IX. , towards conclusion (part 2 of 2)
S----, in the work you mentioned to me, confounds imagery and imagination. Sensible objects really existing, and felt to exist, are imagery; and they may form the materials of a descriptive poem, where objects are delineated as they are. Imagination is a subjective term: it deals with objects not as they are, but as they appear to the mind of the poet.
The imagination is that intellectual lens through the medium of which the poetical observer sees the objects of his observation, modified both in form and colour; or it is that inventive dresser of dramatic tableaux, by which the persons of the play are invested with new drapery, or placed in new attitudes; or it is that chemical faculty by which elements of the most different nature and distant origin are blended together into one harmonious and homogeneous whole.
A beautiful instance of the modifying and investive power of imagination may be seen in that noble passage of Dyer's 'Ruins of Rome,'[261] where the poet hears the voice of Time; and in Thomson's description of the streets of Cairo, expecting the arrival of the caravan which had perished in the storm,[262]
Read all Cowley; he is very valuable to a collector of English sound sense.... Burns's 'Scots wha hae' is poor as a lyric composition.
Ariosto and Tasso are very absurdly depressed in order to elevate Dante. Ariosto is not always sincere; Spenser always so.
I have tried to read Goethe. I never could succeed. Mr. ---- refers me to his 'Iphigenia,' but I there recognise none of the dignified simplicity, none of the health and vigour which the heroes and heroines of antiquity possess in the writings of Homer. The lines of Lucretius describing the immolation of Iphigenia are worth the whole of Goethe's long poem. Again, there is a profligacy, an inhuman sensuality, in his works which is utterly revolting. I am not intimately acquainted with them generally. But I take up my ground on the first canto of 'Wilhelm Meister;' and, as the attorney-general of human nature, I there indict him for wantonly outraging the sympathies of humanity. Theologians tell us of the degraded nature of man; and they tell us what is true. Yet man is essentially a moral agent, and there is that immortal and unextinguishable yearning for something pure and spiritual which will plead against these poetical sensualists as long as man remains what he is.
[261] 1. 37:
'The pilgrim oft, At dead of night, 'mid his oraison, hears Aghast the voice of TIME, disparting towers,' &c.
[262] Thomson's 'Summer,' 980:
'In Cairo's crowded streets, The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
Scientific men are often too fond of aiming to be men of the world. They crave too much for titles, and stars, and ribbons. If Bacon had dwelt only in the court of Nature, and cared less for that of James the First, he would have been a greater man, and a happier one too.
I heard lately from young Mr. Watt a noble instance of magnanimity in an eminent French chemist. He had made a discovery, which he was informed would, if he took out a patent, realise a large fortune. 'No,' said he, 'I do not live to amass money, but to discover Truth; and as long as she attends me in my investigations so long will I serve her and her only.'
Sir ---- I know from my own experience was ruined by prosperity. The age of Leo X. would have shone with greater brilliance if it had had more clouds to struggle with. The age of Louis XIV. was formed by the Port Royal amid the storms and thunders of the League. Racine lived in a court till it became necessary to his existence, as his miserable death proved. Those petty courts of Germany have been injurious to its literature. They who move in them are too prone to imagine themselves to be the whole world, and compared with the whole world they are nothing more than these little specks in the texture of this hearth-rug.
As I was riding Dora's pony from Rydal to Cambridge, I got off, as I occasionally did, to walk. I fell in with a sweet-looking peasant girl of nine or ten years old. She had been to carry her father's dinner, who was working in the fields, and she was wheeling a little wheelbarrow, in which she collected manure from the roads for her garden at home. After some talk I gave her a penny, for which she thanked me in the sweetest way imaginable. I wish I had asked her whether she could read, and whether she went to school. But I could not help being struck with the happy arrangement which Nature has made for the education of the heart, an arrangement which it seems the object of the present age to counteract instead of to cherish and confirm. I imagined the happy delight of the father in seeing his child at a distance, and watching her as she approached to perform her errand of love. I imagined the joy of the mother in seeing her return. I am strongly of opinion (an opinion you, perhaps, have seen expressed by me in a letter to Mr. Rose[263]) that this is the discipline which is more calculated by a thousand degrees to make a virtuous and happy nation than the all-engrossing, estranging, eleemosynary institutions for education, which perhaps communicate more knowledge. In these institutions what the pupils gain in knowledge they often lose in wisdom. This is a distinction which must never be lost sight of.
[263] See vol. i. pp. 340-8. G.
Education should never be wholly eleemosynary. But must the parent suffer privations for the sake of the child? Yes; for these privations endear the child to the parent, and the parent to the child; and whatever education the parent may thus gain or lose for his child, he has thus gained the noblest result of the most liberal education for himself--the habit of self-denial.
Next to your principles, and affections, and health, value your time.[264]
[264] Memoirs, ii. pp. 467-80.
* * * * *
(f) REMINISCENCES OF THE REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., FORMERLY OF WINDERMERE, NOW OF DUBLIN.
I remember Mr. Wordsworth saying that, at a particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince himself of its existence by clasping a tree, or something that happened to be near him. I could not help connecting this fact with that obscure passage in his great Ode on the 'Intimations of Immortality,' in which he speaks of
'Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things; Fallings from us, vanishings: Blank misgivings of a creature, Moving about in worlds not realised,' &c.
I heard him once make the remark that it would be a good habit to watch closely the first involuntary thoughts upon waking in the morning, as indications of the real current of the moral being.
I was struck by what seemed to me a beautiful analogy, which I once heard him draw, and which was new to me--that the individual characters of mankind showed themselves distinctively in childhood and youth, as those of trees in Spring; that of both, of trees in Summer and of human kind in middle life, they were then alike to a great degree merged in a dull uniformity; and that again, in Autumn and in declining age, there appeared afresh all their original and inherent variety brought out into view with deeper marking of character, with more vivid contrast, and with greater accession of interest and beauty.
He thought the charm of Robinson Crusoe mistakenly ascribed, as it commonly is done, to its naturalness. Attaching a full value to the singular yet easily imagined and most picturesque circumstances of the adventurer's position, to the admirable painting of the scenes, and to the knowledge displayed of the working of human feelings, he yet felt sure that the intense interest created by the story arose chiefly from the extraordinary energy and resource of the hero under his difficult circumstances, from their being so far beyond what it was natural to expect, or what would have been exhibited by the average of men; and that similarly the high pleasure derived from his successes and good fortunes arose from the peculiar source of these uncommon merits of his character.
I have heard him pronounce that the Tragedy of Othello, Plato's records of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton's Life of George Herbert, were in his opinion the most pathetic of human compositions.
In a walk one day, after stopping, according to his custom, to claim admiration for some happy aspect of the landscape, or beautiful composition on a smaller scale of natural objects, caught by him at the precisely best point of view in the midst of his conversation on other subjects, he added, good-humouredly, that there were three callings for success in which Nature had furnished him with qualifications--the callings of poet, landscape-gardener, and critic of pictures and works of art. On hearing this I could not but remember how his qualifications for the second were proved by the surprising variety of natural beauties he managed to display to their best advantage, from the very circumscribed limits of the garden at Rydal Mount, 'an invisible hand of art everywhere working' (to use his own exquisite expression) 'in the very spirit of Nature,' and how many there were who have owed the charm of their grounds and gardens to direction sought from his well-known taste and feeling. As to works of art, his criticism was not that of one versed in the history of the schools, but, always proceeding upon first principles, the 'prima philosophia,' as he called it; and it was, as it appeared to me, of the highest order.
He was a very great admirer of Virgil, not so much as a creative poet, but as the most consummate master of language, that, perhaps, ever existed. From him, and Horace, who was an especial favourite, and Lucretius, he used to quote much.[265]
[265] Memoirs, ii. 467-83.
* * * * *
(g) ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.
The death of Coleridge was announced to us by his friend Wordsworth. It was the Sunday evening after the event occurred that my brother and I walked over to the Mount, where we found the Poet alone. One of the first things we heard from him was the death of one who had been, he said, his friend for more than thirty years. He then continued to speak of him; called him the most wonderful man that he had ever known--wonderful for the originality of his mind, and the power he possessed of throwing out in profusion grand central truths from which might be evolved the most comprehensive systems. Wordsworth, as a poet, regretted that German metaphysics had so much captivated the taste of Coleridge, for he was frequently not intelligible on this subject; whereas, if his energy and his originality had been more exerted in the channel of poetry, an instrument of which he had so perfect a mastery, Wordsworth thought he might have done more permanently to enrich the literature, and to influence the thought of the nation, than any man of the age. As it was, however, he said he believed Coleridge's mind to have been a widely fertilising one, and that the seed he had so lavishly sown in his conversational discourses, and the Sibylline leaves (not the poems so called by him) which he had scattered abroad so extensively covered with his annotations, had done much to form the opinions of the highest-educated men of the day; although this might be an influence not likely to meet with adequate recognition. After mentioning, in answer to our inquiries about the circumstances of their friendship, that though a considerable period had elapsed during which they had not seen much of each other, Coleridge and he had been, for more than two years, uninterruptedly, in as close intimacy as man could be with man, he proceeded to read to us the letter from Henry Nelson Coleridge which conveyed the tidings of his great relation's death, and of the manner of it. It appeared that, his death was a relief from intense pain, which, however, subsided at the interval of a few days before the event; and that shortly after this cessation of agony, he fell into a comatose state. The most interesting part of the letter was the statement, that the last use he made of his faculties was to call his children and other relatives and friends around him, to give them his blessing, and to express his hope to them that the manner of his end might manifest the depth of his trust in his Saviour Christ. As I heard this, I was at once deeply glad at the substance, and deeply affected by Wordsworth's emotion in reading it. When he came to this part his voice at first faltered, and then broke; but soon divine faith that the change was a blest one overcame aught of human grief, and he concluded in an equable though subdued tone. Before I quit this subject, I will tell you what I was interested in hearing from a person of the highest abilities,[266] whom I had the good fortune of meeting at Rydal Mount. He said that he had visited Coleridge about a month before his death, and had perceived at once his countenance pervaded by a most remarkable serenity. On being congratulated on his appearance, Coleridge replied that he did now, for the first time, begin to hope, from the mitigation of his pains, that his health was undergoing a permanent improvement (alas! he was deceived; yet may we not consider this hopeful feeling, which is, I believe, by no means uncommon, to be under such circumstances a valuable blessing?); but that what he felt most thankful for was the deep, calm peace of mind which he then enjoyed; a peace such as he had never before experienced, or scarcely hoped for. This, he said, seemed now settled upon him; and all things were thus looked at by him through an atmosphere by which all were reconciled and harmonised.[267]
[266] Dr. Whewell. G.
[267] Extract of a letter to a friend, by Rev. R.P. Graves, M.A., formerly of Windermere, now of Dublin: Memoirs, pp. 288-90.
(h) FURTHER REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH BY THE SAME, SENT TO THE PRESENT EDITOR.
I remember to have been very much struck by what appeared to me the wisdom of a plan suggested by Wordsworth, for the revision of the authorised version of the Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer.
With regard to the former, no one, he said, could be more deeply convinced of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was, and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly important in connection with a volume which naturally became a universally recognised standard of the language; for thus the fresh well of English undefiled was made a perennial blessing to the nation, in no slight degree conducive to the robust and manly thinking and character of its inhabitants. He was satisfied, too, as to its general and most impartial accuracy, and its faithfulness in rendering not only the words but the style, the strength, and the spirit and the character of the original records. He attached too the value one might suppose he would attach to the desirableness of leaving undisturbed the sacred associations which to the feelings of aged Christians belonged to the ipsissima verba which had been their support under the trials of life.
And so with regard to the Prayer Book, he reverenced and loved it as the Church's precious heritage of primitive piety, equally admirable for its matter and its style. It may be interesting to add, that in reference to this latter point I have heard him pronounce that many of the collects seemed to him examples of perfection, consisting, according to his impression, of words whose signification filled up without excess or defect the simple and symmetrical contour of some majestic meaning, and whose sound was a harmony of accordant simplicity and grandeur; a combination, he added, such as we enjoy in some of the best passages of Shakespeare.
But notwithstanding that he held these opinions, which will evince that he was not one who would lightly touch either sacred volume, he did not think that plain mistakes in the translation of the Bible, or obsolete words, or renderings commonly misunderstood, should be perpetually handed down in our authorised version of the volume of inspiration, or that similar blemishes in the Prayer Book, which, as being of human composition, would admit of freer though still reverential handling, should be permitted to continue as stumbling-blocks interfering with its acceptableness and usefulness.
The plan which he suggested as meeting the difficulties of the case was the following:
That by proper authority a Committee of Revision of the English Bible should be appointed, whose business should be, retaining the present authorised version as a standard to be departed from as little as possible to settle upon such indubitable corrections of meaning and improvements of expression as they agreed ought to be made, and have these printed in the margin of all Bibles published by authority. That, as an essential part of the scheme, this Committee of Revision should be renewed periodically, but not too frequently--he appeared to think that periods of fifty years might serve--at which times it should be competent to the Committee to authorise the transference from the margin into the text of all such alterations as had stood the test of experience and criticism during the previous period, as well as to fix on new marginal readings.
He was of opinion that in the constitution of the Committee care should be taken to appoint not only divines of established reputation for sound theology, and especially for their knowledge in connection with the original languages of the sacred volume, but some one author at least noted for his mastery over the vernacular language.
It will be seen that this plan, while it provides for corrections of errors and substitution of understood for obsolete or mistaken expressions, leaves undisturbed the associations of aged Christians, and prepares the younger generation for receiving the marginal amendments into the text. Wordsworth conceived that fixing the duration of the period of revision was of great consequence, both as obviating all agitation in the way of call for such a process, and as tending in the matter of critical discussions respecting the sanctioning, cancelling, and proposing of amendments to bring them to something of definitiveness in preparation for each era of revision.
The same process, under certain modifications, he thought applicable to the Book of Common Prayer. In this he deprecated all tampering with doctrine, considering that alterations ought to be confined to changes rendering the services more clearly understood or more conveniently used. It is fair to add, however, that I have heard him express a strong desire that the Athanasian Creed were rid of the so-called damnatory clauses; at the same time declaring that no one was ever more profoundly convinced than himself of the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity.
