth
which is the common mother of us all. Hence, in
reading his characteristic work, we feel, we cannot
but feel, that we are communing with one who has
seen and talked with actual things, one whom those
things have, so to speak, caught by the eye and the
ear, and held him "in a wise passiveness," till they
expressed their sense, their meaning, their inspira-
tion into him, and so overfilled him with the life and
the soul that were in them, that he must needs speak
out what they had thus breathed into him. Hence
that sense of inevitableness which springs up in those
who rightly know his poetry. And this, I suppose, is
what Mr. Matthew Arnold means by the strong yet
just saying, that "Nature herself seems to take the
pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her
own bare, sheer, penetrating power."
Now this interfusion or interpenetration of solid,
earth-born fact and of soul-like, sky-born effluence
confers on his work a special prerogative of everlast-
ingness. Whatever currency, whatever foothold, it
once gets, that it will be sure to keep. No changes
of creed, no findings of science, no incontinence of
logic in any form, can nonsuit its pleadings, or cir-
cumvent its veracity, or annul its potency, or super-
sede its relevancy. Its substantial truth lies back of
HIS MASTER-VISION.-GOD IN NATURE. 139
is quite void of life and feeling, with no heart or soul
speaking out from it, to kindle the heart and soul of
the reader.
How different is all this when we come to Words-
worth! Under his eye, the reign of beautiful death is
over, the fulgent ice is thawed, the face of Nature
throbs and glows with life and emotion. Illustra-
tions to the point crowd so thick upon me, that I
hardly know what to quote: take, however, this, ad-
dressed to his sister:
It is the first mild day of March :
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.
There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.
My Sister! ('t is a wish of mine,)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign ;
Come forth and feel the sun.
No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar :
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.
Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth :
It is the hour of feeling.
One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason :
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.
1
140
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey :
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.
And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We 'll frame the measure of our souls;
They shall be tuned to love.
Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.
And so, in general, his description of any natural
scene or object is warm with life and feeling, because
it takes its tone and coloring from just that kind and
degree of emotion which the scene or object is spe-
cially apt to kindle in healthy and natural minds. In
other words, the feeling born of what is before him
prompts and shapes and pervades the description, so
that, while the latter is objectively true, it is at the
same time instinct with the higher truth of that in-
ward life which the Poet's imagination pours into and
through it. The picture, therefore, is, as indeed it
should be, the joint result of perception and creation ;
or, in his own words, what the mind half creates
and half perceives; the emotion, withal, deepening
his insight, and the insight in turn heightening his
emotion.
All this makes his descriptions surpassingly unique,
and as powerful as they are peculiar. But the true
character of them, or their uniqueness, can scarce
be rightly apprehended without some illustrative
examples. In his description of a narrow, lonely
HIS MASTER-VISION.-GOD IN NATURE. 141
glen, the supposed burial-place of Ossian, we have the
following:
Does, then, the Bard sleep here indeed?
Or is it but a groundless creed ?
What matters it? I blame them not
Whose fancy in this lonely spot
Was moved; and in such way express'd
Their notion of its perfect rest.
A convent, even a hermit's cell,
Would break the silence of this dell:
It is not quiet, is not ease;
But something deeper far than these:
The separation that is here
Is of the grave; and of austere
Yet happy feelings of the dead :
And therefore was it rightly said
That Ossian, last of all his race!
Lies buried in this lonely place.
What a deep, hushed emotion of intense yet happy
loneliness is moved by these strange lines! All the
peacefulness of the grave, with nothing of its mourn-
fulness! Yet what vividness of local and objective
truth! Equally good, perhaps, in its way, but very
different in tone, is this, from the poem of The
Brownie's Cell:
Spring finds not here a melancholy breast,
When she applies her annual test
To dead and living; when her breath
Quickens, as now, the wither'd heath;
Nor flaunting Summer, — when he throws
His soul into the briar-rose,
Or calls the lily from her sleep
Prolong'd beneath the bordering deep;
Nor Autumn, when the viewless wren
Is warbling near the Brownie's Den.
The next is from a short piece describing the Hill
of Angels in Switzerland; and, having given it, I shall
142
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
then leave the reader to judge for himself which of
the three specimens is the best:
When first mine eyes beheld that famous Hill,
The sacred ENGELBERG, celestial Bands,
With intermingling motions soft and still,
Hung round its top, on wings that changed their hues at will.
Clouds do not name those Visitants; they were
The very Angels whose authentic lays,
Sung from that heavenly ground in middle air,
Made known the spot where piety should raise
A holy Structure to th' Almighty's praise.
Resplendent Apparition! if in vain
My ears did listen, 't was enough to gaze;
And watch the slow departure of the train
Whose skirts the glowing Mountain thirsted to detain.
Many other like strains are singing in my memory,
and calling for notice; and I cannot well forbear to
add one more. The Poet is on one of the lakes in
Northern Italy, and is describing an eclipse of the
Sun there witnessed in 1820:
Afloat beneath Italian skies,
Through regions fair as Paradise
We gayly pass'd, till Nature wrought
A silent and unlook'd-for change,
That check'd the desultory range
Of joy and sprightly thought.
Where'er was dipp'd the toiling oar,
The waves danced round us as before,
As lightly, though of alter'd hue,
'Mid recent coolness, such as falls
At noontide from umbrageous walls
That screen the morning dew.
No vapor stretch'd its wings; no cloud
Cast far or near a murky shroud;
HIS MASTER-VISION. GOD IN NATURE. 143
The sky an azure field display'd:
'T was sunlight sheathed and gently charm'd,
Of all its sparkling rays disarm'd,
And as in slumber laid;
Or something night and day between,
Like moonshine, but the hue was green;
Still moonshine, without shadow, spread
On jutting rock, and curvèd shore,
Where gazed the peasant from his door,
And on the mountain's head.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
it lay,
It tinged the Julian steeps,
Lugano! on thy ample bay :
The solemnizing veil was drawn
O'er villas, terraces, and towers;
To Albogasio's olive bowers,
Porlezza's verdant lawn.
What is it, then, that, to Wordsworth, gives Nature
an aspect so different from the one she wears in the
pages of Goldsmith and other poets of the Artificial
School? Whence, wherefore, the deep, still rapture
of religious emotion with which he contemplates her?
Surely it must be. that he sees something more in her
than meets the sense, something deeper than sense-
vision can reach. For, as our outward senses have a
spiritual entity behind them, informing them, and
looking out through them; so there is a spiritual
entity under or behind the things we see, and looking
out through them to meet its cognate or counterpart
within us. To quote from Mr. Stopford Brooke:
"The outward Universe lay before the Poet's eye and
ear. He felt it speak to him, through his senses to
his soul; and, feeling this, he asked, What is it?
Who is it that speaks? Is it only the matter of the
Universe, which by itself is dead? No, he answered,
144
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTII.
matter is animated by a soul; and it is this soul which
thrills to meet me."
Now this living and animating spirit, this informing,
quickening, outspeaking intelligence, of Nature is what
makes the light, the life, the joy of Wordsworth's
poetry, as it also made those of the man himself.
Nor did he believe in it merely, he saw it; and the
vision often so entranced him, that he lost all sense of
bodily existence, and seemed to be all spirit: that is to
say, through the visible world he so entered into the
invisible, that the visible became to him as if it were
not, and he could hardly think of it as having any
substantive reality. And his supreme joy was to have
his heart lie open to this spirit-presence, to put and
keep the soul within him in vital contact with the soul
outside of him. And so, instead of speaking his own
thoughts and meanings into Nature, as so many poets
do, thus lording it over her soul and at the same time
starving his own, instead of this, he schools and
frames his mind into a free and loving receptiveness,
that Nature may speak her thoughts and meanings
clearly into him, thus enlarging, strengthening, beauti-
fying his inner life with an inflowing stream or portion
of her own.
Here he has food for endless and ever-
growing thought, food for endless and ever-growing
love. So framed, he can be still drinking in new
power, still replenishing his own soul from Nature's
overflowing soul. The following will show, in part at
least, how the Poct's own conscious mind stood in this
regard:
g
O Soul of Nature, excellent and fair!
That didst rejoice with me, with whom I, too,
Rejoiced through early youth, before the winds
And roaring waters, and in lights and shades
HIS MASTER-VISION. — GOD IN NATURE.
145
That march'd and countermarch'd about the hills
In glorious apparition, Powers on whom
I daily waited, now all eye and now
All ear; but never long without the heart
Employ'd, and man's unfolding intellect;
O Soul of Nature! that, by laws divine
Sustain❜d and govern'd, still dost overflow
With an impassion'd life, what feeble ones
Walk on this Earth! how feeble I have been
When thou wert in thy strength!
M
M
Before opening this point further, I must pause
briefly on another matter. Wordsworth had a very
powerful imagination, yet so poised and tempered that
it never ran away with his judgment; for his under-
standing was proportionably strong. Now, as imagi-
nation is the life of all great poetry, so understanding
is its backbone; and poetry must have a good back-
bone, else it cannot stand.
This leads me to note the place which the imagina-
tion holds in the Wordsworth philosophy. Here, the
understanding, the faculty by which we discern logical,
mathematical, and scientific relations, is not the only,
nor is it the highest, organ or exercise of Reason.
The knowledge of the highest things, those which con-
cern us most deeply, is not attained by this faculty
alone, but by the concurrent, harmonious action of
understanding, imagination, feeling, conscience, and
will; that is to say, of the whole man. This is Rea-
son in her supreme exercise, intelligence raised to
its highest power. But the peculiar office of the im-
agination is, to blend and unify, to fuse and inter-
fuse, all these elements or factors of intelligence,
thus drawing them into concert and mutuality, mak-
ing them truly co-efficient and reduplicative, and
10
146
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
endowing each with the collective force and virtue of
the whole.
The imagination, therefore, may be fitly described
as the great mediating and reconciling power between
our sensuous and supersensuous natures; the faculty
by which "sense is made subservient still to moral
purposes, auxiliar to divine"; the organ through which
the soul becomes cognizant of, and converses with,
the vital and spiritual entities and energies working
within and animating the visible and material forms
of Nature. It thus brings or lets the soul into inter-
course and communion with vitalities and vivifying
powers. And the imagination, as a perceptive power,
has its own proper truths, or sphere of truth; and
these, in their place and time, are just as authentic,
just as valid, just as true, as those of the understand-
ing. But the imagination has creative functions also;
and, in discharging these, it incarnates-observe, I
say incarnates, not clothes-its truths, or its ideas, in
sensuous imagery and language, thus turning them to
shape, and giving them a local habitation and a name :
in other words, it gives them a body, with life, breath,
blood, and motion, so that we can grasp them, talk
with them, and hear what they have to say.
Hence, in Wordsworth's view, the Imagination is
emphatically the Queen Faculty of the soul; and he
describes it as
but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
I must here quote also one of his sonnets, wherein
he sets forth the functions of this power more fully or
in another aspect:
!
HIS MASTER-VISION. - GOD IN NATURE. 147
'Weak is the will of Man, his judgment blind;
Remembrance persecutes, and hope betrays;
Heavy is woe; and joy, for human-kind,
A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze!
"C
""
These lines he puts into the mouth of a supposed
grumbler or croaker, and then proceeds with his own
thought, as follows:
Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days
Who wants the glorious faculty assign'd
To elevate the more-than-reasoning Mind,
And color life's dark cloud with orient rays.
Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined:
'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.
The imagination, then, is the organ, the eye, through
which Wordsworth's soul meets and communes with
external Nature, everywhere finding in her a respon-
sive Soul, a Soul infinite and unsearchable indeed,
in thought, power, beauty, wisdom, yet kindred to the
soul within him. In other words, to his eye, all
Nature is alive with God, not merely in a figurative
sense, but really and actually so: in Him, literally, all
things live, and move, and have their being: His
creative presence is the quickening and animating
breath of all Nature's forms and movements: all her.
goings-on are but the pulsations, so to speak, of the
Divine life and spirit within her. Thus he recognizes
an intelligent, conscious energy, or a conscious, ener-
gizing intelligence, throbbing through the whole frame
of things, and knitting all the parts in a mutual fellow-
ship and intercourse of life and strength and joy.
C
148
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
How different is all this from the huge machine of
Pope and the lifeless matter of Cowper! For with
Nature, as Wordsworth sees her, his entire being finds
a home; all his powers of thought and feeling, all his
intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual faculties
have perpetual nourishment and exercise. This, then,
is the Soul without him, that everywhere in Nature.
speaks through his senses to the soul within, every-
where "thrills to meet him"; and thus to his inward
ear the whole Universe is resonant of the sovereign,
omnipresent Mind.
Such is Wordsworth's poetical, rather say pro-
phetic, anticipation of certain conclusions which
science is now reaching or has lately reached. For,
a few years ago, we were hearing much and for
my part I was glad to hear it-of what science then
termed "the correlation and equivalence of forces,"
but what she now, more appropriately no doubt, terms
"the convertibility and identity of energies"; mean-
ing that all the really operative powers of Nature,
such as heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and so
forth, are at bottom only different modes of one and
the same power. And in the last analysis what can
this be but the Divine Mind, or the Divine Will, or
both, creatively omnipresent or omnipresently creative
in the Universe, and "rolling through all things";
giving to each its peculiar life and ministry, yet binding
them all up in a harmonious and co-operative whole?
For the only truly originating and self-acting cause or
power that we have any knowledge or can form any
conception of is an intelligent, conscious will, just
such in kind as we are conscious of in ourselves,
though of course infinitely different in degree.
HIS MASTER-VISION. — GOD IN NATURE. 149
Here, then, we have what I have long been used to
think and speak of as the Master-Vision of Words-
worth's genius, and the master-note of all his most
characteristic singing. And this thought flows a
deep, strong undercurrent through his poetry, and
often comes up to the surface in utterances more or
less round and clear. Time would fail me for pro-
ducing a tenth part of these, but I must give a few.
The first is from the ninth book of The Excursion, and
is perhaps the most formal of those utterances :
To every form of being is assign'd
An active Principle: howe'er removed
From sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures; in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks,
The moving waters, and th' invisible air.
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mix'd ;
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds.
Here the Soul appears as something impersonal; it
is “an active Principle" merely, and so is hardly of
a nature to touch any religious or emotional springs
within us. In other passages this Soul assumes
attributes more properly personal, or at least semi-
personal, so as to be an object of love, awe, worship,
something to be spoken to, listened to, religiously, and
to seek the approval of. For all moral regards are
strictly what we call personal, -personal both sub-
jectively and objectively; and those regards are so
essential and so ruling a force in all our human life,
150
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
that we cannot but hold them to
mind and government of God.
Hart-leap Well:
be uppermost in the
So in a passage of
Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well;
Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell;
His death was mourn'd by sympathy divine.
The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep, and reverential care
For th' unoffending creatures whom He loves.
Thus the same thought reappears in various forms,
sometimes in cold intellectual statement, as in the
passage first quoted, oftener steeped in feeling; now
breathing in soft, flute-like melodies, now in deep,
swelling organ harmonies. And sometimes this uni-
versal Soul individualizes itself, and becomes the spe-
cial Soul of a part of Nature. So in a well-known
sonnet the general Soul is narrowed, as it were, into
"the mighty Being" that is evermore moving and
breathing audibly in the Ocean or the world of
waters:
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ;
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad Sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea :
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with His eternal motion make
A sound like thunder everlastingly.
Dear Child, dear Girl, that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine :
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.
C
HIS MASTER-VISION. - GOD IN NATURE. 151
Sometimes, again, this general Soul specializes itself
still further, and becomes the local spirit or genius of
a particular place or stream, giving to it a touch of
individual life and character; as in the following
sonnet :
Brook! whose society the Poet seeks,
Intent his wasted spirits to renew ;
And whom the curious Painter doth pursue
Through rocky passes, among flowery creeks,
And tracks thee dancing down thy water-breaks;
If wish were mine some type of thee to view,
Thee, and not thee thyself, I would not do
Like Grecian Artists, give thee human cheeks,
Channels for tears; no Naiad shouldst thou be,
Have neither limbs, feet, feathers, joints nor hairs:
It seems th' Eternal Soul is clothed in thee
With purer robes than those of flesh and blood,
And hath bestow'd on thee a safer good;
Unwearied joy, and life without its cares.
K
But probably the best illustration of this whole
matter is in the poem composed near Tintern Abbey.
Before quoting the passage, I must observe that the
Poet notes three several stages or periods in his ex-
perience up to that time, 1798. The first was his
youth, when his thoughts and feelings were all en-
grossed with external Nature, though as yet he neither
saw nor cared to see, in her forms and aspects, any-
thing more than met the sense: he was satisfied with
what the eye and ear alone took in, and "had no need
of a remoter charm by thought supplied." Then
came the second stage, when a deep, intense, impas-
sioned love of man got possession of him, and pushed
Nature out of his thoughts. In due time the third
stage supervened, when his old love of Nature re-
turned in all its original strength, but in a higher
152
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
form, and with a far deeper seizure; sensation being
now lost in the brightness of imaginative and spirit-
ual vision; so that his chief interest in Nature was
born of the soul, and "unborrowed from the eye."
This revival, however, nowise checked or cooled his.
love of man on the contrary, the two now united
their streams, each being strengthened by the union,
and both flowed on together through his subsequent
years. These three stages are successively noted in
the following:
Like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers and the lonely streams,
Wherever Nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For Nature then
To me was all in all. — I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
-
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrow'd from the eye.
That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur : other gifts
Have follow'd; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learn'd
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
HIS MASTER-VISION. - GOD IN NATURE.
153
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize,
In Nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
C
:
The closing lines of this most characteristic strain
are not always rightly understood; and indeed the
sweep of thought is here so broad and so profound,
that the full meaning cannot be taken at once. But
the logic is as strong as the poetry is high. And the
reason why the Poet is still a lover of Nature in all
her forms and workings is because he feels in them
"a presence that disturbs him with the joy of elevated
thoughts"; because he has "a sense of something
far more deeply interfused": and because this is so,
therefore he finds in the things that are seen, finds
"in Nature and the language of the sense," all that
his soul, all that his intellectual, moral, and religious
being, in a word, his whole inner man, needs for its
nourishment and support.
Such is the paramount source of Wordsworth's in-
spiration. And all this directly infers the relation
which he conceives to subsist between external Nature
and the mind of man, the high and delicate ministries.
she is divinely charged with as the educator, the quick-
ener, the nourisher, the upholder, the uplifter, of his
154
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
moral and spiritual being. So he sings it later in the
same poem:
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the Moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; O, then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations!
It is hardly needful to say that the Poet is here
speaking to his sister, who was indeed partly the in-
spirer of, and wholly a sharer in, the thoughts and
feelings that make up his poetry. I must add that
in the same piece Wordsworth distinctly avows him-
self to be "a worshipper of Nature," and to be grow-
ing deeper and more loving in that worship. And
Mr. Myers, speaking, in his own admirable way, of
the Poet's "achievement" in this point, justly says,
"that he revived in a higher and purer form those
HIS MASTER-VISION.-GOD IN NATURE. 155
-
primitive elements of reverence for Nature's powers
which had diffused themselves into speculation, or
crystallized into mythology; that, for a system of
beliefs about Nature, which Paganism had allowed to
become grotesque, of rites which had become un-
meaning,—he substituted an admiration for Nature so
constant, an understanding of her so subtile, a sym-
pathy so profound, that they became a veritable wor-
ship." And the writer further observes as follows:
"Therefore it is that Wordsworth is venerated, be-
cause to so many men - indifferent, it may be, to
literary or poetical effects, as such he has shown,
by the subtile intensity of his own emotion, how the
contemplation of Nature can be made a revealing
agency, like Love or Prayer, an opening, if indeed
there be any opening, into the transcendent world."
I must now add a passage or two from The Pre-
lude, describing how, in his earlier years, Nature had
worked to educate his mind and heart, and thus
prepare him for his mission as her Poet-Highpriest.
He has indeed so many strains of this kind, — strains
in which his intense sympathy with the Soul, or the
Life, of Nature seems to have caught him, and carried
him clean away from himself, as in a trance, that it
—
is not easy to select such as are fittest. Perhaps this
will do as well as any:
Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe !
Thou Soul that art th' eternity of thought,
That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
156
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
But with high objects, with enduring things, —
With Life and Nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
But this Life of Nature, this Spirit of the Universe,
as Wordsworth conceives it, is withal a profoundly
social life; all things having a joy in themselves, and
all sharing in and reflecting each other's joy, and
therefore drawing him into a full-souled partnership
in the universal joy. This phase of his conception
comes out in the following:
Whether from excess
In the great social principle of life
Coercing all things into sympathy,
To unorganic natures were transferr'd
My own enjoyments; or the power of truth,
Coming in revelation, did converse
With things that really are; I, at this time,
Saw blessings spread around me like a sea.
Thus, while the days flew by, and years pass'd on,
From Nature and her overflowing soul
I had received so much, that all my thoughts
Were steep'd in feeling; I was only then
Contented, when with bliss ineffable
I felt the sentiment of Being spread
O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still;
O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought
And human knowledge, to the human eye
Invisible, yet liveth to the heart ;
5
!on
O'er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,
Or beats the gladsome air; o'er all that glides
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
And mighty depth of waters.
With these traits of Wordsworth's poetry in his
mind, Mr. Stopford Brooke is moved to some re-
HIS MASTER-VISION. —GOD IN NATURE. 157
flections with which I may fitly close this chapter.
"This," says he, "is the idea of Life in Nature, which
Wordsworth has given to the world. It fills the heart
of his readers; it makes of Nature a new thing to
them; it makes the commonest walk in the woods
a delight, a teaching, a society; it fills the world
with life and energy and joy; it uplifts us sometimes
when alone among the hills, when Nature is in one
of her wild moods, and her life is most intelligent
and most eager, — into a kindred ecstasy in which we
long to be borne away with wind and cloud to join the
mighty stream of rejoicing Life."
G
CHAPTER V.
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
AT
T the close of the last chapter, I spoke, in a brief
and general way, of the one Life or one Soul
which Wordsworth conceives as pervading, informing,
and binding together the whole universe of things;
and also how, through his recognition or his vision of
this Life, Nature became to him the teacher and in-
spirer of a strong and comprehensive love, a deep and
purifying joy, and of high and uplifting thought.
I am next to say somewhat touching the attributes
and manifestations of this Life in Nature. This is
indeed a wide and various theme, and of course the
utmost I can do is to bring into view a few repre-
sentative parts or instances of it, barely enough to
suggest its general scope and tenor. And I may as
well begin by remarking of this Life, that it is happy,
that it is tranquil, and that it is social or recipro-
cative. These attributes, however, I shall not under-
take to consider separately, as such a course might
be too formal, and might savor too much of system-
building.
Now the correlative and intercommunicating force
and virtue of things is no new idea. It is a familiar
thought, that in Nature everything is somehow related
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
159
to every other thing; that nothing exists by and for
itself alone; but that all stand and work on a plan of
interchange and mutuality, so that no one can say to
another, “I have no need of thee." In many cases
the relation is plain and obvious, so that we cannot
miss it; in others it is too subtile and lies too deep for
us to trace. And there is probably nothing within our
knowledge but what is or may be made in some way
helpful to us,—helpful as food for thought and con-
templation at least, if not otherwise; and the more so,
the more justly and lovingly we deal with it. This it
is that moved Wordsworth to say that "he who feels
contempt for any living thing hath faculties which he
has never used"; and in his view all things are liv
ing, for all share in the great creating and sustaining
Life of Nature. And doubtless we all believe, - how
indeed can any one help believing?—that the birds
sing because they are happy, and are also the happier
because of their singing. Nor do they sing for them-
selves only their gladness overflows upon other sen-
sitive creatures, especially upon us men; touching us
to tender thoughts, and even to something of respect
for our volant and warbling fellow-creatures: some of
them we protect by law, in order to tempt and con-
ciliate their help; others we protect still more by our
natural sympathy and our looks and tones of sorrow
or reproof when we see them made the victims of
wanton and cruel sport. And their singing is, in the
strictest sense, praise to God, unconscious praise,
to be sure, but none the worse for that: and their
vocal gladness must needs be in some sort a joy to
Him; for how could they be glad unless He were glad
to have them so? So that here we have an apt and
160
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
}
even a typical instance of what Wordsworth describes
as "joy in widest commonalty spread."
The same line of thought holds even more strongly
in reference to certain other animals. How service-
able they are to us! and how dependent we are upon
them! how much, too, their service runs upon the
condition of its being reciprocated! The more we do
for them, the more they do for us; as if they could
not bear to be outdone in this way! And some of
them are plainly capable of loving memories: benefits
and kindnesses received breed in them something
which it is no sin to call gratitude, even something
which may almost be termed thoughtful and con-
siderate recompense. Even while we are using them
selfishly, so our usage be not harsh and cruel, they
grow into an unselfish attachment to us: while we are
loving them for our own ends, they turn to loving us
for our own sakes. And perhaps, after all, they serve
us as much by touching our hearts as by working for
us. The kindly tone, the soft caress, how quick
some of them are to feel it! how prompt to return it!
return it in such ways as they can. Thus their hap-
piness overflows upon us, and the more so when our
care or kindness is in any sort the cause of it. Taken
all together, they are indeed a pure and true joy to us,
as well as a help, or at least it lies in us to make them
So. Nor have we reason to suppose that any of them
ever find pleasure in causing pain. A kitten, to be
sure, likes to play with a captive mouse, and will let
it live some time for that purpose: we know that the
poor mouse suffers; but the kitten no doubt thinks
the little creature enjoys the fun as much as she does
herself. So that, sharing as we all do in the one
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
161
great Life of Nature, not the least of our delights may
grow from cultivating
sympathies descending deep,
Even to th' inferior Kinds; whom forest-trees
Protect from beating sunbeams, and the sweep
;
Of the sharp winds fair Creatures! to whom Heaven
A calm and sinless life, with love, hath given.
Nor does this social interchange of good stop here.
Even the inanimate things of Nature, trees, plants,
flowers, live and work in real, fruitful sympathy
and fellowship with the human soul; grow with its
growth, steal virtue from its virtue, beauty from its
beauty. Man's intelligent, loving care makes the
flower rear its head higher, open a larger and brighter
eye, carry in its cheek a livelier flush and more frolic
tints, breathe a sweeter fragrance; thus by its added
virtue rewarding and encouraging the hand that
taught it how to live a happier life. And, when nur-
tured with like care, various fruits, the grape, the
peach, the plum, the apple, the strawberry, and many
others, acquire a plumper form, a richer blood, a
softer pulp, a finer flavor, to gladden man's eye and
heart; all as in gratitude for the loving pains and
thought bestowed upon them. And it is well known
to naturalists that some at least of our best cereals
have in like manner been developed and educated into
foodful form out of plants either noxious or useless;
these so responding to man's thoughtful ministry by
a larger growth, a stronger life, and a grateful service.
So my own agricultural experience has taught me
that our wheat, unless duly cherished by sun and soil
and studious culture, is apt to degenerate into an idle
and even hurtful thing called chess, probably the
11
162
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
original form which has been trained and reared to
serve as the staff of man's earthly life. Trees, too, of
many kinds, lift themselves up to statelier heights, bow
with a loftier grace, exfoliate into a deeper, merrier,
more varied, more refreshing laughter, when taken
into a society and partnership of human interests and
affections. Something of the same holds even in
regard to rocks and hills and streams. With what
variety and beauty of colors and figures, of bold or
tender streaks and dyes and tints, the formless and
unmeaning stone unfolds its hidden riches under
man's intelligent hand! And so the brook learns to
trot with lighter step, to dimple into a happier smile,
to dress its home and bed with fresher and handsomer
robes, when it is taken into human fellowship, and its
latent capacities are tutored forth into proper expres-
sion. As for the hills, I must leave these to tell you
their own tales, how human art teaches them to crown
their heads with a richer foliage or verdure, to make
Flora or Ceres more lovingly at home on their slopes, to
hang their sides with softer or grander pictures, - all
this I must leave the hills themselves to tell you; this
part of my theme being already something overdrawn.
So in a thousand ways man has power over external
Nature, true educational power; and, whenever he
uses that power wisely and beneficently, Nature is sure
to repay him with answering returns of beneficence.
Whence should this proceed but from a common Life
pervading and informing universal Nature, and draw-
ing all her parts, however diverse and even oppugnant
these may seem, into mutual sympathy and intelli-
gence; so that things the most remote from man in
the order of being are nevertheless somehow cog-
My
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
163
nizant of his thoughts and virtues, and delight to
reciprocate them?
So much of real basis have we in our experience for
those traits of Wordsworth's poetry now in question.
Nor, in his view, does this great law of mutuality
prevail only between man and the inferior creatures:
on the contrary, those inferior creatures themselves,
both animate and inanimate, have social links and
ties among themselves; virtues, like rays of light,
running and recurring from each to all and from all
to each; so that they live in a continual interchange
and reciprocity of service and delight. This mutual
helpfulness of things is celebrated in a great many
ways, and in almost innumerable passages. Thus one
thing is represented as reflecting and setting off
another's beauty, one as echoing another's music, one
as reverberating another's happiness. So, with a lake
before him cradled in by hills, and made peaceful
and placid by the protection of those neighbors, he
sees the mountains beholding their features and
accomplishing their beauty, as by the aid of a look-
ing-glass:
The sylvan slopes with corn-clad fields
Are hung, as if with golden shields,
Bright trophies of the Sun!
Like a fair sister of the sky,
Unruffled doth the blue lake lie,
The mountains looking on.
#
Here each side borrows in one kind and repays in
another; each takes what it wants, and gives what it
has; so that the hills are better and happier for the
lake, the lake better and happier for the hills. So,
too, of another lake with similar surroundings:
164
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake
Is visibly delighted;
For not a feature of those hills
Is in the mirror slighted.
And in another well-known poem we have the waves
and the daffodils engaged together in a social frolic,
and vying with each other in "sprightly dance"
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee :
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company :
I gazed and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
Of like spirit is the following, from the poem of Stray
Pleasures:
The showers of the Spring
Rouse the birds, and they sing;
If the wind do but stir for his proper delight,
Each leaf, that and this, his neighbor will kiss ;
Each wave, one and t'other, speeds after his brother:
They are happy, for that is their right!
Also this, from a little piecc composed in the vale of
Grasmere one evening after a stormy day :
Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up
With which she speaks when storms are gone,
A mighty unison of streams!
Of all her Voices, One!
Loud is the Vale; this inland Depth
In peace is roaring like the Sea;
Yon star upon the mountain-top
Is listening quietly.
This sense of happiness even among inanimate
things, in what they do for and get from each other,
comes out in many ways, yet with such a depth and
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
165
freshness in its comings that one never wearies of
them. Several apt instances occur in the delightful
series of short pieces on "The Naming of Places."
Here is one:
Not seldom did we stop, to watch some tuft
Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard,
That skimm'd the surface of the dead-calm lake,
Suddenly halting now, a lifeless stand!
And starting off again with freak as sudden;
In all its sportive wanderings, all the while,
Making report of an invisible breeze
That was its wings, its chariot, and its horse,
Its playmate, rather say its moving soul.
Much the same again, though on a much larger scale,
in the following. And here observe how, when the
Sun has finished his day's work, the things that have
felt the blessing of his presence, hold a talk with him,
speaking their thanks at parting with him, and then
go about their happy evening talk with other things
which his light had hidden from them:
There is an Eminence, of these our hills
The last that parleys with the setting Sun ;
We can behold it from our orchard-seat ;
And, when at evening we pursue our walk
Along the public way, this Peak, so high
Above us, and so distant in its height,
Is visible; and often seems to send
Its own deep quiet to restore our hearts.
