Wordsworth, poet of nature and poet of man

Preface to ' Lyrical Ballads '

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BOSTON AND LONDON GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS f/

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COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY E. HERSHEY SNEATH

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.

TO

MY WIFE

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Preface

In this volume the author aims to trace the history of Wordsworth's mental and spiritual unfolding as a poet of Nature and as a poet of Man, under the influence of heredity and of his physical and social environment. A careful study of the various external sources, and of the Poet's works, has been made. This, of course, has shed much light, not only on Wordsworth's personal psychology, but, also, on the content of his thought concerning Nature and Man, which has been carefully interpreted and systematized, so that it forms a complete statement of his poetic and philosophic creed. In treating of Wordsworth as a poet of Nature, the author has dealt with him primarily as a poet of insight rather than as a descriptive poet, although much is said of him from this point of view also. The limits of the essay precluded a study of Wordsworth's evolution as a literary artist, but this subject, too, could not be entirely igftored.

The author desires gratefully to acknowledge his obligations to his colleagues, Henry A. Beers and Albert S. Cook, Professors of English Literature in Yale University, and to Lane Cooper, Assistant Professor of English Literature in Cornell University, for valuable criticism and suggestion. Acknowledgments are also due to Christopher Wordsworth's '' Memoirs of William Wordsworth," edited by Henry Reed, Boston, 185 1 ; to Professor William Knight's ''The Life of William Wordsworth," Edinburgh, 1899 ; to Professor fimile Hyacinthe Legouis's " The Early Life of William Wordsworth," translated by J. W. Matthews, New York, 1897; to " Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth," edited by William Knight, London and New York, 1904 ; to the Fenwick notes, published in Professor vi WORDSWORTH

Knight's Eversley edition of '*The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth," London, 1896 ; and to '' Letters of the Wordsworth Family, from 1787 to 1855," collected and edited by William Knight, Boston and London, 1907. Wordsworth's metrical autobiography, '' The Prelude," has been of much service. The text of the Oxford edition of ''The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth," edited by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, London, 1895, has been followed in all quotations. His chronological table has proved

to be an excellent guide.

E. HERSHEY SNEATH Yale University

Chapter I Birth, Heredity, And Childhood

An acquaintance with the mental and spiritual development of a poet is necessary for the fullest understanding and appreciation of his work. This is doubtless true of all poets, but it is preeminently true of Wordsworth. No one familiar with his poetry will deny its peculiarly subjective character. Almost from beginning to end the personal note is struck. It is in a large measure the record of his own experiences and of the feelings, imaginings, and reflections occasioned by them. But Man is no mere microcosm, unfolding his mental life by an inner law of necessity altogether independent of relations to an outer world. He is part of a larger order, — a macrocosm, — in interaction with which he unfolds and develops, working out a personal history. Thus understood, a poet's art is an expression of himself, and all fundamental relations, both outer and inner, must be considered if we are to gain a true insight into his mental life and, through it, a true understanding of his poetry.

One of these fundamental relations is heredity. By virtue of his race connection the poet is related to a Past. His mental history, Jil^e the history of his bodily organism, does not begin with what is generally conceived of as birth. The ultimate origin of the mind is, and probably always will be, a debatable question. But if it be in some way an inheritance or derivation, then it seems probable that we derive our mental being, not only in its essentiality but also, to a certain extent, in its particular dispositions or tendencies. The poet, then, can hardly be regarded as an exception to the rule. Although genius may be a perplexing problem to the evolutionist, still the man possessed of it, as organically connected with the species, is doubtless subject to the same biological and psychological laws which govern the derivation and development of his fellows. If, then, we are to understand the life of Wordsworth as a necessary condition to the fullest comprehension and highest appreciation of his art, we must study it in relation to his birth and inheritance. It may be that the knowledge thus gained will aid us very little in endeavoring to account for his poetic powers ; but whether it does or not, it is part of the obligation of his mental biographer to take into consideration the Poet's ancestry — paternal and maternal, immediate and remote — and determine, if possible, in these antecedents, the origin of those unique powers, ''the vision and the faculty divine," which, in their highest exercise, enabled him to '' see into the life of things."