He was in favour of a collection of metrical hymns, more peculiarly Christian in character than the Psalter, being set forth by authority for use in the Church; and for the choice of such hymns he thought a Committee should be appointed in which the knowledge of divine, of poet, and of laymen trusted for common sense and experience in life should be severally and conjointly engaged. As a practical suggestion of moment in the composition of such hymns he advised that composers should not in the four-line stanza do more than make the second and fourth lines rhyme; leaving the other two unrhymed, he said, would give an important addition of freedom both to the sense and the style.
R.P. GRAVES. Windermere, 1850.
To the above memorandum I now (Sept. 1874) add two items, of which I retain a distinct remembrance.
(1) He was in favour of the officiating clergyman being allowed to introduce into his reading of the Lessons in church the authorised marginal corrections.
(2) He expressed in very strong terms his opinion that the prefatory portion of the Marriage Service should be altered so as to make it not only less repulsive to modern feelings, but more accordant with the higher aspects of the union to be solemnised.
Passion in Poetry.--One day, speaking of passion as an element of poetry, he referred to his own poems, and said that he thought there was a stronger fire of passion than was elsewhere to be found among them in the lyrical burst near the conclusion of 'The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle:'
'Armour rusting in his halls, On the blood of Clifford calls: "Quell the Scot," exclaims the Lance-- "Bear me to the heart of France," Is the longing of the Shield.'
Chronological Classification of Poems.--Many years ago I expressed to Wordsworth a wish that his poems were printed in the order of their composition, assigning as reasons for the wish the great interest which would attach to observing the progressive development of the poet's thought, and the interpretative value of the light mutually reflected by poems of the same period. I remember being surprised by the feeling akin to indignation which he manifested at the suggestion. He said that such proceeding would indicate on the part of a poet an amount of egotism, placing interest in himself above interest in the subjects treated by him, which could not belong to a true poet caring for the elements of poetry in their right proportion, and designing to bring to bear upon the minds of his readers the best influences at his command in the way best calculated to make them effectual. I felt that his ground of objection made me revere him the more both as a man and as a poet; yet I retained the opinion that much might be said on the reader's part in the case of a great poet for such an arrangement of his poems as I had been suggesting, and I welcomed in after-days the concession made by him in consenting to put dates to the poems, while adhering to their classification according to subject or predominant element.
Verbal Criticism.--Wordsworth not only sympathised with the feelings expressed in Southey's touching lines upon The Dead, but admired very much the easy flow of the verse and the perfect freedom from strain in the expression by which they are marked. Yet in the first two stanzas he noted three flaws, and suggested changes by which they might have been easily avoided. I have underlined the words he took exception to:
'My days among the dead are past; Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day.
With them I take delight in weal, And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedew'd With tears of thoughtful gratitude.'
In the first stanza, for 'Where'er these casual eyes are cast,' which he objected to as not simple and natural, and as scarcely correct, he suggested 'Where'er a casual look I cast;' and for 'converse,' the accent of which he condemned as belonging to the noun and not to the verb, he suggested 'commune.' In the second stanza he pointed out the improper sequence of tenses in the third and fifth lines, which he corrected by reading in the latter 'My cheeks are oftentimes bedew'd.' Of the narrative poems of his friend, well executed as he considered them, and of the mainly external action of imagination or fancy in which they deal, I have certainly heard him pronounce a very depreciatory opinion; whether I ever heard him use the hard words attributed to him, 'I would not give five shillings for a ream of them,' I cannot now assert, but if used, they were said in reference to the nobler kind of imaginative power which reveals to man the deep places and sublimer affinities of his own being. But to some others of Southey's verses, as well as to the lines above quoted, and to his prose writings in general, he was wont to give liberal praise; and no one could doubt the sincerity and warmth of his admiration of the intellect and virtues of the man, or the brotherly affection towards him which he not unfrequently expressed.
R.P. GRAVES. Dublin, 1875.
(i) AN AMERICAN'S REMINISCENCES.
To PROFESSOR HENRY REED.
Philadelphia, Sept. 1850.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
You have asked me to write out as fully as I can an account of my visit to Wordsworth last Summer, of which your letter of introduction was the occasion. Feeling very grateful to you for the pleasure which that visit gave me, and desiring to make a more minute record of it than either the letter I addressed to you from Keswick, or my journal written at the time contains, I gladly comply with your request.
It was about noon on the 18th of August 1849, that I set out with my friends, from their house near Bowness, to ride to Ambleside. Our route was along the shore of Lake Windermere. It was my first day among the English Lakes, and I enjoyed keenly the loveliness which was spread out before me. My friends congratulated me on the clearness of the atmosphere and the bright skies. Twilight is all-important in bringing out the full beauty of the Lake Region, and in this respect I was very fortunate. I had already been deeply moved by the tranquil beauty of Windermere, for, as I came out of the cottage, formerly Professor Wilson's, where I had passed the night, there it lay in all its grandeur, its clear waters, its green islands, and its girdle of solemn mountains. It was quite dark when I had been conducted to this cottage the night before, so that I saw the Lake for the first time in the light of early morning. The first impression was confirmed by every new prospect as we rode along. The vale seemed a very paradise for its sweet seclusion. I had been told that after Switzerland, I should find little to attract me in this region, but such was not the case. Nothing can be more lovely than these lakes and mountains, the latter thickly wooded, and rising directly from the water's edge. The foliage is of the darkest green, giving to the lake in which it is reflected the same sombre hue. It seemed the fittest dwelling-place for a Poet, amid all this quiet beauty.
It was half-past one when we reached Ambleside, where I left Mr. and Mrs. B., and walked on alone to Rydal Mount. I was full of eager expectations as I thought how soon I should, perhaps, be in the presence of Wordsworth--that after long years of waiting, of distant reverential admiration and love, I was, as I hoped, to be favoured with a personal interview with the great poet-philosopher, to whom you and I, and so many, many others, feel that we are under the deepest obligation for the good which has come to us from his writings. At two o'clock I was at the wicket gate opening into Wordsworth's grounds. I walked along the gravel pathway, leading through shrubbery to the open space in front of the long two-story cottage, the Poet's dwelling. Your sketch of the house by Inman is a correct one, but it gives no idea of the view from it, which is its chief charm. Rydal Mere with its islands, and the mountains beyond it, are all in sight. I had but a hasty enjoyment of this beauty; nor could I notice carefully the flowers which were blooming around. It was evident that the greatest attention had been paid to the grounds, for the flower-beds were tastefully arranged, and the gravel walks were in complete order. One might be well content, I thought, to make his abode at a spot like this.
A boy of about twelve years was occupied at one of the flower-beds, as I passed by; he followed me to the door, and waited my commands. I asked if Mr. Wordsworth was in.... He was dining--would I walk into the drawing-room, and wait a short time?... I was shown into the drawing-room, or study, I know not which to call it.... Here I am, I said to myself, in the great Poet's house. Here his daily life is spent. Here in this room, doubtless, much of his poetry has been written--words of power which are to go down with those of Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Milton, while our English tongue endures. It was a long apartment, the ceiling low, with two windows at one end, looking out on the lawn and shrubbery. Many engravings were on the walls. The famous Madonna of Raphael, known as that of the Dresden Gallery, hung directly over the fire-place. Inman's portrait of the Poet, your gift to Mrs. Wordsworth, being a copy of the one painted for you, had a conspicuous place. The portrait of Bishop White, also your gift (the engraving from Inman's picture), I also noticed.
* * * * *
I could have waited patiently for a long time indulging the thoughts which the place called up. In a few minutes, however, I heard steps in the entry, the door was opened, and Wordsworth came in, it could be no other--- a tall figure, a little bent with age, his hair thin and grey, and his face deeply wrinkled.... The expression of his countenance was sad, mournful I might say; he seemed one on whom sorrow pressed heavily. He gave me his hand, and welcomed me cordially, though without smiling. 'Will you walk out, Sir, and join us at the table?' said he. 'I am engaged to dine elsewhere.' 'But you can sit with us,' said he; so, leading the way, he conducted me to the dining-room. At the head of the table sat Mrs. Wordsworth, and their three grandchildren made up the party.... It was a humble apartment, not ceiled, the rafters being visible; having a large old-fashioned chimney-place, with a high mantelpiece.
* * * * *
Wordsworth asked after Mr. Ticknor of Boston, who had visited him a few months before, and for whom he expressed much regard. Some other questions led me to speak of the progress we were making in America in the extension of our territory, the settlements on the Pacific, &c.; all this involving the rapid spread of our English tongue. Wordsworth at this looked up, and I noticed a fixing of his eye as if on some remote object. He said that considering this extension of our language, it behoved those who wrote to see to it, that what they put forth was on the side of virtue. This remark, although thrown out at the moment, was made in a serious thoughtful way; and I was much impressed by it. I could not but reflect that to him a deep sense of responsibility had ever been present: to purify and elevate has been the purpose of all his writings. Such may have been at that moment his own inward meditation, and he may have had in mind the coming generations who are to dwell upon his words.
* * * * *
Queen Victoria was mentioned--her visit to Ireland which had just been made--the courage she had shown. 'That is a virtue,' said he, 'which she has to a remarkable degree, which is very much to her credit.'
* * * * *
Inman's portrait of him I alluded to as being very familiar to me, the copy which hung in the room calling it to mind, which led him to speak of the one painted by Pickersgill for St. John's College, Cambridge. 'I was a member of that College, he said, 'and the fellows and students did me the honour to ask me to sit, and allowed me to choose the artist. I wrote to Mr. Rogers on the subject, and he recommended Pickersgill, who came down soon afterwards, and the picture was painted here.' He believed he had sat twenty-three times. My impression is he was in doubt whether Inman's or Pickersgill's portrait was the better one.
* * * * *
He spoke with great animation of the advantage of classical study, Greek especially. 'Where,' said he, 'would one look for a greater orator than Demosthenes; or finer dramatic poetry, next to Shakspeare, than that of Aeschylus and Sophocles, not to speak of Euripides?' Herodotus he thought 'the most interesting and instructive book, next to the Bible, which had ever been written.' Modern discoveries had only tended to confirm the general truth of his narrative. Thucydides he thought less of.
* * * * *
France was our next subject, and one which seemed very near his heart. He had been much in that country at the out-break of the Revolution, and afterwards during its wildest excesses. At the time of the September massacres he was at Orleans. Addressing Mrs. W. he said, 'I wonder how I came to stay there so long, and at a period so exciting.' He had known many of the abbÈs and other ecclesiastics, and thought highly of them as a class; they were earnest, faithful men: being unmarried, he must say, they were the better able to fulfil their sacred duties; they were married to their flocks. In the towns there seemed, he admitted, very little religion; but in the country there had always been a great deal. 'I should like to spend another month in France,' he said, 'before I close my eyes.' He seemed to feel deep commiseration for the sorrows of that unhappy country. It was evidently the remembrance of hopes which in his youth he had ardently cherished, and which had been blighted, on which his mind was dwelling. I alluded to Henry the Fifth, to whom many eyes were, I thought, beginning to turn. With him, he remarked, there would be a principle for which men could contend--legitimacy. The advantage of this he stated finely.
There was tenderness, I thought, in the tones of his voice, when speaking with his wife; and I could not but look with deep interest and admiration on the woman for whom this illustrious man had for so many years cherished feelings of reverential love.
'Peace settles where the intellect is meek,'
is a line which you will recall from one of the beautiful poems Wordsworth has addressed to her; and this seemed peculiarly the temper of her spirit--peace, the holy calmness of a heart to whom love had been an 'unerring light.' Surely we may pray, my friend, that in the brief season of separation which she has now to pass, she may be strengthened with divine consolation.
I cannot forbear to quote here that beautiful passage, near the end of the great poem, 'The Prelude,' as an utterance by the author of tender feelings in his own matchless way. After speaking of his sister in tones of deepest thankfulness, he adds,
'Thereafter came One, whom with thee friendship had early prized; She came, no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart; And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined, To penetrate the lofty and the low; Even as one essence of pervading light Shines in the brightness of ten thousand stars, And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp Couched in the dewy grass.'
I have been led away from my narrative; but I wished to record the feelings which had arisen within me with regard to this excellent lady; she who has been, as ---- has so happily expressed it in his letter to you, 'almost like the Poet's guardian angel for near fifty years.'
* * * * *
I may here mention, that throughout the conversation Wordsworth's manner was animated, and that he took pleasure in it evidently. His words were very choice: each sentence seemed faultless. No one could have listened to his talk for five minutes, even on ordinary topics, without perceiving that he was a remarkable man. Not that he was brilliant; but there was sustained vigour, and that mode of expression which denotes habitual thoughtfulness.
When the clock struck four, I thought it time for me to go. Wordsworth told me to say to his friends in America, that he and his wife were well; that they had had a great grief of late, in the loss of their only daughter, which he supposed they would never get over. This explained, as I have already mentioned, the sadness of his manner. Such strength of the affections in old age we rarely see. And yet the Poet has himself condemned, as you remember, in 'The Excursion,' long and persevering grief for objects of our love 'removed from this unstable world,' reminding one so sorrowing of
'that state Of pure, imperishable blessedness Which reason promises, and Holy Writ Ensures to all believers.'
But, as if foreseeing his own case, he has added, with touching power,
'And if there be whose tender frames have drooped Even to the dust, apparently through weight Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power An agonising sorrow to transmute; Deem not that proof is here of hope withheld When wanted most; a confidence impaired So pitiably, that having ceased to see With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love Of what is lost, and perish through regret.'
The weakness of his bodily frame it was which took away his power of tranquil endurance. Bowed down by the weight of years, he had not strength to sustain this further burden, grief for a much-loved child. His mind, happily, retained its clearness, though his body was decaying.
* * * * *
He walked out into the entry with me, and then asked me to go again into the dining-room, to look at an oak chest or cabinet he had there--a piece of old furniture curiously carved. It bore a Latin inscription, which stated that it was made 300 years ago, for William Wordsworth, who was the son of, &c. &c. giving the ancestors of said William for many generations, and ending, 'on whose souls may God have mercy.' This Wordsworth repeated twice, and in an emphatic way, as he read the inscription. It seemed to me that he took comfort in the religious spirit of his ancestors, and that he was also adopting the solemn ejaculation for himself. There was something very impressive in his manner.