The meteors make of it a favorite haunt:
The star of Jove, so beautiful and large
In the mid heavens, is never half so fair
As when he shines above it.
But Wordsworth likes best to mingle, and perhaps
does still better when he mingles, sensitive and insen-
sate creatures in strains of this kind. I must quote
166
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
once more from the same series. The Poet is in a
most sequestered and lonely place among ancient
trees, the shade so thick as not to admit of any under-
growth, but with a slip of lawn and a small sheet of
water in the midst. And here note again how Nature,
as in mere prodigality of life and art, does her best in
fitting up the spot for her own sole enjoyment, not
caring or intending that any sensitive creature should
ever heighten her pleasure by sharing it:
The spot was made by Nature for herself;
The travellers know it not, and 't will remain
Unknown to them; but it is beautiful :
And, if a man should plant his cottage near,
Should sleep beneath the shelter of its trees,
And blend its waters with his daily meal,
He would so love it, that in his death-hour
Its image would survive among his thoughts.
I will add a few more pictures wherein we have
a like interplay of sensitive and insensate things, as
if rejoicing in a common life :
You have espied upon a dewy lawn
A pair of leverets each provoking each
To a continuance of their fearless sport;
Two separate creatures in their several gifts
Abounding, but so fashion'd that, in all
That Nature prompts them to display, their looks,
Their starts of motion and their fits of rest,
An undistinguishable style appears
And character of gladness, as if the Spring
Lodged in their innocent bosoms, and the spirit
Of the rejoicing morning were their own.
Very different from this is the next, yet I hardly
know which to prefer:
Where are they now, those wanton boys?
They met me in a genial hour,
1
S
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
167
When universal Nature breathed
As with the breath of one sweet flower;
A time to overrule the power
Of discontent, and check the birth
Of thoughts with better thoughts at strife,
The most familiar bane of life!
Soft clouds, the whitest of the year,
Sail'd through the sky, the brooks ran clear;
The lambs from rock to rock were bounding;
With songs the budded groves resounding;
And to my heart are still endear'd
The thoughts with which it then was cheer'd.
Here is a brief snatch from his poem of The Kitten
and the Falling Leaves. Observe with what a won-
dering and inquiring eye he watches the mysterious
playings-out of mute, unconscious joy in the creature
before him:
Yet, whate'er enjoyments dwell
In the impenetrable cell
Of the silent heart which Nature
Furnishes to every creature ;
Whatsoe'er we feel and know,
Too sedate for outward show,
Such a light of gladness breaks,
Pretty kitten! from thy freaks,
Spreads with such a living grace
O'er my little Dora's face,
That almost I could repine
That your transports are not mine.
A passage from one of his sonnets may aptly show
how richly he varies this master-note, and with what
uncloying felicity he keeps it the same, yet makes it
another, ever drawing new sense and virtue out of it:
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the sky,
How silently, and with how wan a face!
Where art thou? thou so often seen on high
Running among the clouds a Wood-nymph's race!
168
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Unhappy Nuns, whose common breath's a sigh
Which they would stifle, move at such a pace!
The northern Wind, to call thee to the chase,
Must blow to-night his bugle horn. Had I
The power of Merlin, Goddess! this should be:
And all the stars, fast as the clouds were riven,
Should sally forth, to keep thee company,
Hurrying and sparkling through the clear blue heaven.
Here is another, also part of a sonnet:
Huge Ocean shows, within his yellow strand,
A habitation marvellously plann'd,
For life to occupy in love and rest;
All that we see is dome, or vault, or nest,
Or fortress, rear'd at Nature's sage command.
Glad thought for every season! but the Spring
Gave it while cares were weighing on my heart,
'Mid song of birds, and insects murmuring;
And while the youthful year's prolific art
Of bud, leaf, blade, and flower was fashioning
Abodes where self-disturbance hath no part.
C
Still better, perhaps, than any of the foregoing is
the well-known little poem, than which, as Mr. Brooke
says, the whole world of poetry cannot show a lovelier,
wherein Nature is described as working with the most
loving care, and using her utmost skill and pains, to
accomplish and beautify a little maiden, and then, the
triumph achieved, withdrawing her from life; as if
she were so charmed with the loveliness of her own
work, that she could not bear to let any earthly being
share in the joy of it, but must have it all to herself.
I can quote but a part of the poem :
Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On Earth was never sown :
This Child I to myself will take ;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
169
+
She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs ;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm
Of mute, insensate things.
The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form
By silent sympathy.
The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face."
Best of all for illustrating the point in hand is a
grand passage in the second book of The Excursion.
The speaker is in a deep, narrow glen among the
mountains, with two huge peaks in sight at a distance,
that overpeer the high hills lying near at hand. I
have no words of my own so apt for introducing the
passage as the following from Mr. Brooke: "Mark
how the wind rejoices in them, and they give back its
wild pleasure; how all the things which touch and
haunt them get their reply; how they are loved and
love; how busy are the mute agents there; how
proud the stars to shine on them":
"Those lusty twins," exclaim'd our host, "if here
It were your lot to dwell, would soon become
Your prized companions. Many are the notes
170
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Which, in his tuneful course, the wind draws forth
From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;
* And well those lofty brethren bear their part
In the wild concert, chiefly when the storm
Rides high then all the upper air they fill
With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,
Like smoke, along the level of the blast,
In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song
Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails ;
And, in the grim and breathless hour of noon,
Methinks that I have heard them echo back
The thunder's greeting. Nor have Nature's laws
Left them ungifted with a power to yield
Music of finer tone; a harmony,
So do I call it, though it be the hand
Of silence, though there be no voice: the clouds,
The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,
Motions of moonlight, all come thither, touch,
And have an answer, thither come, and shape
M
A language not unwelcome to sick hearts
And idle spirits there the Sun himself,
:
At the calm close of Summer's longest day,
Rests his substantial orb : between those heights
And on the top of either pinnacle,
More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault,
Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud.
Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man
Than the mute agents stirring there :— - alone
Here do I sit and watch.”
Such is Wordsworth's poetical outcome from the
one Soul or one Life diffused through the Universe.
It is a law of love, whereby all things are linked so-
ciably together. All the parts live and work in mu-
tual sympathy, as having a common circulation of
blood. No jar, no jealousy, no envy, here. Each
thing rejoices in all the others, delights to help and
serve all the others, makes its own joy by ceaseless
intercommunion, by giving and receiving. So, at
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
171
least, the Poet conceives it, feels it, sings it. In one
place he describes it as
the pure delight of love
By sound diffused, or by the breathing air,
Or by the silent looks of happy things,
Or flowing from the universal face
Of earth and sky.
And this idea, as Mr. Brooke says, is the loveliest of
all which Wordsworth introduced into English poetry;
and it flowed from his conception of everything in
Nature as having its own peculiar life, yet as bound
up with all the others in a common life. So that here
it will not be unfitting nor, I trust, irreverent, to apply
what many consider the most eloquent sentence in
English prose:
"Of Law,” says Hooker the Judicious," of Law there can
be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of
God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in Heaven
and Earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care,
and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both
Angels and men and creatures of what condition soever,
though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uni-
form consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and
joy."
Now, of all the beings known to us, man alone has
the heart
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy.
It is only between men among themselves, or by men
towards other sensitive creatures, that this great law
of mutuality is nullified: for man's observance of it
172
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
is conscious and voluntary, and so has a moral char-
acter; whereas other things observe it unconsciously.
The black bird amid leafy trees,
The lark above the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
With Nature never do they wage
1
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free :
But we are press'd by heavy laws;
And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
Those laws are heavy to us because our souls are out
of tune with them; that is to say, they are made so
by our infraction of them or our grudging submis-
sion to them. They are in truth our friends, touch-
ing us only to protect and bless; and so we should
find and feel them, if we did not fret and chafe against
them, or if, seeing them, we framed our minds to a
calm and settled acquiescence in their sway. But
man alone rewards virtue with neglect, kindness with
ingratitude: he alone, caring for nothing but self, and
thus "blindly with his blessedness at strife," would
receive all service, and render none; would claim
benefits from all, and make no return: he alone de-
lights in the voluntary infliction of pain, and in fur-
thering his own ends at others' cost. For so, the
world over, men have sought their pleasure or their
pride in warring against each other's happiness and
welfare; in thwarting each other, robbing each other,
crushing each other; and deeming themselves happy
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
173
in proportion as they made others miserable. And
so, in a brief poem quoted in my first chapter, we had
the Poet sitting in a grove, and "hearing a thousand
blended notes," each note in unison with the others,
and all flowing together in glad respondence; also
seeing the birds, the flowers, the budding twigs, each
happy in itself and happy in the others, and all mu-
tually helped and helping; and the very pleasantness
of all this puts him upon sad thoughts; and, contem-
plating "Nature's holy plan" as shown in what he
hears and sees, he says,
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran ;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
But is there, after all, any ground or principle of
truth, any sober and solid reality, in this so-conceived
Life of gladness and joy coextensive with the Uni-
verse of things? or is it all only a fanciful and self-
pleasing transferrence of what is or may be true of a
part of Nature to the whole, and therefore a thing to
be felt merely, but never at all understood? In other
words, is it only a pleasant dream, that must end with
itself; or is it a substantive fact, upon which some
practical good may be built? And, if the conception
have any real basis in the truth of things, how or in
what sense can it be true that inanimate and senseless
things either have any joy in themselves or any part-
nership in the joy of others? That man and certain
classes of animals have some elements of happiness in
common, so that each may partake, and by partaking
enhance, the happiness of others, is intelligible enough,
174
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
for we see plainly that it is so: but what do we mean
when we affirm this of things that have no sense at
all, and therefore can neither be happy in themselves
nor make others like them happy by interchange of
gifts? Does not, then, this whole thing look like a
kind of sentimental fallacy, or a fond illusion, a vapor
of the brain, out of which nothing can be made, or
at least nothing that is of any worth?
The answer is, that the Creator may most justly be
conceived and most truly spoken of as having ever-
lasting delight in the unceasing act of creation. The
boundless rapture of the Maker in His work, how
should this not breathe and thrill itself into all that
He makes? As I said before, of the birds singing out
their gladness in praise to God, how can they be thus
glad, unless He be glad to have them so? As Mr.
Brooke puts it, the infinite pleasure of the whole of
Nature is felt by Wordsworth to be, in very truth,
66
the joy of God in His own life: it is He Himself
who rejoices in the brook and the tree, in the daisy
and the lark. The thought which, in the Poet's
conception of Nature, makes her divine is, that this
endless interchange of life and joy is in reality (not
the type of, but actually) the never-ceasing self-recip-
rocation of God. He divides Himself into myriads
of forms, and lives in each distinctly, and makes His
own ineffable society and enjoyment by living with
Himself from form to form, and by giving and receiv-
ing Himself forever in the Universe." And is not
this a reasonable thought? Can we feel nothing firm
in its texture, nothing solid beneath its feet? The
idea of God as infinitely blessed in His doing, and as
speaking His own blessedness into all that He does,
2
M
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
175
should not this come with its mouth full of calm-
ing, healing, upstaying eloquence to man's frail and
drooping spirit?
In this matter, however, as in so many others, there
are two sides; which sides may be well enough termed
the subjective and the objective. And here the old
proverb holds, "Nothing give, nothing have." For of
course we find only what we have the faculty for
finding. In other words, and I apply the language
without misgiving, there is here no finding but for
those who seek, no opening but to those who knock.
To "feel the Soul of Nature and see things as they
are," we must have both a feeling soul within, and
also an inward eye correlated with the things we see.
And so I suppose we all understand that there is,
there can be, no beauty in the world without, to him
who has no sense or emotion of beauty within. Does
it therefore follow that the Beautiful has no real sub-
stantive existence outside of the perceiving mind?
By no means. The outward thing, that which kindles
or inspires the emotion, is just as real, just as much a
fact, as the inward sense or susceptibility is. So that
the beauty which we enjoy, or rather our enjoyment
of beauty, is the joint product of something in the
perceiving mind and something in the object per-
ceived; the product being of course different from
either factor, yet partaking of both.
And so the poet-mind, or, more generally, the
artist-mind, may be most truly said to be "wedded to
this goodly Universe in love and holy passion"; and
this love, this passion, must be mutual, else there can
be no joy in it, and, if no joy, then no fruit. That is
to say, the soul of man within and the Soul of Nature
-
176
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
"
without meet together in a loving and sacred wedlock;
and the offspring of this union is a new creation, not
wholly of either, but partly of each. And is it to be
supposed that, in the creative process of poetry,
Nature has less joy in inspiring the poet than the
poet has in being inspired? And such is Words-
worth's meaning when he "would chant the spousal
verse of this great consummation," and when he tells
us "how exquisitely the individual Mind to the ex-
ternal World is fitted, and how exquisitely, too, the
external World is fitted to the Mind": and the poet's
work grows from the marriage of these two corre-
sponsive powers, or is "the creation which they with
blended might accomplish"; so that both are truly in
it, yet it is different from both. Wordsworth has a
happy variation of this thought in the poem of Yarrow
Revisited:
And what, for this frail world, were all
That mortals do or suffer,
Did no responsive harp, no pen,
Memorial tribute offer?
Yea, what were mighty Nature's self?
Her features, could they win us,
Unhelp'd by the poetic voice
That hourly speaks within us?
This is what is meant by that idealizing of Nature
which marks the work of the true poet or the true
painter. For a mere literal reproduction or transcript
of natural objects, in form and color, does not make,
or is not, a poem or a picture in any right sense of the
terms. To that which Nature gives, the true artist,
be he poet, be he painter, adds
the gleam,
The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream.
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
· 177
So that the poem or the picture is neither wholly of
the hand that depicts nor wholly of the thing depicted,
but, as I said before, is partly of each and differing
from both. Even what Mr. Matthew Arnold calls,
and justly calls, Wordsworth's "austere naturalness"
is no bar to such addition; far otherwise. Every true
artist thus adds, whether conscious of it or not; does
so because it is a strong instinct of the art-genius so
to do. This indeed is just what makes the man an
artist; else his work is in no sort a creation, it is a
mere copy. The thing is perfectly natural too, espe-
cially so when the soul within works in living sym-
pathy with the Soul outside. Wordsworth puts the
matter strongly indeed, yet none too strongly, in some
lines of The Prelude:
An auxiliar light
Came from my mind, which on the setting Sun
Bestow'd new splendor; the melodious birds,
The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on
Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obey'd
A like dominion, and the midnight storm
Grew darker in the presence of my eye :
Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence,
And hence my transport.
Even portrait-painting is no exception to this law.
For a formal and exact copying of a man's features
does not make anything fit to be called a portrait.
For he has a thousand different moods of mind, a
thousand distinct shades of expression: these come
and go, pass and re-pass, divide and mingle, in ever-
varying play; and no one, no two, no ten of them, are
fairly characteristic of him, or speak out what he
really is: taken severally, they show but parts or
moments of him. Out of these shifting moods and
12
178
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
shades, the genial artist selects, combines, condenses,
and ensouls, and so makes a work not answering pre-
cisely to any one moment of the subject, but neverthe-
less rightly expressive or suggestive of his character,
of that which underlies and evolves all his ceaseless
change and play of visible expression: for character
is one of the most complex and most subtile things
in the world. And the artist, so doing, not merely
represents his theme, he interprets it, — a very differ-
ent matter!
It is, therefore, by no means true, as Coleridge
affirms, that in conversing with Nature "we do receive
but what we give." Nor, though he says it, does even
he act upon it: there his genius was infinitely truer
than his theory. But many do act upon it, at least to
a great degree. To spin feelings or moods for Nature
out of ourselves, and then to hold her responsible for
them as if she had put them into us, this is not
the way to get at her "open secret"; this is but a
kind of make-believe, and she does not believe in that
sort of thing at all. She is not a looking-glass for
our weak egotisms to love themselves in. Or, again,
Nature does not live in or from our life: she has a
life of her own quite apart from and independent of
ours that life it is indeed our privilege to partake of,
and the more we live in her life, the stronger and
healthier we are; but we can nowise make our life
hers; and, if we undertake to do this, we only mock
her, and so just spoil ourselves for her.
M
M
Coleridge's dictum has, notwithstanding, this much
of truth in it, that in order to receive we must give.
But still what we receive is very different from what
we give, a great deal more, and a great deal better.
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
179
She is by no means a mere reflector of the truths and
thoughts we bring to her, but an inspirer or infuser
of truth and thought. It is our part to furnish ca-
pacity, and here capacity is more a moral than an
intellectual thing: to fill that capacity is her part;
and the fulness is truly from her, not from ourselves.
Except the mind be luciform and veriform, the light
and truth of Nature cannot shine into it: nevertheless
the light and truth that radiate from her into us are
in no sort a reflex of our radiance, but her own
veritable gift. And, if she does but throw back to us
our own features, if she gives us to see but the image
of ourselves, then it is questionable whether we had
not better forego all converse with her. For, in this
matter, our first need is to rise out of self, and get
possessed with a self-forgetting love of something
outside of us; and, until we do this, Nature has
nothing to say to us: if we undertake to father our
own words upon her, if we go to forestalling and dic-
tating what she is to speak, she forthwith becomes
inexorably dumb to us; and we shall simply mis-
take the opening of our own mouth for the opening
of hers.
Nor is there any one error that Wordsworth more
punctually avoids than this, which, as I said before,
so many poets have fallen into, of confounding their
own morbid feelings and feverish fancies and self-
generated brain-bubbles with Nature's authentic in-
spirations; thus feeding, or rather starving, them-
selves with the unwholesome fumes of their inner
consciousness. To sour away her sweetness and
health by exhaling his own unhealthy sourness upon
her, is not his way; no! his way is to sweeten away
180
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
his own sourness and unhealth by freely inhaling her
health and sweetness. So he studiously attempers and
attunes himself to her aspects and utterances, to
whatever her seasons and her hours really offer him.
To be projecting his griefs upon her, and then taking
back what he has given, he regards as a wrong done
both to Nature and to himself: sometimes, indeed, he
catches himself doing this, but then he sees the error
at once, checks and corrects himself, and springs off
in the opposite course. So in a passage of his great
Ode:
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng;
The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday.
So, you see, he does not rest till he makes Nature's
gladness his own, and feels "the heart of May"
within him; is not contented till he rectifies himself
into harmony with the season as it is, and not as his
discord would make it. Still better, perhaps, for the
purpose in hand is what the Wanderer says on closing
his pathetic tale of Margaret; for the Poet, as I have
said before, puts a good deal of his own mind into the
hero of The Excursion:
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
181
She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here.
I well remember that those very plumes,
Those weeds, and the high-spear grass on that wall,
By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er,
As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd
So still an image of tranquillity,
So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful
Amid th' uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind,
That what we feel of sorrow and despair
From ruin and from change, and all the grief
That passing shows of Being leave behind,
Appear'd an idle dream, that could maintain,
Nowhere, dominion o'er th' enlighten'd spirit
Whose meditative sympathies repose
Upon the breast of Faith. I turn'd away,
And walk'd along my road in happiness.
And he has many passages to the same effect. Thus,
in general, instead of imposing his moods, his storm
or his calm, upon Nature, which is only a diseased
insistence upon self, he lets Nature impress her moods,
her storm or her calm, upon him; and so her life and
her joy, which are quite distinct from his, are drawn
in to replenish his own, and to make a larger life and
a deeper joy within him, both his and hers; and he
grows rich and fresh and strong by feeding on Nature's
wealth and freshness and strength.
"This it is,"
says Mr. Brooke, "which makes Wordsworth's poetry
so fresh, so healthy, and of such a morning quality.
He forgets himself in the beauty, joy, and life of
things; he will not spoil Nature by tracing in her any
likeness to his own moods." So, put away heat, it
breeds flies, and cool down into a listening tempera-
ture, then
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
182
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless,
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
1
This brings me to the last point in that part or
branch of my subject which is now in hand.
The life of Nature is tranquil and serene. She has,
indeed, her wild, furious, stormful fits or turns, her
awful, her terrible, her appalling moods, her fierce
elemental perturbations, her ragings, crashings, up-
roarings, and convulsions, that seem to rend and
shake her fabric, as at the crack of doom: yet these
are, and are felt to be, but as the fluttering of her
skirts, mere ripples on the surface of her mighty
being, while in her depths all is undisturbed repose.
And, even in this thin region of superficial tumult,
her general habit is that of profound quiet, of stead-
fast calm these ruptures of tempest, such as they
are, occur but here and there, but now and then; the
more transient too, the fiercer they are; and while
passing they do but intercept or obscure, for the mo-
ment, our outlook into the infinite celestial spaces,
where all things are still rolling on in smooth and
tranquil everlastingness, "above the smoke and stir
of this dim spot which men call Earth": so that
the impression they are most apt to leave upon us
is that
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.
Then too these elemental uproars are, in their time,
needful and salutary to us: they clear our atmosphere,
they dash our vanities, they uplift and solemnize our
hearts, they rouse the soul within us and keep it from
THE DIVINE LIFE IN NATURE.
183
stagnation, and, while rousing, they at the same time
chasten and purify.
But, upon the whole, the deep, calm joy of Nature's
life is what we most need to feel, and to hold our
minds in closest sympathy with. Her looks and voices
of intense and ecstatic quietude, when her counte-
nance seems a treasure-house divine of peaceful
years, a chronicle of Heaven,"-it is in these that her
healing and saving influence chiefly resides. When she
speaks to us as "the upholder of the tranquil soul";
when the impression she makes upon us is that
66
of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life ; —
these are the visitings most inspiring of those still
meditative moods which are most favorable both to
our virtue and our happiness. This profound tran-
quillity of Nature, I say, is what we especially need
the touch or the sense of, that wherein she is most
fruitful of health and joy to us, that whereby she does
most both to clarify our minds and to strengthen our
hearts: when we are feverish, it cools us; when we
are faint, it braces us; when we are weary, it refreshes
us. Who of us, indeed, has not sometimes felt, nay,
who of us does not often feel, what a blessed thing it
is to be so at home with Nature, and so attuned to her
life, that she can speak her own deep peace into our
souls? Many are the times, in bright and vocal
mornings, in hushed and sober evenings, and all day
long in still and lonely places, when she "sends her
own deep quiet to restore our hearts"; and when her
tranquillizing power seems to steal over us and melt
184
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
into us, soothing and sweetening away our evil
thoughts and unhealthy perturbations, our anger,
impatience, discontent, and all our inordinate loves.
and cares and fears, and, along with these, also "the
fretful stir unprofitable and the fever of the world."
And at all times her ministry it is
To interpose the covert of her shades,
Even as a sleep, between the heart of man
And outward troubles, between man himself,
Not seldom, and his own uneasy heart.
It scarce need be said that this aspect or phase of
Nature's life is a favorite theme with Wordsworth.
For, with his clear and firm insight of that life, he
could not but see and feel how her course proceeds
under the sway of universal and unchanging law; and
the calm presence and austere beauty of that law
might well sink down deep into his mind, and become
one of the master-currents of his being. Nor do I
know of any other poet who comes near him in the
frequency and impressiveness with which he opens
out Nature's teachings and inspirations in this respect;
or through whom she voices so grandly or so per-
suasively the deep calm of her Soul. And, surely,
never were such lessons more wanted than here and
now, to temper our too eager chase of things that
cannot stay with us, and to withdraw us from the
fearful heat and stress and fury of our life into a
more calming and healing intercourse with Nature.
To illustrate the spirit of Wordsworth's singing in
this behalf, I quote one of his sonnets. Observe, here,
how it delights him to escape from the nearer haunts
of local mutation, and with what a deep and loving
awe he contemplates those forms and on-goings of
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
185
Nature which no vicissitude can reach, and whose
steadfast order proceeds forever the same:
Hail, Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour!
Not dull art thou as undiscerning Night;
But studious only to remove from sight
Day's mutable distinctions. Ancient Power!
Thus did the waters gleam, the mountains lour,
To the rude Briton, when, in wolf-skin vest
Here roving wild, he laid him down to rest
On the bare rock, or through a leafy bower
Look'd ere his eyes were closed. By him was seen
The self-same Vision which we now behold,
At thy meek bidding, shadowy Power! brought forth;
These mighty barriers, and the gulf between ;
The flood, the stars, a spectacle as old
As the beginning of the Heavens and Earth!
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
I am next to consider the moral and religious
characteristics of this life in Nature, as Wordsworth
sees and sings it. For in his communion with that
life he is, or at least feels and speaks as if he were,
actually communing with God, and drinking there-
from a mighty spirit both of worship and of rectitude.
""Twere long to tell," says he,
'T were long to tell
What Spring and Autumn, what the winter snows,
And what the summer shade, what day and night,
Evening and morning, sleep and waking, thought
From sources inexhaustible, pour'd forth
To feed the spirit of religious love
In which I walk'd with Nature.
This is from The Prelude, and so refers to his feelings
in youth; but in the fourth book of The Excursion he
な
​186
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
puts a still higher strain, to the same effect, into the
mouth of his venerable hero:
How beautiful this dome of sky;
And the vast hills, in fluctuation fix'd
At Thy command, how awful! Shall the Soul,
Human and rational, report of Thee
Even less than these? Be mute who will, who can,
Yet I will praise Thee with impassion'd voice
My lips, that may forget Thee in the crowd,
Cannot forget Thee here, where Thou hast built,
For Thy own glory, in the wilderness!
Me didst Thou constitute a priest of Thine,
In such a temple as we now behold
Reared for Thy presence: therefore am I bound
To worship, here and everywhere.
And the moral strength, the motives for rectitude
of life, which he gets from the same source, are set
forth in language no less elevated :
Yet were I grossly destitute of all
Those human sentiments that make this Earth
So dear, if I should fail with grateful voice
To speak of you, ye mountains, and ye lakes
And sounding cataracts, ye mists and winds
That dwell among the hills where I was born.
If in my youth I have been pure in heart,
If, mingling with the world, I am content
With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
With God and Nature cómmuning, removed
From little enmities and low desires,
The gift is yours; if in these times of fear,
This melancholy waste of hopes o'erthrown, I yet
Despair not of our nature, but retain
A more than Roman confidence, a faith
That fails not, in all sorrow my support,
The blessing of my life; the gift is yours,
Ye winds and sounding cataracts! 't is yours,
Ye mountains! thine, O Nature! Thou hast fed
My lofty speculations; and in thee,
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
187
For this uneasy heart of ours, I find
A never-failing principle of joy
And purest passion.
In all this, too, we see that Nature is to him "both
law and impulse"; or rather her law, as taken into
the heart, warms and quickens into impulse, becomes
a moving and controlling passion; so that everywhere,
in rock and plain,
In Earth and Heaven, in glade and bower,
He feels an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.
From this it will readily be gathered that he does not
find in Nature any reasoned course or scheme of
theology, nor any lines of dogmatic teaching, nor any
form of logical preparation whatsoever: but he draws
from her, notwithstanding, a very profound and com-
prehensive Religion, in the best and highest sense of
the term; and the Natural Religion which he so
draws, though by no means identical, is nevertheless
thoroughly harmonious, and even co-operative, with
the Religion of the Bible: in which respect he seems
to have anticipated, in substance at least, the broad
and sound conclusions so well expounded by our Dr.
Andrew Peabody in his excellent Lectures," Christian-
ity the Religion of Nature." So that the Poet's Re-
ligion of Nature, like the Religion of Christ, as some
of us understand this, is a religion which begins with
the heart, filling it with deep and intense emotions of
love, tenderness, admiration, gratitude, reverence, awe;
and which, seated in that part from whence are the
issues of life, and working up from thence into the
head, naturally prompts to righteousness both in
thought and in deed, or to that course of right moral


188
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
conduct than which, as hath been well said, nothing
in the world is easier to understand, nothing harder
to do. In other words, the religion which Nature's
life breathes into our Poet, and through him into his
readers, is most truly an inspiration, a living and
informing power, and nowise a formal code of didac-
ticism; it does not theorize, it lives, and therefore
takes spontaneously to poetry as its right vernacular.
For song is the truest speech of joy.
Wordsworth, to be sure, was bred and nurtured a
sound and earnest Christian, and he continued such
through life, ever growing broader, deeper, and more
living in his faith and practice. This strong preposses-
sion of course gave him eyes to see things or meanings
in Nature which, else, he would not have seen; that
is to say, his Christian preparation deepened and
rectified his insight of Nature, while, in turn, his
insight of Nature did the same for his insight of
Christianity; the two thus mutually acting and re-
acting to the enlargement and betterment of both.
And, surely, so it ought to be: for what should the
Religion of Christ and the Religion of Nature, what
should the Divine word and the Divine works do, but
thus illustrate and supplement each other?

The case being so as I have said, Wordsworth's
religion, that in his poetry, I mean, of course has
nothing of what has been called "other-worldli-
ness" in it; it is in no sort the political economy of
a future state rather possessing him than possessed
by him, the simple joy, the deep passion, of it suffices
him: the might and beauty of it so thrill into and
through him, that he loses himself and all self-regard-
ing thoughts in the strong meditative rapture of it.
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
189
How his mind stood in this matter, is well shown in
his account of the Wanderer; whom he represents as
having been bred, from childhood up, in the sternest
orthodoxy of the Scottish Kirk: but this has been so
tempered, and his heart has been so fed, by pure and
sweet example in his early home, that its very stern-
ness seems to have blossomed into sweetness. Here
is what I refer to:
Whate'er, in docile childhood or in youth,
He had imbibed of fear or darker thought
Was melted all away: so true was this,
That sometimes his religion seem'd to me
Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods;
Who to the model of his own pure heart
Shaped his belief, as grace divine inspired,
And human reason dictated with awe.
I make bold, therefore, to think that not the least.
part of Wordsworth's mission was to provide new
holdings for religious thought as the old should fail;
in other words, to tide over, or at least to start and
shape the process of tiding over, the English-speaking
world from a religion of theological prescription, a
religion that holds, or savors too much of holding,
that men are to "be saved by believing rightly,"
to a religion of impassioned lovingness, and so of
righteousness or good works. At all events, we are
now in the midst of that transition, or what appears.
to be such; and what is to be the final upshot of it,
we may well fear to think of. But I have strong
faith that Wordsworth has left behind powers that
will work the process through to a good result; that,
through the impulse he has given, the Religion of
Christ will be so intertwined with the Religion of
Nature, as to be all the stronger and healthier for
190
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
having split off the venerable rind of theological pre-
scription. And, surely, it will do us no hurt to hold
that, as "there are more things in Heaven and Earth
than are dreamed of in your philosophy," or your sci-
ence, so there are more things in Christianity than
are dreamed of in your theology.
For the Christian world, especially the Protestant
world, has had a long, deep surfeit of dogma; and
the minds of many men have got so moulded to the
dogmatic form of Christianity, that they can hardly
conceive of its being operative or even presentable in
any other form. What analysis and logical anatomy
cannot do, seems to them wellnigh impossible to be
done. And minds so possessed by the spirit of dogma
are apt to be jealous of Natural Religion, as if this
must somehow speak in rivalry or disparagement of
that which is revealed. The worship of God in Na-
ture seems to them hardly compatible with the wor-
ship of God in Christ: so they are shy of the former,
lest it tend to discredit the latter, and even to annul
and supersede it. Men so minded hardly like, for ex-
ample, to hear it said of any one,
with gentle heart
He worships Nature in the hill and valley,
Not knowing what he loves, but loves it all;
or as in a passage before quoted from Wordsworth,
No thanks he breathed, he proffer'd no request, etc.*
And so even the Poet's nephew and biographer, the
learned and excellent Bishop of Lincoln, seems rather
distrustful of his uncle's teachings in this respect.