Unfortunately, we find very little in Wordsworth's ancestry that accounts for his peculiar gifts. On his father's side his descent can be traced from a line of yeomen — a line of forceful men, some of whom seem to have been active in private and public affairs. His father was a lawyer of fair abilities. Of his mother's antecedents very little is known beyond what is given in Wordsworth's ''Autobiographical Memoranda." Christopher Wordsworth informs us that one of William's maternal ancestors was Richard Crackanthorpe, " one of the ablest and most learned divines in the most erudite age of English theology, the reign of James I." ^ Legouis suggests that " those interested in symbolism will doubtless find an instance of it in these antecedents of a man who was destined so to weld together nature and theology as to form from them the most complete and most orthodox scheme of

1 Memoirs of William Wordsworth, edited by Henry Reed, I, 30, Boston, 1851.

natural religion." ^ But symbolism is not science and it is valueless in helping us to determine origins, so that we have little in what is known of Wordsworth's more immediate ancestors, paternal or maternal, that throws light on the subject of inherited gifts.

The problem of hereditary obligation in Wordsworth's case becomes still more perplexing when we take into consideration the peculiar character of his genius. He was endowed with the mystic's consciousness, which was intimately associated with his poetic power ; indeed, much of his imaginative life was profoundly affected by it. When most truly a poet, he was a mystic poet — a seer, with the seer's mystical vision. The tendency toward a spiritual conception of the universe, which marks so much of his poetry, appears to have its roots in this form of consciousness, in which the spirit seems gradually to withdraw from sense and to gaze with a penetrating eye on the inner nature of Reality. '' The vision and the faculty divine," '' the light that never was, on sea or land," — these are the very soul of his poetic genius, when he is at his best as a poet. But it is this power of poetic vision, or insight, which is inseparably connected with a peculiar mysticism which often reaches its most pronounced form in a trance to which the Poet was subject not only in his childhood and youth but even in mature years. The more specific nature of this trance experience, and its relation to his genius, will be manifest as we proceed. So far as evidence is concerned, we can trace very little in his ancestry that adequately accounts for this peculiar phenomenon. In the present state of uncertainty concerning the explanation of normal consciousness from the point of view of heredity, it would certainly be unsafe to infer anything of a very specific character in regard to the explanation, from this standpoint, of that which seems so preeminently supernormal, especially in view of the very meager data at hand.

1 Legouis, The Early Life of William Wordsworth, translated by J. W. Matthews, 21, New York, 1897. All quotations from Legouis are taken from this edition.

It may be said, however, in a general way, that Wordsworth^s poetic genius, in its more spiritual aspects, may be due to an hereditary obligation which, as a Northman, he owed to a remote past. It does not require much straining of belief to accept the statement of Professor Veitch, who, in speaking of the Poet's emotional sense of the unseen, says it "had its source deep down in a certain heredity of feeling, due to the past, and nourished by circumstances of scenery and of race. In him it was sublimated. What had been but a dim working through the ages on the fears of the older Cymric and Scandinavian people became in him, as he lived and grew with open and fervid heart, a revelation of moral and spiritual truth, and thus an inspiration for mankind. And this was at the root of his moral and theistic feeling." ^

On the whole, we can recognize only this very general and somewhat indefinite obligation to his ancestors on the part of Wordsworth as a poet. This seems still more singular when it is remembered that nearly all of the Wordsworth children were possessed of poetic temperament. Dorothy Wordsworth was in many respects as real a poet as her brother William. It will be evident, in the course of our study, to what extent he was indebted to her keen observation, imagination, and insight, and how truly he

could say:

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.^

Captain John Wordsworth, the brother whom William and Dorothy so dearly loved, was also a man of poetic sympathy and appreciation, as well as of poetic judgment. His brother speaks of him as ''the silent Poet." He had the love for Nature so characteristic of this generation of Wordsworths ; also the " practised eye," the ''inevitable ear," and the "watchful heart" of a

1 Wordsworthiana, edited by William Knight, 298, London, 1889.

2 The Sparrow's Nest, 17-20.

poet. Furthermore, he read and understood the merit of his brother's poetry, and predicted for it a future, when many of his more eminent contemporaries were pointing out its real and supposed deficiencies, and consigning it to an inglorious oblivion. All this reveals the fact that he was, in a measure at least, the '' silent Poet " his brother thought him to be.

There was, then, in this Wordsworth family a decided poetic strain, and the common possession of this endowment by the brothers and sister makes it still more difficult for the psychologist to account for Wordsworth's genius, except in a very general way, on the basis of inheritance.