I asked to see the cast from Chantrey's bust of him, which he at once showed me; also a crayon sketch by Haydon, which, I understood him to say, West had pronounced the finest crayon he had ever seen. He referred also to another sketch, by Margaret Gillies, I think, which was there.
We then went out together on the lawn, and stood for a while to enjoy the views, and he pulled open the shrubbery or hedge in places, that I might see to better advantage. He accompanied me to the gate, and then said if I had a few minutes longer to spare he would like to show me the waterfall which was close by--the lower fall of Rydal. I gladly assented, and he led the way across the grounds of Lady Fleming, which were opposite to his own, to a small summer-house. The moment we opened the door, the waterfall was before us; the summer-house being so placed as to occupy the exact spot from which it was to be seen; the rocks and shrubbery around closing it in on every side. The effect was magical. The view from the rustic house, the rocky basin into which the water fell, and the deep shade in which the whole was enveloped, made it a lovely scene. Wordsworth seemed to have much pleasure in exhibiting this beautiful retreat; it is described in one of his earlier poems, 'The Evening Walk.'
As we returned together he walked very slowly, occasionally stopping when he said anything of importance; and again I noticed that looking into remote space of which I have already spoken. His eyes, though not glistening, had yet in them the fire which betokened the greatness of his genius. This no painter could represent, and this it was which gave to his countenance its high intellectual expression.
* * * * *
Hartley Coleridge he spoke of with affection.... 'There is a single line,' he added, 'in one of his father's poems which I consider explains the after-life of the son. He is speaking of his own confinement in London, and then says,
"But thou, my child, shalt wander like a breeze."
* * * * *
Of Southey he said that he had had the misfortune to outlive his faculties. His mind, he thought, had been weakened by long watching by the sick-bed of his wife, who had lingered for years in a very distressing state.
The last subject he touched on was the international copyright question--the absence of protection in our country to the works of foreign authors. He said, mildly, that he thought it would be better for us if some acknowledgment, however small, was made. The fame of his own writings, as far as it was of pecuniary advantage to him, he had long regarded with indifference; happily, he had an income more than sufficient for all his wants.... He remarked, he had once seen a volume of his poems published in an American newspaper.
I happened to have in my pocket the small volume of selections, which you made some years ago. I produced it, and asked at the same time if he had ever seen it. He replied he had not. He took it with evident interest, turned to the title-page, which he read, with its motto. He began the preface then, in the same way. But here I must record a trifling incident, which may yet be worth noting. We were standing together in the road, Wordsworth reading aloud, as I have said, when a man accosted us asking charity--a beggar of the better class. Wordsworth, scarcely looking off the book, thrust his hands into his pockets, as if instinctively acknowledging the man's right to beg by this prompt action. He seemed to find nothing, however; and he said, in a sort of soliloquy, 'I have given to four or five, already, to-day,' as if to account for his being then unprovided.
Wordsworth, as he turned over one leaf after another, said, 'But I shall weary you, sir.' 'By no means,' said I; for I could have been content to stand there for hours to hear, as I did, the Poet read from time to time, with fitting emphasis, the choice passages which your preface and biographical sketch contain. Imagine with what delight I listened to the venerable man, and to hear, too, from his own lips, such words as these, your own most true reflection: 'His has been a life devoted to the cultivation of the poet's art for its best and most lasting uses--a self-dedication as complete as the world has ever witnessed.' Your remark with regard to his having outlived many of his contemporaries among the poets, he read with affecting simplicity; his manner being that of one who looked backward to the past with entire tranquillity, and forward with sure hope. I felt that his honoured life was drawing rapidly to a close, and with him there was evidently the same consciousness.
He made but little comment on your notice of him. Occasionally he would say, as he came to a particular fact, 'That's quite correct;' or, after reading a quotation from his own works, he would add, 'That's from my writings.' These quotations he read in a way that much impressed me; it seemed almost as if he was awed by the greatness of his own power, the gifts with which he had been endowed. It was a solemn time to me, this part of my interview; and to you, my friend, it would have been a crowning happiness to stand, as I did, by his side on that bright summer day, and thus listen to his voice. I thought of his long life; that he was one who had felt himself from early youth 'a renovated spirit singled out for holy services'--one who had listened to the teachings of Nature, and communed with his own heart in the seclusion of those beautiful vales, until his thoughts were ready to be uttered for the good of his fellow-men. And there had come back to him offerings of love, and gratitude, and reverent admiration, from a greater multitude than had ever before paid their homage to a living writer; and these acknowledgments have been for benefits so deep and lasting, that words seem but a poor return. But I will not attempt to describe further the feelings which were strongly present to me at that moment, when I seemed most to realise in whose presence I stood.
* * * * *
He walked with me as far as the main road to Ambleside. As we passed the little chapel built by Lady Fleming, which has been the occasion, as you remember, of one of his poems, there were persons, tourists evidently, talking with the sexton at the door. Their inquiries, I fancied, were about Wordsworth, perhaps as to the hour of service the next day (Sunday), with the hope of seeing him there. One of them caught sight of the venerable man at the moment, and at once seemed to perceive who it was, for she motioned to the others to look, and they watched him with earnest gaze. I was struck with their looks of delighted admiration. He stopped when we reached the main road, saying that his strength would not allow him to walk further. Giving me his hand, he desired again to be remembered to you and others in America, and wished me a safe return to my friends, and so we parted. I went on my way, happy in the recollection of this, to me, memorable interview. My mind was in a tumult of excitement, for I felt that I had been in the familiar presence of one of the noblest of our race; and this sense of Wordsworth's intellectual greatness had been with me during the whole interview. I may speak, too, of the strong perception of his moral elevation which I had at the same time. No word of unkindness had fallen from him. He seemed to be living as if in the presence of God, by habitual recollection. A strange feeling, almost of awe, had impressed me while I was thus with him. Believing that his memory will be had in honour in all coming time, I could not but be thankful that I had been admitted to intimate intercourse with him then, when he was so near the end of life. To you, my dear friend, I must again say I owe this happiness, and to you it has been denied. You also, of all others of our countrymen, would have most valued such an interview, for to you the great Poet's heart has been in an especial manner opened in private correspondence. No other American has he honoured in the same degree; and by no one else in this country has the knowledge and appreciation of his poetry been so much extended. The love which has so long animated you has been such, that multitudes have been influenced to seek for joy and refreshment from the same pure source.
I have been led, as I said at the beginning of my letter, to make this record, partly from your suggestion, and partly from a remark of Southey which I have lately seen, to the effect that Wordsworth was one of whom posterity would desire to know all that can be remembered. You will not, I trust, deem the incidents I have set down trivial; or consider any detail too minute, the object of which was only to bring the living man before you. Now that he has gone for ever from our sight in this world, I am led to look back to the interview with a deeper satisfaction; and it may be that this full account of it will have value hereafter. To you it was due that I should make the record; by myself these remembrances will ever be cherished among my choicest possessions.
Believe me, my dear friend, yours faithfully,
Ellis Yarnall.[268]
[268] Memoirs, ii. 483-500.
(j) RECOLLECTIONS OF WORDSWORTH.
By Aubrey de Vere, Esq.
(Sent to the present Editor, and now first published)
Part I
It was about eight years before his death that I had the happiness of making acquaintance with Wordsworth. During the next four years I saw a good deal of him, chiefly among his own mountains, and, besides many delightful walks with him, I had the great honour of passing some days under his roof. The strongest of my impressions respecting him was that made by the manly simplicity, and lofty rectitude, which characterised him. In one of his later sonnets he writes of himself thus: 'As a true man who long had served the lyre:'--it was because he was a true man that he was a true poet; and it was impossible to know him without being reminded of this. In any case he must have been recognised as a man of original and energetic genius; but it was his strong and truthful moral nature, his intellectual sincerity, the abiding conscientiousness of his imagination, which enabled that genius to do its great work, and bequeath to the England of the future the most solid mass of deep-hearted and authentic poetry which has been the gift to her of any poet since the Elizabethan age. There was in his nature a veracity, which, had it not been combined with an idealising imagination not less remarkable, would to many have appeared prosaic; yet, had he not possessed that characteristic, the products of his imagination would have lacked reality. They might still have enunciated a deep and sound philosophy; but they would have been divested of that human interest which belongs to them in a yet higher degree. All the little incidents of the neighbourhood were to him important.
The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in Wordsworth's poetic descriptions of Nature, made themselves at least as much felt whenever Nature was the theme of his discourse. In his intense reverence for Nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true in a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were, the more was his indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit. An untrue description of Nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message sophisticated and falsely delivered. He expatiated much to me one day, as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. 'He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain ash waving its red berries. He went home, and wove the whole together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed with a flashing eye and impassioned voice, 'But Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated. That which remained--the picture surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental. A true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.' On the same occasion he remarked, 'Scott misquoted in one of his novels my lines on Yarrow. He makes me write,
"The swans on sweet St. Mary's lake Float double, swans and shadow;"
but I wrote
"The swan on still St. Mary's lake."
Never could I have written "swans" in the plural. The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness: there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan, its own white image in the water. It was for that reason that I recorded the Swan and the Shadow. Had there been many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the character of the scene; and I should have said nothing about them.' He proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on Nature cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had yet no eye to discern her--which he regarded as a sort of 'spiritual discernment.' He continued, 'Indeed I have hardly ever known any one but myself who had a true eye for Nature, one that thoroughly understood her meanings and her teachings--except' (here he interrupted himself) 'one person. There was a young clergyman, called Frederick Faber,[269] who resided at Ambleside. He had not only as good an eye for Nature as I have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on the mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never detected.'
[269] Afterwards Father Faber of the Oratory. His 'Sir Launcelot' abounds in admirable descriptions.
Truth, he used to say--that is, truth in its largest sense, as a thing at once real and ideal, a truth including exact and accurate detail, and yet everywhere subordinating mere detail to the spirit of the whole--this, he affirmed, was the soul and essence not only of descriptive poetry, but of all poetry. He had often, he told me, intended to write an essay on poetry, setting forth this principle, and illustrating it by references to the chief representatives of poetry in its various departments. It was this twofold truth which made Shakspeare the greatest of all poets. 'It was well for Shakspeare,' he remarked, 'that he gave himself to the drama. It was that which forced him to be sufficiently human. His poems would otherwise, from the extraordinarily metaphysical character of his genius, have been too recondite to be understood. His youthful poems, in spite of their unfortunate and unworthy subjects, and his sonnets also, reveal this tendency. Nothing can surpass the greatness of Shakspeare where he is at his greatest; but it is wrong to speak of him as if even he were perfect. He had serious defects, and not those only proceeding from carelessness. For instance, in his delineations of character he does not assign as large a place to religious sentiment as enters into the constitution of human nature under normal circumstances. If his dramas had more religion in them, they would be truer representations of man, as well as more elevated, and of a more searching interest.' Wordsworth used to warn young poets against writing poetry remote from human interest. Dante he admitted to be an exception; but he considered that Shelley, and almost all others who had endeavoured to out-soar the humanities, had suffered deplorably from the attempt. I once heard him say, 'I have often been asked for advice by young poets. All the advice I can give may be expressed in two counsels. First, let Nature be your habitual and pleasurable study, human nature and material nature; secondly, study carefully those first-class poets whose fame is universal, not local, and learn from them: learn from them especially how to observe and how to interpret Nature.'
Those who knew Wordsworth only from his poetry might have supposed that he dwelt ever in a region too serene to admit of human agitations. This was not the fact. There was in his being a region of tumult as well as a higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his poetry lived. It turned aside from mere personal excitements; and for that reason, doubtless, it developed more deeply those special ardours which belong at once to the higher imagination and to the moral being. The passion which was suppressed elsewhere burned in his 'Sonnets to Liberty,' and added a deeper sadness to the 'Yew-trees of Borrowdale.' But his heart, as well as his imagination, was ardent. When it spoke most powerfully in his poetry it spoke with a stern brevity unusual in that poetry, as in the poem 'There is a change and I am poor,' and the still more remarkable one, 'A slumber did my spirit seal,' a poem impassioned beyond the comprehension of those who fancy that Wordsworth lacks passion, merely because in him passion is neither declamatory nor, latently, sensual. He was a man of strong affections, strong enough on one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from poetry.[270]
[270] 'For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow' (Dedicatory Stanzas to 'The White Doe of Rylstone').
Referring once 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 appeared 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. Under the level of the calm there was, however, the precinct of the storm. It expressed itself rarely but vehemently, partaking sometimes of the character both of indignation and sorrow. All at once the trouble would pass away, and his countenance bask in its habitual calm, like a cloudless summer sky. His indignation flamed out vehemently when he heard of a base action. 'I could kick such a man across England with my naked foot,' I heard him exclaim on such an occasion. The more impassioned part of his nature connected itself especially with his political feelings. He regarded his own intellect as one which united some of the faculties which belong to the statesman with those which belong to the poet; and public affairs interested him not less deeply than poetry. It was as patriot, not poet, that he ventured to claim fellowship with Dante.[271] He did not accept the term 'Reformer,' because it implied an organic change in our institutions, and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that while he was a decided Conservative, he remembered that to preserve our institutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first to last, preÎminently a patriot, an impassioned as well as a thoughtful one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his own country only, but with the progress of Humanity. Till disenchanted by the excesses and follies of the first French revolution, his hopes and sympathies associated themselves ardently with the new order of things created by it; and I have heard him say that he did not know how any generous-minded young man, entering on life at the time of that great uprising, could have escaped the illusion. To the end his sympathies were ever with the cottage hearth far more than with the palace. If he became a strong supporter of what has been called 'the hierarchy of society,' it was chiefly because he believed the principle of 'equality' to be fatal to the well-being and the true dignity of the poor. Moreover, in siding politically with the Crown and the coronets, he considered himself to be siding with the weaker party in our democratic days.
[271] See his Sonnet on the seat of Dante, close to the Duomo at Florence (Poems of Early and Late Years).
