Part 28

Whence Wordsworth, however, gathered his philosophy, whether from the books of the Friends, or from his own meditations, it is, nevertheless, a great truth. Jacob Behmen, Emanuel Swedenborg, Kant, Justinus Kerner, and many another philosopher and poet, proclaim and maintain the same. That the Spirit of God lives throughout the universe and in the soul of man; that the more we commune with his Spirit, the more our ears and eyes, or, in better phrase, our spiritual sense, becomes open to perceive it. The closer we draw to it, and live in it, the more we become strengthened, purified, and enriched by it; the more we are able to walk amid all the fascinations, glories, and deceptions of the world, as the men of God walked in the midst of the fiery furnace, so scathless that the very smell of fire passed not on their garments. It is called by the Friends THE TRUTH, as superior to, and including all other truths. Wordsworth gives it the same magnificent title. Standing by this central light of the universe, man learns to see how far all other offered lights, whether of books or spoken doctrines, are lights, or are actually darkness--are great or small. Holding fast by this true substance, he learns to feel how far all other things are substance or shadow; and, if he hold on, at length walks the highway of life free, invincible, and rejoicing; all nature yielding him aliment and peace.

"As the ample moon, In the deep stillness of a summer even Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light, In the green trees; and kindling on all sides Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil Into a substance glorious as her own, Yea, with her own incorporate, by power Capacious and serene: like power abides In man's celestial spirit: virtue thus Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire, From the incumbrances of mortal life, From even disappointment--nay, from guilt: And sometimes, so relenting justice wills, From palpable oppressions of despair."--P. 174, 175.

As this is a curious subject, and particularly curious, as it has escaped the research of those who have thought themselves the most profound, I have gone the more fully into it. But to compare all such passages in Wordsworth and the writings of the early Friends, as would amply prove the fact here introduced, would make a very large volume. The writings of these old worthies are one mass of Wordsworthisms. In some particulars, he has not reached the sublime moral elevation of his masters, as in regard to war; he is martial, and thinks Slaughter, God's daughter. They very sensibly set Slaughter down as the daughter of a very opposite personage. In fact, had not the Friends overshadowed their great doctrines by broad brims, and disguised them in collarless coats; had they not put forward as the outward signs of their community, formality and singularity, the great doctrines which they hold of the great and immutable truth, more than any other people, would have made them far greater than any other people; the high and universally acknowledged instructors of the world in the principles of freedom, moral greatness, and social happiness. As it is, they have made them the most sturdy and efficient agents of peace, right notions of church government, and liberty to the enslaved; and, not the less certainly, the greatest of modern reformers in poetical philosophy. As Fox and his disciples were fiercely attacked as innovators in religion, so Wordsworth was as fiercely attacked as an innovator in literature. Little did the cold and material spirit of Scotch skeptical criticism dream that it was running its head against the old sturdy spirit of Quakerism, in the new heresy, of what they were pleased to term the Lake school.

There is, perhaps, no residence in England better known than that of William Wordsworth. Rydal Mount, where he has now lived for more than thirty years, is as perfectly poetical in its location as any poet could possibly conceive in his brightest moment of inspiration. As you advance a mile or more on the road from Ambleside toward Grasmere, a lane overhung with trees turns up to the right, and there, at some few hundred yards from the highway, stands the modest cottage of the poet, elevated on Rydal Mount, so as to look out over the surrounding sea of foliage, and to take in a glorious view. Before it, at some distance across the valley, stretches a high screen of bold and picturesque mountains; behind, it is overtowered by a precipitous hill, called Nab-scar; but to the left, you look down over the broad waters of Windermere, and to the right over the still and more embosomed flood of Grasmere. Whichever way the poet pleases to advance from his house, it must be into scenery of that beauty for mountain, stream, wood, and lake, which has made Cumberland so famous over all England. He may steal away up backward from his gate, and ascend into the solitary hills, or diverging into the grounds of Lady Mary Fleming, his near neighbor, may traverse the deep shades of the woodland, wander along the banks of the rocky rivulet, and finally stand before the well known water-fall there. If he descend into the highway, objects of beauty still present themselves. Cottages and quiet houses here and there glance from their little spots of Paradise, through the richest boughs of trees; Windermere, with its wide expanse of waters, its fairy islands, its noble hills, allures his steps in one direction; while the sweet little lake of Rydal, with its heronry and its fine background of rocks, invites him in another. In this direction the vale of Grasmere, the scene of his early married life, opens before him, and Dunmail-raise and Langdale-pikes lift their naked corky summits, as hailing him to the pleasures of old companionship. Into no quarter of this region of lakes, and mountains, and vales of primitive life, can he penetrate without coming upon ground celebrated by his muse. He is truly "sole king of rocky Cumberland."