Wordsworth, however, seems to have recognized a certain hereditary obligation to his mother. This recognition consists of conjecture only, and it is somewhat ambiguous in character. On the surface it seems to be merely an acknowledgment of what he considers to be a common indebtedness of infants to maternal parents. Indeed, we are left in doubt whether he refers to a peculiar maternal inheritance at all or merely to an acquisition, due to the intimate relation which the child sustains to his mother after birth, or to both. The more obvious interpretation of his words would indicate belief in an inherited '' infant sensibility," which is " augmented and sustained " as the child drinks in '' the feelings from his mother's eye," and " holds mute dialogues with his mother's heart." This infant sensibility links him to the external world, and irradiates, beautifies, and exalts objects of sense. It gives him " the first poetic view of our human life." It is thus that the otherwise prosaic world is transformed. The mysticism so characteristic of Wordsworth is quite manifest in this beautiful conception, which he clothes in equally beautiful words :

Blest the infant Babe, (For with my best conjecture I would trace Our Being's earthly progress), blest the Babe, Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep. Rocked on his Mother's breast ; who with his soul

Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye ! For him, in one dear Presence, there exists A virtue which irradiates and exalts Objects through widest intercourse of sense. No outcast he, bewildered and depressed : Along his infant veins are interfused The gravitation and the filial bond Of nature that connect him with the world. Is there a flower, to which he points with hand Too weak to gather it, already love Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him Hath beautified that flower ; already shades Of pity cast from inward tenderness Do fall around him upon aught that bears Unsightly marks of violence or harm.

Emphatically such a Being lives, Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail, An inmate of this active universe : For feeling has to him imparted power That through the growing faculties of sense Doth like an agent of the one great Mind Create, creator and receiver both.

Working but in alliance with the works Which it beholds. — Such, verily, is the first Poetic spirit of our human life, By uniform control of after years, I In most, abated or suppressed ; in some,

Through every change of growth and of decay. Preeminent till death.^

But, beautiful as this conception is, it cannot be reckoned with seriously as a factor in the explanation of poetic genius. Science is too prosaic and matter-of-fact for that. It may do for the poet, but not for the inductive philosopher. It may satisfy aesthetic imagination and feeling, but of course it is not logical inference from established fact. This conception is inconsistent, also, with the conviction entertained by Wordsworth in his famous poem entitled '' Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." Here he inclines to belief in the preexistence

1 The Prelude, II, 233-264.

of the soul ; its incarnation is a limitation of its power. The radiant vision of the child is due to its nearness to his former state of existence as compared with the remoteness of later years. His mental vision is a vision brought with him from another world, instead of a maternal inheritance nurtured by close communion with the maternal parent in the dawn of his earthly life ; so that, disregarding the symbolism referred to by Legouis, and the mysticism of Wordsworth's conception, both of which belong to the sphere of imagination rather than to the sphere of science, we conclude that all that can be safely said in attempting to explain the poetic powers of Wordsworth on the basis of his antecedents is that, so far as his immediate ancestors are concerned, very little can be found that indicates obligation to them for his unusual gifts. He was, however, descended from a line of yeomen who were close to Nature, and as a Northman his peculiar feeling for Nature may be an inheritance from early ancestors who daily lived in Nature's presence, and whose emotional regard for her may have been transmitted by Nature herself, through a long line of generations, to him who was to become one of her most faithful devotees, worshiping humbly at her shrine and acknowledging her sovereignty in reverence and love.

Wordsworth seems to have possessed certain original aptitudes or predispositions which, whether received through inheritance or by immediate endowment on the part of the Creator, peculiarly fitted him for the poet's art. In the first place, he had an unusually keen organic sensibility ; his powers of sense were very susceptible to Nature's stimuli. From earliest childhood, so far as his mental history can be traced, an exceptional sensitiveness of eye and ear are manifest. This keenness of perceptive faculty, added to another apparent predisposition, — a unique emotional regard for Nature, — preeminently fitted him to be a Nature poet. Their union resulted in an intensity and minuteness of observation that furnished the imagination with a wealth of images of '* beauteous forms " with which to carry on its work of idealization and insight.

Furthermore, his imaginative life was, as we have seen, closely associated with a mystical consciousness which so warmed and colored it as greatly to enrich the fruits of its poetic activity. This, probably more than anything else, was responsible for " the gleam" that is such a distinguishing mark of his genius. It affected powerfully his apprehension of Nature and was largely accountable for the refined spiritual conception of things which is to be found in his poetry. This unique tendency of mind was unquestionably original; its manifestations are among his earliest recorded experiences.