The absence of love-poetry in Wordsworth's works has often been remarked upon, and indeed brought as a charge against them. He once told me that if he had avoided that form of composition, it was by no means because the theme did not interest him, but because, treated as it commonly has been, it tends rather to disturb and lower the reader's moral and imaginative being than to elevate it. He feared to handle it amiss. He seemed to think that the subject had been so long vulgarised, that few poets had a right to assume that they could treat it worthily, especially as the theme, when treated unworthily, was such an easy and cheap way of winning applause. It has been observed also that the Religion of Wordsworth's poetry, at least of his earlier poetry, is not as distinctly 'Revealed Religion' as might have been expected from this poet's well-known adherence to what he has called emphatically 'The lord, and mighty paramount of Truths.' He once remarked to me himself on this circumstance, and explained it by stating that when in youth his imagination was shaping for itself the channel in which it was to flow, his religious convictions were less definite and less strong than they had become on more mature thought, and that when his poetic mind and manner had once been formed, he feared that he might, in attempting to modify them, have become constrained. He added that on such matters he ever wrote with great diffidence, remembering that if there were many subjects too low for song, there were some too high. Wordsworth's general confidence in his own powers, which was strong, though far from exaggerated, rendered more striking and more touching his humility in all that concerned Religion. It used to remind me of what I once heard Mr. Rogers say, viz. 'There is a special character of greatness about humility for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate the greatness of what is above us.' Fortunately his diffidence did not keep Wordsworth silent on sacred themes; his later poems include an unequivocal as well as beautiful confession of Christian faith; and one of them, 'The Primrose of the Rock,' is as distinctly Wordsworthian in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine. Wordsworth was a 'high churchman,' and also, in his prose mind, strongly anti-Roman Catholic, partly on political grounds; but that it was otherwise as regards his mind poetic is obvious from many passages in his Christian poetry, especially those which refer to the monastic system, and the Schoolmen, and his sonnet on the Blessed Virgin, whom he addresses as
'Our tainted nature's solitary boast.'
He used to say that the idea of one who was both Virgin and Mother had sunk so deep into the heart of Humanity, that there it must ever remain.
Wordsworth's estimate of his contemporaries was not generally high. I remember his once saying to me, 'I have known many that might he called very clever men, and a good many of real and vigorous abilities, but few of genius; and only one whom I should call "wonderful." That one was Coleridge. At any hour of the day or night he would talk by the hour, if there chanced to be any sympathetic listener, and talk better than the best page of his writings; for a pen half paralysed his genius. A child would sit quietly at his feet and wonder, till the torrent had passed by. The only man like Coleridge whom I have known is Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Dublin.' I remember, however, that when I recited by his fireside Alfred Tennyson's two political poems, 'You ask me why, though ill at ease,' and 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights,' the old bard listened with a deepening attention, and when I had ended, said after a pause, 'I must acknowledge that those two poems are very solid and noble in thought. Their diction also seems singularly stately.' He was a great admirer of Philip van Artevelde. In the case of a certain poet since dead, and never popular, he said to me, 'I consider his sonnets to be the best of modern times;' adding, 'Of course I am not including my own in any comparison with those of others.' He was not sanguine as to the future of English poetry. He thought that there was much to be supplied in other departments of our literature, and especially he desired a really great History of England; but he was disposed to regard the roll of English poetry as made up, and as leaving place for little more except what was likely to be eccentric or imitational.
In his younger days Wordsworth had had to fight a great battle in poetry, for both his subjects and his mode of treating them were antagonistic to the maxims then current. It was fortunate for posterity, no doubt, that his long 'militant estate' was animated by some mingling of personal ambition with his love of poetry. Speaking in an early sonnet of
'The poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays,'
he concludes,
'Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs, Then gladly would I end my mortal days.'
He died at eighty, and general fame did not come to him till about fifteen years before his death. This perhaps might have been fifteen years too soon, if he had set any inordinate value on it. But it was not so. Shelley tells us that' Fame is love disguised;' and it was intellectual sympathy that Wordsworth had always valued far more than reputation. 'Give me thy love; I claim no other fee,' had been his demand on his reader. When Fame had laid her tardy garland at his feet he found on it no fresher green than his 'Rydalian laurels' had always worn. Once he said to me, '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, it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore.'
Such are my chief recollections of the great poet, whom I knew but in his old age, but whose heart retained its youth till his daughter Dora's death. He seemed to me one who from boyhood had been faithful to a high vocation; one who had esteemed it his office to minister, in an age of conventional civilisation, at Nature's altar, and who had in his later life explained and vindicated such life-long ministration, even while he seemed to apologise for it, in the memorable confession,
'But who is innocent? By grace divine, Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine.'[272]
[272] 'Evening Voluntary.'
It was to Nature as first created, not to Nature as corrupted by 'disnatured' passions, that his song had attributed such high and healing powers. In singing her praise he had chosen a theme loftier than most of his readers knew--loftier, as he perhaps eventually discovered, than he had at first supposed it to be. Utterly without Shakspeare's dramatic faculty, he was richer and wider in the humanities than any poet since Shakspeare. Wholly unlike Milton in character and in opinions, he abounds in passages to be paralleled only by Milton in solemn and spiritual sublimity, and not even by Milton in pathos. It was plain to those who knew Wordsworth that he had kept his great gift pure, and used it honestly and thoroughly for that purpose for which it had been bestowed. He had ever written with a conscientious reverence for that gift; but he had also written spontaneously. He had composed with care--not the exaggerated solicitude which is prompted by vanity, and which frets itself to unite incompatible excellences; but the diligence which shrinks from no toil while eradicating blemishes that confuse a poem's meaning, and frustrate its purpose. He regarded poetry as an art; but he also regarded Art not as the compeer of Nature, much less her superior, but as her servant and interpreter. He wrote poetry likewise, no doubt, in a large measure, because self-utterance was an essential law of his nature. If he had a companion, he discoursed like one whose thoughts must needs run on in audible current; if he walked alone among his mountains, he murmured old songs. He was like a pine grove, vocal as well as visible. But to poetry he had dedicated himself as to the utterance of the highest truths brought within the range of his life's experience; and if his poetry has been accused of egotism, the charge has come from those who did not perceive that it was with a human, not a mere personal interest that he habitually watched the processes of his own mind. He drew from the fountain that was nearest at hand what he hoped might be a refreshment to those far off. He once said, speaking of a departed man of genius, who had lived an unhappy life and deplorably abused his powers, to the lasting calamity of his country, 'A great poet must be a great man; and a great man must be a good man; and a good man ought to be a happy man.' To know Wordsworth was to feel sure that if he had been a great poet, it was not merely because he had been endowed with a great imagination, but because he had been a good man, a great man, and a man whose poetry had, in an especial sense, been the expression of a healthily happy moral being.
AUBREY DE VERE.
Curragh Chase, March 31, 1875.
P.S. Wordsworth was by no means without humour. When the Queen on one occasion gave a masked ball, some one said that a certain youthful poet, who has since reached a deservedly high place both in the literary and political world, but who was then known chiefly as an accomplished and amusing young man of society, was to attend it dressed in the character of the father of English poetry, grave old Chaucer. 'What,' said Wordsworth, 'M. go as Chaucer! Then it only remains for me to go as M.!'
* * * * *
II. SONNET--RYDAL WITH WORDSWORTH
BY THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE.
'What we beheld scarce can I now recall In one connected picture; images Hurrying so swiftly their fresh witcheries O'er the mind's mirror, that the several Seems lost, or blended in the mighty all. Lone lakes; rills gushing through rock-rooted trees: Peaked mountains shadowing vales of peacefulness: Glens echoing to the flashing waterfall. Then that sweet twilight isle! with friends delayed Beside a ferny bank 'neath oaks and yews; The moon between two mountain peaks embayed; Heaven and the waters dyed with sunset hues: And he, the Poet of the age and land, Discoursing as we wandered hand in hand.'
The above-written sonnet is the record of a delightful day spent by my father in 1833 with Wordsworth at Rydal, to which he went from the still more beautiful shores of Ulswater, where he had been sojourning at Halsteads. He had been one of Wordsworth's warmest admirers, when their number was small, and in 1842 he dedicated a volume of poems to him.[273] He taught me when a boy of 18 years old to admire the great bard. I had been very enthusiastically praising Lord Byron's poetry. My father calmly replied, 'Wordsworth is the great poet of modern times.' Much surprised, I asked, 'And what may his special merits be?' The answer was, 'They are very various, as for instance, depth, largeness, elevation, and, what is rare in modern poetry, an entire purity. In his noble "Laodamia" they are chiefly majesty and pathos.' A few weeks afterwards I chanced to take from the library shelves a volume of Wordsworth, and it opened on 'Laodamia.' Some strong, calm hand seemed to have been laid on my head, and bound me to the spot, till I had come to the end. As I read, a new world, hitherto unimagined, opened itself out, stretching far away into serene infinitudes. The region was one to me unknown, but the harmony of the picture attested its reality. Above and around were indeed
[273] A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises, and Sonnets (Pickering). The Dedication closed thus: 'I may at least hope to be named hereafter among the friends of Wordsworth.'
'An ampler ether, a diviner air, And fields invested with purpureal gleams;'
and when I reached the line,
'Calm pleasures there abide--majestic pains,'
I felt that no tenants less stately could walk in so lordly a precinct. I had been translated into another planet of song--one with larger movements and a longer year. A wider conception of poetry had become mine, and the Byronian enthusiasm fell from me like a bond that is broken by being outgrown. The incident illustrates poetry in one of its many characters, that of 'the deliverer.' The ready sympathies and inexperienced imagination of youth make it surrender itself easily despite its better aspirations, or in consequence of them, to a false greatness; and the true greatness, once revealed, sets it free. As early as 1824 Walter Savage Landor, in his 'Imaginary Conversation' between Southey and Porson, had pronounced Wordsworth's 'Laodamia' to be 'a composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own, and a part of which might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions he describes'--the Elysian Fields.
Wordsworth frequently spoke of death, as if it were the taking of a new degree in the University of Life. 'I should like,' he remarked to a young lady, 'to visit Italy again before I move to another planet.' He sometimes made a mistake in assuming that others were equally philosophical. We were once breakfasting at the house of Mr. Rogers, when Wordsworth, after gazing attentively round the room with a benignant and complacent expression, turned to our host, and wishing to compliment him, said, 'Mr. Rogers, I never see this house, so perfect in its taste, so exquisite in all its arrangements, and decorated with such well-chosen pictures, without fancying it the very house imaged to himself by the Roman poet, when, in illustration of man's mortality, he says, "Linquenda est domus."' 'What is that you are saying?' replied Mr. Rogers, whose years, between eighty and ninety, had not improved his hearing. 'I was remarking that your house,' replied Wordsworth, 'always reminds me of the Ode (more properly called an Elegy, though doubtless the lyrical measure not unnaturally causes it to be included among Horace's Odes) in which the Roman poet writes "Linquenda est domus;" that is, since, ladies being present, a translation may be deemed desirable, The house is, or has to be, left; and again, "et placens uxor"--and the pleasing wife; though, as we must all regret, that part of the quotation is not applicable on the present occasion.' The Town Bard, on whom 'no angle smiled' more than the end of St. James's-place, did not enter into the views of the Bard of the Mountains. His answer was what children call 'making a great face,' and the ejaculation, 'Don't talk Latin in, the society of ladies.' When I was going away he remarked, 'What a stimulus the mountain air has on the appetite! I made a sign to Edmund to hand him the cutlets a second time. I was afraid he would stick his fork into that beautiful woman who sat next him.' Wordsworth never resented a jest at his own expense. Once when we had knocked three times in vain at the door of a London house, I exclaimed, quoting his sonnet written on Westminster-bridge,
'Dear God, the very houses seem asleep.'
He laughed heartily, then smiled gravely, and lastly recounted the occasion, and described the early morning on which that sonnet was written. He did not recite more than a part of it, to the accompaniment of distant cab and carriage; and I thought that the door was opened too soon.
Wordsworth, despite his dislike to great cities, was attracted occasionally in his later years
'To the proud margin of the Thames, And Lambeth's venerable towers,'
where his society was courted by persons of the most different character. But he complained bitterly of the great city. It was next to impossible, he remarked, to tell the truth in it. 'Yesterday I was at S. House: the Duchess of S., showing me the pictures, observed, "This is the portrait of my brother" (naming him), "and it is considered very like." To this I assented, partly perhaps in absence of mind, but partly, I think, with an impression that her Grace's brother was probably a person whose face every one knew, or was expected to know; so that, as I had never met him, my answer was in fact a lie! It is too bad that, when more than seventy years old, I should be brought from the mountains to London in order to tell a lie!' He made his complaint wherever he went, laying the blame, however, not so much on himself, or on the Duchess, as on the corrupt city; and some of those who learned how the most truthful man in England had thus quickly been subverted by metropolitan snares came to the conclusion that within a few years more no virtue would be left extant in the land. He was likewise maltreated in lesser ways. 'This morning I was compelled by my engagements to eat three breakfasts--one with an aged and excellent gentleman, who may justly be esteemed an accomplished man of letters, although I cannot honestly concede to him the title of a poet; one at a fashionable party; and one with an old friend whom no pressure would induce me to neglect--although for this, my first breakfast to-day, I was obliged to name the early hour of seven o'clock, as he lives in a remote part of London.'
But it was only among his own mountains that Wordsworth could be understood. He walked among them not so much to admire them as to converse with them. They exchanged thoughts with him, in sunshine or flying shadow, giving him their own and accepting his. Day and night, at all hours, and in all weather, he would face them. If it rained, he might fling his plaid over him, but would take no admonition. He must have his way. On such occasions, dutiful as he was in higher matters, he remained incurably wayward. In vain one reminded him that a letter needed an answer, or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary for him to do what he liked; and one of his dearest friends said to me, with a smile of the most affectionate humour, 'He wrote his "Ode to Duty," and then he had done with that matter.' This very innocent form of lawlessness, corresponding with the classic expression, 'Indulge genio,' seemed to belong to his genius, not less than the sympathetic reverence with which he looked up to the higher and universal laws. Sometimes there was a battle between his reverence for Nature and his reverence for other things. The friend already alluded to was once remarking on his varying expressions of countenance. 'That rough old face is capable of high and real beauty; I have seen in it an expression quite of heavenly peace and contemplative delight, as the May breeze came over him from the woods while he was slowly walking out of church on a Sunday morning, and when he had half emerged from the shadow.' A flippant person present inquired, 'Did you ever chance, Miss F., to observe that heavenly expression on his countenance, as he was walking into church, on a fine May morning?' A laugh was the reply. The ways of Nature harmonised with his feelings in age as well as in youth. He could understand no estrangement. Gathering a wreath of white thorn on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into the ribbon which bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,
'And what if I enwreathed my own? 'Twere no offence to reason; The sober hills thus deck their brows To meet the wintry season.'