* See the passage on page 34.
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
191
Now all this, I take it, proceeds upon the supposal
that the natural and the supernatural are conflicting
and antagonistic, so that as the former comes up the
latter must go down. But surely such is not the
case. For we cannot define the boundary between
the natural and the supernatural, cannot even per-
ceive any line dividing them, so as to tell where
one ends and the other begins. They are, in truth,
strictly continuous the one with the other. We have
to conceive of the natural as being ensouled and made
alive by the supernatural, and of the supernatural as
living and working in the heart and veins of the nat-
ural; or, as Wordsworth puts it, the supernatural is
the "Soul of Nature." So that God in Nature is
nowise at odds with God in Christ: rather say, the
two, though not the same, are nevertheless perfectly
at one.
Well, the surfeit of dogma had grown to a some-
what convulsive eructation. We are now in the midst
of a strong and wide-spread reaction from that excess;
and, as extremes are evermore generating their oppo-
sites, so the danger now to be feared may be lest the
reaction go too far. For it now seems to be rather the
fashion to dogmatize against dogma; which, surely, is
no great improvement on the past. But men, I fear,
are still somewhat imperfect beings. And Words-
worth's poetry, if it did not prepare that reaction, cer-
tainly forestalled it, and has probably done a good deal
to further it. But its working has been deep down
in the undercurrents of religious thought, and has been
the more thorough and telling for that very cause; the
result being all the surer to come because it was slow
and silent in coming. So that here, again, Words-
192
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
worth stands out in the character of a true prophet,
a veritable seer, taking deep and wise counsel for pos-
terity, a mind so inward with Nature and the hu-
man heart as to feel the pulse or hear the footsteps
of far-off events, or as one
to whom, in vision clear,
Th' aspiring heads of future things appear,
Like mountain-tops whose mists have roll'd away.
But the discrediting of religious dogma ought not
to discredit, in the long run will not discredit, relig
ion herself on the contrary, it can hardly fail to
bring her into higher credit by drawing her deeper
powers more into the foreground. Newton's emis-
sion theory of light has been discredited by Young's
wave theory, but light itself is not discredited. The-
ories of storms are one thing, storms themselves are
another thing; and the death of the former does not
hurt the latter at all. Religious dogma, I suppose,
may be well enough defined as theology enacted into
law as such, it may have been wise and good in its
day, it may have, nay, it has, its uses still; but it
does not therefore follow that the past over-use or
misuse of it ought to continue: at the best, it serves
but as the husk or involucre for preserving religion,
not as her vocal organ or her operative form. For
theology, like science, is but the product of the logical
faculty; it goes by the methods of analysis, argument,
proof; and the best it can work is mere reasoned con-
victions of the understanding, which, however good in
their place and time, yet have no real life or quicken-
ing virtue in them. But these are not the methods
of Nature: she is no logic-mill or logic-monger; she
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
193
does not work by analysis, argument, proof; she wages
no syllogistic contests with us; she spins no theorems
or results of dissection about us. She speaks to the
moral, the emotional, the imaginative springs within
us, as well as to the understanding, and speaks to all
of these at once: her proper working is by vision and
inspiration, by love and beauty, by her breathing har-
monies and poetries and eloquences: she has indeed.
"a world of ready wealth," which she offers us freely,
but she does not argue or wrangle us into accepting
it she spreads it out, for us to see, to feel, to love;
and to see, to feel, to love it, is to know it, to have
it, to be at one with it; or, if we cannot see and feel
it, then she has no more to say to us, but just goes
her way, a little sorry perhaps, and waits for our see-
ing and feeling to become more attuned to her calls.
Now why should not the methods of Christianity
go hand in hand with those of Nature? Why should
not the former work by vision and inspiration, by
love and beauty, rather than by analysis and proof and
logical diagrams? Why should not the Light that
has come into the world even blend its beams with
the light that was already in the world, the two thus
working together as co-ordinate and coefficient pow-
ers? Or, again, why should Christianity be used as
the raw material for constructing anatomical figures,
and then the anatomy, which is but dry bones and
sinews, be pressed so near the eye as to shut out the
living whole? And who of us that are old have not
too often seen the dogmatic theorem so used as quite
to supplant the Divine Original? spread out so wide
and thick that no living and life-giving Person could
be seen behind or through it? nothing but a huge
13
194
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
dun mass of smoke and brimstone terrors! Theories,
for instance, as to the origin of the four Gospels may
come and pass in endless succession, they may put
out each other's eyes as much as they please; but this
will not put out the eyes of the Gospels themselves.
Men may argue, may prove, that Christ ought not to
be, but there Christ is nevertheless, a FACT neither to
be explained away nor explained. For Christianity
is a live eloquence, impassioned, kindling, with “the
rapt soul sitting in the eyes," not a dead, prating or-
thodox theorem; a voice sounding through the whole
man, and not in the understanding only; a thing that
freely inspires will and power, instead of demanding
or coercing assent. The science of Nature is good, but
Nature herself is better: the former too is ever chang-
ing; the latter changes not. The science of Christ
may be good, but surely it has been made too much of,
surely Christ Himself is better. In short, poetry, or
art in general, is much more the native language of
Christianity than logic is. And so Wordsworth, re-
ferring to a time when Christian piety was more in-
clined to sing than to argue, and preferred inspiration
to syllogism, poetry to logic, tells us,
The Spirit of Antiquity - enshrined
In sumptuous buildings, vocal in sweet song,
In picture speaking with heroic tongue,
And with devout solemnities entwined-
Mounts to the seat of grace within the mind.
M
Now, as Natural Religion comes forward, and its
claims get a fair hearing, Revealed Religion, as by
instinctive sympathy, draws more into the methods of
Nature. And this is just what has been going on
under the influence of Wordsworth. Of course I do
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
195
not mean that he alone has done the thing, for this
was bound to come, sooner or later, anyhow; but that
his poetry has been strongly co-operative with other
forces working to the same end. And surely it was a
most timely service, this of doing something at least
to turn a theology back into a religion, or perhaps I
should rather say, to turn us back from our wrangling
christologies to the living Christ. And how different
is the language of Christian teaching now from what
it was a hundred or even fifty years ago!
It has gone
back to something much more like what it was at
first, and before analysis and system-making had split
and wrangled the subject-matter of it all out into
dogmatic expression; though, to be sure, the old
cobwebs of learned argumentation are not all brushed
off it yet. Articles of Religion, systematic divinity,
the old Christ-lore done into theological abstractions,
or what is called doctrinal preaching, who hears this
now, or who, if he hears it, does so without an earnest
wish, felt if not spoken, to be relieved from it? It
has no real life-power over any class of minds, cul-
tured or uncultured. Not that dogma has been or
ought to be driven altogether out of church: it has
simply been invited to take a back seat, and has done
so; it is therefore put where it can hardly speak,
unless first spoken to. It may still do good, but only
on condition of holding its tongue; as nobody, or
hardly anybody, wants to hear it;-a thing to be
kept in reserve for no one knows what special exi-
gency. And, as this evolution backward has gone on,
the worship of God in Nature has almost visibly been
moving in cordial sympathy and reciprocity with the
worship of God in Christ.
196
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
But this is not all. The strong instinctive sym-
pathy with Nature's Life, or with the Divine Life in
Nature, as Wordsworth sees and feels it, runs into
other forms not less interesting, perhaps even more
so. For the human heart naturally yearns to be at
one or to feel itself univocal with what is greatest and
best outside of it, or to draw this latter into concert
and unanimity with what is best and greatest in itself.
Hence the hero of The Excursion, at the Ruined Cot-
tage, once the home of Margaret, and recalling his
tender memories of its "last human tenant," is made
to speak as follows:
The Poets, in their elegies and songs
Lamenting the departed, call the groves,
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn,
And senseless rocks; nor idly; for they speak,
In these their invocations, with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are
More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth,
That steal upon the meditative mind,
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seem'd to feel
One sadness, they and I. For them a bond
Of brotherhood is broken: time has been
When, every day, the touch of human hand
Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up
In mortal stillness; and they minister'd
To human comfort.
And so, again, in The Prelude, where the Poet is
descanting the memories of his youth:
To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
I gave a moral life: I saw them feel,
Or link'd them to some feeling: the great mass
Lay bedded in a quickening soul, and all
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
197
That I beheld respired with inward meaning.
Add that, whate'er of Terror or of Love
Or Beauty Nature's daily face put on
From transitory passion, unto this
I was as sensitive as waters are
To the sky's influence in a kindred mood
Of passion; was obedient as a lute
That waits upon the touches of the wind.
Advancing a step further in the same line, what
do we find? The Psalms, as we all know, abound
in notes of the worship which Nature, through all
her works, is forever paying to her Author. There,
indeed, we hear "Earth with her thousand voices
praising God." And what else is the meaning of that
sublime canticle of the Church beginning, "O all ye
works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him,
and magnify Him forever"? Would modern theology
ever have conceived anything like that? Modern the-
ology knows not what to make of it! It is in flat
discord with the genius of orthodoxy. The dumb and
inanimate things of Nature may well enough be said
to be orthoprax, for they do something, and what they
do is always right; but, as they do not think, and
have no opinions, they cannot be said to be orthodox.
Nevertheless Christian poets at all times, unless
tongue-tied by the spirit of dogma, or by fears born
of that spirit, have gone into raptures with the same
thought so grandly voiced in the forecited canticle.
For, if the works of Nature have in them any power
of song, as surely they must have, if there be any
Divine Life in them, what should their singing be
but praise to their Maker? And how can men and
women, with the sense or the thought of God in their
hearts, how can they choose but hear all Nature
-
198
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
calling upon them to join her in praise to God? or
how, hearing this, can they do less than call upon all
Nature to join with them in praising Him?
And so Milton, with Adam and Eve in their Para-
dise, lets us hear them invoking all created things to
unite with them in their morning hymn to the Uni-
versal Lord: “Let your ceaseless change vary to our
great Maker still new praise." But Wordsworth, much
oftener and more strongly than any other modern
poet, is caught with this mighty ravishment. As he
sees God everywhere in Nature, so he everywhere
feels or hears the works of Nature lifting up their
hands and voices in adoration of Him who made them,
and whose pulsing presence is a perennial joy within
them; his soul thus speaking in unison with that of
the Psalmist: "Let the floods clap their hands, and
let the hills be joyful together before the Lord." So,
for instance, in his poem To a Sky-Lark :
There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine:
Lift me, guide me high and high
To thy banqueting-place in the sky.
Happy, happy Liver,
With a soul as strong as a mountain river,
Pouring out praise to the almighty Giver,
Joy and jollity be with us both!
He has not a few whole poems and many passages in
his longer poems, that seem to speak themselves out
of this enraptured mood:
Where flower-breathed incense to the skies
Is wafted in mute harmonies;
And ground fresh-cloven by the plough
Is fragrant with a humbler vow;
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
199
Where birds and brooks from leafy dells
Chime forth unwearied canticles,
And vapors magnify and spread
The glory of the Sun's bright head;
Still constant in her worship, still
Conforming to th' eternal Will,
Whether men sow or reap the fields,
Divine monition Nature yields,
That not by bread alone we live,
Or what a hand of flesh can give.
Nor hush'd be service from the lowing mead,
Nor mute the forest hum of noon;
Thou too be heard, lone eagle! freed
From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six-days' Work, by flaming Seraphim,
Transmits to Heaven!
In his deep communion with Nature, and when her
power upon him was at its height, a still rapture, an
ecstatic calm, overcame his soul, the Beatitudes were
about him, and he felt himself in Heaven with God
and holy Angels. And why not? for God is every-
where, if we have the eye to see and the heart to feel
His presence; and, wherever this is seen or felt, there,
surely, Heaven is to us.
"Wonder not," says he,
Wonder not
If high the transport, great the joy I felt,
Communing in this sort through Earth and Heaven
With every form of creature, as it look'd
Towards th' Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
One song they sang, and it was audible,
Most audible then, when the fleshly ear,
O'ercome by humblest prelude of that strain,
Forgot her functions, and slept undisturb'd.
200
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
It is when he is in this state or this mood that his
poetry takes on its highest form and melts into its
divinest strains. In this respect, I know of no poetry
outside the Bible that equals his; and as it comes of
talking with Nature face to face, and talking with an
impassioned soul, so it is of perfect nativeness and of
unsurpassed originality. And so I have been told
that Professor James Marsh, of Vermont University,
a gifted and saintly man, was wont to rehearse or
read certain of Wordsworth's strains upon his knees,
as an act of profound religious devotion. I know not
if it were so, but can well understand how it might be
so; for he was one of the best of men, and that poetry
touches what is best in souls like his. It is, therefore,
in strict keeping with the spirit of Wordsworth's
poetry, as evinced in the foregoing extracts, that he
represents the Wanderer, among the grander forms of
Nature, as sympathizing so deeply with the Divine
Life in them, that his Christian belief passes into
vision:
A Herdsman on the lonely mountain tops,
Such intercourse was his, and in this sort
Was his existence oftentimes possess'd.
O, then how beautiful, how bright, appear'd
The written promise! Early had he learn'd
To reverence the volume that displays
The mystery, the life which cannot die
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
All things, responsive to the writing, there
Breathed immortality, revolving life,
And greatness still revolving; infinite:
There littleness was not; the least of things
Seem'd infinite; and there his spirit shaped
;
*
* This strain is continuous with the one quoted at the close of
Chapter I., and should be read in connection therewith. See page 34.
THE RELIGION OF NATURE.
Her prospects, nor did he believe, — he saw.
What wonder if his being thus became
Sublime and comprehensive! Low desires,
Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart
Lowly; for he was meek in gratitude,
Oft as he call'd those ecstasies to mind,
And whence they flow'd.
201
CHAPTER VI.
WORDSWORTH'S PLACE AMONG ENGLISH POETS.
IT
T was as good as settled, many years ago, that
Wordsworth ranks as one of the five great chiefs
of English Song; the other four being, of course,
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. As for
Shakespeare, he stands by himself, alone and unap-
proachable, so that no one is to be put in comparison
with him. How the other four are to rank among
themselves, may well be a question: Time alone can
decide such matters, and Time is slow and long in
deciding them. So Coleridge, in his superb critique
of Wordsworth, justly says, "His fame belongs to
another age, and can neither be accelerated nor re-
tarded." To pronounce Wordsworth as great a poet
as Milton, would still, I suppose, be something rash:
probably there has not been time enough yet to jus-
tify such a verdict. But I make bold to affirm that
he is more original than Milton; in fact, the most
original of all the English poets, Shakespeare alone
excepted; if, indeed, even that exception may be al-
lowed. And his poetry is also more varied than Mil-
ton's, ranges over a wider field, both in matter and in
style. As I have said before, neither of them has
any humor; and this lack puts a wide space indeed
←
HIS PLACE AMONG ENGLISH POETS.
203
between them and Shakespeare. The only points
wherein Milton seems to me to surpass Wordsworth
are learning and sublimity: as for the learning,
Wordsworth has indeed vastly less of this, but his
less is, I think, more than made up by something
better; as for the sublimity, no one will think of put-
ting him in competition with Milton there: it would
be too like setting Milton beside Shakespeare in dra-
matic power.
N
And here I must pause to say, what perhaps I ought
to have said before, that Wordsworth was very far
from being an overweening truster in his own genius.
On the contrary, he was a most careful, earnest, pains-
taking workman; was never weary of retouching his
poems, and spared no labor, that he might lift and
chasten them into fair accordance with his own ideal.
And, with all his sturdy self-reliance, a self-reli-
ance that belongs to all genius of a high order, — he
had a spirit of willing deference to thoughtful and
genial criticism on his work. All this was because in
his view the office of poet was invested with religious
consecration: he regarded his calling as divine, his
art as a sacred thing; and to treat it as a mere play-
thing, or to use it for any self-ends, was to him noth-
ing less than downright profanation. On this point
he has left the following markworthy passage: "I
can say without vanity, that I have bestowed great
pains on my style, full as much as any of my contem-
poraries have done on theirs. I yield to none in love
for my art. I therefore labor at it with reverence, af-
fection, and industry. My main endeavor, as to style,
has been that my poems should be written in pure
intelligible English."
204
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
HIS ORIGINALITY.
Wordsworth's profound originality came, like Shake-
speare's, from taking nothing at second hand; from
looking at things with his own eyes, not with other
men's, or through "the spectacles of books"; from
living and talking with Nature face to face, draw-
ing his thoughts directly from her heart, his lan-
guage directly from her lips. Shakespeare, as I
suppose we all know, for his work shows it plainly,
had but a school-boy's knowledge of Latin, not enough
to enter a freshman in Harvard College; and he is
never so weak as when a fit of learning takes him.
But, in his characteristic work, such fits never do
take him and, having once outgrown his little learn-
ing, and found himself, he then had no scholastic mists
or cobwebs to choke or blur his intuition of Nature's
truth. Wordsworth, of course, was far more learned
than he; but neither do fits of learning ever take him,
at least not in his characteristic work: and, whenever
he makes use of his learning, he shows himself ripe
in it, his classical allusions, of which he has a good
many, being chosen with judgment, cited accurately,
and applied with good taste.
As I have before said, Wordsworth was at no time
an ardent student of books: he read but few, but those
he read a good deal, and with clear comprehension;
doing this, too, mainly for the pleasure of it, and not
to gather materials for use. "A poet," he tells us,
"is one who loves the brooks far better than the
sages' books." Accordingly, all through his early
years, he found much more attractive matter for
HIS ORIGINALITY.
205
study in the aspects and on-goings of Nature around
him, in the lakes and hills and streams of his native
region, than in the lessons of the school-room or the
printed pages of men. To study the former was in-
deed an enthusiasm with him almost from the first.
Here is a passage from his account of it:
Daily the common range of visible things
Grew dear to me : already I began
To love the Sun; a boy I loved the Sun,
Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge
And surety of our earthly life, a light
Which we behold and feel we are alive;
Nor for his bounty to so many worlds;
But for this cause, that I had seen him lay
His beauty on the morning hills, had seen
The western mountain touch his setting orb,
In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess
Of happiness, my blood appear'd to flow
For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.
This intense delight in the things he saw drew him,
from his very childhood, and as if by instinct, to a
most eager and constant and punctual observation of
natural objects: and, as this was purely a labor of
love, and therefore had no sense of labor in it, and
was not even a conscious quest of knowledge; so
there was no bias in his mind to keep him from see-
ing those objects just as they were, or from taking
their lineaments to the life. The process had indeed
an irresistible charm for him, and seemed to lead him
captive as under a spell, impelling him to the most
minute and searching inspection of whatever his eye
fastened upon; so that he was not satisfied till he had
got at the heart of it, caught all its distinctive lines,
sucked out and soaked up, so to speak, its nicest tints
206
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
and touches of individual complexion. His own de-
scription of the process is very remarkable:
The bodily eye
Amid my strongest workings evermore
Was searching out the lines of difference,
As they lie hid in all external forms,
Near or remote, minute or vast; an eye
Which from a tree, a stone, a wither'd leaf,
To the broad ocean and the azure heavens
Spangled with kindred multitudes of stars,
Could find no surface where its power might sleep;
Which spake perpetual logic to my soul,
And by an unrelenting agency
Did bind my feelings even as in a chain.
What a strange picture is this of a boy's thoughts
and doings! His eye "could find no surface where
its power might sleep"! What a restless watching,
prying, scrutinizing of things, as if to capture and
steal the very soul out of them! All this might well
bring his powers, as indeed it did, to an almost pre-
ternatural delicacy and keenness for detecting the most
occult and secret properties which distinguish or dif-
ferentiate one thing from another. Thus things reg-
istered themselves in his mind with the exactness of
a photograph, yet with something far deeper than
photography can reach. All the scrupulous precision
of science, without any of her merciless dissecting and
exanimating of Nature!
From the passion of poetry thus working uncon-
sciously in the boy or the poet-germ, his mind natu-
rally got filled to the brim with a fresh and original
fund of thought and matter while as yet he had no
idea what use he was to make of it. And so he tells us
he had been surprised to find what an infinite variety
HIS ORIGINALITY.
207
there was of natural appearances, which, so far as he
knew, had hitherto escaped the notice of all the poets.
Nature was supposed to be pretty much exhausted of
poetic riches, so that poetry could go no further, ex-
cept by repeating and varying what she had already
done. Wordsworth found and proved it to be other-
wise decidedly; that there were still other and better
things for poetry to deal in than exhumed and new-
varnished fossils. On this point, Professor Shairp,
who is not a man to go off at random in such a case,
speaks as follows: "It would be hardly too much to
say that there is not a single image in his whole works
which he had not observed with his own eyes. And
perhaps no poet since Homer has introduced into
poetry, directly from Nature, more facts and images
which had not hitherto appeared in books."
Now, from his face-to-face communion with living
Nature, it came to pass that, when his time for writing
arrived, and he had gained the use of himself to that
end, his mind was overflowing; so that he wrote be-
cause, really and in very truth, he had something to
say, instead of hunting and straining after something
to say because he wanted to write. Nay, more: the
poetic impulse grew too strong in him to be repressed,
grew to be "as a fire in his bones," so that it must
have vent. And this feature of his writing is so
marked, that even so restrained and rigid a believer
in hard facts as Mr. Leslie Stephen was moved to
say, that "Wordsworth in his best moods reaches a
greater height than any other modern Englishman";
and that “the word inspiration is less forced when ap-
plied to his loftiest poetry than when used of any of
his contemporaries." And Mr. Matthew Arnold speaks
208
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
still more decisively to the same point.
"No poetry,
perhaps," says he, " is so evidently filled with a new
and sacred energy when the inspiration is upon him.
I remember hearing him say that Goethe's poetry
was not inevitable enough.' The remark is striking
and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself,
but its maker knew well how it came there. Words-
worth is right; Goethe's poetry is not inevitable, not
inevitable enough. But Wordsworth's poetry, when
he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature
herself." So true is this of Mr. Arnold's, that many of
his poems seem literally to have sung themselves out
of him, as if Nature's very Soul had breathed them into
him, lifting him clean out of himself, and compelling
him to go whithersoever she would have him. And
this is what I mean when I speak of his unsurpassed
originality; for originality can hardly go further than
this implies. So that we may not unfitly apply to
him what he himself says of another:
For the power of hills is on thee,
As was witness'd through thine eye
Then, when old Helvellyn won thee
To confess their majesty!
Ka
only not the power of hills alone was on him, bui
that of all Cumbrian Nature, with its inexhaustible
variety and beauty and grandeur of form and outlook.
INFLUENCE OF CUMBRIAN SCENERY.
And here it may be well to dwell a little on the
influence of Cumbrian scenery and climate in decid-
ing the bent of his genius and the spirit of his work.
INFLUENCE OF CUMBRIAN SCENERY.
209
How deeply and how fruitfully that influence regis-
tered itself in his mind and heart, is best shown,
perhaps, by some passages of prose, or rather of un-
versified poetry, in his Guide through the District
of the Lakes. One of these is as follows:
The rain here comes down heartily, and is frequently
succeeded by clear bright weather, when every brook is
vocal, and every torrent sonorous, brooks and torrents
which are never muddy even in the heaviest floods. Days
of unsettled weather, with partial showers, are very frequent;
but the showers, darkening or brightening as they fly from
hill to hill, are not less grateful to the eye than finely inter-
woven passages of gay and sad music are touching to the ear.
Vapors exhaling from the lakes and meadows after sunrise in
a hot season, or in moist weather brooding upon the heights,
or descending towards the valleys with inaudible motion, give
a visionary character to everything around them, and are in
themselves so beautiful as to dispose us to enter into the feel-
ings of those simple nations by whom they are taken for
guardian deities of the mountains; or to sympathize with.
others who have fancied these delicate apparitions to be the
spirits of their departed ancestors. Akin to these are fleecy
clouds resting upon the hill-tops: they are not easily man-
aged in picture, with their accompaniments of blue sky, but
how glorious are they in Nature! how pregnant with im-
agination for the poet! And the height of the Cumbrian
mountains is sufficient to exhibit daily and hourly instances
of those mysterious attachments. Such clouds, cleaving to
their stations, or lifting up suddenly their glittering heads
from behind rocky barriers, or hurrying out of sight with
speed of the sharpest edge, will often tempt an inhabitant to
congratulate himself on belonging to a country of mists and
clouds and storms, and make him think of the blank sky of
Egypt, and of the cerulean vacancy of Italy, as an unanimated
and even a sad spectacle.
14
210
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Reading this fine description, with many strains
of the author's poetry in mind, I seem almost to
see the genius and inspiration of Cumbrian Nature
hovering visibly around him, and stealing into his
hand in his happier hours of work. I give one
more passage:
It has been said that in human life there are moments
worth ages. In a more subdued tone of sympathy may we
affirm, that in the climate of England there are, for the lover
of Nature, days which are worth whole months, I might say,
even years.
One of these favored days sometimes occurs in
Spring-time, when the soft air is breathing over the blossoms
and new-born verdure. But it is in Autumn that days of
such affecting influence most frequently intervene. The
atmosphere seems refined, and the sky rendered more crys-
talline, as the vivifying heat of the year abates; the lights
and shadows are more delicate; the coloring is richer and more
finely harmonized; and, in this season of stillness, the ear
being unoccupied or only gently excited, the sense of vision
becomes more susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. A
resident in a country like this will agree with me that the
presence of a lake is indispensable to exhibit in perfection
the beauty of one of these days; and he must have experi-
enced, while looking on the ruffled waters, that the imagina-
tion by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise
impenetrable. The reason of this is, that the heavens are not
only brought down to the bosom of the Earth, but that the
Earth is mainly looked at, and thought of, through the
medium of a purer element.
I cannot quite make up my mind to leave this topic
without quoting one of the Poet's sonnets, as happily
illustrating how lovingly his spirit drank in the
natural beauty which he describes so choicely in the
foregoing passages:
¦
THEORY AND USE OF LANGUAGE.
211
Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side,
Together in immortal books enroll'd :
His ancient dower Olympus hath not sold;
And that inspiring Hill, which "did divide
Into two ample horns his forehead wide,"
Shines with poetic radiance as of old ;
While not an English Mountain we behold
By the celestial Muses glorified.
Yet round our sea-girt shore they rise in crowds :
What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,
Mount Skiddaw? In his natural sovereignty
Our British Hill is nobler far: he shrouds
His double front among Atlantic clouds,
And pours forth streams more sweet than Castaly.
But what the Poet here says is no longer true. His
work has made the whole region classic ground, cloth-
ing it with a "poetic radiance" not to be surpassed;
so that many English mountains are now "by the
celestial Muses glorified," and "flourish in immortal
books enroll'd."
THEORY AND USE OF LANGUAGE.
Nor was it in respect of matter only that Words-
worth lifted English poetry out of its old ruts, and
sent it off on a new course. He found a new language
for it also; or rather drew and adopted into its service.
the language actually used by men, in place of that
which had been made up for its special use. For the
school of Pope had shut poetry up in a state of lingual
strait-lacedness; whether it thought as wise men do
or not, they could not bear to hear it speak as common
people do so they had a kind of stereotyped inven-
tory of words and phrases and turns of speech, such
as plain, every-day people never use; and this was
212
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
held to be the only legitimate lingual organ of poetry,
a set aristocratic fashion of dress and manners and
motion, which was called "Poetic Diction," and was
deemed the only garb befitting the high descent and
dignity of those divine old girls, the Muses.
Wordsworth was of another mind altogether. He
held that poetry was not, and ought not to be made,
the creature of fashion, either in matter or manner;
that it had its birth in the human heart, and not in
any clan-life or class-life club-house, and that its
proper freehold was as "broad and general," in every
respect, as the source from which it sprung,
no less
than the universal heart of man. He stuck to it, that
the words, the language, which best express the native
thoughts and feelings of natural-hearted men and
women, people who live in their own deep nativeness,
were the best for poetry to use also. He therefore
insisted that poetry ought to be as free and limber in
its dress and motion as in its soul and body. So he
just exploded the fond canting notion of poetic diction,
and cast it from him utterly, both name and thing.
Much ado has been made about his theory on this
subject, and also about the alleged discrepancy be-
tween his theory and his practice. I grant that, if
some of his words be taken too literally and strained
too far, the discrepancy may be made out, in appear-
ance at least, and therefore I could rather wish he
had not written them; but, if we go through the
words to his real meaning, his theory and practice
seem to me nowise discrepant. The scope and aim of
his reasoning I take to be simply this, that, as poetry
lives in and from the common life, so it ought to be
untied from the pent-up language of the schools, and
K
ORGA
THEORY AND USE OF LANGUAGE.
213
let out into the full lingual freedom of the common
life; that is to say, that the words and forms of speech
actually used by common men when their minds are
moved and lifted, as, to be sure, they often are, into
that state which forms the right stuff of poetry,-
that the same are the best and fittest for the poet's
use.
How, then, does or should the language of verse
differ from that of prose ? Wordsworth maintains
that, where the thoughts and feelings are the same in
both, there the language has a perfect right to be the
same also; that, apart from the conditions of metre
and rhythm, neither the words nor the arrangement
of them need to differ at all; or that, if verse be the
language of passion and prose the language of thought,
which is by no means the case, then the lingual usages
of the two ought to differ only as thought and passion
differ, just so much and no more.
But what is "the language of common life"? or
what does Wordsworth mean in urging the special
fitness of that language for poetic use? For of the
common people there are many individuals and even
large sections whose speech teems with words and
phrases not fit for use in either verse or prose. Per-
haps, then, the best way to gather his meaning is by
going to the people among whom his loves and learn-
ings grew. These were mostly small land-owners
with their families, very tenacious of their ancestral
acres and manners, of simple and homely tastes, yet
intelligent and thoughtful, grave and sober livers,
familiar with their Bibles and Prayer-Books, in their
habits, morals, ways of thinking, and their whole
mental atmosphere, as also in their climate and
214
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
scenery, closely resembling their Scottish neighbors;
in short,
Men unto whom sufficient for the day
And minds not stinted or untilled were given,
Sound, healthy children of the God of Heaven.
Now experience has taught me that the language of
similar people, plain farmers and mechanics, house-
keeping mothers and maidens, the words and tones
that break from them spontaneously in their work or
their play, their sorrow or their mirth, is commonly
better for poetic use than that of the highly educated;
and this because it has more of truth and soul in it,
and therefore touches the heart more movingly; so
that I have often thought that, if one could take it
down just as it comes from them, he would indeed
"snatch a grace beyond the reach of art." I have
never been in the mother-land of Professor Shairp;
but I have seen enough of the world to feel the just-
ness of the following from his pen. "Those who are
familiar with the poor," says he, " know how much of
that feeling language which is the essence of poetry
may be heard at times under cottage-roofs. At the
fall of Autumn I have visited and said farewell to two
old Highland women, sisters, sitting in their smoky
hut beside their scanty peat-fire. With return of
Summer I have revisited that hut, and found one.
sitting there alone, and have heard that sole survivor,
as she sat on her stool, rocking her body to and fro,
pour forth in Gaelic speech the story, how her sister
pined away, and left her in the dead days of Winter,
all alone. And no threnody or lament poet ever
penned could match the pathos of that simple narra-
tive." Readers of George MacDonald will find ample
THEORY AND USE OF LANGUAGE.
215
confirmation of this in the best passages of his
novels. And probably the most memorable passage
in Scott's great novel, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, is
the touching appeal of Jenny Deans to the Queen in
behalf of her sister; and there the dear girl's pathos
is hardly more remarkable than the rustic simplicity
and plainness of her language; in fact, the two are of
the closest possible fitness each to the other. And
the thing outworths volumes of the most culled
"poetic diction."