There was, too, a constitutional moral sensitiveness which characterized Wordsworth and very early affected his imagination, notably in its aesthetic interpretation and insight. This element was a pronounced factor in his consciousness as a boy, and became more and more so throughout the history of his mental unfolding. Early in his career it impelled him to an ethical interpretation of nature, not only ascribing to her a moral life, but also investing her with a moral office in her relation to Man. How greatly this moral sensitiveness enriched his poetry will be manifest in the course of our study. Indeed, it was involved in his very birth as a poet. He was called and dedicated to be Nature's high priest, and it was his to accept the high office, ''else sin greatly." It lies at the foundation of his conception of the poet's art, for with him poetry must have an ethical aim. The poet must be a teacher, — the bearer of a divine message to the race. He deals not with a dream but with things oracular, and is morally responsible for the right use of his gifts.^

Another fundamental relation which must be kept in mind in studying the development of the inner life of Wordsworth is his relation to the social environment. The poet cannot, any more than ordinary men, be regarded as an isolated personal unit. He belongs to a race system, and from birth is surrounded by human beings with whom he is in interaction, and by whom he is greatly influenced. He is born into the family and is brought under its personal and organized life. Soon he is initiated into a community whose members are bound together by common interests, manners, institutions, sentiments, and ideals, and is in a large measure molded by its influence. He is bom, also, into the state, the community organized under political government, with which he is in constant relation and by which his life of intelligence, feeling, and will is powerfully affected. The poet, by virtue of his genius, may be freer from the law of social environment than his fellows, but he cannot escape it. Even genius is subject to law, as the whole history of the arts testifies.

Wordsworth is certainly no exception among the poets in this respect. [Throughout the major part of his poetical career he seems to have been especially sensitive to his human surroundings. Certain individuals proved to be powerful factors in his life and art. Then, too, the simplicity and sincerity of the humbler classes of society appealed to his heart, and the fundamental in Man, as he read it in these simple folk, inspired much of his song. The inequalities of society, the t3n'anny of the classes over the masses, the evils of the industrial organization, the weakness of the educational system, the oppression of the political order, and the tremendous social and political conflicts of his time affected him profoundly, awakening the great deeps of his nature, coloring his feeling and imagination, and making him preeminently a poet of Man. Remarkable poet of Nature that he was, the human within him was so powerfully affected by the human without and around him that, almost in the very beginning of his career as a poet, he resolved that his theme should be

No other than the very heart of man,

As found among the best of those who live.^

And although this resolve was by no means literally carried out, — Nature, also, occupying a conspicuous place in his affections and art, — still he attained the position where, under the influence

1 The Prelude, XIII, 241-242.

lO WORDSWORTH

of his human environment, he learned to look even upon Nature as hearing often '' the still, sad music of humanity."

One of the more formal and direct influences of the social environment brought to bear upon the individual mind in its unfolding and development is education. This usually plays a large and important part, although in the case of Wordsworth it belonged to the category of minor influences. His early education was in a measure directed by his mother. She was not a woman of great attainments, nor possessed of much pedagogical skill, but she dealt wisely with her son. In after years, when reflecting on her method, or lack of method, he commended her judgment in guiding his mental development. An insight into her educational creed, which consisted chiefly in faith in Nature's beneficent instincts, may be gained from '' The Prelude." He was permitted to unfold his physical and mental powers mainly under Nature's guidance and under the benign influence that flowed from his mother's heart. He grew up almost like the child of Rousseau's " Emile," Nature being allowed a comparatively free hand. Such liberty proved to be an important influence in molding and fashioning both his body and his mind, and was in a measure responsible for the development of that love for Nature which was so large a part of his life from youth even to manhood's prime. ^

Wordsworth, however, received formal instruction also during this early period. Sometimes he was taught at Cockermouth by the Reverend Mr. Eillbanks ; also at Penrith by Mrs. Anne Birkett. Writing of the latter to his friend, the Reverend Hugh James Rose, he says : '' The old Dame did not aifect to make theologians, or logicians^ but she taught to read, and she practised the memory, often no doubt by rote ; but still the faculty was improved." ^ His father too had a part in his early education. He was a man who evidently had some appreciation of poetry, as well as regard for it as a mental discipline, and required his boy to commit to memory certain selections from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.

iThe Prelude, V, 256-293. 2 Memoirs, edited by Reed, I, 33.

BIRTH, HEREDITY, AND CHILDHOOD n

This constituted the education of Wordsworth in these years of childhood. There is httle here that has any special bearing on his future life except, as has already been suggested, the influence of his mother's method in dealing with him. Wordsworth, in the fifth book of '' The Prelude," contrasts it with the artificial pedagogy in vogue in the schools at the time of his writing. His sympathies are undoubtedly with the more natural method of his mother. This is what might be expected of one born and nurtured so close to Nature's heart ; he was too thoroughly a child of Nature to fail to appreciate later in life the advantages of such a method. He had too keen a regard for Nature's tutorial power to overlook the benefits that came to him during those first years of life, through the means adopted by maternal wisdom in the training of mind and body. And it may be that here, in these early experiences, we have the foundations laid for the educational views to which he gave expression later in '' The Prelude " and "The Excursion." However this may be, it is certain that through the liberty granted to Nature by this simple Englishwoman in the training of her son, his susceptible soul early received impressions which gave direction to his future unfolding.