The immediate grounds in which his house stands are worthy of the country and the man. It is, as its name implies, a mount. Before the house opens a considerable platform, and around and beneath lie various terraces and descend various walks, winding on amid a profusion of trees and luxuriant evergreens. Beyond the house, you ascend various terraces, planted with trees now completely overshadowing them; and these terraces conduct you to a level above the house-top, and extend your view of the enchanting scenery on all sides. Above you tower the rocks and precipitous slopes of Nab-scar; and below you, embosomed in its trees, lies the richly ornate villa of Mr. William Ball, a Friend, whose family and the poet's are on such social terms, that a little gate between their premises opens them both to each family alike. This cottage and grounds were formerly the property of Charles Lloyd, also a Friend, and one of the Bristol and Stowey coterie. Both he and Lovell have long been dead; Lovell, indeed, was drowned, on a voyage to Ireland, in the very heyday of the dreams of Pantisocracy, in which he was an eager participant.

The poet's house, itself, is a proper poet's abode. It is at once modest, plain, yet tasteful and elegant. An ordinary dining-room, a breakfast-room in the center, and a library beyond, form the chief apartments. There are a few pictures and bust, especially those of Scott and himself, a good engraving of Burns, and the like, with a good collection of books, few of them very modern. In the dining-room there stands an old cabinet, which is a sort of genealogical piece of furniture, bearing this inscription:--

Hoc op' fiebat Aº D ni MºCCCCCºXXVº ex suptu Will'mi Wordsworsh, filii W. fil. Joh. fil. W. fil. Nich. viri Elizabeth filia et hered W. P'ctor de Pengsto qoru aneabus p' picietur De'!

A great part of the labor of laying out the garden, raising the terraces at Rydal, and planting the trees, has been that of the poet himself. The property belongs to Lady Fleming, but Wordsworth has bought a piece of land lying just below, with the fatherly intent, that should his daughter at any time incline to live there, she may, if she choose, erect a house for herself in the old and endeared situation.

The trees display a prodigality of growth, that make what are meant for walks almost a wilderness. On observing to the poet that he really should have his laurels pruned a little, the old man smiled, paused, and said, with a pardonable self-complacency,--"Ay, I will tell you an anecdote about that. A certain general was going round the place, attended by the gardener, when he suddenly remarked, as you do, the flourishing growth of the trees, especially of the evergreens, and said, 'Which of all your trees do you think flourishes most here?"

"'I don't know, sir,' said James; "but I think the laurel.'

"'Well, that is as it should be, you know,' added the general.

"'Why it should be so, James could not tell, and made the remark.

"'Don't you know,' continued the general, 'that the laurel is the symbol of distinction for some achievement, and especially in that art of which Mr. Wordsworth is so eminent a master? therefore it is quite right that it should flourish so conspicuously here.'

"By this," continued the poet, "James acquired two new pieces of intelligence; first, that the laurel was a symbol of eminence, and, that his master was an eminent man, of both which facts he had been before very innocently ignorant."

It may be supposed that, during the summer, Wordsworth being in the very center of a region swarming with tourists and hunters of the picturesque, and in the very highway of their route is regularly beset by them. Day after day brings up whole troops of them from every quarter of these kingdoms, and no few from America. The worthy old man professes a good deal of annoyance at being thus lionized, but it is an annoyance which obviously has its agreeable side. No one can doubt that it would be a far greater annoyance, if, after a life devoted to poetry, people, all in quest of "the sublime and beautiful," hurried past, scoured over all the hills and dales, and passed unnoticed the poet's gate. As it is, he has an ever swinging censer of the flattery of public curiosity tossing at his door. Note after note is sent in, the long levee continues from day to day--the aged minstrel votes it a bore, and quietly enjoys it. If not, how easy it would be, just, during the laking season, to vanish from the spot to another equally pleasant, and yet more retired. Yet why should he? It is not as if the visitor interrupted the progress of a life's great labor. That labor is done; competence and fame are acquired; the laurel and the larder have equally flourished at Rydal Mount: and what is more agreeable than to receive the respect of his fellow-men, and diffuse the pleasure of having seen and conversed with one of the lights of the age?