* * * * *
(k) FROM 'RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON.'
BY E.J. TRELAWNY. 1858 (MOXON).
Some days after this conversation I walked to Lausanne, to breakfast at the hotel with an old friend, Captain Daniel Roberts, of the navy. He was out sketching, but presently came in accompanied by two English ladies, with whom he had made acquaintance whilst drawing, and whom he brought to our hotel. The husband of one of them soon followed. I saw by their utilitarian garb, as well as by the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips, and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, fresh from the snow-covered mountains, the blazing sun and frosty air having acted on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing his dark coat scarlet. The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind. Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drifted into warmer latitudes: broken loose from its anti-social system, mystic castes, coteries, sets, and sects, they lay aside their purse-proud, tuft-hunting, and toadying ways, and are very apt to run risk in the enjoyment of all their senses. Besides, we were compelled to talk in strange company, if not from good breeding, to prove our breed, as the gift of speech is often our principal, if not sole, distinction from the rest of the brute animals.
To return to our breakfast. The travellers, flushed with health, delighted with their excursion, and with appetites earned by bodily and mental activity, were in such high spirits that Roberts and I caught the infection of their mouth; we talked as loud and fast as if under the exhilarating influence of champagne, instead of such a sedative compound as cafÈ au lait. I can rescue nothing out of oblivion but a few last words. The stranger expressed his disgust at the introduction of carriages into the mountain districts of Switzerland, and at the old fogies who used them.
'As to the arbitrary, pitiless, godless wretches,' he exclaimed, 'who have removed Nature's landmarks by cutting roads through Alps and Apennines, until all things are reduced to the same dead level, they will he arraigned hereafter with the unjust: they have robbed the best specimens of what men should be of their freeholds in the mountains; the eagle, the black cock, and the red deer they have tamed or exterminated. The lover of Nature can nowhere find a solitary nook to contemplate her beauties. Yesterday,' he continued, 'at the break of day, I scaled the most rugged height within my reach; it looked inaccessible; this pleasant delusion was quickly dispelled; I was rudely startled out of a deep reverie by the accursed jarring, jingling, and rumbling of a calËche, and harsh voices that drowned the torrent's fall.'
The stranger, now hearing a commotion in the street, sprang on his feet, looked out of the window, and rang the bell violently.
'Waiter,' he said, 'is that our carriage? Why did you not tells us? Come, lasses, be stirring; the freshness of the day is gone. You may rejoice in not having to walk; there is a chance of saving the remnants of skin the sun has left on our chins and noses; to-day we shall he stewed instead of barbecued.'
On their leaving the room to get ready for their journey, my friend Roberts told me the strangers were the poet Wordsworth, his wife and sister.
Who could have divined this? I could see no trace, in the hard features and weather-stained brow of the outer man, of the divinity within him. In a few minutes the travellers reappeared; we cordially shook hands, and agreed to meet again at Geneva. Now that I knew that I was talking to one of the veterans of the gentle craft, as there was no time to waste in idle ceremony, I asked him abruptly what he thought of Shelley as a poet.
'Nothing,' he replied as abruptly.
Seeing my surprise, he added, 'A poet who has not produced a good poem before he is twenty-five we may conclude cannot and never will do so.'
'The "Cenci"!' I said eagerly.
'Won't do,' he replied, shaking his head, as he got into the carriage: a rough-coated Scotch terrier followed him.
'This hairy fellow is our flea-trap,' he shouted out as they started off.
When I recovered from the shock of having heard the harsh sentence passed by an elder bard on a younger brother of the Muses, I exclaimed,
'After all, poets are but earth. It is the old story,--envy--Cain and Abel. Professions, sects, and communities in general, right or wrong, hold together, men of the pen excepted; if one of their guild is worsted in the battle, they do as the rooks do by their inky brothers--fly from him, cawing and screaming; if they don't fire the shot, they sound the bugle to charge.'
I did not then know that the full-fledged author never reads the writings of his contemporaries, except to cut them up in a review, that being a work of love. In after years, Shelley being dead, Wordsworth confessed this fact; he was then induced to read some of Shelley's poems, and admitted that Shelley was the greatest master of harmonious verse in our modern literature. (Pp. 4-8.)[274]
[274] See our Index, under Shelley, G.
(l) FROM 'LETTERS, EMBRACING HIS LIFE, OF JOHN JAMES TAYLER, B.A., PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, AND PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE. LONDON, 1872' (TWO VOLS. 8vo).
Spring Cottage, Loughrigg, Ambleside, July 26. 1826.
Rydal, where we now are, has an air of repose and seclusion which I have rarely seen surpassed; the first few days we were here we perfectly luxuriated in the purity and sweetness of the air and the delicious stillness of its pastures and woods. It is interesting, too, on another account, as being the residence of the poet Wordsworth: his house is about a quarter of a mile from ours; and since Osler joined us we have obtained an introduction to him, and he favoured us with his company at tea one evening last week. He is a very interesting man, remarkably simple in his manners, full of enthusiasm and eloquence in conversation, especially on the subject of his favourite art--poetry--which he seems to have studied in a very philosophical spirit, and about which he entertains some peculiar opinions. Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton are his favourites among the English poets, especially the latter, whom he almost idolises. He expressed one opinion which rather surprised me, and in which I could not concur--that he preferred the 'Samson Agonistes' to 'Comus.' He recited in vindication of his judgment one very fine passage from the former poem, and in a very striking manner; his voice is deep and pathetic, and thrills with feeling. He is Toryish--at least what would he considered so--in his political principles, though he disclaims all connection with party, and certainly argues with great fairness and temper on controverted topics, such as Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation. We took a long walk with him the other evening, to the scene of one of his Pastorals in the neighbourhood of Grasmere. He has a good deal of general conversation, and has more the manners of a man of the world than I should have expected from his poems; but his discourse indicates great simplicity and purity of mind; indeed, nothing renders his conversation more interesting than the unaffected tone of elevated morality and devotion which pervades it. We have been reading his long poem, the 'Excursion,' since we came here. I particularly recommend it to your notice, barring some few extra vagancies into which his peculiar theory has led him: his fourth book, the last, contains specimens both of versification, sentiment, and imagery, scarcely inferior to what you will find in the best passages of Milton. He spoke with great plainness, and yet with candour, of his contemporaries. He admitted the power of Byron in describing the workings of human passion, but denied that he knew anything of the beauties of Nature, or succeeded in describing them with fidelity. This he illustrated by examples. He spoke with deserved severity of Byron's licentiousness and contempt of religious decorum. He told us he thought the greatest of modern geniuses, had he given his powers a proper direction, and one decidedly superior to Byron, was Shelley, a young man, author of 'Queen Mab,' who died lately at Rome. (Vol. i. pp. 72-4.)
Manchester, July 16. 1830.
....Though I am busy, I feel rather melancholy; and I am continually reminded how sad my life would be without the society and affection of those we love, and how terribly awful the dispensation of death must be to those who cannot anticipate a future reunion, and regard it as the utter extinction of all human interests and affections. I am solacing myself with Wordsworth. Do you know, I shall become a thorough convert to him. Much of his poetry is delicious, and I perfectly adore his philosophy. To me he seems the purest, the most elevated, and the most Christian of poets. I delight in his deep and tender piety, and his spirit of exquisite sympathy with whatever is lovely and grand in the breathing universe around us. (Vol. i. p. 86.)
* * * * *
(m) ANECDOTE OF CRABBE.
FROM 'DIARY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.'
Talking of Wordsworth, he [W.] told Anne a story, the object of which, as she understood it, was to show that Crabbe had no imagination. Crabbe, Sir George Beaumont, and Wordsworth were sitting together in Murray's room in Albemarle-street. Sir George, after sealing a letter, blew out the candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a look with Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating thread of smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the taper was wax; and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that there was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their admiration of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives of Windsor,' act i. scene 1]; but Sir George is the man in the world most void of affectation; and then he is an exquisite painter, and no doubt saw where the incident would have succeeded in painting. The error is not in you yourself receiving deep impressions from slight hints, but in supposing that precisely the same sort of impression must arise in the mind of men otherwise of kindred feeling, or that the common-place folk of the world can derive such inductions at any time or under any circumstances.[275]
* * * * *
(n) LATER OPINION OF LOUD BROUGHAM.
I am just come from breakfasting with Henry Taylor to meet Wordsworth; the same party as when he had Southey--Mill, Elliot, Charles Villiers. Wordsworth may be bordering on sixty; hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth and a few scattered gray hairs, but nevertheless not a disagreeable countenance; and very cheerful, merry, courteous, and talkative, much more so than I should have expected from the grave and didactic character of his writings. He held forth on poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics, and with a great deal of eloquence; he is more conversible and with a greater flow of animal spirits than Southey. He mentioned that he never wrote down as he composed, but composed walking, riding, or in bed, and wrote down after; that Southey always composes at his desk. He talked a great deal of Brougham, whose talents and domestic virtues he greatly admires; that he was very generous and affectionate in his disposition, full of duty and attention to his mother, and had adopted and provided for a whole family of his brother's children, and treats his wife's children as if they were his own. He insisted upon taking them both with him to the Drawing-room the other day when he went in state as Chancellor. They remonstrated with him, but in vain.[276]
[275] 'Diary of Sir Walter Scott,' Life, by Lockhart, as before, vol. ix. pp. 62-3.
[276] The Greville Memoirs. A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV. and King William IV. By the late Charles C.F. Greville, Esq., Clerk of the Council to those Sovereigns. Edited by Henry Reeve, Registrar of the Privy Council. 3 vols. 8vo, fourth edition, 1875. Vol. ii. p. 120.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
P. 5. Footnotes: 5a, 'Intake.' Cf. p. 436 (bottom).
P. 6, l. 6. 'Gives one bright glance,' &c. From 'The Seasons,' l. 175, from the end of 'Summer.' Originally (1727) this line ran, 'Gives one faint glimmer, and then disappears.'
P. 17, l. 2. Shelvocke's 'Voyages:' 'A Voyage round the World, by the Way of the Great South Sea.' 1726, 8vo; 2d edition, 1757.
P. 22, l. 27. Milton, History of England, &c. 'The History of Britain, that Part especially now called England; from the first traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Conquest. In six Books.' Lond. 1670. (Works by Mitford, Prose, iii. pp. 1-301.)
P. 24, l. 28. Hearne's 'Journey,' &c.; viz. Samuel Hearne's 'Journey from the Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean.' 1795, 4to.
P. 31, l. 12. Waterton's 'Wanderings,' &c.; viz. Charles Waterton's 'Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles.' 1825, 4to. Many subsequent editions, being a book that has taken its place beside Walton's 'Angler' and White's 'Selborne.'
P. 32, l. 11. James Montgomery's 'Field Flower.' Nothing gratified this 'sweet Singer' so much as these words of Wordsworth. He used to point them out to visitors if the conversation turned, or was directed, to Wordsworth. The particular poem is a daintily-touched one, found in all the editions of his Poems.
P. 32, l. 33. 'Has not Chaucer noticed it [the small Celandine]'? Certainly not under this name, nor apparently under any other.
P. 33, l. 2. 'Frederica Brun.' More exactly Frederike. She was a minor poetess; imitator of Matthison, whose own poems can hardly be called original. (See Gostwick and Harrison's 'Outlines of German Literature,' p. 355, cxxiii., 7th period, 1770-1830.)
P. 36, ll. 13-15. Quotation from Thomson, 'The Seasons,' 'Summer,' l. 980.
P. 44, l. 17. Quotation from Sir John Beaumont, 'The Battle of Bosworth Field,' l. 100. (Poems in the Fuller Worthies' Library, p. 29.) Accurately it is, 'The earth assists thee with the cry of blood.'
P. 47, ll. 17-19. 'The Triad.' Sara Coleridge thus wrote of this poem: 'Look at "The Triad," written by Mr. Wordsworth four-or five-and-twenty years ago. That poem contains a poetical glorification of Edith Southey (now W.), of Dora, and of myself. There is truth in the sketch of Dora, poetic truth, though such as none but a poet-father would have seen. She was unique in her sweetness and goodness. I mean that her character was most peculiar--a compound of vehemence of feeling and gentleness, sharpness and lovingness, which is not often seen' ('Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, edited by her Daughter,' 2 vols. 8vo, 3d edition, 1873, p. 68). Later: 'I do confess that I have never been able to rank "The Triad" among Mr. Wordsworth's immortal works of genius. It is just what he came into the poetical world to condemn, and both by practice and theory to supplant. It is to my mind artificial and unreal. There is no truth in it as a whole, although bits of truth, glazed and magnified, are embodied in it, as in the lines, "Features to old ideal grace allied"--a most unintelligible allusion to a likeness discovered in dear Dora's contour of countenance to the great Memnon head in the British Museum, with its overflowing lips and width of mouth, which seems to be typical of the ocean. The poem always strikes me as a mongrel,' &c. (p. 352).
P. 56, l. 7. 'Mr. Duppa.' See note in Vol. II. on p. 163, l. 2.
P. 56, l. 27. '179--.' Sic in the MS. He died in January 1795.
P. 60, l. 16. 'Mr. Westall;' viz. William Westall's 'View of the Caves near Ingleton, Gosdale Scar, and Malham Cove, in Yorkshire.' 1818, folio.
P. 62, l. 31. 'The itinerant Eidouranian philosopher,' &c. Query--the Walker of the book on the Lakes noticed in Vol. II. on p. 217?
P. 63, l. 6. 'I have reason,' &c. Cf. Letter to Sir W.R. Hamilton, first herein printed, pp. 310-11.
P. 68, l. 24. Dampier's' Voyages, 'etc.; viz.' Collection of Voyages.' London, 1729, 4 vols. 8vo.
P. 72, l. 29. 'Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.' His complete Works in Verse and Prose are given in the Fuller Worthies' Library, 4 vols.
P. 76, l. 14. Spenser. An apparent misrecollection of the 'Fairy Queen,' b. iii. c. viii. st. 32, l. 7, 'Had her from so infamous fact assoyld.'