Nor is the reason of this far to seek. For common
people, those educated for life, instead of living for
education, being intent upon things, think little or
nothing of the words they use; and as their speech is
unstudied, so it is apt to be fresh and racy, to have
the sap of life in it, the dews of Nature upon it:
whereas the highly educated, the book-eaters, they
whose business is talk, not work, living apart from
things, and spending their mind on words, grow apt to
shrink from any language that has not had the life
refined out of it, any that is not starched and crimped
into primness and purism; people, in short, learnedly
done over or undone into sifters and pickers of speech,
squeamish and overnice in their use of words, as
thinking less of what they say than of the appearance
they make in saying it.
Now Wordsworth's practice runs in full accordance
with the foregoing remarks, whenever the matter of
his poems, the themes and persons, as in Michael, We
are Seven, and many others, naturally invites it or
admits of it. There the language is so clear and
simple that a child may understand it, yet so pure and
true that the ripest minds can hardly fail to relish it.
216
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
But then the thoughts and ideas are clear and simple
also, as much so as the language; the two drawing
together by native and inherent fitness. On the other
hand, many of his poems abound in words and verbal
combinations which the average mind of Cumbrian
folk could understand very little, if at all; but the
thoughts and ideas in those poems would have been
as little understood by them, in whatever words they
had been clothed. Here, again, the word is suited to
the thing; the matter and the language are in mutual
keeping, as much so as in the former case; and both
are equally intelligible, though neither is intelligible
to all classes of minds. A peasant's speech is not,
cannot be, naturally the same as a philosopher's,
because his thoughts and ideas are not the same,
though they may be as wise and good in their place.
In this, as in some other things, "those that are good
manners at the Court are as ridiculous in the country
as the behavior of the country is most mockable at
the Court."
So that I do not quite see how Wordsworth's theory
and practice go at odds with each other. His diction
varies with his matter, and would not be natural, if it
did not. Because poetry, when its thoughts and
themes are those of common life, ought to use the
language of common life, does it therefore follow, by
his theory, that the same language ought to be used
for thoughts and themes of quite another region?
For instance, the language in his Ode on Immortality
differs very much from that in his Simon Lee, but not
a whit more than the matter does. The thoughts
being so different, would you have the style the same?
The language of common life, used so out of place,
THEORY AND USE OF LANGUAGE.
217
would cease to be the language of any life whatever:
it would be as absurd as the style of Pope's Pastorals
is. Nor can I at all understand how Wordsworth's
theory should require such a stark mismatching of
words and things.
But I care little for his or anybody's theory in this
matter. It is enough that, what with his theory and
his practice, he smashed up the old practice utterly:
the fond notion of poetic diction has never recovered
from the blows he dealt upon it. The chief danger
now seems to be lest a new school of poetry should
form itself about him, and, following the course traced
by him, should dig itself into ruts as deep as the old
ones were. For poetry is an individual work, or it is
nothing; and when it becomes the work of a school,
no matter on what model the school is built, it then
ceases to be poetry in all but form. When the egg is
addle, no cooking can make it savory: not even the
shell is then of any worth.
How pliant Wordsworth's manner is, how aptly his
style or diction varies with the theme or person,
ought, perhaps, to be made something clearer by ex-
amples. Of the passages apposite for this, there are
so many that it is not easy to choose. The first is
from the poem of Michael, where the old Shepherd
is talking to his son Luke:
Day by day pass'd on,
And still I loved thee with increasing love.
Never to living ear came sweeter sounds
Than when I heard thee by our own fire-side
First uttering, without words, a natural tune ;
While thou, a feeding babe, didst in thy joy
Sing at thy Mother's breast. Month follow'd month,
And in the open fields my life was pass'd,
218
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
And on the mountains; else I think that thou
Hadst been brought up upon thy Father's knees.
But we were playmates, Luke: among these hills,
As well thou know'st, in us the old and young
Have play'd together, nor with me didst thou
Lack any pleasure which a boy can know.
The next is from the fourth book of The Excursion,
where the Wanderer is in deep argument with the
Solitary. But, before giving it, I must explain that
the Solitary is a man who, having found that the
world would not go to his mind, has fled from it in
disgust, and shut himself up in the loneliest dell he
could find among the mountains. There the Wan-
derer visits him, and tries to sweeten off his despond-
ency, to make him think better of man, and to win
him back to the paths and the joys of social humanity.
One of his high strains has the following:
As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene: like power abides
In man's celestial spirit; virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the encumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment, — nay, from guilt;
And sometimes so relenting justice wills
From palpable oppressions of despair.
G
In these two passages the language is equally suited
to the matter; yet how wide the difference we feel on
passing from the one to the other! Michael using
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
219
the Wanderer's style to his boy would be absurd
indeed; yet not more so than the Wanderer talking
on such a theme to the Solitary in the old Shepherd's
language.
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
In a passage cited near the opening of this chapter,
we found the Poet claiming to "have bestowed great
pains on his style," and that his main endeavor, as
to style, had been to write "in pure intelligible
English." Yet Mr. Matthew Arnold says, " He has no
style." I am by no means sure that I rightly under-
stand his meaning in this. If it be, that Wordsworth
has no constant or uniform cast of language or mode.
of expression, the dictum is so obviously true that
no one should care to controvert it. But, if the mean-
ing be, that the Poet's individuality, his proper self-
hood, is not in his execution as distinct from his
conception, then I do not see how the dictum can
be true at all. For, beneath all his work, variant as
is its lingual texture or countenance, there is, not-
withstanding, a common basis or underflow, which
may be not unfitly termed the Wordsworthian idiom;
and this, though unstudied and unobtrusive, is yet so
decided that long-time students of him have no diffi-
culty in tasting it. Nor is his texture of language, or
his execution, less truly touched with this idiom, so
as to taste of it, than his cast and grain of thought;
only, in so great a variety and versatility of work,
the identity of the workman is not so apparent. For
that indefinable make-up of expression which we call
style is one of the deepest and subtilest things in
human writing; not a whit less so than the make-up
-
220
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
or character of the thought itself, sometimes even more
so. What, indeed, is a writer's style but the character-
istic transpiration of his mind in language? And, if
Wordsworth really has "the profound genuineness"
which Mr. Arnold ascribes to him, then, surely, he
must be no less genuine, no less true to himself,
in his execution than in his conception; and, if the
former be thus genuine, thus rooted in his character,
then he has a style in the best and highest sense of
the term; and, the longer one studies him, the more
one feels that such is the case. For genuineness is
a thing which, if a man has it, he can nowise put off,
and which, if he has it not, he cannot put on; a thing,
too, which he cannot have in one part of him and be
without in another part: it must be in all or in none.
In short, Wordsworth is Wordsworthian alike in his
matter and in his expression; and any fighting against
this is merely a battle of words.
As to the qualities of his style, here a few words
must suffice. Of course, where a thing varies so
much, no one word, or two, or even three can rightly
distinguish it. We have seen that "pure intelligible
English" was his chief aim; and this, I think, he
always has, or as nearly so as the nature of his sub-
ject admits of. His style is often bare, not seldom
copious, perhaps, here and there, too much so, and
sometimes cumbrous and heavy; but never, I think,
what should be called florid or ornate. Probably its
general character may be best described in his own
words as "plain and severe." In his happiest hours,
I think it comes fairly up to what Cicero, in his Orator,
so aptly notes as the highest grace of oratory, suavitas
austera et solida, "austere and solid sweetness;" and
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
221
this has long been my favorite phrase for describing it.
In this respect, too, as in others, his work very often
seems to forget itself utterly in the all-absorbing in-
terest of the matter; and at such times his style is
so pure, so simple, so penetrating, and of such perfect
transparency as to cheat the sense, causing you to
see nothing but the thought it enshrines; or like a
sightless medium or vehicle, where the thing carried
stands out in clearest vision as if sailing or sus-
pended in the air; so that we may not unfitly apply
to it some of his lines To H. C. Six Years Old:
Thou fairy voyager! that dost float
In such clear water, that thy boat
May rather seem
To brood on air than on an earthly stream.
His Ode to Duty is, throughout, if not a supreme, cer-
tainly a very high, a most happy, instance of this
quality. The same holds equally of his poem To a
Highland Girl, his Stepping Westward, his Solitary
Reaper, his Rob Roy's Grave, and many others, in
whole or in part.
In illustration of this point perhaps I cannot do
better than quote a little from the poem of Resolution
and Independence :
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods ;
But now the Sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is fill'd with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth ;
The grass is bright with rain-drops; on the moors
:
222
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
The hare is running races in her mirth ;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
Here, out of more than a hundred words, there is but
one of Latin origin, distant, and, I think, not over two
or three of French, as pleasant and rejoice; all the
rest pure Saxon. And how clear, cool, fresh, and
bracing is the atmosphere of the whole thing! In
all the particulars noted, the sounds, the objects, the
motions, we feel the breath, the very soul of the
morning. How sober, too, yet how cheerful everything
looks; as if the Morning herself had written her own
essence into the lines! In other parts of the same
poem, the style is decidedly bare; yet there is a cer-
tain grandeur in its very bareness, like that of Na-
ture's sternest and barest rocks and hills. And here,
because the Poet's style is colorless, therefore it may,
with some show of reason, be said he has no style;
whereas, in truth, that colorlessness is itself one of
the highest traits of the very highest style.
Sometimes, again, the Poet's style, to use his own
words, swells, spontaneously, as it were, "into liquid
music"; as in the sonnet where this occurs, speaking
of "the Nereid Sisters and their Queen":
For they Earth's fairest daughters do excel ;
Pure undecaying beauty is their lot ;
Their voices into liquid music swell,
Thrilling each pearly cleft and sparry grot,
The undisturb'd abodes where Sea-nymphs dwell!
Another good instance, though, perhaps, hardly equal
to this, occurs among the Ecclesiastical Sonnets :
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
223
A pleasant music floats along the Mere,
From Monks in Ely chanting service high,
While-as Canute the King is rowing by :
"My Oarsmen," quoth the mighty King, "draw near,
That we the sweet song of the Monks may hear !”
He listens, (all past conquests and all schemes
Of future vanishing like empty dreams,)
Heart-touch'd, and haply not without a tear.
The Royal Minstrel, ere the choir is still,
While his free barge skims the smooth flood along,
Gives to that rapture an accordant rhyme.
O, suffering Earth, be thankful! sternest clime
And rudest age are subject to the thrill
Of Heaven-descended Piety and Song.
The Poet does not seek this trait of style, and it
would become a blemish if he did; but in many a
place he is surprised into it, or seems so; and, as it
thus finds him, not he it, so it is always hearty and
sincere, and therefore, when it comes, it always brings
refreshment in its face.
The rare and felicitous aptness of Wordsworth's
style to reflect, as in a viewless mirror, the exact
tone and air of his theme, but yet so that, as Cole-
ridge says, "the image is distinguished from the
reality by its greater softness and lustre," — this
might be shown by many instances. Here is one,
where he is describing a long and profound sleep of
the sea, as he witnessed it at Peele Castle. Observe
how his style seems to have caught the deep, solid calm
of the sea itself:
I was thy neighbor once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee :
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day !
•
224
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Whene'er I look'd, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never pass'd away.
How perfect was the calm! it seem'd no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings :
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
I give one more from the poem of Yarrow Visited:
But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation :
Meek loveliness is round thee spread,
A softness still and holy;
The grace of forest charms decay'd,
And pastoral melancholy.
This is indeed a fruitful topic, and I could easily fill
a whole chapter with it; but I must cut it short: yet
I cannot well leave it without noting one more trait.
Wordsworth's genius is, I think, more at home in
the Beautiful than in the Grand; though he evidently
delights to dwell on what may be termed the border-
land where strength and sweetness meet together.
Certainly he does not wield the Awful with anything
near the mighty yet familiar grasp of Milton: but
then it is just as well that not all poets should be
Miltons. Nevertheless his style not seldom rises into
true and solid grandeur, such as it would not be un-
safe to put alongside of Milton's work. As a whole,
perhaps the poem of Laodamia is the best example of
his grand style; but he has many passages in other
poems that are even grander than that. The follow-
ing are not his highest strains in this kind, but their
brevity brings them more within my space. The first
QUALITIES OF STYLE.
225
is from his poem of Kilchurn Castle, which is an
ancient war-structure long since abandoned to slow
decay:
Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream
Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age;
Save when the winds sweep by, and sounds are caught
Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs.
O, there is life that breathes not! Powers there are
That touch each other to the quick in modes
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive,
No soul to dream of. What art thou, from care
Cast off, abandon'd by thy rugged Sire,
Nor by soft Peace adopted? Though, in place
And in dimension, such that thou mightst seem
But a mere footstool to yon sovereign Lord,
Huge Cruachan, (a thing that meaner hills
Might crush, nor know that it had suffer'd harm,)
Yet he, not loth, in favor of thy claims
To reverence, suspends his own; submitting
All that the God of Nature hath conferr'd,
All that he holds in common with the stars,
To the memorial majesty of Time
Impersonated in thy calm decay!
The next is from the last book of The Prelude,
where the Poet describes his ascent of Mount Snow-
don in the night, to see from its top the rising of the
Sun. The lower parts of the mountain were covered
with a dense fog, through which the party struggled
up till at last they got above it:
For instantly a light upon the turf
Fell like a flash, and lo! as I look'd up,
The Moon hung naked in a firmament
Of azure without cloud, and at my feet
Rested a silent sea of hoary mist.
A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved
All over this still ocean; and beyond,
15
226
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Far, far beyond, the solid vapors stretch'd,
In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes,
Into the main Atlantic, that appear'd
To dwindle, and give up his majesty,
Usurp'd upon far as the sight could reach.
Not so th' ethereal vault: encroachment none
Was there, nor loss; only th' inferior stars
Had disappear'd, or shed a fainter light
In the clear presence of the full-orb'd Moon ;
Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed
Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay
All meek and silent, save that through a rift
Not distant from the shore whereon we stood,
A fix'd, abysmal, gloomy breathing-place
Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
Innumerable, roaring with one voice!
Heard over earth and sea, and, in that hour,
For so it seem'd, felt by the starry heavens.
Ad
HIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.
No review of Wordsworth can be complete, which
does not make some account of his character as an
artist. It is a well-known principle of ethics that
the direct pursuit of happiness defeats itself; this
being naturally attainable only in an earnest, full-
hearted quest of something else. When we are so
intent upon thinking and doing what is right as to be
lifted clean out of self and all self-regarding aims,
then this Divine benediction springs up to us of its
own accord. Or, again, happiness is a thing which,
if we go after it, we cannot catch, but which, if we
leave it to take care of itself and go about our duty,
is sure to catch us; this, too, no matter how hard
and even painful the duty may be.
It is much the same in art. Of course everybody
knows the old axiom, that "the perfection of art is to
HIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.
227
#
conceal art." This is capital as far as it goes, but I
think it hardly goes far enough. In its highest work,
art is a secret even unto itself; that is to say, has no
thought or consciousness of itself at all. It therefore
uses no concealment whatever, for it has nothing to
conceal its one, sole, burning desire is, to show, to
express the Truth and Beauty it sees, and to express
these just as it sees them. In other words, art does
its best, even as art, when it loses itself utterly in
the clearness, the brightness, the intensity of its vis-
ion, or when its whole mind is so filled and entranced
with the object, the idea, the conception before its
eye, that its self-consciousness is abolished altogether.
So it may most truly be said that art, to find itself,
must lose itself and that to seek itself is to defeat
itself. So, too, the less we think and speak about it
as art, and the more we think - observe, I say think,
not speak of the Truth and Beauty it lets us into
and fills us with, the more good it will do us, and the
better will be its chance of redeeming us.
But this is a degree of perfection which art does
not often hit, for it implies a higher spirituality of
mind than can well be looked for even in saints and
prophets. And art is sure to miss such perfection,
and to hit wide of it, when it sets out to be uncon-
scious. For unconsciousness is not a thing to be
extemporized or got up to order, because seeking to
become unconscious of a thing only makes us more
conscious of it. Hence the need of that mysterious,
elusive thing called inspiration, a divine in-breathing
power, coming no one can tell how or whence, which
surprises, masters, and snatches the subject quite
away from himself. And the thing is most real,
228
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
most true, nor can there be any great poetry, no, nor
any true personal religion either, without it. And
the word enthusiasm, in its radical sense, just ex-
presses the nature and force of it. So the greatest
and loveliest of the old Greek sages, Plato, tells us
that "all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose
their beautiful poems, not as works of art, but because
they are inspired and possessed." And again: "Many
are the noble words in which the poets speak of the
actions they record, but they do not speak of them by
any rules of art; they are inspired, and utter that to
which the Muse impels them."
Now Wordsworth has very little if any conscious
art sometimes I have almost wished he had more of
it, especially in his longer poems. I am apt to think
The Excursion might have been better planned, its
construction, as a whole, more ordered and harmoni-
ous, if he had bestowed upon it some conscious exer-
cise of artistic skill. But, taken all together, I like
his work better as it is. Probably he never aimed at
what is called artistic effect at all; his perfect single-
ness of eye, his downright, stubborn honesty withhold-
ing him from it. In fact, I think he rather studied to
avoid such aim, as tending to artificiality. For there
was in his time, as there is now, a great deal of
swarming, voluble, and noisy cant about art, and he
appears to have got rather disgusted with this, as
indeed he well might. His nearest approach to an
outright sneer is on this subject:
A POET ! — He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropp'd upon the staff
Which Art hath lodged within his hand,
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.
must laugh
HIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.
229
Thy Art be Nature: the live current quaff,
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool
Have kill'd him, Scorn should write his epitaph.
Nevertheless,
fore,
perhaps I should rather say there-
a great many of Wordsworth's smaller poems,
as also of his sonnets, are consummate specimens of
art: perfect I hardly dare call them, in this respect, but
as nearly so as anything we can justly expect to have.
And they come the nearer to the ideal of art-work
for the very reason that there was no aiming at art
in the composition; for, as Professor Shairp observes,
"where the inspiration, as we call it, is most strong
and deep, there a conscious purpose is least present."
For all things right and true are in harmony with
each other, nay, dwell in perfect love and peace to-
gether; there can be no discord among them. I
hardly know how it was with Wordsworth, whether
it was in his making or his training, or in both; but
it rather seems as if Nature had so attuned, not his
genius only, but his whole inner man to her music
and her order, that there was, there could be, in him,
no conflict between impulse and judgment, or between
passion and reason. Rather say that, when he was
most impassioned, then he did what is best in reason.
So that with him passion was itself, or had in itself,
the finest instinct of art. Of course art has its laws;
but such an instinct keeps those laws without knowing
it, keeps them vastly better so than can be done by
any line-and-plummet work. In a word, when an
artist does his best work, it is just because he cannot
help it. We may, therefore, say of Wordsworth, as
an artist, what Mr. Myers well says of him as a poet:
230
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
"It is less often from moods of self-control than from
moods of self-abandonment that the fount of poetry
springs and herein it was that Wordsworth's especial
felicity lay, that there was no one feeling in him
which the world had either repressed or tainted; that
he had no joy which might not be the harmless joy
of all; and that, therefore, it was when he was
most unreservedly himself that he was most pro-
foundly human. All that was needful for him was to
strike down into the deep of his heart."
Of whole poems that seem to me very nearly if not
altogether faultless as works of art, may be named
Laodamia, Dion, the Ode to Duty, the Ode to Lycoris,
the Ode to May, The Two April Mornings, The Foun-
tain, Yarrow Unvisited, and the Evening of Extraordi-
nary Splendor. Others still may well be thought to
come nearer perfection than some of these. And he
has fifty sonnets of which the same may be said. Of
his longer poems, The White Doe of Rylstone is the
finest as a whole, and in its kind has no equal in the
language. It is somewhat more than one fifth as long
as The Excursion. I suppose there must be blemishes
in it as a work of art, but I have never been able to
find them, and I have read it a great many times.
Possibly the Poet might have condensed a little with
advantage.
But Wordsworth's greatest merit, on this score, is,
that so much of his work is Pure Art,-pure, I mean,
as distinguished from Ornate Art, and also from what
is sometimes called Grotesque Art. Now, in pure art,
that which is truly worthy of the name, the workman-
ship stands out round, clear, and solid, no deficiency,
no redundancy; the thought, the idea, the conception,
W
HIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.
231
-
being set forth in simple, naked completeness, and in
that style of beauty which is most adorned in being
wholly unadorned; the idea or the conception being,
withal, so beautiful in itself, that any attempt to en-
hance it by dress only mars or dims it. And Words-
worth has a surprising amount of work which is thus
statuesque in its rounded and clean perfectness of
form and expression; as truly so, though on a smaller
scale, as the Antigone and the Edipus at Colonos of
Sophocles, or the King Lear and the Othello of Shake-
speare; only these tragedies are pure art in the ex-
pression of character, whereas Wordsworth's work is
such only in the expression of ideas and sentiments.
And herein he has no equal in English poetry. This,
I am aware, is saying a good deal, but I speak advis-
edly. The best handling of the subject that I have
met with is in the late Mr. Walter Bagehot's Literary
Studies; and, that I may not seem overbold, I will
quote a little from him. "The English literature,"
says he, contains one great, one nearly perfect,
model of the pure style in the literary expression of
typical sentiment; and one not perfect, but gigantic
and close approximation to perfection in the pure de-
lineation of objective character. Wordsworth, per-
haps, comes as near to choice purity of style in senti-
ment as is possible; Milton, with exceptions and
conditions, approaches perfection by the strenuous
purity with which he depicts character."
66
The subject probably needs to be illustrated some-
what by examples; and sonnets, if not the best in
themselves, are the most available and handiest for
this purpose. The first is on the Extinction of the
Venetian Republic by Napoleon in 1797. And here
232
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
mark how the one idea or sentiment of the lines is cut
and lifted out of all obstructive and needless particu-
lars, and presented with just enough of detail, just feat-
ures enough, to give it due clearness and force:
Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee;
And was the safeguard of the West: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay ;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reach'd its final day :
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is pass'd away.
Here the idea may almost be said to be clothed with
light; a kind of transparent expressiveness, where the
body is lost in the effulgence of the soul within it.
Still better, perhaps, in this respect, is the one to be
given next. In 1802, the liberties of Switzerland
were utterly crushed by Napoleon, and thus driven
from their old mountain-home, their last refuge on
the Continent. This is the theme of the sonnet:
Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!
There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee
Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven:
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft :
Then cleave, O, cleave to that which still is left;
HIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.
233
For, high-soul'd Maid, what sorrow would it be
That Mountain floods should thunder as before,
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!
Perhaps I should have said, before, that Napoleon
was then on the eve of his gigantic preparations for
the invasion of England, and possibly the Poet had
some fear that Liberty would lose the Voice of the
Sea, as she had already lost that of the Mountains.
And these are, I will not say the best, but cer-
tainly good specimens of what I call Wordsworth's
perfect workmanship; and their perfectness lies a
good deal in their austere bareness of ornament: the
thing is done with the fewest and the finest strokes
that may suffice for giving the thought an intelligible
form; no special felicity of detail that can, for an in-
stant, catch the eye away from the total impression;
not an image, not a word, but what helps the vision
of the idea, and, which is more, helps it so much as
not to seem to help it at all.
Such is the stern self-denial of true art in its
whitest purity. In such work, as Mr. Bagehot says,
66 we do not think of that which gives us the idea; we
are absorbed in the idea itself." And again he says,
"To Wordsworth has been vouchsafed the last grace.
of the self-denying artist: you think neither of him
nor his style, but you cannot help thinking of - you
must recall the exact phrase, the very sentiment he
wished."
The Poet has many other sonnets equally good,
and a few perhaps even better, for illustrating the
point in hand; as the one composed on Westminster
Bridge, the one on the Sonnet itself, and the one
234
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
beginning "Hail, Twilight," quoted in a previous
chapter. I add two more in a very different vein
from the preceding:
Well mayst thou halt, and gaze with brightening eye!
The lovely Cottage in the guardian nook
Hath stirr'd thee deeply; with its own dear brook,
Its own small pasture, almost its own sky.
But covet not th' Abode: forbear to sigh,
As many do, repining while they look ;
Intruders, who would tear from Nature's book
This precious leaf, with harsh impiety.
Think what the Home must be if it were thine,
Even thine, though few thy wants! Roof, window, door,
The very flowers are sacred to the Poor,
The roses to the porch which they entwine :
Yea, all that now enchants thee, from the day
On which it should be touch'd, would melt away.
Here we have a calm rapture, a tranquil energy, a
rapture, an energy subdued and compressed into an
intensity so still and so deep, that it almost seems,
through the senses, to transport one clean out of the
world of sense; and all this is partly because the
form or body of the thought is chastened and clari-
fied into the essential purity of the thought itself. —
The following is a favorite with me, and for several
reasons:
Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path there be or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon ;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of Fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought and Love desert us, from that day,
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
HIS CHARACTER AS AN ARTIST.
235
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
Many of the poems, too, have the same quality in
an equal or nearly equal measure. Most of those
before referred to as true works of art are also, in a
very high degree, if not the highest, works of pure
art. And so it is with many others not so referred
to, such as the little poem To the Cuckoo, The Eclipse
of the Sun, and especially that indescribable little
gem of song beginning "Three years she grew in
sun and shower," part of which was quoted in a
former chapter and for another purpose. In fact,
this artistic pureness of form and expression is a gen-
eral characteristic of nearly all the Poet's best work.
In the poems, however, of course the author was
much less circumscribed as to space than in the son-
nets, or was not "bound within the Sonnet's scanty
plot of ground"; and, as he had larger freedom, so
there was less of external pressure. to crowd and
strain a maximum of thought into a minimum of ex-
pression. Nevertheless, so strong was his passion or
his genius for severe purity and solidity of form, that
he used nearly the same rigid self-denial in the poems
as in the sonnets; I mean that self-denial which
abstains from all needless details, however tempting,
and from all such outstanding attractiveness in the
parts as would anyway draw attention to the work-
man, or take the mind off from the work as a whole.
In a word, it is just enough of setting and of just the
right sort to hold and show the pearl. And thus it
is that pure art, be it in painting, in architecture, in
-
236
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
music, or in poetry, achieves that style or that order
of the Beautiful which awes while it attracts, which
chastens while it delights, which humbles while it
elevates.
After quoting so many of the Poet's sonnets, I can-
not well forbear to add a very choice passage of criti-
cism from Sir Henry Taylor, who aptly remarks in
them "an invariable abstinence from antithesis and
false effects. There is," continues he, "hardly one
of these three or four hundred Sonnets which ends in
a point. Pointed lines will sometimes occur in the
course of them, as thought will sometimes naturally
take a pointed shape in the mind: but whether it takes
that shape or another is obviously treated as a matter
of indifference; nothing is sacrificed to it; and at
the close of the sonnet, where the adventitious effect
of the point might be apt to outshine the intrinsic
value of the subject, it seems to have been studiously
avoided. Wordsworth's sonnet never goes off, as it
were, with a clap or repercussion at the close; but is
thrown up like a rocket, breaks into light, and falls
in a soft shower of brightness. To none, indeed, of
the minor forms of poetry are Wordsworth's powers
in some respects better adapted: there is none to
which discrimination in thought and aptitude in lan-
guage are more essential; and there never was a
poet who reached so near to perfection in these par-
ticulars as he."
OFFICE OF CRITICISM.
Hitherto I have spoken comparatively little, proba-
bly too little, of particular poems; my critical work,
OFFICE OF CRITICISM.
237
such as it was, having been mostly of a general char-
acter. A brief time spent in what may be termed
special criticism will bring this series of studies to an
end. Here, however, I am first to make a few obser-
vations in plain disparagement of the kind of work
which I am engaged upon.
Now high poetry, such as the great masters of song
have in all ages and sections of the world produced,
grows and acts in ways and modes past our finding
out: at its heart there lies a secret, divine something
which no logic can grasp or fathom, which no explan-
ation can surround, which eludes, baffles, defies all
our definitions, and even all our mere intellectual per-
ceptions. In other words, the distinctive essence, the
constituent soul of poetry, is in the fullest sense a
mystery,— a thing which science or the human un-
derstanding can nowise catch, and cook or dress up
in logical statement. Criticism, itself a mere work
or process of logic, may think, often does think, it
has done this; but it always turns out that the thing
which made the writing poetry has somehow escaped.
The analysis may seem to be complete, and in one
sense may really be so; but its completeness is
simple death; that is to say, it completes itself by
killing that which it works on. Science may dissect
a bird, to find out how and why the little creature
sings, but the knife just scares away what it is in
quest of, and the real singer forthwith hides itself
in immateriality. For the bird sings because it has
a soul of music within; that is, it has in it that thing
which we call life; and all life is a mystery. In the
bird, to be sure, the life has a special form and is
touched with special instincts, so that it naturally
238
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
sings, and cannot choose but sing; but this nowise
lessens the mysteriousness of it.
And so poetry, true poetry, is a live thing; and the
being alive, or the having life, is just that which
makes it what it is, its constitutive principle. This
life we can feel, can apprehend, can enjoy, for it
speaks to, it touches a kindred and responsive life
within us; but analysis can no more overtake it than
it can overtake the life of a bird, can no more find
out the secret of its effect than it can find out the
secret of a bird's singing. Not indeed but that science
and criticism are good and useful things, — good and
useful, I mean, as applied to works of poetry and art:
here, as elsewhere, they have high uses, but not the
highest, they may subserve important ends, but not
the most important. To do this, however, they should
not claim, nor should be supposed, to do too much:
for, if their results claim, or are supposed, to include
all there is in the matter they work upon, then their
work is simply false and misleading, and must needs
do more hurt than good; and this because, after they
have done their utmost, there still remains something
over and above, which they have not found; and this
remaining something is just the most important of all.
Therefore it is that those verse-makers or would-be
poets who know precisely the how and the why of
what they write, and who are so perfect in their art as
to "laugh by precept only, and shed tears by rule,"
therefore it is that these are so innocent of what I
mean by poetry; for here it may well be said, with
something of special emphasis, that "he is oft the
wisest man who is not wise at all."
What, then, is the right office of criticism, or to
OFFICE OF CRITICISM.
239
what good end may it be profitably used? Now great
poets, as I have said before, are interpreters of Nature,
and their worth is measured by the truth and depth
of this interpretation. But it often happens that
their work, in order to produce its full effect for
the good of mankind, needs itself to be further inter-
preted, and thereby opened out and brought down
nearer to the comprehension of average minds. And
this is the rightful office of criticism; here it may do,
often has done, true and laudable service. In my
own experience I have found it highly useful both as
an incentive to the study and also as an aid to the
understanding of great authors; and, what with the
incentive and the aid, it has done much to widen and
to heighten both the pleasure and the profit of the
study. So far, good, nothing but good. But suppose
I had made it a diversion from that study, then evil,
nothing but evil. And criticism is often so used or
abused as, in effect if not in form, to displace and
supersede the thing criticised. A critic defines so
much as may be definable in a poet's work; his defi-
nition is imagined to include all there is in the work,
to have plucked out the heart of its mystery; and so
is made a substitute for the work itself. This is an
easy and compendious way of coming at a talkative
and showy knowledge of authors, great or small, as
the case may be, and so serves as a cheap preparation
for what George MacDonald describes as "that in-
fernal parody of Heaven called Society." Here criti-
cism is put between the author and the reader, so as
to keep them apart; whereas it is good for nothing
but as it draws them closer together and helps them
to a deeper communion with each other. And criti-
:
240
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
cism so used is an unmitigable nuisance, and the less
we have to do with it the better, and the sooner we
get rid of it altogether, the better still.