Some years ago, spending a few days there with Mrs. Howitt, we witnessed a curious scene. The servant came in, announcing that a gentleman and a large party of ladies wished to see the place. "Very well, they can see it," said Mr. Wordsworth.

"But the gentleman wished to see you, sir."

"Who is it?--Did he give his name?"

"No, sir."

"Then ask him for it."

The servant went, and returned, saying, "The gentleman said that he knew Mr. Wordsworth's name very well, as every body did, but that Mr. Wordsworth would not know his if he sent him his card."

"Then say, I am sorry, but I can not see him."

The servant once more disappeared, and the poet broke forth into a declamation on the bore of these continual and importunate, not to say impudent, visits. In the midst of it the servant entered.

"Well, what did the man say?"

"That he had had the honor to shake hands with the Duke of Wellington, and that his last remaining wish in life was to shake hands with Mr. Wordsworth."

This was too good. A universal scream of merriment burst from us. The poet rose, laughing heartily. Mrs. and Miss Dora Wordsworth, laughing as heartily, gently seized him, each by an arm, and thus merrily pushed him out of the room. In another minute, we beheld the worthy host bowing to the man who possessed such irresistible rhetoric, and to his large accompaniment of ladies, and doing the amiable, by pointing out to them the prominent beauties of the view. The cunning fellow was a Manchester manufacturer.

It is well known that the dread of a railroad into the lake country has alarmed Wordsworth into the firing off a sonnet against it, and that his annoyance has been increased by the lanch of a steamboat on Windermere. There is some mitigation of our surprise, that the poet who knows and has so well described the nuisances of cities and manufacturing towns, should thus see with disgust the beautiful and breezy region of the lakes laid open to them, when we know that this railroad is proposed to be carried close under his beloved retirement; but still it is befitting the generosity of the man, who has, in so many forms, given us an interest in the toil-worn and the lowly, to be prepared to make some sacrifice of that quiet which he has so long and so richly enjoyed, to the spread of truth and rational pleasure among the humble workers of the mill; remembering his own impressive words:--

"Turn to private life And social neighborhood: look we to ourselves; A light of duty shines on every day For all, and yet how few are warmed or cheered!"

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

Sheffield has been poetically fortunate. It has had the honor, not to give birth to two eminent poets--a mere accident--but to produce them. Neither Montgomery nor Elliott was born in Sheffield; but they were drawn to it as the trading capital of the district in which they _were_ born; and there their minds, tastes, and reputations grew. In both poets are strongly recognizable the intellectual features of a manufacturing town. They are both of a popular and liberal tendency of mind. They, or rather their spirits and characters, grew amid the physical sufferings and the political struggles of a busy and high-spirited population, and by these circumstances all the elements of freedom and patriotism were strengthened to full growth in their bosoms. Montgomery came upon the public stage, both as a poet and a political writer, long before Elliott, though the difference of their ages is not so vast as might be supposed from this fact, being as near as possible ten years only.

It is not my object in this article to compare or to contrast the intellectual characters of these two genuine poets. They are widely different. In both the spirit of freedom, of progress, of sympathy with the multitude, and of steady antagonism to oppression, manifest themselves, but with much difference of manner. Both possess great vigor and fervor of feeling; but in James Montgomery the decorums of style are more strictly preserved. We feel that he received his education in a very different school to that of Ebenezer Elliott. In the still halls and gardens of the Moravian brethren, Montgomery imbibed the softness of bearing, and that peculiarly religious tone which distinguish him. Amid the roughest and often most hostile crowd of struggling life, Elliott acquired a more fiery and battling aspect, and he learned involuntarily to thunder against evils, where Montgomery would reason and lament. Yet it would be difficult to say in which all that characterizes real patriotism, and real religion, most truly resides. In very different walks they have both done gloriously and well, and we will leave to others to decide which is the greater poet of the two. Elliott, by both circumstance and temperament, has been led to make his poetry bear more directly and at once upon the actual condition of the working-classes; Montgomery has displayed more uniform grace, and in lyrical beauty has far surpassed his townsman, though not in the exquisite harmony of many portions of his versification. But, they are not now to be compared, but to be admired; and nothing is more beautiful than to hear in what tone and manner they speak of each other. Montgomery gives Ebenezer Elliot the highest praise for his genius, and says, that for years in the Iris he was the only one who could or would see the merit of the great but unacknowledged bard; while Elliott modestly dedicates his poem of Spirits and Men to the author of The World before the Flood, "as an evidence of his presumption and his despair."