P. 78, l. 6. 'Armstrong;' i.e. Dr. John Armstrong, whose 'Art of Preserving Health,' under an unpromising title, really contains splendid things. His portrait in the 'Castle of Indolence' is his most certain passport to immortality.
P. 80, l. 21. 'The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci.' A reproduction of the head of our Blessed Lord, taken from the fresco (photograph), is given in the quarto edition of Southwell's complete Poems in the Fuller Worthies' Library--none the less precious that it pathetically reveals the marks of Time's 'effacing fingers.' No engraving approaches the 'power' of this autotype of the supreme original.
P. 88, l. 32. 'Faber.' Among the treasures (unpublished) of the Wordsworth Correspondence are various remarkable letters of Faber--one, very singular, announcing his going over to the Church of Rome.
P. 90, l. 34. 'Mr. Robinson.' Cf. 'Reminiscences' onward.
P. 97, ll. 9-10, &c. 'Dyer.' Cf. note, Vol. II., on p. 296, l. 35.
P. 97, l. 18. 'Mr. Crowe;' i.e. Rev. William Crowe, Public Orator of Oxford. His poem was originally published in 1786 (4to); reprinted 1804 (12mo).
P. 98, l. 19. 'Armstrong.' See on p. 78, l. 6.
P. 98, l. 20. 'Burns.' Verse-Epistle to William Simpson, st. 13; but for 'nae' read 'na,' and for 'na' read 'no.'
P. 101, l. 9. 'Rev. Joseph Sympson.' This poet, so pleasantly noticed by Wordsworth, appears in none of the usual bibliographical authorities. Curiously enough, his 'Vision of Alfred' was republished in the United States--Philadelphia.
P. 116, ll. 33-34. Quotation, Shakspeare, 'Henry VIII.' iii. 2.
P. 120, l. 22. Quotation from Milton, 'Paradise Lost,' viii. l. 282.
P. 125, l. 4. 'Mr. Hazlitt quoted,' &c. See Index, s.n. for Wordsworth's estimate of Hazlitt; also our Preface.
P. 130, l. 17. Hill at St. Alban's. See 'Eccl. Hist.' s.n.
P. 130, l. 31. 'Germanus.' Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' b. ii. c. xvi.
P. 131, l. 10. 'Fuller;' viz. his 'Church History.'
P. 131, l. 16. 'Turner.' The late laborious Sharon Turner, whose 'Histories' are still kept in print (apparently).
P. 131, l. 21. 'Paulinus.' Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' b. ii. c. xvi.
P. 131, l. 26. 'King Edwin.' Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' b. ii. c. xiii.
P. 136, l. 28. 'An old and much-valued friend in Oxfordshire;' viz. Rev. Robert Jones, as before.
P. 137, l. 10. 'Dyer's History of Cambridge,' 2 vols. 8vo, 1814.
P. 137, l. 14. 'Burnet,' in his 'History of the Reformation;' many editions.
P. 119, ll. 4-5. Latin verse-quotation, Ovid, 'Metam.' viii. 163, 164.
P. 151, l. 11. 'Charlotte Smith.' It seems a pity that the Poems of this genuine Singer should have gone out of sight.
P. 155, l. 31. 'Russel.' Should be Russell. Some very beautiful Sonnets of his appear in Dyce's well-known collection, and to it doubtless Wordsworth was indebted for his knowledge of Russell. He has cruelly passed out of memory.
P. 165, ll. 7-9. 'Is not the first stanza of Gray's,' etc. Gray himself prefixed these lines from Aeschylus, 'Agam.' 181:
[Greek: ZÍna
* * * * * ton phronein brotous hodÙ- santa, ton pathos thenta kuriÙs echein.]
He seems to have been rather indebted to Dionysius' Ode to Nemesis, v. Aratus.
P. 182, l. 9. 'Dr. Darwin's Zoonomia;' i.e. 'The Laws of Organic Life,' 1794-96, 2 vols. 4to.
P. 182, l. 24. 'Peter Henry Bruce ... entertaining Memoirs.' Published 1782, 4to.
P. 185, ll. 2-3. Verse-quotation, from Milton, 'Il Penseroso,' ll. 109-110.
P. 190, l. 27. 'Light will be thrown,' &c. We have still to deplore that the Letters of Lamb are even at this later day either withheld or sorrowfully mutilated; e.g. among the Wordsworth Correspondence (unpublished) is a whole sheaf of letters in their finest vein from Lamb and his sister. Some of the former are written in black and red ink in alternate lines, and overflow with all his deepest and quaintest characteristics. His sister's are charming. The same might be said of nearly all Wordsworth's greatest contemporaries. Surely these MSS. will not much longer be kept in this inexplicable and, I venture to say, scarcely pardonable seclusion?
P. 192, foot-note. This deliciously naÔve note of 'Dora' to her venerated father suggests that it is due similarly to demur--with all respect--to the representation given of Mrs. Hemans (pp. 193-4). Three things it must be permitted me to recall: (a) That the 'brevity's sake' hardly condones the fulness of statement of an imagined ignorance of 'housewifery' on the part of Mrs. Hemans. (b) That a visitor for a few days in a family could scarcely be expected to set about using her needle in home duties. (c) That unquestionable testimony, furnished me by those who knew her intimately, warrant me to state that Wordsworth was mistaken in supposing that Mrs. Hemans 'could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle.' Her brave and beautiful life, and her single-handed upbringing of her many boys worthily, make one deeply regret that such sweeping generalisation from a narrow and hasty observation should have been indulged in. My profound veneration for Wordsworth does not warrant my suppression of the truth in this matter. Be it remembered, too, that other expressions of Wordsworth largely qualify the present ungracious judgment.
P. 209, l. 8. 'Lord Ashley.' Now the illustrious and honoured Earl of Shaftesbury.
P. 212, l. 17. 'Burnet;' i.e. Thomas Burnet, whose Latin treatise was published in 1681 and 1689; in English, 1684 and 1689. Imaginative genius will be found in this uncritical and unscientific book.
P. 214, l. 12. 'The Hurricane,' &c.; viz. 'The Hurricane; a Theosophical and Western Eclogue,' &c. 1797; reprinted 1798.
P. 216, ll. 4-5. Quotation from Coleridge, from 'Sibylline Leaves,' Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath.
P. 216, l. 29. 'Dr. Bell.' Southey edited the bulky Correspondence of this pioneer of our better education, in 3 vols. 8vo.
P. 233, ll. 34-36. 'They have been treated,' &c. ('Evening Walk,' &c., 1794.)
P. 247, foot-note [A]. De Quincey, in his 'Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey' (Works, vol. ii. pp. 151-6), gives a very realistic exposÈ of the Lonsdales--abating considerably the glow of Wordsworth's recurring praise and homage.
P. 255, l. 31. 'History of Cleveland.' The book is by the Rev. John Graves, and is entitled 'The History of Cleveland in the North Riding of the County of York.' Carlisle, 1808. Wordsworth is unjust: it is a deserving work, if o' times inevitably dry.
P. 285, l.1. 'Francis Edgeworth's "Dramatic Fragment."' This was Francis Beaufort Edgeworth, half-brother of Maria Edgeworth.
P. 285, ll. 29-30. 'Spectator.' From No. 46, April 23, 1711, one of Addison's own charming papers in his lighter vein of raillery.
P. 280, ll. 13-16. 'Mr. Page;' viz. Frederick Page, author of (a) 'The Principle of the English Poor Laws illustrated and defended by an Historical View of Indigence in Civil Society.' Bath, 1822. (b) 'Observations on the State of the Indigent Poor in Ireland, and the existing Institutions for their Relief.' London, 1830.
P. 290, ll. 25-27. Verse-quotation, from Milton, 'Paradise Regained,' b. iii. ll. 337-9.
P. 293, l. 1. Letter to Hamilton. The Rev. R.P. Graves, M.A.--Wordsworth's friend--is engaged in preparing a Life of this preeminent mathematician and many-gifted man of genius, than whom there seems to have been no contemporary who so deeply impressed Wordsworth intellectually, or so won his heart. The 'Poems' of Miss Hamilton (1 vol. 1838) sparkle with beauties, often unexpected as the flash of gems. Space can only be found for one slight specimen of her gift in 'Lines written in Miss Dora Wordsworth's Album,' as follows:
'It is not now that I can speak, while still Thy lakes, thy hills, thyself are in my sight; I would be quiet--for the thoughts that fill My spirit's urn are a confused delight; They must have time to settle to the clear Untroubled calm of memory, ere they show, True as the water-depths around thee here, These images, that then will come and go, An everlasting joy. Far, far away As life, extends the shadow of to-day; And keenlier present from the past will come Thy sweet laugh's freshness pure, with all the poet's home.
'Rydal Mount. 1830.'
'The Boys' School' is the title of Miss Hamilton's poem referred to by Wordsworth. It occurs in the volume, pp. 126-131. Her brother's was one commencing, 'It haunts me yet.' The 'Mr. Nimmo' of this letter was a civil engineer connected with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.
P. 299, l. 18; 300, l. 8, &c. 'Countess of Winchelsea.' Sad to say, a collection of this remarkable English gentlewoman's Poems remains still an unfurnished desideratum.
P. 306, l. 11. 'The Duchess of Newcastle.' Edward Jenkins, Esq. M.P., has recently collected some of the Poems of this lady and her lord in a pretty little volume, which he entitles, 'The Cavalier and the Lady.'
P. 312, l. 32. 'Eschylus and the eagle. 'The reference doubtless is to Aeschylus' 'Prometheus Vinctus,' l. 1042:
[Greek: Dids de toi ptÍnos kuÙn, daphoinos aietos.]
Compare
'Aischulos' bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood Has somehow spoiled my taste for twitterings.'
Robert Browning, 'Aristophanes' Apology' (1875), p. 94.
P. 321, ll. 32-3. Verse-quotation, from 'Macbeth,' viz. i. 3.
P. 333, l. 2. 'Russell.' Before misspelled 'Russel' (p. 155).
P. 337, ll. 17-18. 'Auld Robin Grey' [= Gray], by Lady Ann Lindsay. 'Lament for the Defeat,' &c., viz. 'The Flowers of the Forest,' by (1) Mrs. Cockburn; 'I've seen the smiling,' &c. (2), Miss Jane Elliot. 'I've heard the lilting,' &c.
P. 342, l. 1. 'Shakspeare.' Quotation from Sonnet lxxiii.
P. 380, ll. 6-7. Horace, Ep. i. l, 8-9.
P. 382, ll. 27-9. Southey's Letters. Admirably done by his son Cuthbert in many volumes. The seeming over-quantity have been reduced (to the look) by the American reproduction in a single handsome volume.
P. 394. Heading of Letter 144. 'Of the' has by misadventure slipped in a second time here. Read, 'Of the Heresiarch Church of Rome.'
P. 449, l. 34 onward. Mrs. Wordsworth. My excellent Correspondent the Rev. R.P. Graves, of Dublin, thus writes me of Mrs. Wordsworth: 'I forget whether it has been put on record, as it certainly deserves to be, that Wordsworth habitually referred to his wife for the help of her judgment on his poems. Mrs. Wordsworth did not indeed possess the creative and colouring power of imagination that belonged to his sister as well as to himself; but her simple truthfulness, her strong good sense (which no sophistry could impose upon), and her delicate feeling for propriety, rendered her judgment a test of utmost value with regard to any subjects of which it could take adequate cognisance. And these were confined within no narrow range--the workings of Nature as it lived and moved around her, social equities and charities, religious and moral truth, tried by the heart as well as by the head, and verbal expression, required by her to avoid the regions of the merely abstract and philosophical, and keep to the lower but more poetical ground of idiomatic strength and transparent logic.'
P. 457, l. 18. 'The (almost) contemporary notice of Milton.' A still more significant contemporary notice of Milton than the well-known one of the text occurs in 'The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book entituled The Ready and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, 1660, by James Harrington,' as comes out at p. 16 ('my Oceana'). As it seems to have escaped the commentators, a short quotation must be given here: 'Though you have scribled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of Chandlers and Tobacco-Men, who are your Stationers, and the onely men that vend your Labors' (pp. 4-5). 'He [a member of the Rota] said that he himself reprieved the Whole Defence of the People of England for a groat, that was sentenced to vile Mundungus, and had suffer'd inevitably (but for him), though it cost you much oyle and the Rump 300_l._ a year,' &c. (ibid.). This of the 'Defence'!!!
P. 459, l. 7 onward. Horace, Ode iv. 2, 1; ibid. 2, 27.
P. 462, l. 15. 'Walter Scott is not a careful composer,' &c. This recurs in Mr. Aubrey do Vere's 'Recollections' (p. 487 onward). I venture as a Scot to observe that for this one slight misquotation by Scott, on which so large a conclusion is built, the quotations by Wordsworth from others would furnish twenty-fold. He was singularly inexact in quotation, as even these Notes and Illustrations will satisfy in the places--scarcely in a single instance being verbally accurate. 'Sweet' certainly was a perfectly fitting word for the sequestered lake of St. Mary in its serene summer beauty. Moreover, swans are not usually found singly, but in pairs; and a pair surely differenced not greatly the symbol of loneliness. The latter remark points to Wordsworth's further objection, as stated to Mr. de Vere (as supra).
P. 492, l. 26. 'In the case of a certain poet since dead,' &c. I may record what his own son has not felt free to do, that this was Sir Aubrey de Vere, whose 'Song of Faith, and other Poems,' has not yet gathered its ultimate renown. Wordsworth greatly admired the modest little volume. See one of his Sonnets on page 495. Nor with the Laureate's poem-play of 'Queen Mary' (Tudor) winning inevitable welcome ought it to be forgotten--as even prominent critics of it are sorrowfully forgetting--that Sir Aubrey de Vere, so long ago as 1847, published his drama of 'Mary Tudor.' I venture to affirm that it takes its place--a lofty one--beside 'Philip van Artevelde,' and that it need fear no comparison with 'Queen Mary.' Early and comparatively modern supreme poetry somehow gets out of sight for long.
P. 497, 1. 15. Read 'no angel smiled.' I can only offer the plea of an old Worthy, who said, 'Errata are inevitable, for we are human; and to have none would imply eyes behind as well as before, or the wallet of our errors all in front.' G.
INDEX.