THE ODE ON IMMORTALITY.
In my Wordsworth classes, of course I often have
occasion to use his great Ode on Immortality. Yet
I always dread to take it in hand, as, in my Shake-
speare classes, I dread to take Hamlet in hand,
because some things in it are so very hard to be un-
derstood, — hard, not, I think, from any fault in the
Poet's expression of his thoughts, but from the na- .
ture of the thoughts themselves. And, outside of my
classes, I have not seldom been applied to for explan-
ations of certain parts of the Ode. This must be my
excuse, if any excuse be needed, for undertaking to
do somewhat in the line of such explanation now.
Perhaps, indeed, most readers here find no such diffi-
culties in their way as I have been troubled with.
But the Ode is commonly set down as the greatest
of Wordsworth's poems, the crowning glory of his
genius; and many people easily persuade themselves
that they thoroughly understand and enjoy a work
that stands so high in the roll of fame. It is a
rather ungracious thing to do aught that may even
look like flying in face of people who wish to love, or
who think they wish to love, what is in itself so good.
Nevertheless I may as well confess that the merits of
the Ode, as a whole, seem to me to have been put
something too high; albeit I feel it to be a great, a
very great poem; and I think parts of it go so high,
that praise can hardly go beyond them. As a whole,
THE ODE ON IMMORTALITY.
257
The great Ode was written in 1803-6. From that
time onward, the mighty inspiration which had lifted
the Poet into it, and carried him through it, gradually
fell off; the (splendor of his ecstatic vision grew dim-
mer and dimmer, though the wisdom of reflection and
of "the philosophic mind" continued to enrich his
mind more and more.
66
At length, in 1818, an even-
ing of extraordinary splendor and beauty" brought
back to him the old vision in its full strength, but
only for a brief time. The poem written on that
occasion is one of his very best, and is suffused with
the genuine light of the great Ode; but the light is
somewhat subdued and softened, and therefore even
more grateful than when at its brightest. A part of
it will not unfitly close my long review of the Poet:
Time was when field and watery cove
With modulated echoes rang,
While choirs of fervent Angels sang
Their vespers in the grove;
Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height,
Warbled, for Heaven above and Earth below,
Strains suitable to both. Such holy rite,
Methinks, if audibly repeated now
From hill or valley, could not move
Sublimer transport, purer love,
Than doth this silent spectacle, — the gleam,
The shadow, and the peace supreme!
No sound is utter'd, but a deep
And solemn harmony pervades
The hollow vale from steep to steep,
And penetrates the glades.
Far-distant images draw nigh,
Call'd forth by wondrous potency
Of beamy radiance, that imbues
Whate'er it strikes, with gem-like hues !
In vision exquisitely clear,
..
17
258
STUDIES IN WORDSWORTH.
Herds range along the mountain side ;
And glistening antlers are descried ;
And gilded flocks appear.
Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve!
But, long as god-like wish or hope divine
Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe
That this magnificence is wholly thine:
From worlds not quicken'd by the Sun
A portion of the gift is won.
Such hues from their celestial Urn
Were wont to stream before mine eye,
Where'er it wander'd in the morn
Of blissful infancy.
This glimpse of glory, why renew'd?
Nay, rather speak with gratitude;
For, if a vestige of those gleams
Survived, 't was only in my dreams.
Dread Power! whom peace and calmness serve
No less than Nature's threatening voice,
If aught unworthy be my choice,
From THEE if I would swerve;
Ö, let Thy grace remind me of the light
Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored;
Which, at this moment, on my waking sight
Appears to shine, by miracle restored :
My soul, though yet confined to Earth,
Rejoices in a second birth!
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
Y
My main subject, in this essay, is Acquirement and
Culture, their relative force and value in building
up and beautifying the human mind. As subsidiary
to this, I propose to discourse somewhat touching the
several uses or functions of Science and Literature in
the work or the process of what we call Liberal Edu-
cation. And I am to view Science as being mainly,
though not exclusively, the field of acquirement, and
Literature as being, in a pre-eminent sense, the gar-
den of culture. But it seems needful, or at least
highly desirable, that we should first endeavor to
gain some clear and definite ideas as to what Science
and Literature are; wherein they differ; and what
is the proper scope, nature, aptitude, and efficacy of
each.
Now Science is the product of the human under-
standing merely, the joint, progressive, cumulative
result of many minds working outside of their respec-
tive idioms or individualities, and in what they have
in common. It is concerned with the forces, elements,
qualities, and operations of the material world, the
order and relation of its objects, events, and proc-
esses its business is to discover, to demonstrate,
260
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
and to make known the truth of things in that world;
and in its language truth is but another name for
ascertained and immutable law. In this work, the
understanding interrogates physical Nature, and, as
it were, compels her to give up her secrets. Having
once mastered her laws, Science then has, in some
degree, the command of her vast powers, and can use
them as its servants or ministers. As Science pro-
ceeds from the understanding alone, so it appeals to
and exercises that faculty alone; that is to say, the
naked and cold abstractions of the intellect are its
proper food and life: so that it touches and draws
into play only one part or one side of our complex
and many-sided being.
It is to be noted, further, that authors and books
of science have, for the most part, but a brief period
of interest or currency, the later continually super-
seding the earlier, and leaving them behind; for, in-
deed, as the results are strictly impersonal, and stand
free from idiomatic sap or taste, such books have
nothing but what others may draw off and reproduce:
and, as Science is progressive, and keeps gaining new
matter, and the new keeps modifying the old, and the
thing never stays long in one shape, so the reproduc-
tion soon puts the original out of date, and pushes it
out of sight.
This statement is almost enough of itself to point
out the widely different scope, nature, and efficacy of
literary workmanship. Works of literature, espe-
cially those of the higher order, have their very life
in what is personal, idiomatic, and individual in the
authors. The man, his heart, his soul, his genius, his
character, are in his work, and inseparable from it.
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
261
Its proper virtue can no more be drawn off, and put
into another form, than the soul of a man can be
taken out of his body, and set up in a new one. And
such works deal not with the abstractions of the un-
derstanding, mere skeletons, that have no blood in
them, but with the concrete, living, breathing things
of Nature. So that they touch and kindle many sides,
feed and exercise many parts, of our being at one and
the same time: when at their best, they propagate
and thrill their virtue through the whole mind, touch-
ing all its sides, kindling all its powers. And such
works live on from age to age: even the death of
the languages in which they were written is not
enough to break their hold on human interest and
thought. All that was written of science in Shake-
speare's time became mere "dust for oblivion" long
ago; but not much has yet been done towards
ousting Shakespeare's plays, or Spenser's poems, or
Bacon's essays from the minds and memories of
men. And so it is, in a greater or less degree, with
high literary workmanship generally. For, indeed,
not to be obsolescent, is the very proof and character
of such workmanship.
A
Now the great characteristic of our time is in the
number and magnitude of the conquests and triumphs
which Science has achieved in the world of sense.
So rapid and sustained has been this onward march,
that Science herself seems now to have her head well-
nigh turned by it. For so several of her leaders are
thought to have displayed "something too much" of
the bigotry, arrogance, and dogmatism which were
once supposed to be the special freehold of theology.
I am not sorry for this; for I hope it will have the
262
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
effect of shaming Christian teachers out of those un-
handsome exhibitions.
But the recent progress of Science in extorting Na-
ture's secrets is not the thing that most excites our
wonder. Still more astonishing is its course in tam-
ing her mighty energies to the hand, and harnessing
them into the service, of Earth's rightful lord: so
that we now almost seem in danger of being spoiled
by the vastness of its practical fruits in material com-
forts and facilities. Herein its work nearly equals,
nay, indeed, quite outstrips, the wonders wrought by
Prospero through the airy spirits whom he has taught
and trained to obey his "so potent art." For what
are those spirits but bold poetical impersonations of
the laws and forces which Science catches and puts to
work? So that we may well say with Wordsworth,
True is it, Nature hides
Her treasures less and less. Man now presides
In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;
Science advances with gigantic strides :
But are we aught enrich'd in love and meekness?
Can aught be found in us of pure and wise
More than in humbler times graced human story?
That makes our hearts more apt to sympathize
With Heaven?
It is the boast of some, and it is the fear of others,
that Science is to have exclusive possession of the
human mind; religion, poetry, and whatever comes
under the name of humane letters, being left behind,
as no longer of any interest or use. And indeed, in
certain quarters, Science is, or seems to be, claiming
and asserting the right to supersede and replace all
other forms and preparations of thought. And it
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
263
rests this claim on the ground, that those other forms
of thought are strictly irrational, or that they have no
real foothold within the proper domain of Reason,
and so are nowise covered by her authority, have no
maintainable right to plead her sanctions. To all
this add, that Science is now, as some think, in the
process of enthroning Reason in her rightful suprem-
acy, and of investing her with her just powers and
prerogatives, insomuch that the human mind cannot
long continue to acknowledge any other law, or to
regard any other interests, add all this, and it
clearly follows, that the forecited claims of Science
are not to be reproved or gainsaid: therewithal, its
progress towards "solely sovereign sway and master-
dom" is likely to be sure and speedy; which happy
consummation being once attained, the other forms
of thought in question must then be relegated into
outer darkness and blank oblivion; the human mind
having quite outgrown them, so as to have no further
use for them, no further interest in them.
Here the postulate of Science plainly is, that the
understanding, or the logical faculty, the faculty of
strict and irresistible demonstration, is the one sole
organ of Reason in the human mind. Such being the
case, it is clear that the other parts of our being, the
moral, emotional, and imaginative parts, can have no
rights that are to be respected in the courts of Reason:
as inlets of truth, or as fountains of law, they are of
no account whatever; and, if they are admitted as
such, if they are allowed to play any part as umpires
or exponents of Nature's authentic teachings, the
result can be nothing but delusion and superstition.
Here, of course, everything that falls under the head
264
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
of what we call faith is quite ruled off: as rational
beings, we have no right to affirm anything, to believe
anything, but what demonstration rigidly, inexorably,
forces upon us. For so it is, that scientific proof
leaves no choice, no freedom whatsoever, touching
the matter proved: whoever understands the proof,
finds his assent literally compelled: love, hope, fear,
joy, conscience, "the vision and the faculty divine,"
have no vote or voice in the business, are, indeed,
peremptorily gagged.
Now are we really bound to admit the postulate
aforesaid? Has it been, can it be, scientifically
proved that the understanding proper, the faculty of
scientific demonstration, is the only organ of Reason
in man? I doubt it. I am not aware that any one
propounds it as an intuitive truth, such as to com-
mand the assent without proof; nor does it commend
itself to me as an intuitive truth: so I take the lib-
erty to deny the whole thing, and to call for the proof
of it. I hold the moral, emotional, and imaginative
parts of our being to be, in their time and place,
just as truly, just as highly, organs of Reason, as the
understanding part; that the three former have each
their rightful spheres of action and command; that
in their spheres they are just as good inlets of truth,
just as high fountains of law; and that Reason her-
self owns their voices to be as authentic and authori-
tative, as that of the understanding is in its proper
sphere. In other words, there are truths of the im-
agination, truths of the heart, truths of the con-
science; and these are, in their place and time, just
as true, and full as important, carry as precious and
as needful treasures in their hands, as those of the
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
265
scientific faculty. These truths are not indeed scien-
tifically demonstrable, for then there would be no
choice or freedom in them; nevertheless they are, to
all intents and purposes, just as much truths of the
Reason as anything that the understanding is distinc-
tively cognizant of. Love, pity, tenderness, admira-
tion, gratitude, reverence, what would our life be
worth, without these? Yet these things stand on
their own independent ground, and have rights of
their own they are nowise amenable to the bar of
scientific proof: demonstrative logic has no jurisdic-
tion over them, or the matter of them: they have, in
their turn, just as good a right to give laws to the
understanding, as the understanding has to give laws
to them. Virtue has at least as good a right to be as
knowledge has, and its being is of at least as deep
concernment to us. Art, also, has as good a right
to be as science, and its being is as fruitful of joy and
beneficence to us. So, again, beauty, loveliness, aw-
fulness have as good a right to be as logic and con-
clusive experiment have; and they are, in the fullest
sense, as conversant with truth, law, order, and ra-
tional intelligence, as demonstration is. The bird
alive and singing, the flower growing and breathing,
have meanings and messages as wholesome and pre-
cious as any results of analysis and dissection can be.
The telescope is indeed a magnificent invention; all
honor to it and to what it reveals! yet I suspect that
Night, star-tongued, though a very ancient orator, has
lessons as inspiring, as uplifting, as expanding, as any
that come through our modern optic glasses.
The light of the understanding is proverbially cold
and dry, still it has its rights, and is, in its place and
266
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
turn, just the grandest thing in the world; yet warmth
is as needful to our health and comfort as light: then
too the imagination, the heart, the conscience dis-
course light as well as warmth from their eyes. All
these have their proper freehold and roothold in the
truth of things: they live and act in a rather unscien-
tific manner, to be sure, but very effectively and be-
neficently nevertheless: the methods of scientific proof
are nowise applicable or relevant to them; yet the
truths of which they have to tell are just the dearest
and sweetest of all truths to the human soul. Beauty
is well said to be the splendor of truth, as love is also
said to be the splendor of virtue; and the splendor of
both is as authentic and benign as anything else about
them, as rich in strength and joy to us as the sub-
stance itself is; as venerable too in the eye of Na-
ture. Who, then, shall take upon him to say that
these things have no part or lot in the divine fran-
chises of Reason? And why, in the presence of these
things, should scientific proof put on airs and look big,
as much as to say, "I am Sir Oracle; and, when I ope
my lips, let no dog bark"?
I have said that the moral, emotional, and imagina-
tive parts of our being have each their proper truths
or spheres of truth; and that each is, in its proper
sphere, of ultimate or paramount authority. So that,
under Reason, these have each their several rights
and powers, which, in their time and place, are
strictly co-ordinate with those of the understanding.
For so imagination and emotion are the creative
powers of art as such, they have their own laws,-
laws standing without the pale of scientific proof;
and in the realm of art their legislation is supreme;
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
267
this, too, because Reason herself so orders it. Hence
the well-known proverbial saying, that "love's reason
is without reason"; which means that love does not
act, and is not bound to justify itself, by the methods
of logic; and that, so far at least as regards the un-
derstanding proper, it is a law unto itself, and has a
perfect right to be so. In other words, love has, or
makes, a truth of its own, as also a proof of its own,
and so will not submit to the bondage of demonstra-
tive procedure. And that we should laugh and weep
by the rules of grammar and logic, parsing and syllo-
gizing our way through them, however the faculties of
scientific proof may affirm it and seek to enforce it, is
nevertheless a position that Nature, and the faculties
of art, which are Nature's organs and ministers, utterly
reject, and appeal to their own distinctive rights under
the sovereignty of Reason. For indeed passion and
imagination do not move or speak by the charts of
scientific direction; and the moment they proceed to
do so they lose their nature, cease to be themselves,
and sink into mere mechanical drudges, all the life
and spirit which are naturally theirs being strangled
out of them.
Accordingly art, especially the poetic form of it,
is seen, every now and then, unfolding new powers
and breaking out in new spots: however logic may
prescribe rules for it, and point out how it ought to
proceed, still it goes its own way, laughing at and
spurning aside the dogmas of technical prescription,
and justifying its course by the work it actually per-
forms. It is quite in vain, therefore, that the methods
of science go about to pen up the genius of poetry
within their formal rulings and findings: for the
268
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
machine-poetry thus produced is but a hollow imita-
tion, with no heart inside of it, no blood in its veins,
nor even any veins for blood to flow in; a mere ap-
pearance, in fact, and so enough of itself to condemn
its origin.
66
Poetry," says Mr. Myers in his capital book on
Wordsworth, "Poetry, like all the arts, is essentially
a 'mystery.' Its charm depends upon qualities which
we can neither define accurately, nor reduce to rule,
nor create again at pleasure. Mankind, however, are
unwilling to admit this; and they endeavor, from time
to time, to persuade themselves that they have dis-
covered the rules which will produce the desired
effect. And so much of the effect can be thus pro-
duced, that it is often possible to believe for a time
that the problem has been solved. Pope, for in-
stance, was by general admission a poet. But his
success seemed to depend on imitable peculiarities;
and Pope's imitators were so like Pope, that it was
hard to draw a line, and say where they ceased to be
poets. At last, however, this imitative school began
to prove too much. If all the insipid verses which
they wrote were poetry, what was the use of writing
poetry at all?" And Wordsworth speaks to the
same sense in a sonnet which I am never tired of
repeating:
A POET ! — He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropp'd upon the staff
Which Art hath lodged within his hand, — must laugh
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.
Thy Art be Nature! the live current quaff,
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else, when critics grave and cool
Have kill'd him, Scorn should write his epitaph.
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
269
How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold?
Because the lovely little flower is free
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold ;
And so the grandeur of the forest-tree
Comes not by casting in a formal mould,
But from its own divine vitality.
Further I have said that the imagination, the
heart, the conscience are as truly the inlets or or-
gans of light and law as the understanding is. By
their action we come to the knowledge of many things
that must else be to us unknown and unknowable.
Through them the mind is perceptive or cognizant
of certain truths,-truths different indeed from those
of scientific demonstration, but nowise inferior in
rank, nor less effective towards the discipline, the
beauty, and the felicity of human souls. In brief,
they are the eyes, so to speak, through which the
soul- the man in men converses with what is
supersensuous and spiritual in Nature, things of
which Science, as such, knows and can know nothing
whatsoever. For the understanding, or the scientific
faculty, the faculty that judges according to sense, is
conversant only with the sensuous and material parts
of Nature; and the things of the spirit, such as Deity,
religion, immortality, virtue, moral beauty, are quite
beyond its recognition; and, if its methods are taken
as the sole or ultimate criterion of what is, then they
must be pronounced non-existent. But there are yet
66 more things in Heaven and Earth than are dream'd
of in your philosophy," -the philosophy of negation
or agnosticism: Nature still refuses to be surrounded
and exhausted by logical diagrams: she has her cabi-
net of imponderables, — laws, powers, principles that
270
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
our optics and our chemistry, our microscopes and
our crucibles, can neither overtake nor scare out of
being: Science may dogmatize that it is irrational to
believe in them, but Reason will own them as a part
of her domain nevertheless. For so, as was lòng ago
taught, the scientific study of Nature is not the only
way of coming at the truth about her: she has rays
of light which still elude our finest manipulations ;
and I suspect that our optic-glasses may be so used
as to shut out more of light than they let in. In the
words of another, "Her loveliness is also a revelation,
and the soul that is in unison with her is justified by
its own peace."
Now an irreverent man of course finds no sacred-
ness anywhere, because, to be sure, he has no eye, no
sense, to find it with. Nor can Science help him to
the vision of it, for it transcends or eludes all her
modes of proof, and, according to our Positivists,
what she cannot prove is, to her, non-existent. And
so, again, unless a man have the counterpart of a
primrose blooming within,
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more.
For, indeed, without love in the heart, a man can see
or feel no loveliness in Nature, because he is of course
color-blind to that part of her effluence. It is no
doubt familiar to us all, that the music we hear is
nothing, externally, but diversified vibrations of air,
which become music to us by touching and playing
the infinitely-delicate keys of an internal organ: if
this organ be wanting, no sound is heard; if it be
+
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
271
out of tune, the music is but noise. Thus the "touches
of sweet harmony" are truly nothing to us without an
answering harmony in the soul. And so, generally,
we find in the world around us just what we have the
faculties for finding; and, according as our inward
powers are more or less responsive and alive, so ex-
ternal Nature shows more or less of riches ready to
drop upon us; the world thus being a very different
thing to different minds.
C
I have spoken of the understanding, the imagina-
tion, the heart, the conscience, as being alike organs
of Reason, and as standing, under her, in the relation
of co-ordinate powers.
But here must come in one
exception or qualification. In strictness of speech,
conscience, the moral sense, the faculty percipient
of right and wrong, is the highest organ of Reason
in man. For, as virtue or righteousness is the su-
preme good and crowning beauty of the soul, so that
part of our being in and by which virtue lives has the
right of sovereignty over the whole man; and to put
it in a lower place is the same, in effect, as giving it
no place at all. In other words, conscience must be
supreme in our intellectual house, else it can be truly
nothing. And so it differs from the other parts of
the mind in this, that it gives law to them all, but
receives it from none of them, but only from Reason
herself. This order is the one condition of inward
unity and peace: otherwise, the soul is a house divided
against itself; and discord and misery, the discord
and misery of lawlessness, each part at war with the
others, and even with itself, are the sure result. I
say that conscience is justly subject only to the law
of Reason. But to that law she is subject indeed,
272
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
and so has no right of ultimate authority in and of
herself. For Reason is indeed one and the same with
the Divine Order of the world: and when conscience
disowns that Order, and assumes to be a law unto
itself, it then becomes, in the fullest sense, fanati-
cism, and so is just the most lawless thing in human
nature.
Now, to science, as such, or under the rule of scien-
tific proof, there is no such thing as moral truth: her
fingers cannot grasp it, her methods cannot touch it:
of right and wrong in their distinctive character she
knows nothing; she knows only of pleasure and pain;
and right and wrong are to her only other names of
pleasure and pain. And so virtue has, in strictness
of thought, no place in her system; and, if she uses
the word, it is only as another name for prudence or
enlightened self-interest: whereas virtue, to be rightly
itself, must be a passion of the soul, and not a mere
conviction of the understanding; though, of course,
it should be this too. To be sure, our Positivists
claim to be strictly conscientious in the pursuit of
truth; and no doubt they are so, and I honor them
for it but the claim is, on their own principles, un-
scientific, or at least extra-scientific. Truth is, with
them, a passion, as indeed it ought to be; but science,
in itself, is passionless, and has no right to be other-
wise. So it seems that, in order to be good men in
their work, they have to be better than their creed:
disclaiming in theory all faith, they nevertheless evince
in practice a strong faith in the law of moral goodness;
while it cannot be scientifically proved that there is
any such law.
:
From all which, may we not conclude that science
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
273
can nowise attain her proper ends but in the strength
or inspiration of higher ends? that, to be rightly and
truly herself, she must fasten upon a law beyond and
above herself?
Moreover, scientific knowledge, as such, has no
purifying and elevating effect on the mind whatever;
it is perfectly consistent with the lowest and coarsest
sensuality, as it also is with the most refined intel-
lectual depravity: but, if pursued passionately or en-
thusiastically, as it may be and often is, then the
passion or the enthusiasm will have a purifying and
elevating effect and I hope it need not be said that
the impassioned or enthusiastic pursuit of virtue or of
beauty will have the same effect in at least an equal
degree.
It is well known that some of the Positivists frankly
avow that they suffer great mental anguish, intense
grief of heart, in being compelled, as they think they
are, by the stern law of Reason, to throw off all
faith, all religion, all belief in God and immortality,
and in those spiritual elements which religion implies
as a part of our complex being. They say, and say
truly, that these things are full of mystery; and that
Reason, or science, as the one sole form of Reason,
cannot live in a house where mystery is cherished.
As they are surely honest in this, I can but regard
their state as calling for profound and most respect-
ful commiseration. But I must needs think that they
are sadly though uprightly mistaken; and that Rea-
son speaks more divinely, more authentically, in their
sorrow than in their science; this, too, because they
are really "greater than they know," and because that
greatness is ensouled with certain strong instincts of
1
18
274
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
Reason which cannot be pinched into silence without
intense pain. And, if pleasure be, as they think it is,
the sole legitimate end of science, why should they
torment themselves in the pursuit of science? or why
pursue it on such grounds as must hold their minds
stretched on the rack? Why become so religiously
self-exacting in their cause, when all religion is, in
their creed, utterly unscientific? Surely the faith, or
the illusion, that comforts and uplifts, is, in the eye
of Reason, better than the fact, or the demonstration,
that tortures and casts down.
These men admit, withal, nay, affirm, that Art is,
in its various forms, a natural, a rational, a legitimate
source of pleasure. This pleasure, they say, is a fact,
and, as such, science can neither deny nor ignore it.
They themselves find comfort and solace in works of
art; and they urge, and justly urge, such comfort and
solace as inferring that Art has a firm roothold in the
nature of things; that it has a vital sap of truth cir-
culating through its body, a genuine heart of Reason
throbbing along its veins and speaking from its eyes.
Yet Art, as we have seen, is nowise a matter of sci-
entific proof; the methods of demonstration are not
applicable to it; it proceeds by other laws than the
logical faculty is properly cognizant of; and its best
effects are produced in ways that are, in the fullest
sense, mysterious and inexplicable. Doubtless the
understanding has, or should have, a share in the
process; yet here it is to work subject to the laws of
passion and imagination. For in all true Art-work
the creative powers are supreme, the logical subordi-
nate; and, if this order be reversed, the result is
mechanism, not art.
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
275
Now who knows, or how can science prove, that the
effects of Art are not all a delusion, or that the sup-
posed truth of Art is not a stark unreality, and no
truth at all? And what right has Science to take
pleasure in anything but demonstrated truths, —
truths that have passed her own prescribed ordeals
of proof and authenticity? If these truths are SO
precious and dear to humanity, that prolonged and
exquisite suffering must, in Reason, be endured in
finding and proving them, how is Reason to justify us
in accepting comfort and solace at the hand of Art,
when the truth of Art, if it have any truth, is un-
proved and unprovable by the logic of science? And,
if Reason can justify us in doing this, why may she
not equally justify us in finding comfort and solace
in the house of Religion, or in drawing strength and
joy from the wells of Christian faith, hope, and char-
ity? For the pleasure of religion is as much a fact
as the pleasure of Art; and the supposed truths of
religion are not a whit more undemonstrable, scien-
tifically, than the supposed truth of Art. And, if the
delight and joy of Art authenticate Art as founded in
the nature and truth of things, why may not the de-
light and joy of religious faith authenticate such faith
also as equally founded in the nature and truth of
things?
So that I do not well see how Science can, consist-
ently, put religion down, and yet hold up art. As
these both stand on essentially the same ground, it is
not self-evident why the one may stand, while the
other must fall. To be sure, the forms of art are
visible; but the truth, the soul, of art is not visible,
save as it makes itself so in and through the forms.
276
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
A
The truth, or the soul, of religion has, we know, its
highest, clearest, strongest revelation in and through
the lives and characters of holy and heroic men and
women; but this soul has also the right and the
power of revealing itself to human sense through the
forms of art. And this may well be so, since Art is,
both philosophically and historically, the daughter of
the religious sentiment in man. And, surely, Art
must be held in perennial communion with its origin,
it must still keep drawing nutriment from the breast
of its mother, else it cannot long survive, save as a
barren and inoperative form. For, in this, as in some
other things, though the stream may run on awhile
after being cut off from its source, yet it must sooner
or later waste away and dry up, leaving only the
empty channel of its once happy and fruitful life.
Once more: We have seen that the conclusions of
science are necessary; that in reference to them
there is no such thing as choice or freedom of thought;
that whatever mind understands the process is carried
along irresistibly, and shut up inexorably in the result.
So that the truths of science are and must be the
same to all who fairly comprehend them. The very
constituent of them is, that they preclude all doubt
and question, and tie the mind up in certainty. They
can, therefore, take no cast or color from the mind
that contemplates them: individual will, taste, apti-
tude, predisposition, character have no part or lot,
no life or motion, in the matter. Here, then, in this
august and beautiful mansion built by Science, all
hopes, fears, misgivings, anxieties are hushed, have
indeed no room, no air, in which to breathe or stir.
Now there are times when I like, above all things, to
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
277
sojourn in just such a realm as this; a realm where
doubts and scruples do not tease the brain; where
choice and freedom of thought cannot enter; where
likes and dislikes, apprehensions and responsibili-
ties, have nothing to stick upon. It is a place for
the mind to set up its rest in. Sometimes, "feel-
ing the weight of too much liberty," I long, as I
am sure all thoughtful minds must, "I long for a
repose that ever is the same." At such times it
is supremely refreshing and health-giving to dwell
in the calm presence of ascertained and immutable
law.
But the human mind is not so made as to acquiesce
permanently in such a state. For the element of will,
choice, and freedom of thought is a part of its birth-
right, and is one of its highest and strongest instincts.
The still firmness and solidity of necessary truth is a
good house to rest in, but it is not the best air to fly
in; and, as the mind has wings, so there are times
when it craves and must have free air to use them in.
Such air it has in the realm of religious, moral, emo-
tional, and imaginative truths, - truths which, as
before remarked, are nowise strictly demonstrable,
but only probable, with some things to be said for
them, and some against them; the probability ranging
through many degrees of strength, till it reaches the
point of what is called moral certainty. Here we
have free scope for the play of personal idiom: our
individual tastes, aptitudes, wills, preferences, predis-
positions, our susceptibilities of art, our emotions of
beauty, our sentiments of right and wrong, here draw
the breath of their proper life; and so the course a
man takes in these things is a just exercise and index
278
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
of his moral, intellectual, and emotional character.
They are indeed Nature's appointed school for the
development and discipline of character; the school
where a man naturally reveals not only what he sees
and knows, but what he is. And as this is the native
sphere, the vital air, of hope, fear, love, friendship,
pity, tenderness, admiration, gratitude, reverence, so
it is the heart's natural home, the garden where the
human soul grows and blooms, and puts forth its
foliage of power and beauty and benignity.
Here I must pause a moment, to notice what seems
to me a matter of no small importance. A distin-
guished public lecturer of our time maintains, if I
rightly understand him, that the cardinal truths or
teachings of religion in general, and of Christianity
in particular, are of a nature to challenge and under-
go, in all its sternness, the ordeal of scientific proof.
This position I hold to be quite untenable and mis-
leading. The methods of science, I repeat, are rigidly
demonstrative; the truths of science strictly demon-
strable; insomuch as to compel the assent of every
mind fairly intelligent of the process. Now I must
still think that the truths or the teachings in ques-
tion cannot stand, ought not to stand, the tests of
rigid demonstration, and would be good for nothing
as moral and religious truths, if they could. In other
words, that they cannot face the ordeal of the scien-
tific logic, is because they are above it, not because
they are below it: their very efficacy depends on their
being of another jurisdiction: in the essential order
of things, and by virtue of that which makes them
what they are, their venue is in a higher court. For
freedom of mind, or freedom of thought, is of the
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
279
essence of morality and religion in other words,
the law of righteousness is a law of individual lib-
erty; and free choice is the proper constituent of it.
Against what I have been saying, it is often urged
that the moral, emotional, and imaginative parts of
our being are untrustworthy; that at all times they
have been fruitful sources of error and delusion.
And this is true. But then it may be not less truly
answered, that there is no one thing whereby men
have been more frequently or more fatally led astray
than by "false conclusions of the reasoning power."
And "the reasoning power" does not here mean the
Reason, but what is sometimes called the "faculty of
ratiocination," that is to say, the understanding proper,
or the power of deducing general conclusions from
particular facts or premises. For so men often rea-
son themselves into errors, into follies, and even into
crimes; but Reason herself never draws men into
these, neither can she do so; for, indeed, such draw-
ing is altogether against Reason. I suspect, in fact,
that full half the strayings and lapses of human life
proceed from blunders and failures of the logical
faculty. On the other hand, nothing is more com-
mon than to see the spontaneous wisdom of the heart
reproving and refuting the elaborate errors of the
head. Does not this infer that men may at least live
as wisely and as safely in the heart as in the under-
standing? And, indeed, whatever is highest, purest,
and most heroic in human character is much more
a thing of passion than of logic. So that we may
accept, without reserve, the axiomatic saying of
the great philosopher Poet, that "passion itself is
highest Reason in a soul sublime." And the under-
280
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
standing is apt to be a mere groper or groveller,
unless the heart set it on fire, and the imagination
lend it wings.