Again, the poet, like other human beings, is born into a physical environment, and this also has much to do with his mental and spiritual development. Not only is it a powerful influence indetermining the general life of every soul but also in the determination of the particular quality and form, of its functioning. It has much to do with what and how it perceives, imagines, thinks, feels, and wills, coloring its entire mental life and affecting both the quantity and quality of its content. Here again the poet is no exception to the rule ; rather, because of his sensitiveness and susceptibility, does he most conclusively prove it. This was undoubtedly the case with Wordsworth. Bom and brought up in the Lake country, far famed for its natural beauty, — of which no one has written more knowingly and eloquently than he, — from birth, through childhood and youth up to mature manhood, much of his life was spent in the presence of Nature — of Nature clothed with beauty as with a garment. Hills, mountains, valley, river, lake, and sea were his companions. From childhood he was conscious of Nature's influence, and owned her fashioning power. Nature is at work with his soul at Cockermouth, Penrith, Hawkshead, Racedown, Alfoxden, Sockburne, Grasmere, and other places of abode. When he is traveling among the Alps, or in the mountains of Scotland and Wales, or wandering over the hills or through the valleys, and around the lakes of his own country. Nature's presence is felt as the presence of a teacher, friend, and guide. Sometimes, indeed, her influence is so overpowering that the bodily sense falls asleep and he sees with a spiritual eye. Normal consciousness is lost in spiritual vision, and that which he beholds appears to be within himself, — ''a dream, a prospect in the mind."

It is interesting to note Wordsworth's own conception of the influence of Nature upon his mental life during the first years spent in the place of his birth. Cockermouth is located on the western edge of the Lake country, and although not remarkable for its beauty, there was something in his natural environment here that led the Poet in later years to say :

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear : Much favoured in my birthplace.^

As a man he looks back and reflects upon his relation to his physical surroundings and sees in it a molding force. Especially does he call attention to the fact in '* The Prelude." Reproaching himself, when in London, shortly after his graduation from Cambridge, for not having written a work really worthy of his powers, and feeling that he was a false and unprofitable steward, he turns to his infancy and childhood, and beholds what Nature has done for him in those early surroundings. There flowed the Derwent, '' the fairest of all rivers," which, as the Poet says, loved

1 The Prelude, I, 301-303.

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 flowed along my dreams.^

Again, noting the ministry of Nature through this river, he continues to reproach himself further :

For this, didst thou, O Derwent ! winding among grassy holms Where I was looking on, a babe in arms, Make 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.^

Later he speaks of the sense of obligation to Nature experienced

by him when living in London, as he reverted to the home of his

childhood :

With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel In that enormous City's turbulent world Of men and things, what benefit I owed To thee, and those domains of rural peace, Where to the sense of beauty first my heart Was opened.^

Exaggerated as may appear the belief of the Poet in regard to the extent of her influence thus early exerted, the general truth, at least, may be accepted, — that his natural surroundings were a molding force in the life of the child ; and it is not improbable that here in Cockermouth we have the beginnings of that charm which Nature later exercised over him, and that profound regard and religious love with which in after years he worshiped her. It was a ''seed-time" for his soul, and he grew up ''fostered alike by beauty and by fear."

Studying, then, the mind of Wordsworth, as a poet of Nature and as a poet of Man, in the light of his birth and childhood, we find, in the first place, that, so far as his regard for Nature is concerned, he possessed a native keenness of sense perception which was closely associated with an imagination predisposed to spiritual interpretation and insight ; also a native moral sensitiveness which soon led him to invest Nature with a moral life, and to apprehend her as a moral fashioner, teacher, and guide. Furthermore, he was possessed of an original mystical tendency of mind that powerfully affected his life of imagination. All of this may have been an obligation, of a more or less general character, to a remote ancestry. At any rate, these seem to have been original mental traits. In the second place, in regard to social environment, we recognize primarily an indebtedness to his mother's training, in which she delegated much of the teacher's task to Nature, — a more skillful pedagogue than herself. And finally, much is due to his physical environment for fostering his childish spirit by beauty and fear, for sowing, in this early springtime of his life, seed which later blossomed and bore fruit, yielding a rich harvest of reverence and love for a so-called physical world that, for him at least, lived and moved and had its being in an all-animating Spirit, and which long proved to be the soul of his religion and the inspiration of his art.