* * * As pointed out in the places, the 'Contents' of Vol. III. give the details of topics in the 'Notes and Illustrations of the Poems' and of 'Letters and Extracts of Letters' so minutely, as to obviate their record here; thus lightening the Index. G.
A.
Abuses, i. 284.
Acquiescence, not choice, i. 19.
Action, springs of, i. 160.
Addresses, Two, to the Freeholders of Westmoreland, i. 211-270; occasion of writing, i. 214.
Addison, i. 357, iii. 508.
Adventurers, i. 241.
Advice to the Young, i. 295-326.
Admiration, unqualified, i. 312.
Advancement and preferment of youth, i. 352.
'Age, present,' supposed moral inferiority of, i. 310.
Agitators, i. 249.
Alpedrinha, i. 56.
Allies, to be supported, i. 138; how, 138-9, et seqq.
Alban's, St., ii. 46.
Alston, ii. 193.
'Altering' of poems, ii. 207.
Alfoxden, iii. 16.[277]
[277] This first mention of Alfoxden in the 'Notes and Illustrations of the Poems' leads the Editor to record here the title-page of a truly delightful privately-printed volume, by the Rev. W.L. Nichols, M.A., Woodlands: The Quantocks and their Associations (1873), 41 pp. and Appendix, xxxii, pp. A photograph of 'Wordsworth's glen, Alfoxden' (p. 6) is exquisite. G.
'Amends,' how to make, i. 130-1, et seqq.
American war, i. 135-6.
American edition of poems, iii. 483-4.
Ambleside, ii. 224-6; road from, to Keswick, ii. 227-8.
Anxiety, moderate, i. 324.
Appendix to Bishop Watson's Sermon, i. 24-30; to Contention of Cintra, i 175-179. (See preface, I. xiv.-xix.)
Apology for the French Revolution, i. 1-23. (See preface, I. x.-xix.)
Arbitrary, distinctions, i. 16-17; power, i. 158-9.
Aristocracy, i. 19.
Aristarchus, ii. 17.
Armistice, i. 84; preamble of, i. 86; articles of, i. 88-94.
Armstrong, Dr., iii. 506.
Army, British, departure of, i. 38; Spanish, the people, i. 47; French, and the French government, i. 95.
'Arrow,' i. 21.
Artevelde, van, Philip, iii. 492.
Art and nature, ii. 157-61.
Arts and science, i. 154; fine, i. 323.
Ashe, i. 360.
Ashley, iii. 507.
Assembly, i. 147.
Asturias, i. 52-3.
B.
'Bad people,' ii. 41.
'Babes in the wood,' ii. 98.
Bacon, quotation from, i. 357; and Shakespeare, iii. 457.
Beia, i. 55.
Benevolence, i. 171.
'Beck.' i. 336.
Beaumont, Sir George H. and Lady, letters to, ii. 146-201; drawings by Sir George, ii. 151.
Beaumont, Sir John, ii 346, iii. 505.
Bell, Peter, ii. 182.
Bell, Dr., iii. 507.
Bede, iii. 506.
Biscayans, i. 60.
Biography, of authors, ii. 11-12.
Birthday, iii. 443-4.
Bonaparte, i. 37; acknowledgment of titles, i. 84-5; influence of concession on, i. 93-4; ravager of Europe, i. 115; formidable yet weak, i. 163-4; to decrease, i. 200, ii. 18, et alibi frequenter.
Books, religious, i. 335.
'Bolton, Mr.,' i. 350.
Boswell's Johnson, ii. 9.
Bran [misprinted Braw], iii. 69.
Bleeding, good, i. 86.
Britain, history of a noble one, i. 101-2.
Brougham, public life of, i. 225, et seqq., 242-8, et seqq. later opinion of, iii. 504.
Bruce, Michael, ii. 21, 343.
Bruce, P.H.. iii. 507.
Browne, Sir Thomas, ii. 23.
Browning, Robert, letter to the Editor, i. xxxiv.; quotation from poem of, iii. 508.
Brun, Frederica, iii. 505.
Brooke, Lord, iii. 560.
Burke, i. 21, 357.
Burns, Robert, Cottar's Saturday-night, i. 356, 360; letter to a friend of, ii. 1-19; Gilbert, ii. 5, 19, 343; fitted to tell the whole truth of, ii. 6-7; quotations from, ii. 7, 13-14, 331, 343 (bis), 347, iii. 436, 506.
Building and gardening, ii. 184-191.
Buttermere and Crummock, ii. 230.
Burnet, Thomas, ii. 327, 507.
Burnet, Bishop, iii. 506.
Buchanan, iii. 459.
Byron, iii. 462-3, 503.
C.
Calamity, how to be regarded, i. 52.
Castile, council of, i. 59.
Cadiz, governor of, i. 92.
Catholic Relief Bill, i. 259-70.
Camden, ii. 27, 343-4.
Carter, Miss, 'Spring,' iii. 426.
Campbell, odd forgetfulness of, ii. 445.
Celandine, small, iii. 505.
Church of England, servility of its clergy, i. 3-4; notices of, i. 262-4, 283, et seqq.
Chamber, personal character of and its chief, ii. 140-1.
Child and man, i. 170.
Charles I., tyranny of, i. 310; epitaph of, ii. 49; Sydney and, ii. 50.
Chatterton, ii. 21, 343.
Churchyard, village, ii. 33-4; country, ii. 41, et seqq.; on sea-coast, ii. 434.
Chiabiera, ii. 58, 68, et seqq.
Christabelle, ii. 427.
Chronological classification of poems, iii. 474.
Clark, Mrs., ii. 66-7, 344-5.
Clergyman, the, i. 286-7, et seqq.
Classical study, iii. 479.
Cleveland, history of, iii. 508.
Courts, corruption of, i. 14.
Corruption, i. 20.
Contention of Cintra, i. 31-172; occasion of writing, i. 35, 129; importance of, i. 37, 143; impression produced by the, i. 37; condemned, i. 65; reception by the people, i. 69; results of, as a military act, i. 70-1; critical examination of its terms, i. 71, et seqq.; not necessary, i. 82; military results, i. 84, et seqq.; conditions of, thus far examined, i. 99; injury done to British character, i. 99, 100, 101-2; sorrow of the nation over, i. 103-4; punishment demanded, i. 104-5; to be repudiated, i. 105-6; disgrace of, i. 121; Vindication of the Opinions on, i. 195 209. (See preface. Vol. I. xiv.-xix.)
Courage, i. 50; intellectual, lacking, i. 74-5.
Constancy, i. 51.
Condemnation, inevitable, i. 82-3.
Cortes, i. 147.
Companions, i. 229.
Contradictions, i. 237.
Counters and stakes, i. 81.
County elections, entire charge of, i. 251-2.
Conciliation and concession, i. 265.
Commissioners, report of, i. 274.
'Compulsory' relief, i. 278.
Coˆperation of working people, i. 282.
Continuous education, i. 355-6.
Cotton, Charles, and Walton, ii. 89, 345.
Cotton, Dr., ii. 142-4.
Contempt, ii, 18.
'Common life,' ii. 81-2, et seqq.
Cowper, ii. 104, 211, 346.
Collins, ii. 120, iii. 419.
Coleridge, ii. 155-6, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 174-5, 183-4, 193, iii. 427, 441, 442, 444, 469-70, 492, 507, et alibi frequenter.
Coleridge, Hartley, iii. 482, et alibi.
Coleridge, the Lord, i. xxxiii.
Coniston, ii. 226-7.
Conversations and personal reminiscences of Wordsworth, iii. 403-504.
Cowley, iii. 465.
Copyright, international, iii. 483.
Cockburn, Mrs., iii. 509.
Criticism, false, ii. 175-181; result of in Edinburgh Review and Quarterly, iii. 437; a low ability for, iii. 438-9; verbal, iii. 474-5.
Critic, decision of, ii. 110.
Crabbe, iii. 503, et alibi.
Crashaw, ii. 344.
Crowe, iii. 506.
Cromwell, i. 166, 359.
Curates, i. 285-6.
Currie, Dr., ii. 5; indignation with, ii. 7-8, 12.
Cuckoo, ii. 136-7.
Cumberland's Calvary, iii. 415.
D.
Dalrymple, Sir Hew, i. 72, et frequenter.
Daughter, education of a, i. 329-33.
Dante, i. 359, et alibi.
Da Vinci, Leonardo, iii. 506.
Darwin, Dr., iii. 507.
D'Abrantes, title of, wrongly acknowledged, i. 68, 357.
Delusions, i. 19.
Debt, national, i. 20.
'Declarations,' i. 43-4.
Defeats and disasters, i. 44-45.
Delicacy, no, i. 98.
Defence of fellow-countrymen, i. 113.
Despotism i. 139-40, 229.
Despond, those who, i. 171 2.
Detraction, no, ii. 42.
Dedication, to the Queen, i. v.; of 1815, ii. 144.
De Vere, Sir Aubrey, iii. 495, 509-10.
De Quincey, i. xxxiii.-iv., iii. 507.
Diction, of poetic, ii. 101-5.
'Difficulties,' i. 72.
Diogenes, i. 238.
Disabilities, civil, i. 269.
Dissenters, i. 262.
'Dignity,' individual, i. 292.
Discrimination in epitaphs, ii. 37-8.
Doe, White, the, iii. 430, et alibi.
Double sense, ii. 45-6.
Drummond, Miss. ii. 65-6.
Dryden, ii. 118, iii. 416, 419.
Duty, i. 40-1, 129, 326, 349.
Dupont, i. 358.
Duppa, ii. 162, 346, iii. 506.
Dubartas, ii. 111-12.
Dyer, John, ii. 196-7, 346, iii. 216, 405, 506, et alibi.
E.
Economists, unfortunate, i. 233.
Education, of, i. 327-56; what it is, i. 343-4, et seqq., moral, i. 346-7; of Scotland, i. 348; continuous, i. 355-6.
Edinburgh Review, censured, ii. 16, et alibi.
Edwards, John, ii. 33, 344.
Edgeworth, Francis, iii. 508.
Egle, bank of, iii. 508.
Election, free, i. 234.
Elizabeth, i. 310.
Elliot, Jane, iii. 509.
Emerson, i. xxxiv., et alibi.
Ends, i. 80-1.
Enthusiasm, i. 149.
Epitaphs, upon, from 'The Friend,' ii. 27-40; laws of, 31, et seqq.; requisites of, ii. 35, et seqq.; a perfect, ii. 39; The country Churchyard, and critical Examination of ancient, ii. 41-59; in Germany, ii. 44; homeliness, ii. 46-7; in Westmoreland, ii. 51-2; of Pope, criticised, ii. 55, et seqq.; Celebrated Epitaphs considered, ii. 60-75; favourable examples, ii. 72, et seqq. (See preface, I. xxiv.-v.)
Equality, i. 14, 288.
Established church and priesthood, i. 232; preservation of, i. 290.
Eschylus, iii. 508.
'Estate,' gift of, ii. 151.
Europe, state of, i. 220-1.
Evil, ii. 91.
Excursion, ii. 145-8, 168-9.
Executive, the power, i. 13.
F.
Faith, ii. 109-10.
Fancy and imagination, ii. 134-5, et seqq.
'Favourite spots,' ii. 424.
Fame, posthumous, iii. 458, 493.
Faber, iii. 488, 566.
Family, a single, 215-16. et seqq.; defence of the, I. 217-18. et seqq.
Feelings, i. 65. 158, ii. 83-4, et seqq.; rely on our, ii. 99.
Ferguson, General, i. 137.
Fermor, Mrs., ii. 178.
Fenwick, Miss, i. xxvi.-xxx.
Ferdinand VII., i. 358.
'Fire.' i. 118-19.
Flowers, iii. 447.
Florus, i. 359.
Fortitude, ancient, i. 205-6.
Forebodings, i. 249-50.
Fore-feeling, ii. 344.
Founders of a school to be remembered, i. 351.
Fool, in Lear, iii. 419.
Fools, Paradise of, ii. 18.
Fox, letter to, on poems, ii. 202-5; reply, ii. 205-6.
Frere, i. 67-8, 96, 358.
French armies, character of, i. 79-80; to surrender at discretion, i. 81; under French government, i. 90.
'Free,' a nation resolved to be, i. 146.
Franchise, i. 223, 239.
Fuller, iii. 506.
G.
Gardening, ii. 174; and building, ii. 184-191.
Generals, British, bearing of, i. 79; political, i. 95; incompetent and competent, i. 143.
Girl, peasant, iii. 466-7; education of, i. 341.
Goldsmith, ii. 154, 333.
Goethe, iii. 435-6, 465.
Grievances, national, i. 4.
Gregoire, i. 4-5, 357.
Gratifications, what, i. 315-16.
Gratuitous instruction, i. 346.
Grammar, &c., i. 353.
Gray, ii. 41, 67-8, 85-6, 327, 344, 345, iii. 507.
Gray, James, ii. 5, 343.
Grimm, Baron, ii. 113.
Gratitude for kindnesses, ii. 149.
Grasmere, ii. 229.
Graves, Rev. R.P., M.A., i. xxxv.-vi.; prayer by, i. 359-60.
Guide through the District of the Lakes, ii. 215-313. (See under Lakes and different places.)
H.
Hamlet, i. 22.
Hakewell, ii. 113, 345.
Hamilton, Sir R.W., iii. 492, 506, 508, et frequenter.
Hamilton, Miss, iii. 508.
Hazlitt, i. xxiv., ii. 168, 177, iii. 125, et alibi.
Hearne, iii. 505.
Hemans, Mrs., iii. 507.
Hessians, i. 136.
High-minded men, i. 76.
Hope, i. 41, 123-4, 148, 169, 322-3.
Honour, i. 78.
Home influences, i. 345.
Houbraken, ii. 170, 346.
Homer and the classics, iii. 458-9.
Horace, i. 357, iii. 509 (bis).
Humanity, i. 78, 274.
Humility, iii. 491.
Humour, iii. 495, 496.
'Hurricane,' iii. 507.
I.
Idiots, ii. 212.
Impulses, grand, i. 115.
Imagination, i. 154; and taste, ii. 126, et seqq.; and fancy, ii. 134-5, et seqq.
Immoral, the perishable, i. 163.
Improvement, process of intellectual, i. 318-20.