What, then, shall we say of the millennial absolutism
of science which is promised us, but that it is a merci-
less objective necessity or compulsion crushing down
and extinguishing all subjective freedom? the very
thing that theological dogmatism has often tried to
do, but never with lasting success. For, under such
a rule, the individual mind is absolutely nothing, the
external law everything. But the individual mind will
and must insist on being something, something to
itself at least, whether it be so to the universal power
outside itself or not. And, if this be true of the in-
dividual mind, still more is it true of the collective
mind of humanity.
I have no fears, therefore, that Science is going to
obtain exclusive possession of the human mind. Men
will continue to live very much as they have hitherto
lived, partly by understanding indeed, but partly also
by imagination, by emotion, by conscience, and by
faith; and their present life will continue to be more
or less shaped and sustained by anticipations of a life
to come. So it will still hold true, that
We live by admiration, hope, and love;
And, even as these are well and wisely fix'd,
In dignity of being we ascend.
The foregoing remarks indicate, with, I hope, toler-
able clearness, what culture has in hand to do, how
it works, and also where the proper means and forces
of it chiefly reside. For culture pertains to the whole
man: it cares alike for all the interests and capa-
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
281
bilities of our manifold being: its office is to kindle,
quicken, feed, and enrich the mind through all its
powers and susceptibilities; at the same time draw-
ing and attempering them into harmony, equipoise,
and co-operative energy. To make the most and the
best of all that we have and all that we are, this is
its aim and scope. And so its perfect work is when
it establishes all the parts and faculties of a man in
concurrent and coefficient action, each sympathizing
with and helping all the others.
If the views I have set forth be at all correct, it is
manifest that Science, as such, that is to say, pure
science, can do comparatively little in this work the
larger and better share of it lies outside her circle.
For, while our nature is many-sided, science, though
a very great and noble thing, is notwithstanding a
one-sided thing, a thing that feeds and exercises
only one part of the mind. A high tonic and gym-
nastic of the understanding it is indeed, and so far a
most important element or agent of culture; still it
leaves the other faculties, the moral, emotional, and
imaginative faculties, out in the cold. Yet there is
one further respect in which it involves the finest
general culture also: for it sets and holds the mind
in converse with the orderly and beautiful laws of
physical Nature; and such converse ministers, more
perhaps than any other one thing, to that purity and
severity of taste, that chastened relish of austere and
solid sweetness, which is one of the prime character-
istics of a round, symmetrical, and finished mind.
So that here it comes in as one of the co-ordinate and
coefficient factors of a full, living, operative intelli-
gence. And, as good taste is at one with pure morals
282
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
and just thought, or at least is a natural preparative
of the soul for the calm, sober, steadfast joys of recti-
tude and benevolence, and of all that goes in fellow-
ship with "clean hands and a pure heart"; so Science
may be made to serve, indirectly, the moral and even
the spiritual and religious interests of mankind. And
such, truly, appears to have been the effect of scien-
tific pursuits on Newton, Faraday, and sundry others
of that great and beneficent priesthood in former
times.
Still, for general effect, there is more of culture-
force or culture-inspiration in the Sermon on the
Mount than in all the mere scientific books in the
world put together. For, in that celestial strain of
wisdom, that divine outpouring of "sweetness and
light," yes, and of cherishing and chastening warmth
also, other and higher parts of our being than the
understanding are thoroughly at home, and have the
breath of life breathed into them. But, in the widest
and fullest sense, works of literature and art are
the distinctive means and forces of culture. Hence
these studies were formerly called "The Humanities";
and rightly so, inasmuch as they comprehend the
whole of our proper humanity, and not one part of it
merely.
Again: Science, save in the forecited exception,
looks to the receiving and retaining faculties of the
mind: it gives knowledge of things outside of us,
but not inward life or soul-power; and, if pursued
too exclusively, it dries and narrows the mind, and
so results in "knowledge purchased by the loss of
power." So that Science is, for the most part, a
source or process of acquirement merely,-acquire-
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
283
ment as distinguished from culture. Now acquirement
is mainly but a furnishing of the mind with tools and
weapons to work with; while it does comparatively
little towards creating or providing the living ener-
gies of work: it arms the mind with implements and
methods, but does not put blood and life and sinews.
into its veins and substance. Moreover, the gains
of acquirement are, in general, made with at least
comparative ease and quickness: but then they are
also as quickly and as easily lost; here to-day, and
gone to-morrow; for, indeed, they lie mostly on the
surface and in the suburbs of the mind, or, at best,
in its pockets, and draw very little into its heart and
substance. And so, in what we are pleased to call
education, such gains are good to show off with; for,
being but lip-deep, they are ready and voluble, and
somewhat pyrotechnic withal: the mind has but to
stuff its pockets with them, and then, at stated hours,
pull them out for extemporary display in recitation :
that done, away they go, leaving nothing behind them
but air slightly tainted.
The gains of culture, on the other hand, are slow,
silent, insensible: we can never see them coming,
nor can know they have come till a good while after:
for indeed their advent and process are in depths of
the mind which consciousness cannot reach; and
they work out so softly and smoothly as to make no
noise in the working: their proper virtue transpires,
not audibly or directly, but only in the form of grace,
power, beauty, in purity of taste, delicacy of percep-
tion, harmony of thought, and all those little, name-
less issues, never seen in detail, but only in the
aggregate, which mark the consummate mind. Hence,
284
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
again, in what we are pleased to call education, the
gains of culture are of little or no account, and there-
fore are almost wholly ignored: for, being soul-deep,
they of course make no noise, are not talkative at all,
and so are nowise available for display in recitation;
in fact, can make no report of themselves whatever
in such use. But, when these gains come, they come
to stay their efficacy, if slow and silent, is also
sure and permanent; and naturally so, because they
enter into the mind's blood and life, become a part
of its intimate structure and essence, and thus con-
solidate into character: so that, once got, they are
never or seldom lost; nor indeed can be, save as they
expire in the process of mental decay. In a word,
culture is growth; acquirement is mere motion:
motion may be swift and loud; growth must be
slow and noiseless. To sum up this whole matter,
culture, in its perfection, makes the mind a lu-
minous or radiant thing, like the Sun, and not a
mere reflector or transmitter of borrowed light, like
the Moon.
Culture is, I must think, the supreme need of our
time, and is daily becoming more so; because science,
with its incessant and voluminous proceeds of acquire-
ment, is daily crowding it more and more out of our
regard. In fact, we have wellnigh lost all right ideas
about it; we can hardly conceive what it is, or even
that there is any such thing; and so we keep substi-
tuting mere acquirement in the place of it. There-
withal, science is doing so much for our earthly and
mortal state, is putting into our hands so many help-
ful things, which however still perish with the using,
that we are in danger of drawing it so near the eye
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
285
as to shut out that larger, higher, richer world which
culture opens for us and lets us into.
66
But, assuredly, in the long run this course will not,
cannot, come to good. For science is not self-begot-
ten culture is its true original; and it cannot per-
manently survive its original. Culture is both the
fruitful mother and the foodful nurse of all manly,
earnest, conscientious intelligence; and so is the cre-
ative, vivifying, and sustaining power of science itself:
severed from this power, the faculties of science must
gradually languish and fall away, and finally die out;
starved or strangled, perhaps, by the very excess of
their own accumulated proceeds. For we know, or
ought to know, that the workman may be incumbered
with his tools; that resources may become impedi-
ments; and that, in science, as in other things, if
we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free;
if our wealth command us, we are poor indeed." In
short, the mind must be greater and stronger than
science, else science cannot long retain the strength
and greatness it has. And, indeed, that science is
already beginning to fail in strength, may be not un-
fairly suspected, from the boastful and overweening
temper it has lately evinced. For, when a thing thus
turns to glorying in itself and to adoring its own
splendor, what else can this mean than a cooling, if
not a quenching, of that impassioned pursuit of the
object which is at once the proof of virtue and the
pledge of success?
But culture has in her keeping other and more gen-
eral interests, interests that have an immediate
and practical bearing on our common life, and that
touch, directly or remotely, the personal health and
286
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
welfare of us all. The great English Poet of our
century has put this matter so wisely and so well,
that I must here let him speak for me:
There lives
No faculty within us which the Soul
Can spare; and humblest earthly weal demands,
For dignity not placed beyond her reach,
Zealous co-operation of all means
Given or acquired, to raise us from the mire,
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits.
By gross utilities enslaved, we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past,
If to the future aught of good must come,
Sounder and therefore holier than the ends
Which, in the giddiness of self-applause,
We covet as supreme. O, grant the crown
That Wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff
From Knowledge !
O
Now, for schools of culture-discipline, I have already
noted works of art and literature in general as being
among them, and indeed as forming the main body
of them. But all such works, to produce their full
effect of culture, must be used in subordinate connec-
tion with something else, something higher and
greater than themselves. The prating, ostentatious
flirting with art now so often met with,- a process
in which the actors seem to admire nothing but their
own admiration, is as far as possible from having
any life of culture in it. It is sheer affectation and
cant, serving no end but to solidify hollowness. And
such is the natural outcome of that "gospel of art”
which, as Carlyle says, "is the windiest gospel ever
yet preached; a gospel that never has saved nor ever
will save any man from moral corruption."
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
287
Far different from all this is the right use of art.
And no love of art is genuine and true, but where the
soul within us feels and communes with the great
Soul of Nature informing the artist's work. For
works not thus informed are in no true sense works
of art, but only a sort of veneered or varnished
sponges.
All this infers that culture proceeds best when it
comes along unsought, and when it is not pursued as a
conscious end at all. And so the common works,
plays, joys, and recreations of life, especially those
of the home and the family, where dwell
Embosom❜d happiness and placid love,
As if the sunshine of the day were met
With answering brightness in the hearts of all,
""
these are some of the best culture-forces; and their
working is all the better that we breathe and live
among them without taking any thought of culture.
Nor, perhaps, is anything more needful for us in this
behalf, or more fruitful, than the things that "chasten
and subdue"; such as "the still, sad music of human-
ity," the bereavements, the tender sorrows, the sweet
compassions of home, and the "unbidden tears that
rise for names once heard, and heard no more
: for
of the home it has been well said that "all other
pleasures are not worth its pains." And wherever
the light of beauty, grandeur, loveliness, awfulness,
whether in Art or Nature, shines out full and clear,
there to dwell till, from the effluence thence proceed-
ing, our minds and souls become themselves luciform,
so as to meet that light with answering light, — here
the process of culture is, with one exception, at its
288
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
best in us. But its very highest service, as also its
deepest and widest, is when we surrender ourselves,
unreservedly and with self-forgetting fulness of heart,
to the sovereign Beauty and supreme Good; we being
lifted clean out of ourselves and carried away by the
mighty charm and rapture of the Object.
So that religion,— I do not mean theology, for this
is but a science, and a rather unscientific science at
that, but religion, our own holy and beautiful re-
ligion, with her Bible, her altars, her architecture,
and her music, with her inspirations of love and awe
and tenderness, and with the Saviour's presence per-
vading, sweetening, consecrating all these, this is
the best school of culture-discipline the world has
yet seen, and is indeed worth more than all the others
combined, as it is also, at least throughout Christen-
dom, the spring-head, the primitive source of them all.
The use and power of books for culture-work is
a theme upon which a good deal might well be said;
but the theme is too large and various to be more than
glanced at in so general a view of the matter.
but stay to observe that their ministry in this behalf
depends altogether on what they are and how they
are used. For good books, such as are meet for this
high service, are nothing less than, as it were, another
nature, a nature nearer and more intelligible to us
than the great original whence they are drawn.
Rather say, they are authentic and veracious trans-
lations from that Nature which is the breath and
language of God into our human language, bringing
the thoughts of the Divine mind down to our appre-
hension and sympathy. So it has been justly said,
that we may receive
Ką
M
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
289
Knowledge and increase of enduring joy
From the great Nature that exists in works
Of mighty Poets. Visionary power
Attends the motions of the viewless winds,
Embodied in the mystery of words :
There darkness makes abode, and all the host
Of shadowy things work endless changes; there,
As in a mansion like their proper home,
Even forms and substances are circumfused
By that transparent veil with light divine.
And the way to get this service from books is by
taking a few great authors and making them our
settled intellectual home, dwelling, conversing, living
with them long and lovingly, till their efficacy gets
steeped into and through the mind, suffusing, per-
meating, assimilating all its powers.
Here perhaps it were best to make an end of this
discourse, the real matter of it being now exhausted:
yet I have bethought me that a few particulars in
illustration of what has been said may render the
matter somewhat clearer to the reader's apprehen-
sions, and so gain it a firmer lodgment in his
thoughts. My first illustration is from music.
Now music is both an art and a science.
As a
science, the matter of it is strictly demonstrable, as
much so as that of any other physical science. And
the science of music, or, more properly, of sound, has
its use and value, as indeed all knowledge has; and
I am far from meaning to disparage it. Yet music
is infinitely more useful and important to us as an
art than as a science. As a science, it pertains to
the understanding only; as an art, it may be so used,
has been so used, as to search every chamber of the
19
290
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
soul; to surround, to penetrate, to kindle all the
powers and susceptibilities of our inward being. The
science is matter of acquirement; the art is a vast,
manifold, inexhaustible treasure-house of culture-
forces. A man may understand it thoroughly, may
have the full mastery and enjoyment of it, as a sci-
ence; and yet, as an art, may have no knowledge
or feeling of it whatever. There have been men of
good intelligence, and of good general hearing also,
but who, notwithstanding, had not the least sense or
susceptibility of music, and could never distinguish
one tune from another. On the other hand, men
may be thoroughly at home in it, may have the full
mastery and enjoyment of it, as an art, without un-
derstanding it at all, or seeing any meaning in it, as
a science. There have been good musicians, and
even good composers, to whom the science was little
or nothing known. For both the performing and the
composing are things of genius and inspiration, not
of formal and explicit logic. And so a man may
have the keenest sense and finest taste for music in
the concrete, and yet have no sense or taste at all
for the scientific analysis and explanation of it. To
be able to make it, is one thing; to be able to tell
the how and the why of it, is a totally different thing;
and either ability may be had quite apart from the
other. Now, which would you rather have, which do
you think the higher, richer, better thing for you,
one of Mozart's or Beethoven's symphonies in the
concrete, or in the analytic presentation? Which
has more of potency and beneficence in it, the art, or
the science? Of course you will say, the former:
but, observe, it nowise follows that the latter may
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
291
not be good also. Both together are better than
either alone.
It is needless, now, to dwell upon, impossible to
set forth in detail, the manifold high and delicate
services rendered to humanity by this great art. Its
practical use and power as a civilizer, refiner, uplifter,
comforter, sweetener of man's life has been a theme
of praise the world over. There is no toil, no hard-
ship, no grief, no adversity, but may be more or less
cheated of its sting by the mighty, the mysterious
virtue of music.
Blest be the song that brightens
The blind man's gloom, exalts the veteran's mirth ;
Unscorn'd the peasant's whistling breath, that lightens
His duteous toil of furrowing the green earth.
For the tired slave, song lifts the languid oar,
And bids it aptly fall, with chime
That beautifies the fairest shore,
And mitigates the harshest clime.
Nor friendless he, the prisoner of the mine,
Who from the well-spring of his own clear breast
Can draw, and sing his griefs to rest.
Thus, generally, at the touch of this potent charmer,
what is good becomes better, and what is bad loses
something of its badness.
Much the same is to be said of architecture, which
is my next illustration. For this, also, is both an art
and a science. And here, again, the artist and the
scientist are totally different things; so that each
may be highly accomplished in his line, and still have
little or no communication with the other; though
the two may stand and work together in the same
mind, and in the best architects probably do so stand
and work.
292
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
Many years ago, I had the honor and the pleasure
of being well acquainted with Mr. Upjohn, distin-
guished as the father of Gothic architecture in this
country. He was English by birth and education,
a man of decided genius, thoroughly accomplished
in his art, withal an intelligent, upright, and devout
Christian gentleman. Among the first, if not the
very first, of his buildings in this country was Christ
Church, Brooklyn. He told me that, one day while
he was in the final act of putting the interior of that
building in order for use, two men walked in, total
strangers to him, and not appearing to see him.
Mr. Upjohn said he eyed them rather closely, being
somewhat curious to see how the thing would affect
them. At first they stood awhile with their hats on,
but looking intently on what was before them. Ere
long, their hands stole up, involuntarily, to their
heads, and took their hats off; and then they stood
some time with the hats in their hands, but without
speaking a word. So it was evident that the aspect
and countenance of the place struck feelings of awe
and reverence into the men.
Here was, in its degree, a fine process of culture.
The minds of the men were stirred with an impulse
or sentiment of worship and devotion. An air or
a fragrance as of something holy and sacred was
breathed into them. Their religious susceptibilities
were softly and sweetly touched into action; and the
effect showed itself spontaneously in their gestures
and attitude.
Now, if Mr. Upjohn had met those men in some
other place, and had put into their hands or read in
their hearing a written treatise fully unfolding the
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
293
N
science of architecture as involved in that structure;
and he could easily have done this, for he was
master of the science as well as the art; — in that
case, do you suppose any such effect would have been
produced? Of course you know there would have
been nothing of the kind. The treatise would have
stirred no sentiments or emotions of awe and rev-
erence in the men. They would nowise have been
moved to take their hats off, and stand in a reveren-
tial attitude. Whereas the architecture had, at least
in some measure, the effect of solemnizing their
minds, the science, if it had interested them at all,
would at the best have only moved in them an intel-
lectual curiosity. If they had studied the treatise
carefully, and mastered all its scientific teachings,
still they would have found or felt no air or fra-
grance of holiness in its words and sentences. Thus
the building itself was to them a vastly different
thing from what the science of it would have been;
and I hope we all agree that it was as much better
as different. The science, learned, would have been
a more or less valuable piece of acquirement; the
architecture, felt, the beauty, the virtue, the joy of
it taken into the thoughts and emotions, was a far
deeper, richer, more operative thing.
So, neither music nor architecture, as art, proves
anything scientifically; the logic of demonstration
has no place in it, is no part of its aim. And so,
again, take, for instance, Paradise Lost: reading
that work, as it ought to be read, with the feelings
and faculties wide-awake, you have a great variety
of thoughts and emotions deeply stirred within you,
stirred as with a mighty tempest, by the sublimity
294
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
&
A
!
of conception and expression, the imagery, now of
overpowering grandeur, now of the most melting
sweetness, and the deep, organ-like harmonies of the
poet; and "the mind, expanded by the genius of the
spot, becomes colossal": still the thing has no demon-
strative effect upon you; you are nowise shut up, will
you, or will you not, in conclusions rigidly, scientifi-
cally proved.
Now, suppose that poem to be used merely as the
raw material of philological study, and so put through
the process of scientific analysis and dissection, all
cut up and sorted into formal categories and predica-
ments, with the several parts and elements distinctly
labelled and ticketed according to the most approved
rules or prescriptions of logic, rhetoric, grammar,
prosody, and whatsoever else may come under the
technicalities of lingual science. Here the methods
of proof might have a fine time of it, and the under-
standing would have something to feed and work
upon; but all the other parts of the mind would
remain locked in profound sleep: and a man might
easily get so dried and frosted with the science
ground out of the work, that the grand culture-
potencies of the work itself could not touch him,
nor find anything in him to stick upon, and so would
be just nothing at all to him.
I might continue these illustrations further, might
carry them into the field of eloquence, into the great
parliamentary discourses of Burke and Webster; but
enough, probably more than enough, has already been
done in this line. So I will just close with some-
thing infinitely better in itself, and also much more
to the purpose, than anything I can possibly say:
SCIENCE, CULTURE, ACQUIREMENT.
295
W
Books! 't is a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark, how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher :
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless,
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art ;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives."
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.*
THE
HE interest mankind take in tragedy appears to
have something of mystery in it; and various
inquiries have been made, various opinions set forth,
as to the nature and source of that interest. For
deep sorrow, intense suffering, together with a strong
element of injustice, enter so largely into high tragic
representation, that they may almost be described as
the very life and soul of it. Now, sympathy with the
wronged and suffering is, in itself, anything but de-
lightful; nay, rather say, the mere pain of it naturally
prompts to instant and strenuous measures of relief.
Yet the proper work of tragedy is nothing less than
to transmute this painful sympathy into the purest
and highest pleasure. The distinctive interest or
allurement of tragic art turns entirely on such trans-
mutation.
What is the secret of this? French writers gen-
erally, and David Hume among the English, prefer to
derive that interest from what may well be thought
a rather low origin, and to account for it on low
*The following paper was read to the "Old Cambridge Shakespeare
Association some time in the Winter of 1882-83, and was printed in
Shakespeariana for January, 1884.
""
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
297
"s
grounds. One French writer puts it upon the ground
that, however afflicting may be the passion excited by
tragedy, "it is still better than that insipid languor
which arises from perfect tranquillity and repose.'
The difficulty in question is well stated by Hume as
follows: "It seems an unaccountable pleasure which
the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from
sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions that are in
themselves disagreeable and uneasy. They are pleased
in proportion as they are afflicted, and are never so
happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to
give vent to their sorrow, and to relieve their heart."
And his solution of that difficulty rests upon grounds
merely artistic; that is to say, upon the emotions
raised by the beauty and eloquence of the representa-
tion. "The impulse," says he, "or vehemence aris-
ing from sorrow, compassion, indignation, receives
a new direction from the sentiments of beauty. The
latter, being the predominant emotion, seize the whole
mind, and convert the former into themselves, at least
tincture them so strongly as totally to alter their na-
ture. And the soul, being at the same time roused by
passion and charmed by eloquence, feels on the whole
a strong movement, which is altogether delightful.”
Is this explanation satisfactory? The least I can
say of it is that, though perhaps right as far as it goes,
it appears to me decidedly superficial and elusive.
For it is evident that no moral element, no ethical
sense, is here regarded as having anything to do with
the proper interest of tragedy. Merely to minister
excitement or entertainment to the sensitive and im-
aginative parts of our being, this, too, in languid or
vacant hours, is thus held to exhaust the whole scope
298
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
and aim of tragic art. The strange fascination which
tragedy has exercised over men at all times, and in
the highest degree over the most cultivated men,
must, it seems to me, draw down into some deeper
currents of our nature than these. Surely the strongest
threads of that fascination can be spun from nothing
less than the moral soul, the conscience, the ethical
heart of humanity. In other words, the great secret
of tragedy lies in touching the spiritual forces of our
being, and in working the lower forces in subordina-
tion to these, thus making "sense subservient still
to moral purposes, auxiliar to divine." So that holi-
ness is the prime law of tragic art; and it is from the
strength and virtue of this everlasting law that tragedy
draws the life-blood of its interest and power. This
it is that gives to the tragedies of Sophocles and
Shakespeare their supreme excellence; this is the
main secret of their inclusive and invincible tenacity
on the best intelligence of man. For, in the whole
world of uninspired writing, there is nothing else that
touches the spiritualities of our being so deeply, or
carries so high an expression of holiness in its coun-
tenance, as these great masterpieces of the Tragic
Muse.
I have been implying that sorrow, suffering, calam-
ity, terror, and the passions arising out of them or
waiting upon them, are the proper staple of tragic
representation. For so the course and scope of trag-
edy always has been, to represent truly heroic souls
struggling with, and finally overmastered and crushed
by, adverse circumstances, whether such adversity pro-
ceed from Fate, Providence, or human will. Hence
the well-known dictum of Aristotle, which still holds
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
299
true, that the office and aim of tragedy is to search
and purify the soul with emotions of pity and terror.
Now, pity finds its rightful objects in wronged inno-
cence and unmerited suffering. To do good, and
thereby to provoke returns of evil, and still to persist
in the former through all the onsets of the latter,-
this it is that touches the deepest springs of compas-
sion in the human breast. And such compassion
purifies and elevates, because it is a virtual setting
of the sacred claims of rectitude and holiness far
above all others. And there is a deep joy in such
compassion, because it is, at least for the time being,
a clear triumph of the spiritual man over the world
and the flesh. There is also implied a profound
sense or a sustaining faith that "underneath are the
everlasting arms." So that here we have the form
of pity fairly transfigured or ensouled with moral
efficacy.
Nor is the moral element less present and operative
in the form of tragic terror: indeed, it is the presence,
rather say the predominance, of this element that so
broadly distinguishes the terrible of tragic art from
the horrible of untragic bungling. Take, for instance,
the murder scene, the banquet scene, and the sleep-
walking scene in the tragedy of Macbeth. Tragic ter-
ror has never been, can hardly be, strained higher
than it is in these scenes. Here we have the con-
science, or the spiritual man, quite dominating the
senses and all the inferior faculties; and this it is that
makes the sublimity of the representation. However
the guilty ones may "bend up each corporal agent
to the terrible feat," yet the outraged moral forces
within prove too mighty for them, and rise in over-
300
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
whelming fury against them; and we lose all other re-
gards in the appalling soul-convulsions through which
their sense of guilt breaks into utterance. In this in-
stance, as usual in tragedy, crime does indeed prevail
over virtue and innocence, and the course of things in
this world seems for a long time to be on its side; still
it cannot for an instant prevail over the law of retri-
bution that has its seat in the criminal breast; and
there is, besides, a fearful looking forward to a world
where all things shall speak in harmony with that
law.
Thus the essence of all right tragic interest seems
to lie in the moral discords which the representation
sets forth, and which, moreover, the actual course of
things in this world often involves. And this inter-
est has its life in the principle that, behind appear-
ances and above the reach of chance, there exists a
paramount law under which "all virtue doth suc-
ceed"; yes, and succeeds in proportion as it fails of
visible and secular recognition; succeeds most when,
stripped of all earthly props, it stands alone with its
God,
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
Its breath in confidence of Heaven's applause.
It is the proper test and triumph of heroic souls that
they can and do thus sustain themselves on celestial
food; and we find or feel them to be strongest and
sweetest just then when the pressure of injustice and
undeserved suffering most crushes their native strength
and sweetness into manifestation. Hence the sacred
charm, hence the "awful loveliness," which invests
the character of a Cordelia or a Desdemona, of a
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
301
Lear or an Othello: where they have deserved the
best, there they receive the worst, and out of their
own goodness and beneficence is spun the fate that
tortures and crushes them.
66
How can all this fail to awaken or to confirm within
us that sense of belonging at once to two worlds
which gives to human life so much of mysterious so-
lemnity"? While we are hanging over such delinea-
tions and our hearts are throbbing in sympathy with
them, “wings at our shoulders seem to play," and
The soul, though yet confined to Earth,
Rejoices in a second birth.
66
For, indeed, human life, as all may see who rightly
use their eyes, is not wanting in instances of men
and women who, ❝ offering no obeisance to the world,
are yet cut off from peace, like exiles on some barren
rock," with nothing but their own thoughts to sup-
port and comfort them. Wordsworth, referring to
this solemn fact, for such it is, aptly cites
A
C
That ancient story of Prometheus chain'd
To the bare rock, on frozen Caucasus;
And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes ;
Fictions in form, but in their substance truths,
Tremendous truths! familiar to the men
Of long-past times, nor obsolete in ours.
Here the line of Thebes " points to the story of
Edipus, who solved the Sphinx's riddle, and thereby
delivered his country from the most terrible calami-
ties, but brought unspeakable woes upon himself.
And both those old myths agree in bodying forth a
common principle, namely, the seeming lack of moral
302
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
discrimination in the government of the world, as if
goodness were not the law of the Divine administra-
tion. For afflictions and calamities often fall, in
overwhelming measure, upon the righteous or the
innocent; while men of the opposite character often
seem to have things all their own way. Nay, more ;
good men are sometimes punished, apparently, for
their virtues and beneficence; while guilt and wrong-
doing find impunity, and sometimes even appear to
gather the rewards due to goodness. That the Greek
mind was powerfully charmed by the old mythical
embodiments of this principle is evident from the use
made of them in classic tragedy. It is hardly need-
ful to observe how, in this point, they reflect the
moral import of the great Christian sacrifice.
Here, then, I must think, lies the proper domain
of tragedy; here is the prime source of its inextin-
guishable power. It draws and holds thoughtful
minds by working in the conscience, and appealing
to those spiritual instincts which dwell at the centre
of our being, or because its main roots strike down
deep in the soil of our moral constitution. Its most
cherished home is, so to speak, on or near the border
of two worlds, and where the experience gathered
here naturally generates a presentiment of something
further. For so
Truth shows a glorious face,
While, on the isthmus which commands
The councils of both worlds, she stands.
Thus the constituent order of tragic poetry lies
very much in moral disorder: its proper harmonies
are woven, to a great extent, out of moral discords;
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
303
and its music is all the sweeter to the human soul
for those jarring notes, because they hint and whis-
per of a vastly broader, deeper, richer scheme of har-
mony, in which those discordant tones are but the
tuning of the instruments, as it were, for the grand,
awful, rapturous symphonies of a life beyond life.
When we see the pure, the just, the pious sinking be-
neath the power of wrong, and the foul, the cruel, the
impious flourishing in their wickedness, the thought
naturally springs up of an order visibly broken off in
the midst, yet drawing by invisible threads into future
completeness; that the good have indeed no sure hope
in this world, stands out in solemn impressiveness;
but then comes in the sense that, out of that no hope,
how great hope have they! But this is all because
the conscience, as the voice of God speaking in the
soul, must and will be supreme in our intellectual
house, supreme either to bless or to scourge; and,
in order to do this, it must have the prerogative of
appealing to another and a higher Court.
And so, however speculative doubts may tease the
brain and hang about the thoughts, still, the human
heart feels its own anchorage secure, and a sort of
instinctive faith tightens its hold — a faith springing
from sources deeper than logic can fathom or con-
sciousness can reach that, when the good thus go
down before the bad, their fall is but a rising to a
larger and diviner life, a life in which their souls
will be all the more at home, that the pains and sor-
rows of their mortal state have scoured and beautified
and attuned them to its music and its order; so that,
from the total impression, we catch a soft, deep un-
dertone, that speaks only
304
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure,
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsigh'd-for, and the future sure.
From all which it follows, further, that tragedy is,
in its proper scope, a discipline of what is highest and
best in human nature, a school of practical instruc-
tions and enablements for converting sorrow and suf-
fering themselves into sources of strength and joy,
disappointments and reverses into stepping-stones of
elevation and serenity. This is indeed the top and
crown of its service to the spirits of men. For the
Tragic Muse loves, religiously loves and honors, human
souls, but she loves them, as the gods are said to love
them, severely; and it grieves her heart to see the
worse domineering over the better within them, and
rotting or tearing them with earth-born conflicts and
perturbations; and she would fain
elevate the will,
And lead us on to that transcendent rest
Where every passion shall the way attest
Of Reason seated on her sovereign hill.
So the sweet wisdom which she sings tells of "a
central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agi-
tation"; and her first postulate is, that our prone
and frail affections need to pass through refining
fires, and so be purged and chastened into affinity
with that peace. And, surely, the great problem of a
wise benevolence is how to help and speed us in the
process of turning our necessities to gains; that we
may be lifted up and made better by the hardships we
can nowise avoid, and may profitably "bear those ills
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
305
which bear we must." It is to this high end that the
Tragic Muse, when properly herself, orders and works
the forces of poetry and art. And common experience
teaches us that such service is just the strongest of our
human needs. For, whereas suffering should always
make men better, I fear it oftener makes them worse,
souring where it should sweeten, weakening where it
should fortify, polluting where it should cleanse, de-
basing where it should elevate. And, as Mr. Leslie
Stephen well observes, "The waste of sorrow is one
of the most lamentable forms of waste." Desperate,
indeed, is our case, when the only thing that can help
us thus becomes a hindrance. And I can think of
nothing sadder in the world than that the things
which are indispensable to us as medicines should
be turned into poisons.
