Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

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

  Here mighty Nature! In this school sublime

  I weigh the hopes and fears of suffering Spain;

  For her consult the auguries of time,

  And through the human heart explore my way,

  And look and listen, gathering whence I may

  Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain.

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

  I dropped my pen, and listened to the wind,

  That sang of trees uptorn and vessels tost;

  A midnight harmony, and wholly lost

  To the general sense of men, by chains confined

  Of business, care, or pleasure, — or resigned

  To timely sleep. Thought I, the impassioned strain

  Which without aid of numbers I sustain

  Like acceptation from the world will find.

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

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

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

  Call not the royal Swede unfortunate,

  Who never did to Fortune bend the knee!

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

  A gift of that which is not to be given

  By all the blended powers of Earth and Heaven!

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

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

  [Footnote 4: The researches of Sir Nicholas Nicolas, (Letters and

  Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. vii. Appendix), have placed Lord

  Nelson’s connexion with Lady Hamilton in an unexpected light.]

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

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

  Whose powers shed round him. In the common strife,

  Or mild concerns of ordinary life.

  A constant influence, a peculiar grace:

  But who, if he be called upon to face

  Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined

  Great issues, good or bad for human kind,

  Is happy as a Lover, and attired

  With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired.

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

  He who, though thus endued as with a sense

  And faculty for storm and turbulence.

  Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans

  To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;

  Sweet images! Which, wheresoe’er he be,

  Are at his heart; and such fidelity

  It is his darling passion to approve; —

  More brave for this, that he hath much to love.

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

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

  Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,

  And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!

  Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

  In face of these doth exercise a power

  Which is our human nature’s highest dower;

  Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves

  Of their bad influence, and their good receives;

  By objects which might force the soul to abate

  Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; —

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

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

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

  CHAPTER VIII. CHILDREN — LIFE AT RYDAL MOUNT — ”THE EXCURSION.”

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

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

  As a faggot sparkles on the hearth

  Not less if unattended and alone

  Than when both young and old sit gathered round

  And take delight in its activity.

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

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

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

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