Immortality, ii. 27-30.
Imbecility, i. 172.
Imagery and imagination, iii. 464-5.
Independence and liberty, i. 102-3; of Spain, i. 151.
'Indifferent,' i. 110.
Invasion of our country, supposed, i. 114.
Infancy and childhood, i. 318.
Intellect, sharpening of, i. 340.
Infant-schools, i. 343.
Inscriptions at Coleorton, ii. 191-2, 195-6.
'Intimations of immortality,' iii. 464.
Individual character, iii. 467-8.
Intake, iii. 505.
Ireland, i. 267-8, et alibi.
J.
James I., ii. 47-8.
Johnson, Dr., ii. 98, 103-4.
Jones, Rev. Robert, iii. 506.
Judges in England, i. 12.
Junot, i. 55-6.
'Judicature, court of,' not essential to a verdict on wrong, i. 108-10.
Justice, i. 116; moral, i. 118.
K.
Kant, iii. 420.
Keble, iii. 441.
Kendal and Windermere Railway, two letters on, ii. 321-41, iii. 448-9.
Keswick, vale of, ii. 229.
Kirkstone, pass of, ii. 314-15.
Klopstock, iii. 405-23.
Knowledge, life and spirit of, i. 309; for virtue, i. 320.
L.
Laws, partial and oppressive, i. 12-13.
Laws, delay, i. 20.
Labour, dishonoured, i. 18.
Lament for England, i. 112.
Land, i. 239.
Landscape gardens, i. 248.
Lakes, the country of, as formed by Nature, ii. 235-6; as affected by its inhabitants, ii. 256-69; changes and rules of taste for preventing their bad effects, ii. 269-86; miscellaneous observations, ii. 287-301; excursions to the top of Scawfell, &c., ii. 302-15; itinerary of, ii. 316-19. (See preface, I. xxv.-vi.)
Laodamia, iii. 496.
Laing, Malcom, ii. 345.
Lamb, letters of, iii. 507.
Leon, i. 60.
Legislation for the Poor, &c., i. 271-94.
Letter-writing, difficulty of, ii. 149-50.
Leech-gatherer, ii. 206-7.
Letters and extracts of Letters, ii. 217-401. (See preface, I. xxx.-ii.)
Liberty, i. 6; against oppression, i. 52; and independence, i. 155-6.
Life, i. 77-8, 280.
Library for poor, i. 337-8.
Lindsay, Lady Ann, iii. 509.
Louis XVI., 'royal martyr' (so-called), i. 4-5, et seqq.
Loyalty, enthusiasm of, i. 46.
Lowther family, i. 235, iii. 507-8.
'Lower orders,' i. 273.
Loughrigg Tarn, ii. 155.
Loweswater, ii. 230.
Locke, iii. 461.
Loison, i. 357.
Luff, Mr., ii. 172.
Lucretius, ii. 347.
Lyttleton, Lucy, ii. 52; Lord, monody criticised, ii. 53-4.
Lyrical ballads, defence of, ii. 79-100.
Lying, iii. 497-8.
M.
Massaredo, i. 56-8, 357.
Manufactories, workmen in, i. 282-3.
Mathetes, Letter of, i. 297-308; Answer to, i. 309-26.
Madras, system of education, i. 341, 343.
Malignity, ii. 17.
Mason, William, ii. 62, et seqq.
Matter-of-fact and poetry, ii. 86.
Macpherson, ii. 122, et seqq.
Madoc, ii. 169, 171.
Manner in conversation, iii. 480.
Means, i. 80.
Memory, ii. 41.
Metrical language, ii. 95-6, et seqq.
Mearely, ii. 344.
Mirza, vision of, i. 3.
Military spirit, i. 48-9; men to be judged by the people, i. 83-4.
'Ministry,' the conduct of the, i. 105-6.
Might, i. 116.
Miscarriages, national, i. 128-9.
Misery, effects of, i. 281.
Milton, i. 358 (bis), 359, 360. ii. 6, 40, 114-15, 136, 142 et seqq., 344, 345, 346, iii. 430-1, 449, 453-4, 461, 505, 506, 507, 508; contemporary notice of, iii. 509, et alibi frequenter.
Monarchy, objections to, i. 13, et seqq.
'Moral' superiority, i. 165.
Monuments to Literary Men, ii. 20-22; beauty of, ii. 31-2; monition of, ii. 32-3; near churches, ii. 34-5; in churches, iii. 450-1.
Montrose, Marquis of, ii. 49, 51, 344.
Morning Post, letter to, ii. 321-41.
Morla, i. 357-8.
Montgomery, James, iii. 505.
N.
Nations, the two suffering, i. 63-4; to speak to representatives of, i. 144-5.
Nature, i. 317, ii. 60, iii. 493-4; and art, ii. 157-161.
Needpath Castle, sonnet on, ii. 152, 345-6.
Nelson, Lord, ii. 173.
Necklace, diamond, i. 357.
Newcastle, Duchess of, iii. 508.
Nobility, hereditary, a wrong, i. 17.
Notes and Illustrations of the Poems (a), the notes originally added to the first and successive editions; (b) the whole of the I.F. MSS., iii 1-216. (For details of these Notes, see minute 'Contents' of Vol. III.)
O.
Obliquities of admiration, ii. 116.
Observation and description, ii. 131-144.
'Occurrences,' i. 98.
Offices, i. 18-19.
Oligarchy, i. 147.
'Oppression,' i. 168-9.
'Opposition,' in House of Commons needed, i. 219; the party of, i. 222; degenerated, i. 225.
Originality, ii. 126.
Oviedo, i. 63.
Oversight, culpable, i. 68.
Ovid, iii. 506.
P.
Paine, Thomas, i. 14, 357.
Parchment, 'dead,' i. 21.
Past, retrospect of, i. 43-4.
Passions and passion, i. 115-16, ii. 127, et seqq.; in poetry, iii. 473-4; though not declamatory, iii. 489.
'Party,' i. 144, 219.
Patriot, the, i. 150.
Palafox, i. 167, 359.
Pasley, letter to, i. 195-206; essay on the military policy of Great Britain, i. 197, 205, et seqq.
Palmers, ii. 46.
Page, Frederic, iii. 508.
'People,' the, i. 10, 11; Spanish, i. 47-8; their ways and needs, i. 334-339.
Peasants and mechanics, i. 11-12; peasantry, i. 159.
'Petition,' vindication of, i. 107-8, 110.
'Petty' things, i. 120.
Peninsula, southern, i. 122-3.
'Peace,' i. 221.
Peterkin, ii. 5, 343.
'Pedlar,' ii. 163, 346.
Pelayo and Cid, i. 358.
Petrarch, i. 359.
Philosophy, i. 316.
Pity, i. 5.
Pitt, ii. 174.
Pluralities, i. 284.
Pleasures, poetic, ii. 13; production of, ii. 90.
Portugal, i. 80-1.
Portugeze, i. 43, 54-5, 67, 86, 97, 100-1, et seqq.
'Political' generals, i. 78-9, 95.
Policy, i. 116.
Poor, laws to be reformed, i. 232; amendment act, i. 273-4, et seqq.; just claims of the, i. 274-7, 278-9.
Pope, ii. 55, et seqq., 116, iii. 419.
Poetry, of the Principles of and the 'Lyrical Ballads,' ii. 79-100; as a study, ii. 106-130; kinds of readers of, ii. 106; as observation and description, ii. 131-144; forms of, ii. 132-3; of the principle of and Wordsworth's own poems, ii. 208-14. (See preface, I. xxv.-vi.)
Poet, what is a, ii. 87, et seqq.
'Popular,' ii. 129; vox populi, ii. 130.
Poems, classification of, ii. 133, et seqq.
Power without right, i. 159-60.
Priesthood, French, i. 6-7.
Principles, i. 39, 43, 74-5, 144, 145; of poetry, ii. 79-100.
Primogeniture, i. 16.
Prostitution, i. 18.
'Precautions,' i. 45, 61.
Prudence, i. 58-9.
Private, a, individual, i. 83.
Private property, i. 89-90.
Preface, Editor's, i. vii-xxxviii.
Prisoners of war, i. 89.
Property, a sound basis, i. 240.
Protestantism and Popery, i. 261.
Progress, i. 314-15.
Prosaisms, ii. 85.
Prose, more of but for Coleridge, iii. 457.
Purpose, worthy, ii. 82.
Public, not the people, ii. 130.
Puny, ii. 347.
Pyrrhus, i. 359.
Q.
Qualities, moral, i. 49-50.
Queen, dedication and poem to the, i. v.-vi.
R.
Racine, i. 5-6.
'Rash' politicians, i. 248.
Reputation, i. 3.
Republic, American, i. 10.
Republican, Wordsworth a, i. 3, 10; republicanism defended, i. 9, 10, et seqq.
Revolution, i. 6; war against the French, i. 135, iii. 490.
Reform, parliamentary, i. 22.
Representation, universal, i. 11.
'Rejoicing,' deplorable, i. 69, 105.
Regeneration, national, i. 122.
'Remonstrance,' i. 127.
Representation of Westmoreland, i. 215.
Religion, in poetry, ii. 108-9, et seqq.
Religious instruction, i. 354.
Reserve, biographical, ii. 9.
'Reliques,' ii. 120, et seqq.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, ii. 153-7, 161-2, 345.
'Recluse,' the, ii. 163, 105.
Revision of Authorised Version, &c., iii. 471-3.
Riddance, i. 115.
Royalty, no more, in France, i. 5.
Road, anecdote, i. 22; old, iii. 428.
Robespierre, ii. 18.
Roscius, Young, ii. 164, 165.
Robinson Crusoe, ii. 468.
Rogers, iii. 516, et alibi.
'Ruin mouldering.' i. 237.
Russell, iii. 507, 509.
S.
Saragossa, i. 117, 121, 166, 357.
Sass, Padre St. Iago, i. 167, 359.
Scott, i. xiv., iii. 442-30, 445, 457, 462, 487; vindication of, 509: et alibi frequenter.
Scotland, critics of, ii. 116.
Schiller, iii. 417.
Seville, i. 1-3, 60.
Shelvocke, iii. 505.
Shelley, iii. 489, 493, 501, 503.
Shakespeare, ii. 113, 114, 136, 139, 140, 141, 345, 346, iii. 460, 488, 506, 509, et alibi frequenter.
Silence, ii. 10.
Simonides, ii. 30.
Sincerity, ii. 48.
Slavery, i. 77.
Smith, Charlotte, iii. 507.
Southey's Letters, iii. 509.
Spain and Britain, i. 41-2, 161-2, et seqq.
Spanish people, patriotism of, i. 45-7, et seqq., 125-6, et seqq.
Spenser, i. 322, ii. 111-12, 345, 347, iii. 466, 506, et alibi.
Speech on laying the Foundation stone of Bowness School, i. 350-6.
Spelling and style, iii. 452-3.
Struggle, how the, ought to have been carried on, i. 116.
Statesmen and courtiers, minds of, i. 130-1, et seqq.
Stagnation, apparent, i. 313.
Statistical account of Scotland, ii. 44.
Style, ii. 84, et seqq.
Stevens, George, ii. 113-14.
Steamboats and railways, ii. 340.
Superstition, i. 117.
Superiority, i. 321.
Sword, not pen, i. 95.
Sympathy, ii. 38.
Sydney, Sir Philip, ii. 49-50.
Sympson, Rev. John, iii. 506.
T.
Tam o'Shanter, ii. 13-14.
Tempers and dispositions, i. 279.
Teacher, enlightened, i. 325.
Tenderness, iii. 480, 489.
Tennyson, iii. 390, 492, et alibi.
Things, if not men, i. 142.
Thomson, ii. 117, et seqq., 160, iii. 505, et alibi.
Timidity, i. 231.
Tourist, directions and information for the, ii. 221, et seqq.
Traitors, i. 23.
Tranquillity from 'Relief Bill' not possible, i. 266-7.
Truth, love of, i. 323, iii. 488.
Trespass, iii. 425.
Tree-planting, iii. 436.
Transcendental world, iii. 467.
Triad, iii. 505-6.
Turner, Sharon, iii. 506.
Tyrant, the, i. 70, et seqq.
Tyranny, French, basis of, i. 139, 148.
U.
Ulpha, Kirk, ii. 227.
Ullswater, ii. 230-4.
Union of nations, i. 152-3.
Unworthy objects, i. 326.
V.
Vane, Sir George, ii. 47.
Verse, why write in, ii. 93-4.
Veracity and ideality, iii. 486.
Vespers, Sicilian, i. 359.
Vimiera, i. 43, 75.
Vindication of opinions, &c. i. 195-209.
Vice and Virtue, ii, 42-3, 61.
Virgil, i. 358 (bis), iii. 469, et alibi. (See II. 274-9.)
Virgin, the, iii. 492.
Voice of the people, i. 113.
Volunteers, i. 234.
W.
Watson, Bp., i. 3, et seqq. (See preface, I. x.-iiv.)
Watson, Thomas, ii. 313.
War, just and necessary, i. 39-40; opponents of, i. 40; with France, wished still, i. 201-2, et seqq.; varied opinions of, i. 226-7.
Warrior, happy, ii. 173-4.
Wales, North, excursion in, ii. 197-201.
Wastdale, ii. 230.
Walks, iii. 423.
Warwick, Sir Philip, i. 359.
Walker, A., book on the lakes overlooked, ii. 346-7, iii. 506(?).
Waterton, iii. 506.
Wealth, i. 15, 189.
Westmoreland, two letters to freeholders of, i. xix.-xxi., 211, et seqq.
Wellesley (= Wellington), i. 65-6, 68-9, 126-7, et seqq., et alibi.
Weever, John, ii. 27, 50, 344.
Westall, iii. 506.
Wickedness, prodigious, i. 170.
Wilson, Alexander, ii. 346.
Wilson, Professor, ii. 208-14. (See under Mathetes.)
Windermere, ii. 223-4.
Wieland, iii. 418.
Winchelsea, Countess of, iii. 508.
Wordsworth, Mrs. iii. 509.
Workmen in manufactories, i. 282-3.
Worthlessnesses swept away, i. 311.
Woman, iii. 457.
Y.
Young, Advice to the. i. 295-326, et alibi. (See under Education.)
Z.
Zaragoza, i. 167.
FINIS.