I know not how I can better dismiss the theme
than by quoting a brief passage from a tragedy en-
titled Athelwold, written by William Smith, and pub-
lished in 1842. I cannot, indeed, speak much in
praise of the work as a whole; but the passage in
question seems to me one of the choicest strains that
modern poetry has produced. Nor can I name any
other piece of writing where, to my sense, the inmost
heart of the Tragic Muse is so fittingly discoursed":
Joy is a weak and giddy thing, that laughs
Itself to weariness or sleep, and wakes
To the same barren laughter: 't is a child
Perpetually; and all its past and future
Lie in the compass of an infant's day.
Crush'd from our sorrow, all that's great in man
Has ever sprung. In the bold Pagan world
Men deified the beautiful, the glad,
The strong, the boastful, and it came to nought :
20
306
ETHICS OF TRAGEDY.
We have raised Pain and Sorrow into Heaven;
And in our temples, on our altars, Grief
Stands symbol of our faith; and it shall last
As long as man is mortal and unhappy.
The gay at heart may wander to the skies,
And harps may there be found them, and the branch
Of palm be put into their hands; on Earth
We know them not no votarist of our faith,
Till he has dropp'd his tears into the stream,
Tastes of its sweetness.
PARTING ADDRESS
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BOSTON SCHOOL
OF ORATORY.
MY
Y DEAR PUPILS: We have now reached
the end of our year, and the time has come
that is to separate us. To me the occasion is one of
no ordinary interest, and I do not well know how to
let it pass without saying to you, individually and
collectively, that your behavior, both towards the
authors you have studied and towards me, has been
throughout altogether handsome and honorable. I
have not a word of fault to find with you or with any
of you: on the contrary, I heartily commend you, wish
nothing but good to you, and am not at all glad to
part with you.
Most of you for a year, some of you for two years,
have been feeding, with me, upon the thoughts and
teachings of great and wise and good men. That
the hours we have so spent together were as pleasant
to you as to me, I have no right to suppose; for you
are young and I am not, and I believe age is generally
happier with youth than youth with age. You can-
not, you cannot know, until yourselves are old, how
much we who are past our youth delight in you that
308
PARTING ADDRESS.
are young. In closing an intercourse that has been
to me so full of pleasantness, I am moved to speak a
few words of parting counsel, which I am sure you
will take kindly, as it is meant, whether you altogether
approve of it or not.
First: Do not suppose be somewhat on your
guard against supposing that you have any special
mission to the world or to mankind at large. It is
not so; and the imagining it to be so would be simply
a delusion and a snare. The most and the best that
you, or I, or any of us, are fitted for, or that we ought
to think ourselves fitted for, is to gain a fair and
honest living by doing true and solid service in the
nearest walks of life, to have a clean record in our
consciences, and to receive at last a "Well done, good
and faithful servant," from our great Task-Master.
Whatever our gifts and virtues may be, there is no
danger of our wearing them too modestly, or of our
thinking less highly of ourselves than we ought to
think. It will do us no hurt to understand that the
world does not greatly need us, and can get along
very well without us; and that, if we be found faith-
ful in a few small things, we shall do well.
To the ladies of the school especially, let me say:
Be assured that a very limited sphere, that of sacred
home, is large enough for you. There is the true
place for you to show us "how divine a thing a woman
may be made." Nor need you mind at all about dif
fusing your fragrance abroad; the breezes of heaven
will do that far better than you can: so that you need
but stick close to your gardens, and cultivate your
flowers. The best forces in Man, as in Nature, do
their work silently and unobserved. We hear the
da
PARTING ADDRESS.
309
blowing of the wind; the sunshine we hear not.
And God works more powerfully in the growing of
the grass than in the hurricane or the earthquake.
And so the unconscious forces of the moral and social
world are infinitely deeper and stronger than the
conscious ones. Hence it is that we so often find
experience outwrestling and crushing theory. The
shapings of theory are loud and conscious; the laws
that shape experience are silent, working far too
deeply for consciousness to grasp. We see what
comes to the surface, the results; what works in
the depths, preparing the results, we do not see.
Thus, all through life, the secret processes are what
tell, in the long run: the noisy processes, to be sure,
tell more for the present; but they do so at the cost
of those which are vital and generative. Therefore
it is that the human institutes which grow from and
stand by the unconscious forces of our being, see the
beginning and the end of those which we consciously
and self-applaudingly build. We, indeed, often wonder
why it is so, because we vastly overrate our own wis-
dom, and fancy we have mastered the powers that
make us. Assuredly "there are more things in
Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your
philosophy."
To be sure, what I have been saying, if it be good
for anything, is just as good for the men of this school
as for the women. For, in truth, we men spread our-
selves abroad altogether too much in talk; we should.
do a great deal more good if we made less noise, and
had our mouths stretched less, contented to let what-
ever of good we may have appear silently in deeds.
Surely there are talkative powers enough in the
310
PARTING ADDRESS.
world powers that can work and be silent are what
the world most needs. And all the best efficacies of
thought and liberal culture that you women can gather
from the fields of printed wisdom and soul-power may
be well and worthily employed in beautifying and
blessing the home, in crowning the fireside with
"sweetness and light," and in making it the semi-
nary of pure thought and peaceful virtue, —
Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom,
For sportive youth to stray in;
For manhood to repose his strength,
And age to wear away in.
Therewithal, it so happens that, just now, we want
home-hearted women; we WANT them. For they who
love home will needs love the things that make home
lovely; which are, peace, order, purity, kindness, and
To be
CHILDREN.
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,
is as high as any of you need to aspire. Of stars,
both male and female, too brilliant to shine on any
thing less than a whole hemisphere, we have more
than enough: they are putting our eyes out with too
much light!
Second: In all your plans and shapings of life, be
sure, both men and women, that you make Duty your
supreme concern, and that you keep your pleasure
waiting unreservedly upon her. You may indeed
make yourselves worthy of happiness, but you can-
not make yourselves happy: God alone can do that.
For the smooth benediction of Nature, which we call
happiness, is a thing that happens of its own accord
PARTING ADDRESS.
311
to those who, with hearts attuned to truth and right,
lose themselves in the proper loves and cares and
ministries of life. And, relatively to us, this bene-
diction must happen, else it cannot be we can neither
make nor command it; we may prepare ourselves for
it, but we cannot prepare it: we need not go far to be
overtaken by it, but we shall strive in vain to over-
take it. All that we need care for is, to walk as
becomes the children of light, and then the day-spring,
eternally prepared in the moral constitution of things,
will not fail us; if it do not shine around us, it will
at least shine within. And so the only happiness in
this world's gift, that is really worth the having, is
the happiness which springs up, free and unsought,
by the wayside of Duty; rather say, that which
"falls down from God's bosom silently" while our
thoughts and hands are duly occupied in good and
pious works.
We are apt to think of the service of Duty as a
hard and exacting service. In some respects it is so
indeed; but, after all, it is a service that pays: you
may rest assured that it pays; and it is the only
service in this world that really does pay. As for
the service of pleasure, notwithstanding that so many
sell themselves to it, it is all a cheat: the best that it
ever does is to "keep the word of promise to our ear,
and break it to our hope." But Duty never did, and
never will, betray the heart that loves her. That you
can recognize her voice, is the very soul of your souls,
the true and authentic seed of Heaven within you;
and whatever in your being is to survive this brittle
life must draw all its vital support from that. Under
the stern and awful guardianship of Duty, all your
312
PARTING ADDRESS.
best capacities of delight and joy, whatever is worthi-
est in your nature, will spring and grow: only cleave
steadfastly to her law, make her eye the guiding-star
of your course, and she will keep your interest safe:
she will strew your path with pleasantness, and at
the same time will lay up for you a treasure of hal-
lowed and precious memories, to make your age bright
and serene; such" visions of the past" as will
Sustain the heart in feeling
Life as it is, our changeful life,
With friends and kindred dealing.
Let me, then, with all possible earnestness, com-
mend you to the keeping of this austere but beneficent
Power, assuring you withal, that a fair experience in
her service, even though much of pain and grief should
fall to your lot, will fully justify to your sense and
your reason the language in which Wordsworth ad-
dresses her:
Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads ;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
And now, my dear pupils, one and all, God bless
you! I have no more to say.
BOSTON, May 14, 1879.
Sincerely your friend,
H. N. HUDson.
THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO
CIVIL SOCIETY.*
*
IN
N discussing this theme, I shall assume that the
Church is the proper embodiment and represen-
tative of the Gospel in the world; and that, conse-
quently, the sphere of her work, her rights, and duties
is coincident and coextensive with the aims, powers,
and interests of the Gospel. This infers that the re-
lations of the two, however distinct in idea, are identi-
cal in fact. The relation of the Church, then, to civil
society is all one with the relation of the Gospel in
that respect.
As I assume this position, it would hardly be in
order, to undertake to prove it. Such an attempt,
moreover, would occupy too much time. Neverthe-
less, it may be well to add somewhat, not by way of
proving its truth, but in illustration of its meaning.
I suppose it will be admitted that the one sovereign
* Read before a Convocation of the Clergy held in the Church of the
Advent, Boston, in 1866. The paper was written in pursuance of a
formal invitation by the Clergy themselves, who also proposed the sub-
ject of it. I understood at the time that the appointment both of the
writer and of the theme originated with the Rev. Dr. F. D. Hunting-
ton, now Bishop of Central New York. — The paper is here printed
just as it was originally written, a few slight verbal changes excepted.
314
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
end of Christianity is to save men's souls; and that
all its teachings and deliverances touching men as
beings of this world, or as creatures and subjects of
time, are with reference to that end. The Gospel,
moreover, provides and prescribes, at least in part,
the means and modes of accomplishing that end. But
those provisions suppose men to be rational beings,
and are addressed to them as such; and as they are
both general and practical in their nature, so there is
need and scope for judgment and discretion in the
using of them. How is such judgment and discretion
to be exercised? where is its seat? what and whence
are its certifications? The thing implies, I think, a
practical necessity of some fitting organ of human
reason for the due and effective working of those.
provisions.
Perhaps it will make the point clearer, if I remark
that the Gospel sets forth the principles and forces of
an universal and perpetual religion for mankind.
Those principles of course run irrespective of par-
ticular circumstances and conditions; they are un-
changeable in purpose and form. But their sphere
of operation is in a world of endless variety and
change, where they can hardly take effect without a
ministry and process of corresponding adjustment.
Hence the obvious need of a living, intelligent, adap-
tive institute, to specialize the order and method of
working those general forces, according to the exi-
gencies of times and occasions. I mean no more
than the rule, which holds everywhere, I believe, in
drawing and applying general principles to particular
cases: the special nature of the case must be con-
sidered, else the intention of the principle will be
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
315
defeated. So that the constancy of the Gospel forces.
must not be so understood as to preclude variability
in their instruments of action. On the contrary,
those operative powers can only be retained as such,
by leaving them free to vary their furniture of opera-
tion. Just as, amid the revolutions of human thought
and speech, the substance of knowledge would be lost
if rigidly confined to one and the same form of ex-
pression it must clothe itself in the language of the
time, to be understood by the men of the time. And
I think it stands to reason and the analogies of the
case, that the more of fixedness there is in those forces,
the greater the need of flexibility somewhere in the
furniture and process of their administration. For
the more permanent your law is, the larger must be
the discretion of your magistrate. And, where the
principle cannot vary, there needs the wider scope for
adaptive reason in applying it.
Of course, as regards the matter in hand, this ele-
ment of variability resides in the corporate reason
and authority of the Christian Commonwealth. The
Gospel, then, may be regarded as a body or code of
law; the Church as an administrative system. And
as Christianity is a religion of means as well as ends;
as the administration of the law is no less necessary
than the law itself; does it not follow that the Church
is as much an essential part of our religion as the
Gospel is? The Church is the Gospel organized and
at work; the relation between them being like that
between a power of motion and an apparatus for mov-
ing. I can as well think of conversing with a man's
soul apart from his body, as of realizing the Chris-
tian spirit without the Christian organization. The
316
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
vital power, as it dwells in the germ, can come to
nothing without the conditions of growth: it must
have its proper sphere of development, with the appro-
priate food, stimulus, and atmosphere, else it cannot
become a life. Now, the Gospel, taking the Scriptures
as its Divine interpretation, sets forth an offer and a
doctrine of life; the Church, in her true character and
office, is an available order, provision, and ministry
of living: the one is abstract and ideal, the other
concrete and practical: the former tells us what
we ought to be; the function of the latter stands in
guiding, prompting, helping, and enabling us to be
what we ought. Here, then, we have spiritual life as
the end; Christian nurture and discipline, instruction
in truth and duty, persuasion, correction, and all the
arts of inspiring and feeding good thoughts and de-
sires, as the means. So that the difference between
the Gospel and the Church is much the same as that
between a law of virtue and a process of becoming
virtuous. And we might as well think of having the
laws of the State without a government to interpret
and enforce them, as of having the laws of Christ
without His Church to teach and administer them.
In either case, the law both contemplates and consti-
tutes an administrative organ; in a right practical
sense, the two are mutually inclusive, as vital parts
of one organic and operative provision. And as the
Church is our Lord's living and acting representative
on Earth, so our Lord's presence is the vitality and
strength of the Church: she lives from Him as her
soul; He works through her as His body. All this, it
seems to me, is fairly implied in the great, simple fact
of Christianity being not merely a doctrine, but a life.
•
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
317
I have said that the Gospel provides, at least in
part, its own means and modes of action. Whether,
or how far, the Church is authorized to supplement
that provision in the exercise of her corporate judg-
ment, is indeed an important question, but nowise
material to the subject in hand.
Thus much by way of illustrating how and why it
is, that whatever be the relation of the Gospel to civil
society, the relation of the Church is the same.
What, then, is that relation? This will be partly
answered by observing, that the relation grows neces-
sarily out of what is most essential and fundamental
in the Christian life, subjectively considered. I mean
faith and repentance; taking faith in the right Gospel
idea, as meaning that our Saviour Christ is the medi-
cine provided for curing the disease of sin; and repent-
ance as including charity in the full apostolic sense,
which is said to be "the fulfilling of the law," and
which is the state of health to be attained by a due
reception and use of that medicine. Viewing the
matter simply in its moral aspect, Christ is the form,
the mould, in which our life is to be cast: upon our
endeavoring earnestly and constantly after this, our
whole title to the helps, hopes, blessings, and fruitions
of the Gospel is made to depend. This of course com-
prehends the discipline of all the virtues, affections,
dispositions, that strengthen society and conduce to
social happiness and well-being. The one purpose of
the Church is to make good Christians, and this must
necessarily proceed by making good citizens and good
men; the performance of our moral duties in this
world being the measure of our health, and conse-
318
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
quently of our fitness for "the inheritance of the
saints in light." Thus the same ministry, which is to
prepare us for the life of another world, is also our
best, and indeed our only right and adequate prepara-
tion for living in this.
Again: This relation is permanent and universal,
because it is founded on the nature of human society,
and not on any local or accidental phase or condition
of it. Now men must live together. This is the
primitive law of our constitution. It is only under
this law that we receive our birth, or retain the life
that is born with us. Society is thus the necessary
condition of our being as animals. Moreover, it is
the element in which all our human powers and attri-
butes live, move, and have their being. Even our
individual life as men is built up from the stock of
a common life; it must be had in a partnership with
others, or not at all: our minds and souls feed and
expand by intercourse with fellow-minds and fellow-
souls. And so long as men have to live together, so
long they will need to be steeped in the habits, princi-
ples, and sentiments that uphold social order and
peace.
So true is this, that even if, under influences now
at work, mankind at large should ever become so es-
tablished in rectitude and intelligence as to dispense
with civil government, still the Church will be neces-
sary, to keep them in that state; that is, unless the
race should discover far other powers of mental and
moral propagation than it ever has done yet. Nor is
it by any means certain that even our present Chris-
tian civilization may not have its period of growth and
decay, as former civilizations have done. For have
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
319
we not cause to fear lest the light wnich now shines
so full upon us, instead of growing brighter and
brighter unto the perfect day, may sooner or later be
strangled and lost in the vapors which itself may gen-
erate? Great success, great prosperity has always
been the hardest thing for men to bear. A wonderful
proof of man's weakness; yea, but a wonderful proof
of his strength too! because it infers that adversity
is his best discipline of virtue, and that he is most
helped by being hindered. At all events, it is but too
evident that all the moral forces within our reach will
be required to prevent such a result; and, unless the
teachings of history and experience are to be set
aside, nothing less than the continued strength of the
heavenly attraction can suffice to keep our being from
gravitating downwards from the elevation to which it
has been raised.
It should be observed, further, that even our social
ties and relations need to be continually strengthened
and purified with religious efficacy, else they can
hardly fail to corrupt into a spring of social virulence
and disorder. So it has often happened, and so it
must ever happen, where the sense of religion loses
its hold on men from want of due stimulus and cul-
ture. Such was the case with all the nations that
were most highly civilized at the dawn of Christianity :
the social body had become full of the most fatal and
loathsome disease; men's intercourse with each other
was little else than a discipline of savage passions and
deadly corruptions. Their religion, such as it was,
had not strength enough, either in its moral character
or its logical basis, to endure the illumination of the
torch which itself had helped to kindle; the gods
320
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
were burnt up by the intellectual fire which they had
inspired; and therefore both the light and the cause
that produced it expired together in a social dissolu-
tion. For, where men are living together without God
in the world, the opportunities of neighborhood and
consanguinity engender the rankest of poisons: with-
out the salt of the Divine presence among them, the
very heat of association generates a steam to rot
asunder the cords that draw and hold them together.
Thus it has ever been found that they who fear not
God will not regard men; while, on the other hand,
the religious conscience is the only spring of social
health, reverence and loyalty to God the principle of
respect and fidelity to one another. For it is a great
mistake to suppose that religion is purely an affair
between man and his Maker: on the contrary, its
office is, in part, to clothe our life with various mutual
religions; to bind our relative duties home with the
ligaments of piety, and to impress a sacred character
upon the natural charities of the heart. Indeed, all
our social ties and relations need the consecration of
religious baptism; and, where this power is wanting,
even our best human affections are ever in danger of
festering into hatred and contempt. And who does
not know, who has conversed much with himself, and
not learned, that unless the soul of man be held in
sympathy with Heaven, it is ever tending to become
engrossed with earthly, antipathies; ever drawing
more and more into that state where all the senti-
ments of brotherhood are quenched in unmitigated
selfishness and lust?
If these things are true of religion generally, they
are especially true of Christianity; which, far beyond
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
321
·
any other religion ever thought or dreamed of by
man, is a social religion; for this is essentially such,
such by its inherent and constitutive law, and not
merely by a superadded provision, or an inference of
reason. Its whole life is complicated with the ele-
ments of our social constitution: its saving virtues
are not supposed to be in us at all, unless they work
out in social action; its seat within us is at the centre
and spring-head of all right social tempers, disposi-
tions, habits, principles; its proper moral form being,
that we have and can have no Father in Heaven, no
brother in Christ, but as we feel and respect the
claims of brotherhood among men. It every where
speaks the language of the social affinities and obliga-
tions: this idea pervades its teachings, and above all
is reflected in the character and ministry of its Divine
Author, where we have an unsearchable record of
human sympathy and beneficence. All which is only
another way of saying that in the purpose and mean-
ing of the Gospel our religious character is not as
something standing outside of and apart from our
moral character: the two are perfectly fused together;
or rather, are one and the same thing, viewed now in
reference to our Father in Heaven, now in reference
to our brethren on Earth; conformity to the moral
law being the very process and motion of the divine
life within us. Accordingly, the Gospel does not take
men out of society to make them children of God, and
to form their Christian character; but, in the very
act of making them children of God, it puts them into
society, and proceeds throughout upon the ground
that their Christian character is to be formed in and
by the exercise of the social duties and affections.
21
322
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
Thus society in the highest form, and therefore the
principles of social order and well-being in every form,
are bound up in the constitution of Christianity. And,
as regards the welfare of civil society, how could this
have a deeper basis, a stronger support, a more elo-
quent sanction, than by what is implied in the great
fact of the Gospel and the Church being the two co-
ordinate and inseparable provisions of the Christian
religion? For the co-ordination and inseparableness
of the two is a fundamental law of the whole thing.
And the reason of that law is that, as I have already
said, Christianity is not merely a doctrine, but a life;
and, I may add, a doctrine in order to a life. Now,
the Church is a social organization, with the Gospel
as its organic law. To proclaim and administer that
law, to mould men's lives in the image of it, and in-
form men's souls with the spirit of it, is her mission
and work. By that law, the moral and social virtues
are not merely the natural results of the Christian.
character when formed, but the very constituents of
its growth and development in us. So that the style
of character which it is her office to form, and which
she has the art of forming, is the style of character
which is truest, noblest, best, in all the relations of
life. To make men do justly, and love mercy, and
walk humbly with their God, no better service than
this has been or can be done for human society in all
its parts, forms, interests, necessities, and occasions.
And, in every age since her establishment, the Church,
notwithstanding all her blemishes and imperfections,
has been doing this service for social humanity far
more than any or all other powers that ever existed in
the world, even her enemies themselves being judges.
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
323
Nor is it in this respect alone that the Church has
served and serves the occasions of civil society. She
is herself the highest instance and example of social
architecture that the world has seen. Almost from
the first, she has been the best political light of the
best nations; which indeed were the best for that
very cause.
How much her influence and instructions
have done to originate and shape the constitutions of
States and civil governments, has never been fully told,
and probably never will be. When the face of Chris-
tendom was all overspread with the deepest ignorance
and barbarism, and human society was but a huge
chaos of ferocity and violence, she preserved and
kept alive, not only in the minds of her members,
but in the social order and structure of her system,
the arts and elements of policy and government; and
gave to the nations where she dwelt long lines of
upright and intelligent statesmen, legislators, and
magistrates; not kings, indeed, but something far
better, wise and good men; men who, by their sanc-
tity of life and eloquence of speech, tamed the savage-
ness out of kings, and made the people capable of
peace. Her original form of polity it was that set
on foot in the world the great principle of represen-
tative democracy in civil government; and under her
patronage that principle has been making its way,
working as a secret force in the life of States, and
gradually preparing them for a full and explicit recog-
nition of it as the sole ground of political right.
Even the details of our American political system,
from the petty township to our august National State,
fetch their being from seeds that she planted and
nourished into life. Thus the Church has supplied
324
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
not only the informing spirit of free institutions, but
also the pattern and model on which they have been
formed. In fine, she was the presiding genius of all
the civil arrangements, seminaries of learning, crea-
tions of art, institutes of charity, which are now the
strength and glory of Christendom: the principles of
whatsoever of social order and civilization has come
down to us were the expression of her mind, and the
workmanship of her hand. Well, therefore, may we
say with Hooker, "If the course of politic affairs
cannot in any good sort go forward without fit instru-
ments, and that which fitteth them be their virtues,
let Polity acknowledge itself indebted to Religion."
I am aware that what I have been saying does not
directly answer the question in hand. What the
Church has done or has the power of doing for civil
society is one thing; the nature of her relation to
civil society is another thing. Nevertheless I think
the foregoing remarks may help us somewhat towards
an answer. For what the Church has actually done
may be taken as a measure of what she was ordained
and fitted to do; and such appointment and fitness
come near to defining her relation in the premises.
The Church, then, is nowise the creature or the
servant of civil society. Nor is civil society in any
sort the author or judge of her rights, duties, and
prerogatives, save in the matter of protecting the
persons and property of its members. For in civil
questions civil society is of course supreme. The
Church is the creature and servant of God alone;
and, with the reservation already made, she has no
other governor or superior. So that her relation to
ܕܐ
#
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
325
civil society is not one of dependence and subjection ;
while, moreover, her duties to civil society are in their
nature such as to preclude that relation. Thus much
negatively. Positively, her relation, it seems to me,
may be defined as that of the divinely appointed de-
positary and operator of the forces and principles of
social order and well-being and progress. The Church
is the mother and nurse of those virtues, faculties,
arts, institutions, and preparations, which are the true
springs of social health and prosperity. She is, in
short, the minister of God's providence, rather say,
God's providence itself in the world, for evolving and
shaping the life and growth of nations and communi-
ties in stability, righteousness, and honor.
W
Nor can this relation be subverted or changed by
any human power. She cannot herself repeal or dis-
place it, however she may come short of fully realizing
it: civil societies, though they may ignore or disown
it, cannot thwart nor control it: for it is founded, not
in the will of man, but in the moral order of things,
which is only another name for the will of God.
Equal justice between man and man, regard for each
other's persons and rights, obedience to law, respect
for authority, self-restraint, love of order and peace,
works of mercy and charity, mutual help, counsel,
comfort, interchanges of sympathy and beneficence,
and all the duties comprehended in the precept,
"whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them" ; these must needs be the
elements of social welfare so long as civil society
exists; and, so long as the Church exists on Earth,
the preparation of these elements will remain in her
office and keeping.
326
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
*
It is now time to bring out in explicit statement the
idea which I have all along implied, namely, that to
civil society, as such, the Church has no direct and
immediate relation at all. She stands in direct and
immediate relation with individual men; and her re-
lation to civil society is mediate through the individuals
composing it. And this immediate relation to indi-
vidual men is not only the simplest, it is also the
deepest and strongest relation known or possible in
humanity. From this one original and primary rela-
tion all her other relations on the human side grow;
to this all the others are secondary, subordinate, and
subsidiary. And her relation to civil society, mediate
though it be, is permanent and universal, because civil
society is the necessary condition of individual men.
But, if such be the relation of the Church to civil
society, what is her relation to States and civil gov-
ernments as the organs and representatives of civil
society? For I suppose I should hardly be considered
to have answered the question, without touching upon
this.
I observe, then, that here we are in the region of
contingency and mutability. On the one hand, it is
not necessary that there be any relation between the
Church and the State, except that of juxtaposition;
on the other hand, the relation may be such as
amounts to a legal and practical identity. The thing
is purely a matter of positive political arrangement,
to be regulated on grounds of expediency, and with a
view to special circumstances and occasions, as all
political arrangements are. Will it be said that the
Church has duties to the State, and that duties grow
out of relations, and therefore presuppose them? I
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
327
answer, the Church has indeed duties to the State,
but those duties grow out of her relation to civil
society; and what her relation to the State ought to
be, or whether any at all, is a question depending on
how she can best serve the end of social order and
well-being. What is at one time or in one place a
means, perhaps a necessary means, to that end, may
be at another time or in another place an obstruction.
There and then, the influence of the Church for good
may depend on her having political power; here and
now, it may depend on her not having such power.
This clearly infers a corresponding law of variability
in the matter under consideration. Whether, there-
fore, there should be an identification, an union, an
alliance, or a total separation, is to be decided accord-
ing to the exigency of times and places, and upon the
reason of each particular case.
Nor is the duty or the efficiency of the Church in
behalf of civil society anyways necessarily affected by
these diversities of arrangement. The sole question is,
I repeat, what "der, in a given set of circumstances,
will be most practicable, or will work best, in refer-
ence to the one constant purpose. For here, of course,
as elsewhere, the end gives law to the means. To il
lustrate this: In the first ages of the Church she had
no connection with the State at all, nor was she so
much as recognized by the State, except for the pur-
pose of oppression and persecution. Yet in propor-
tion to her numbers she probably did as much for the
well-being of civil society then, as she has done at
any time. In the simple prosecution of her divine
mission, and while inculcating an almost unreserved
submission to the civil powers, she undermined the
C
328
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
gigantic tyranny of Imperial Rome, revolutionized the
worship and the mind of the civilized world, and laid
the foundations of a new civil order and freedom.
What she thus did for civil society, while out of any
relation with the State, this it was that set on foot
and inaugurated the close State relationship in which
she stood for so many ages after. And when at a
later period she was called upon to do the political
work of the nations, this was because she alone re-
tained the lamp of knowledge, and possessed the
faculties of government. The functions of civil or
ganization and administration fell into her hands of
their own accord, because whatever of organizing and
administrative genius and wisdom then existed was in
her mind. The ministers of the Church everywhere
became, by the best of all rights, the right of exclusive
competency, the ministers of the State. In brief, the
political instincts of the time gave her, nay, pressed
upon her, what may almost be described as a mo-
nopoly of political power, because she alone had the
virtue and ability to wield it in furtherance of its
legitimate ends. And a practical identification of the
Church and the State grew up naturally and unavoid-
ably from the fact of the ecclesiastical and civil ad-
ministration being thus united in the same persons.
G
And it must be confessed, withal, that in those ages
the possession of political power by the Church was
more or less needful to her work and efficiency in be-
half of civil order and well-being. For what are the
strongest attractions of Christianity now, were mere
repulsions to the ferocious barbarism of those times.
The people could nowise be touched and moved either
by the morals of the Gospel or by the character of its
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
329
}
Author. All its higher efficacies and preparations were
too far above them to take hold of them. Neither its
logic nor its beauty, neither its light nor its sweetness,
could work upon them. Its spiritualities, both of pre-
cept and of motive, both of duty and of reward, had,
humanly speaking, no access to the popular mind but
through the medium of earthly and material interests
and regards. So that the success of Christianity at
that time depended very much on its putting on a
political form. And so, in fact, the popular currency
and influence of its ministers were greatly, if not
mainly, owing to their abilities and services as states-
men and magistrates. That they guided the State, rec-
ommended them to favor as religious guides. Their
place in the government, together with the civil quali-
fications which purchased it, drew and held the people
within their reach as preachers of the Gospel.
Thus the Medieval marriage of religion and politics
was fitted to the time; and all the best developments
of the time were more or less the fruits of that mar-
riage. It were vain to deny this, and those who would
most gladly deny it are now reluctantly admitting it.
I say that, while the ministers of the Church were
also the ministers of the State, the political forces
which they wielded in the latter character gave them a
hold on the popular mind till the moral forces of their
religion could penetrate and work. And rough, wild,
stormy natures, all steeped in ferocity and lawlessness
and superstition, who knew not how to respect and
had no faculties to see the light of Christian truth
and beauty and purity, were won to the touches of
that light as it beamed from the high seats of political
authority. Thus men who were unreceptive of the
330
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
Gospel in its own proper form went to the Church for
the law, and received more or less of the Gospel in
the form of law. Without a clear recognition of the
principle involved in this position, the history of the
Medieval Church cannot possibly be understood.
Nor is it possible to overestimate the service which
was thus done by the Church in working out the great
problem of our modern civilization. Our whole vast
inheritance of civil order and freedom was prepared
at that time, and by that hand. For, where force
alone can preserve social order, there men never have
been and never can be free; the first condition of
freedom being, that men be educated into some higher
principle of action than fear. And their fears have
to be acted upon till that higher principle is developed.
It hardly need be said that the best substitute for fear,
which has yet been realized in men, is the individual
reason and conscience; the reason strong enough to
take the Gospel freely as truth and good; the con-
science strong enough to withhold men freely from
crime by the energies of self-judgment. But, in the
Middle Ages, as a general thing, it had been vain to
present the truth in a rational or moral form; men
had not the rational and moral faculties enough devel-
oped to be capable of it in that form: they could
neither enter into the methods of reason, nor under-
stand what is meant by the remorses of guilt; the idea
of self-retributions could awaken no response within
them; and they could receive truth and good only in
the form of legal enactments, and under the appre-
hension of pains to be inflicted by an external power.
Which explains why it was that the Gospel had to be
preached so long in the shape of authoritative dogma,
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
331
and enforced by the experience of bodily sufferings
in this world, and the expected torments of material
fire in the world to come.
The whole course, then, of the Medieval Church in
her connection with the State was in accordance with
the Medieval modes of thought. It is true, those
modes of thought were in part the creation of the
Church; but then, whether good in themselves or not,
they were no doubt the best that the Gospel could
create in that particular stage and condition of the
human mind. In a sound philosophical sense, they
were indeed a necessary link in the chain of human
progress. Those modes of thought, therefore, were
suited to the time. But they are not suited to our
time. And the self-same spirit that evoked them into
being has long been at work to replace them with
others. They have had their day, and passed away.
They will not return. For, whether the individual
mind and conscience is a better principle of action
than fear or not, there is no such thing as going back
from the former to the latter.
With those modes of thought goes, is going, or has
gone, the highest realized expression and embodiment
of them, the corporate union of politics and religion.
That union, in all its parts, is doomed and dying. No
human power can save it. The Reformation was the
first audible cracking of its timbers; though the spirit
which caused that cracking had long been gathering
strength for the work. This is the real meaning of
Protestantism; which represents a radical though
slow-moving revolution in men's modes of thought.
And even the Roman Catholic Church, with all her
iron strength of constitution, must give way, is giving
332
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
way, before this irresistible movement. Ever since
the Reformation, the union of Church and State, of
religion and politics, has been breaking up and disin-
tegrating more and more. Wherever the English lan-
guage is spoken, the substance of that union is gone
already, and the form is rapidly following. What-
ever of it now survives, survives only as a venerable
anachronism; justly venerated indeed, but still to be
buried with decent dispatch, as all our venerable
things are, when dead.
It may indeed be said that religion and patriotism,
piety and loyalty, are sentiments so near akin, that
it seems unnatural to separate them; that it stands
to reason each should thrive best, when by the union
of their objects both are invited to intertwine and
grow on together; that in such union they serve to
intensify and support each other; and that both are so
essential in the economy of our life, that danger is to
be apprehended from a divorcement of them. There
is, it must be confessed, great force in this argument.
And we may well have serious apprehensions as to
the ultimate results of such a separation. Yet, on the
whole, I can hardly think that the rupture of their
alliance will breed any practical antagonism between
them; and I can well conceive how it may open the
door to a better mutual understanding. They may
help each other still; and they can hardly coexist
without helping each other. At all events, the separa-
tion is bound to be, and we may as well make up our
minds to it. The truth is, their union, as it has ex-
isted in past ages, is incompatible with the present
modes of thought. The great trouble is, that under
the law of individual reason and conscience they
1
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
333
intensify each other too much, when thus united; fill-
ing the Church with a dangerous strife of sects, and
the State with an equally dangerous war of parties.
And one very natural and important consequence of
their separation, as we may already see, is, to mitigate
and assuage the fury and rancor both of political and
theological controversy. Under the new order of
things, men can at least differ in theology without
calling each other traitors to the State, and differ in
politics without calling each other rebels against God.
This is something gained. Nay, more; we everywhere
find men agreeing in their political beliefs, who differ
in their theology, and men agreeing in their theologi-
cal beliefs, who differ in their politics. Thus their
sympathies in one kind serve to qualify their antipa-
thies in the other kind. And the best of it is, that
under this process of mutual assuagement moral tests
are taking the places of dogmatic tests.
We are
learning to esteem others, not as they agree with us in
political or theological dogmas, but according to their
rectitude and purity and usefulness of life. Our eyes
are getting purged of the jaundice caused by political
and theological bile, and we are getting to see persons
by the light of reason and conscience. It is even
becoming unfashionable to impute moral guilt for
differences of opinion. And perhaps the time is not
far off, when it will be lawful to think that men
will not, for certain speculative tenets, be doomed to
a state of suffering hereafter, from which, with the
same moral character, but with different tenets, they
would have been saved.
Another consequence of the divorcement in question
will be, that religious teachers will not have the
334
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
sanction and patronage of the State, to recommend or
enforce their instructions. By the modern modes of
thought, men's beliefs on all subjects must and will
proceed by the measures of reason and conscience,
and not by the measures of authority. Thus we are
coming to a practical realization of Hooker's noble
saying, that "to prescribe what men shall think be-
longeth only unto God." In the spirit of this saying,
men claiming to be teachers of truth will be strong
for their work just in proportion as they are believed
to be indifferent to everything but truth. The prime
condition, therefore, of faith on the part of the learn-
ers is, that their religious guides shall not lie under
the suspicion of being biased by secular regards, nor
their political guides under that of being biased by
theological regards. Thus it comes about, that, as the
great law of individual thought and conscience gains
strength, State patronage ceases to be a help and
becomes a hindrance to the teachers of religion.
Accordingly, it is but too manifest that in England
the people are losing their confidence more and more
in the Church, because of her connection with the
State, and that the government is losing its confidence
in her also, because the people do. Can we question
that it would be better for both parties, if the divorce
of religion and politics were formally consummated,
leaving each to retire within its own sphere, and stand
on its own bottom?
Finally The Gospel, it seems to me, may be re-
garded as a Divine force cast into the element of
humanity, there to fructify from age to age into new
forms and modes of thought, new discoveries and
appliances of truth; and thus to act as the shaping
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
335
and informing power of a progressive development
from bad to good, and from good to better, as it per-
vades and assimilates more and more the element in
which it works. For so we find, in the history of the
Church, that age after age has seen and received so
much of the Gospel as it was capable of seeing and
receiving. Though in some cases differing so widely
in their modes of thought as not to understand one
another at all, yet each age in turn has mainly ac-
quired its modes of thought in the same school, and
derived its mental and moral life from the same source.
Explain it as we may, Christianity keeps educating
man out of the very stages it educates him into.
Under its influence, the human mind and character
do not and will not stay in any fixed and uniform
cast. What does this argue but an inexhaustible
power in the Gospel to create new faculties and per-
ceptions in us? A change from it in one form is but
the precursor of a change to it in a higher form.
Men have often thought they were outgrowing it, and
the event has proved that they were only growing
into truer conceptions of it. When men need truth
in dogmas, it puts on a dogmatic form to them; when
they are capable of truth as an inward living law, it
becomes such a law within them.
Such is the mysterious force of the Gospel to draw
and hold men in virtue of the capacities it quickens.
and develops in them. However fixed our structure
of opinion, of sentiment, and purpose may be, still
there is an energy working in secret to melt that
structure down, and recast it in a different shape.
And this energy is apt to be working in us most
when we perceive it least. How different was the
336
THE CHURCH AND CIVIL SOCIETY.
Mediæval religion from that of the primitive age;
how different ours from the Mediæval; and how dif
ferent that of a future age probably will be from ours!
diversities of mind and character so great as almost
to preclude sympathy and recognition; yet all tracing,
and justly tracing, their moral lineage to a common
root. Thus, from age to age, as men at the touch of
the Gospel wake up in one part of its likeness after
another, they still find it answering without to the
changes it works within. It is as true and responsive
to the highest ideas and aspirations of the soul in this
age of individual mind and heart, as it was in the old
times of ecclesiastical dogma and definition. Nor
does all this infer any want of objective clearness
and validity in what the Gospel delivers: it merely
infers that there are more things in the Gospel than
are dreamed of in any man's theology. O, that all
Christians realized how true this is! They would
then understand that Christianity means to keep the
human soul alive and growing, and not to hold it
fixed in any crystallized state. In fine, Christianity
is not merely a revelation of particular truths; it is
also the light of a perpetual revelation, a light that
is always revealing, because it is always creating.
And as it is a principle of continual life and growth,
so men will ever be finding new things in it according
to their measure of growth.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.
As some question was made touching the use of the
word dogma in the foregoing paper, it may be well to
add that by dogma I mean theology enacted into law.
This definition does not, to my mind, include the
Apostles' Creed, which I cannot think of as theologi-
cal at all, in the proper sense of the term. Perhaps
historic would come nearer describing its character
than any other one word. That Creed, I take it, is
supposed and is meant to be such a symbol or sum-
mary of the Gospel as, in effect, draws the whole
Gospel after it; and its excellence lies very much in
that, being historic, and not theological, it does this
in such a way as to leave us in all the original free-
dom of the Gospel itself. Now, to call the Gospel,
dogma, would be, to my sense, bad English. And I
would almost as soon call the Gospel, dogma, as the
Apostles' Creed. If, however, any see fit to call it so,
I will neither follow them nor quarrel with them.
The whole matter of dogma, as I understand it, pro-
ceeds upon the ground that the purpose of Hell is,
not only to prevent or to punish men's doing what
they know to be wrong, but also to convince them
what is true. As such, it is incompatible with the
22
338.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.
modern modes of thought, which are essentially ra-
tional, and not dogmatic. But the same matter,
which was once held as dogma, may now be held as
reason; nay, must be held so, or not at all. Accord-
ingly, the Church presents to the Laity nothing of
dogma whatsoever. Many of her Clergy, however,
both High Church and Low Church, still cling more
or less to dogma; and much of their teaching is in
the right style of the dogmatic modes of thought.
For myself, I have no difficulty in subscribing to all
the Thirty-nine Articles, so far as I understand them;
but I heartily wish they were out of the Prayer Book
nevertheless, because I think they keep many good.
Christians out of the Church. But the worst of it is,
that, so long as men hold to the dogmatic modes of
thought, they will think it their duty to be making
war against Science; which is probably the greatest
evil of the Church in our time. For the spirit of
dogma and the spirit of science are utterly antagonis-
tic; they cannot coalesce. Hence the sad spectacle,
now so common all about us, of the Clergy condemning
scientific men, and scientific men despising the Clergy.
This is all wrong, wrong on both sides; but much
more so on our side than on the other. It is dog-
matic theology, and not science, that is making scien-
tific men infidels.
Acquirement and Culture, discourse on
Acquirement, how differing from culture.
Adverse criticism on Wordsworth, reason of it.
Animals, what they do for man
"(
sympathies between them and man
Annuity to Wordsworth from the State
Architecture both an art and a science
its use in culture illustrated
better as art than as science
"L
"
"C
<<
Arnold, Matthew, what he heard the Poet say
"
on Scott and Wordsworth
K.
his estimate of Wordsworth
compares Goethe and Wordsworth
says Wordsworth has no style.
،،
INDEX.
"C
<<
Apostles, line of, continued
Art best when unconscious of itself
"C
Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque
"has as good a right to be as science
"not amenable to scientific tests
"and literature as means of culture
Artificial School, reaction from the .
C
<< characteristics of the
Artist, Wordsworth's character as an
Attributes of the Divine Life in Nature
1
•
•
•
•
Bagehot, Walter, on Wordsworth's art
Ballads, Lyrical, when first published.
Beaumont, Sir George, the Poet's friend.
Beaumont, Lady, her concern for the Poet..
"" how he reassured her mind.
"
Beauty is as good a thing as logic
•
с
•
PAGE
259
283
122
159
160
92
291
292
293
87
99
134
208
219
3
227
230
265
274
286
117
120
226
158
231
82
88
88
89
265
}
340
INDEX.
H
Bell, Peter, description of, quoted
Birds, why they sing
Birth and parentage of Wordsworth
Books, use and power of, in culture
Borderers, The, remarks upon.
(6
(C
Boyhood, the Poet's raptures in
Brooke, Stopford, on God's thought in Nature.
32
((
(C
his Lectures on Wordsworth
103
143
describes how the Poet felt Nature
his comment on Wordsworth's view of Nature 157
174
85
29
123
4
25
26
78
<<
<<
on God's joy in His own life
Brougham against Young in the Edinburgh .
Bryant, how affected by Wordsworth
Burns, what Wordsworth owed to him
Burke, Edmund, a true apostle
Byron, his influence, how broken
character of his poetry
CC
Shelley, and Keats, great poets
("
""
<<
CC
46
CC
(C
•
Calm, Nature's, good for the soul
Calvert, G. H., his volume on Wordsworth
Calvert, Raisley, his bequest to the Poet.
Cambridge, the Poet's life at
Child, the, in the man
Childhood, moral traits of.
<<
hallowed recollections of
Christian piety prefers poetry to logic.
Christianity not hurt by lapse of dogma
Christologies not so good as Christ Himself
Coleridge, S. T., his remark on Wordsworth
his rank as a poet. .
a benediction to Wordsworth
•
•
what he said of Wordsworth.
his poem on The Prelude
Coleridge, Hartley, on Wordsworth
College-mates, the Poet's account of his
Common life, the language of
Conscience the highest organ of Reason
Conscious art not liked by Wordsworth
Continent, Wordsworth's tour on the .
Co-operation of Nature's forms and forces
Co-ordinate faculties of the mind
O
•
•
U
•
☛
. 183
103
52
41
246
245
255
194
192
195
40
78
79
•
PAGE
84
159
35
288
•
15
39
*
79
82
92
42
213
271
228
46
159
266
INDEX.
341
Cowper and the Artificial School
(C
his conception of Nature
Crabbe and the Artificial School
Critics, their abuse of Wordsworth, and how he bore it
Criticism, the proper use of
(C
<<
never gets at the heart of poetry
(C
Cumbrian scenery, the influence of .
people, their characteristics
Cuckoo, To the, cited and commented on
Culture and Acquirement, discourse on
how it differs from acquirement
the supreme need of our time.
means and forces of
<<
<c
•
""
Dana, R. H., his review of Wordsworth
Daisy, the, how Wordsworth treats it
David, King, "a mighty orb of song'
Death of Wordsworth, his wife, and sister
Decline of Wordsworth's fame
<<
•
(C
•
Departure, a new, made by Wordsworth
Derwent, "fairest of all rivers "
Descriptive Sketches, publication of
Descriptions of Nature, Wordsworth's
Diction, poetic, exploded by Wordsworth
Difficult parts of the great Ode explained
Diffusive power of Wordsworth's poetry
Disappointment and bewilderment.
Discords, moral, involved in tragedy
Disillusionment, no occasion for, in Wordsworth
Divine Providence in Humanity.
Divine Life, the, in Nature
Dogma, surfeit of, in modern teaching.
<<
the spirit of, reaction from it
<<
·
•
the lapse of, hurts not Christianity
Dogmatic theology, none in Nature
Dryden, founder of the Artificial School .
•
Early friends of Wordsworth
Earth with all her voices praising God
Eclipse of the Sun, quotation from
Edinburgh Review, its abuse of the Poet
•
•
jealous of Natural Religion
·
•
30
128
10
95
95
120
37
52
139
211
250-4
•
•
•
PAGE
118
138
118
86
236
238
208
213
251
259
283
284
286
91
53
300
75
1
158
190
191
190
192
187
117
87
197
142
83
342
INDEX.
--
English poets, Wordsworth's place among
Epitaph, A Poet's, quotation from
(C
parts of it explained
Ethics of Tragedy.
Evening Walk, publication of
Evening of Extraordinary Splendor
Excursion, The, comment on
"C
<<
Faults of Wordsworth, what and whence.
Fermor, Mrs., one of the Poet's friends
Final triumph of the Poet over his critics
Flowers, Wordsworth's love of them
France, the Poet's residence in
CC
Freedom of thought, none in science
<< is essential in religion.
French Revolution, the Poet's sympathies with
"C
(C
his final judgment of
his experiences growing from
"C
"C
(C
when written and published
Freshness of Wordsworth's poetry.
Friends, early, how they stood by the Poet.
God speaking through His works
" all Nature alive with Him
•
worship of, in Nature.
"His society with Himself in Nature.
praised by all His works.
"
•
•
•
Goethe's poetry "not inevitable enough
Goldsmith's descriptions of Nature .
Gothic cathedrals, the builders of
Grand style, the, as used by Wordsworth
Grasmere, the Poet's residence there
•
•
·
Happiness of the Divine Life in Nature.
Happy Warrior, The, quotation from
"Harvest of a quiet eye, the "
Hawkshead, the Poet's life there
recollections of
(C
•
•
"}
revisited by the Poet
Helpfulness, mutual, in Nature's order
Hemans, Mrs., a friend of Wordsworth
High-Priest of a new poetical dispensation
·
•
•
•
•
·
PAGE
202
31
32-4
296
•
52
257
17
82
14-18
88
90
128
49
276
278
47
50
51
12
87
2
147
154
174
197
208
138
3
225
79
. 159
63
33
36
40
45
163
88
92
INDEX.
343
Holiness the prime law of tragic art
Holy plan, Nature's, as viewed by the Poet
Home, the poetry of.
(C
the pleasantness of Wordsworth's
Homilies, philosophic, in verse
Hooker, Richard, his sentence on Law
Human character, Wordsworth's ideal of
Humble life, the poetry of.
Hume, David, on the interest of tragedy
Hutchinson, Mary, the Poet's wife.
<<
(C
Idiot Boy, The, objections to
Illusions, none in Wordsworth to be dispelled
Imagination the life of poetry
<<
"the Queen Faculty of the soul"
the mind's spiritual eye
<<
•
<<
Sarah, the Poet's sister-in-law .
— Immortality, Ode on, comment on
M
Inanimate things, Nature's life in them
responsive to human care
helpful to each other
Inevitableness of Wordsworth's poetry
Influence of Cumbrian scenery
- Inspiration, applied to Wordsworth's poetry
Inspirations of worship and rectitude
Intellect, its place in Wordsworth
Interest of tragedy, whence it springs.
Italy, Northern, the lakes of .
•
•
Jeffrey, how his abuse hurt the Poet
Joy, new wells of opened by Wordsworth
CC the author of a new and elevating
Joys that chasten and sanctify
•
Language, theory and use of .
CC
of common iife, the
Laodamia, an example of grand style
•
<<
"C
- Keats, John, his reference to Wordsworth
Shelley, and Byron as poets
Keble, what he said of Wordsworth at Oxford
Knight, Prof., his volume on the Poet.
·
·
✰
•
•
•
. 17
75
145
146
147
240
161
•
•
•
•
PAGE
298
172
127
129
18
171
244
122
297
60
110
162
163
134
208
207
186
109
298
47
85
32
64
33
12
78
92
103
. 211
213
224
344
INDEX.
Laguna
Law, Hooker's description of.
Leighton, Archbishop, quoted.
Life, common, the language of
6C the Divine, in Nature.
Linnet, the green, description of .
Literature, how differing from science.
its use as a culture-force
CC
Logic, malign usurpation of, in the Poet
"C
the scientific, not applicable to morals
London, what the Poet learned there
"(
Lonsdale, first Earl of, cranky and mean.
second Earl of, not like the first
Love, law of, as taught by Nature .
(c
for Wordsworth, how mine began
CC
of Nature impaired and suspended.
religious, in Wordsworth
Love-poetry not written by Wordsworth.
Luther, Martin, his mission
Lyrical Ballads first published
(C
(C
Man as man in Wordsworth's poetry
Man, the child in the ..
Manifestations of Nature's one life
Marriage, Wordsworth's
"" of the mind with Nature
•
•
•
Marsh, Prof. James, how he used Wordsworth
Master-Prophets of Song
Master-vision, Wordsworth's
•
•
Means of culture, what they are .
Memory, poem of, Myers's comment on it
Microscope, the revelations of the
Mill, J. S., how helped by Wordsworth
Milton and Wordsworth compared
"C
•
a master of the grand style.
Mind and passion, their normal relations .
Mission of Wordsworth, the
Missionaries of light and health.
Moral purpose of Wordsworth's poetry
- Moral sense and scope of tragedy
<<
Moral truth not discoverable by science
C is above scientific tests
Muse, Wordsworth's, what she loves
•
•
D
1
0
•
→
PAGE
171
• 67
213
158
8
260
286
57
272
48
36
61
170
25
56
185
110
·
•
•
•
•
•
·
•
•
4
82
133
246
158
61
175
200
9
135
287
95
6
64
203
224
114
8
4
19✓
298 -
269
278
126
INDEX.
345
S
Muse, the tragic, her mind towards man .
Music both an art and a science .
<< better as art than as science.
its vast service to humanity
Mutual helpfulness of things in Nature
Myers, F. W. H., his volume on Wordsworth
((
CC
(C
(C
(C
"C
(6
(6
<<
"
(f
<<
Mystery in art and poetry
(6
(C
Nature, all alive with God
(C
((
(C
CC
(c
God's language to His creatures
translators and interpreters of.
how she educated Wordsworth
the Divine Life in
Wordsworth's religion of
Nightingale, "a creature of a fiery heart
Normal relations of mind and passion
what he says of the Poet's wife
his comment on Mill's tribute
his reflections on the poem of Memory
his view of the Poet's Nature-worship
on Wordsworth's self-abandonment
on Pope and Pope's imitators
•
•
•
Objective, the, in Nature's teachings
Ode to Duty, quotations from
<<
•
its transparency of style
-Ode on Immortality, comment on .
•
•
Office of criticism, the proper .
Organs of Reason in man
•
•
•
•
parts of it hard to understand
the glory of it renewed
•
Originality of Wordsworth, how it came
Oxford gives the Poet an honorary D. C. L.
•
Passion, place of in Wordsworth's poetry
Paul, Saint, not altogether faultless
Peabody, A. P., on the Religion of Nature
(C
Ephraim, what he told me of a friend
People, Cumbrian, their characteristics
Peter Bell, poem of, comment on
Philosophy the underpinning of poetry
Plants responsive to human care
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
·
•
•
•
. 178
108 and 245
221
240-56
250-4
257
236
264
204
92
PAGE
304
289
290
291
163
104
61
64
95
155
230
268
237
147
2
3
155
158
185
130
114
105-16
10
187
243
213
17
75
161
346
INDEX.
(C
Pleasure of art approved by Positivists
of religion as good as that of art
Poet, Wordsworth's ideal of a
Poets, English, the most spiritual of
66
(C
""
66
((
Poor, poetry in the homes of the.
Pope, his place in English poetry
<<
his conception of Nature
(<
the poetry of his imitators
Positivists, their love of Wordsworth
<<
calling on all things to praise God
"Poetic Diction " discarded by Wordsworth
Poetical interpretation of Nature
Poetry and Science
<<
66
(C
the greatest of, good men.
their mission, how best fulfilled
contemporary with Wordsworth
what they should be and should do
<<
(C
((
discard all religion in word
have to be better than their creed
approve the use of art
Pre-existence, doctrine of, in the great Ode
Prelude, The, prosaic strains in
(C
(C
•
•
•
•
why Wordsworth attracts them
more religious than they think
catch a spirit of worship from him
•
•
•
4
•
when written and published
(C its effect on me at first
Prometheus, a typical example of tragedy
Proof, scientific, not applicable to religion
precludes choice and freedom.
(C
(C
Providence, Divine, in Humanity
Pure Art, Wordsworth a master of .
"C
<<
examples of, in his poetry
Racedown, Wordsworth's residence there
Reaction from the Artificial School
(C
from the excess of dogma
Realism in Wordsworth, broad and solid
attractive to the Positivists
(C
•
•
•
Quarterly Review against Wordsworth .
Questioning, what it means in the great Ode.
·
•
·
•
•
·
PAGE
274
275
30
8
10
21
77
106
197
212
7
5
214
117
138
268
9
62-76
67
68
273
272
274
247
17
82
97
301
278
276
1
230
232-5
83
250
78
117
191
71
73
INDEX.
347
Reason, not monopolized by Science
"C
its supreme exercise
organs of, in the human mind
the Divine Order of the world
Recent writers on Wordsworth
Recollections of childhood, what they are
Religion of Nature, the .
<<
(C
""
((
(c
CC
(c
"C
HEL
Religion, the joy of, as good as that of art
not amenable to scientific tests
(c the best culture-force
(C
Religious thought, new holdings for
Residence in France, fruits of it
Resolution and Independence, comment on
Resurgence of Wordsworth's fame
Reviewers, their treatment of the Poet
Revolution, the French, and the Poet,
Rydal Mount, the Poet's life there.
(c
Science, the genius of, in recent times.
how differing from literature .
(6
<<
<<
<<
"C
<<
<<
<<
(C
Scientific interpretation of Nature
•
•
how it influenced the Poet
not in conflict with Christianity
not to reign exclusively
how it ministers to culture
•
not the only form or voice of Reason.
the conclusions of, necessary.
(<
CC
(6 form of religion not the best.
(c
((
not a general means of culture
not self-creative or self-sustaining
"
•
•
Scott, Sir Walter, his poems and novels.
(C
his rank as a novel-writer
his estimate of Wordsworth.
what Wordsworth thought of him
•
proof extinguishes freedom of thought
Sentimentalism, how Wordsworth avoids it.
Shairp, J. C., passage quoted from him
<<
"C
·
•
his account of the Poet's sister
his estimate of Wordsworth's poetry
his essay on the Poet.
"" his volume on Burns.
Shakespeare, his plays not popular .
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
PAGE
7
145
264
272
102
255
185
186
191
275
278
288
189
50
221
97
83
47
92
5
260
269
276
280
281
282
285
7
194
265
78
98
99
100
180
32
59
98
102
104
24
348
INDEX.
Shakespeare, decline of his fame
"
as compared with other poets
as compared with Wordsworth
Shelley, his poetry as viewed by Stephen
Byron, and Keats, their rank as poets
Sister, the Poet's, what she was to him
Sky-Lark, To a, quoted .
Skating-frolic, description of a
Song, Master-Prophets of
Sorrow transmuted into strength
waste of, lamentable
(C
"C
Soul of Nature, the, as Wordsworth felt it
Stephen, Leslie, his estimate of Wordsworth
"his comment on Shelley.
on Wordsworth's inspiration
his comment on the great Ode
Stock-dove," his homely tale,"
Style, qualities of Wordsworth's.
traits of, not sought after
occasional grandeur of .
Subjective side of Nature's teaching
Swiss scenery, its effect on Wordsworth
Symington, A. J., his book on the Poet
""
C
<<
(C
"C
(C
<<
<<
<<
(C
(C
Tragedy, Ethics of
<<
•
•
•
Taylor, Sir H., on Wordsworth's Sonnets
Telescope, the revelations of the .
Text-book, Words worth used as a
Theology not religion
<<
•
•
enacted into law, dogma
Thought, freedom of, none in science proper
Tintern Abbey, poem of, quoted
and the Master-Vision .
•
•
•
Tragic art, holiness its prime law
Tragic Muse, the, loves men's souls
Tranquillity the Poet's constant aim
(C
an attribute of Nature's life.
Triumph, the Poet's, over the critics
•
•
•
interest of, as viewed by Hume
moral and spiritual .
CC
its moral sense shown in Prometheus
its harmonies grow from moral discords
•
PAGE
96
202
204
74
78
57
20
38
9
66
305
149
65
74
207
247 and 252
130
219
223
224
175
46
103
•
•
•
•
•
+
•
236
5
22
194
192
276
34
151
296
297
298
301
302
298
304
112
182
90
INDEX.
349
Turtle-Dove, The caged, and the Poet.
Tyndall, Prof., his opinion of Thos. Young
Undercurrent, passion an, with the Poet.
Understanding, the backbone of poetry
not the only organ of Reason
""
Upjohn, Mr., the architect, referred to
Vaudracour and Julia, quoted
Virtue has as good a right to be as knowledge
(C
Wanderer, the, description of .
We are Seven, poem of, commented on
"C
Webster, Daniel, an apostle of law and order
"C decline of his fame
Wesley, John, his special mission
Whittier, J. G., on Wordsworth's poetry
Wishing-Gate, The, quotation from
Wordsworth, Christopher, the Poet's nephew
Dora, the Poet's daughter
(C
Dorothy, the Poet's sister
<<
(C
<<
(C
<<
<<
34
3
<<
3
"C
""
:
CC
(C
،،
- cc
<<
દર
<<
((
≈
<<
1
(C
<<
،،
CC
Wordsworth, William, the Poet, his mission
(C
((
his character as a man
CC
(C
(C
(C
John, the Poet's father
John, the Poet's brother
<<
<<
((
•
CC
3
•
(C
•
Mrs., the Poet's mother
Mary, the Poet's wife
""
the crowning felicity of his life.
(6 her death
•
•
·
what she did for the Poet
her long illness and suffering
she and the Poet one in soul
her death
•
•
·
his death, and how the Poet felt it .
•
faults of his poetry
his ideal of a poet
his birth and parentage
his school-life at Hawkshead.
early tokens of his genius
his college-life at Cambridge
what Cambridge did for him.
his tour on the Continent
•
•
•
PAGE
132
85
115
145
263
292
131
265
34 and 200
16
4
96
4
11
20
190
94
57
58
59
78
95
35
80
81
35
60
61
95
8
11
14
30
35
36
40
41
43
46
350
INDEX.
Wordsworth, whirled away with French joy
<C
<<
CC
46
66
<<
"
66
""
<<
6C
66
66
66
66
4،
، ،
(f
"
<f
66
66
(6
66
66
15
པ
"C
35
66
"
35
་
35
པ
<<
•
པ
"
"
"
66
his residence in France.
his experiences of the Terror.
tried to live all in the understanding
breaking his heart in speculation
rescued from this state by his sister
his marriage and home life
what his poetry teaches
imparts power, instead of asking faith
his poetry an apocalypse
has a broad and solid realism.
his realism as shown in Peter Bell
in the Prospectus to The Excursion.
a great philosopher
always healthful and manly
his residence at Racedown
his acquaintance with Coleridge
spends a Winter in Germany.
his residence at Grasmere .
his strength of character
his poetry not popular
a teacher of the teachers
why he had to leave Grasmere
his self-consciousness
•
•
appointed distributor of stamps
has an annuity from the Civil List.
becomes Poet Laureate.
•
his fame resurgent
his friendship with Scott
his opinion of Scott
he and Scott visit Yarrow
•
his course of life at Rydal Mount
his death and burial
decline of his fame
•
•
•
•
recent writers on his poetry
his view of a poet's mission
how he treats the passion of love
place of passion in his poetry
what a heart of fire was in him
·
his craving for tranquillity
his "fiery heart," how controlled
temper of his poetry
•
•
PAGE
47
49
50
54
57
ZI IZZN8282&
61
62
67
69
71
72
73
75
76
78
79
79
80
82
86
87
91
91
92
92
93
94
95
95
97
99
100
101
102
106
107
108
111
112
113
115

INDEX.
351
Wordsworth, his poetry at home in the truth of things
"
his estimate of Burns
his service to the poor
(C
"(
66
<<
(f
((
"
<<
،،
"(
66
"C
"
195
35
54
19
"
་
66
tr
14
34
34
"
393
<C
(C
•
his respect for man as man
his master-vision .
his conception of God in Nature
three stages of his mental growth
his worship of God in Nature
how educated by Nature
what Nature's one life taught him
frames himself to receptiveness.
his avoidance of sentimentalism
his sympathy with Nature's calm
his Natural Religion.
deeply stirred by natural scenes
his place among English Poets
how he regarded his art
his endeavor as to style
studying Nature face to face
how close his view of natural objects
his imagery taken at first hand
his theory and use of language
his theory and practice not at odds
qualities of his style .
his character as an artist
has little if any conscious art
as a workman in Pure Art
his misgivings of a future life
his ideal of human character
•
•
Yarrow Revisited, occasion of it
Yew-Tree, Lines left in, quotation from
Young, Thos., kept down by Brougham
(C
66
his Wave Theory of Light
his experiences shaping the great Ode
Worship of God in Nature
•
University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
•
•
•
•
•
PAGE
119
124
125
133
135
137
151
154
155
158
179
180
181
187
199
202
203
203
205
206
207
211
216
220
226
228
230
242
244
248
154
101
21
85
192

XWX
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD
༄ན དག་མ་