Mr. Montgomery had a strictly religious education; he was the son of religious parents, and belonged to a pre-eminently religious body, the Moravian brethren; and the spirit of that parentage, education, and association, is deeply diffused through all that he has written. He is essentially a religious poet. It is what of all things upon earth we can well believe he most would desire to be; and that he is in the truest sense of the word. In all his poems the spirit of a piety, profound, and beautifully benevolent, is instantly felt. Perhaps there are no lyrics in the language which are so truly Christian; that is, which breathe the same glowing love to God and man, without one tinge of the bigotry that too commonly eats into zeal as rust into the finest steel. We have no dogmas, but a pure and heavenly atmosphere of holy faith, filial and fraternal affection, and reverence of the great Architect of the universe, and of the destinies of man. There is often a tone of melancholy, but it is never that of doubt. It is the sighing of a feeling and sensitive heart over the evils of life; but ever and anon this tone rises into the more animated one of conscious strength and well placed confidence; and terminates in that pæan of happy triumph which the Christian only can ascend to. There is no "dealing damnation round the land" in the religious poetry of James Montgomery; we feel that he has peculiarly caught the genuine spirit of Christ; and a sense of beauty and goodness, and of the glorious blessedness of an immortal nature, accompanies us through all his works. That is the spirit which, more than all other, distinguishes his lyrical compositions; and how many and how beautiful are they! as, The Grave, The Joy of Grief, Verses on the Death of Joseph Browne, a prisoner for conscience' sake in York Castle, commencing, "Spirit, leave thine house of clay;" The Common Lot, The Harp of Sorrow, The Dial, The Molehill, The Peak Mountains, A Mother's Love, those noble Stanzas to the Memory of the Rev. Thomas Spencer, The Alps, Friends, Night, and the many in the same volume with the Pelican Island, perhaps some of them the most beautiful and spiritual things he ever wrote. The poetry of Montgomery is too familiar to most readers, and especially religiously intellectual readers, to need much quotation here; but a few stanzas may be ventured upon, and will of themselves more forcibly indicate the peculiar features of his poetical character, than much prose description.

The opening stanzas on the death of Thomas Spencer embody his very creed and doctrine as a poet.

"I will not sing a mortal's praise, To thee I consecrate my lays, To whom my powers belong; Those gifts upon thine altar thrown, O GOD! accept;--accept thine own: My gifts are Thine,--be Thine alone The glory of my song.

"In earth and ocean, sky and air, All that is excellent and fair, Seen, felt, or understood, From one eternal cause descends, To one eternal center tends, With GOD begins, continues, ends, The source and stream of good.

"I worship not the Sun at noon, The wandering Stars, the changing Moon, The Wind, the Flood, the Flame; I will not bow the votive knee To Wisdom, Virtue, Liberty; 'There _is_ no GOD but GOD,' for me: Jehovah is his name.

"Him through all nature I explore, Him in his creatures I adore, Around, beneath, above; But clearest in the human mind, His bright resemblance when I find, Grandeur with purity combined, I must admire and love."

I can not resist transcribing one more specimen. It is one in which the quaint but adoring spirit of Quarll, Withers, or Herrick, seems to speak; nor shall I ever forget the thrilling tone in which I have heard it repeated by a sainted friend, in whom the love of her Savior was the very life-blood of her heart, and who resembled him in his beneficent walk on earth as much, perhaps, as it is possible for mortal to do.

THE STRANGER AND HIS FRIEND.

"Ye have done it unto me."--_Matt._, xxv. 40.

"A poor wayfaring man of grief Hath often crossed me on my way, Who sued so humbly for relief, That I could never answer, 'Nay:' I had not power to ask his name, Whither he went, or whence he came; Yet there was something in his eye That won my love, I knew not why.

"Once when my scanty meal was spread, He entered;--not a word he spake;-- Just perishing for want of bread, I gave him all; he blessed it, brake, And ate,--but gave me part again: Mine was an angel's portion then, For while I fed with eager haste, That crust was manna to my taste.

"I spied him where a fountain burst Clear from the rock; his strength was gone; The heedless waters mocked his thirst, He heard it, saw it hurrying on. I ran to raise the sufferer up; Thrice from the stream he drained my cup, Dipped, and returned it running o'er; I drank, and never thirsted more.

"'Twas night; the floods were out; it blew A winter hurricane aloof; I heard his voice abroad, and flew To bid him welcome to my roof; I warmed, I clothed, I cheered my guest, Laid him on my own couch to rest; Then made the hearth my bed, and seemed In Eden's garden while I dreamed.

"Stripped, wounded, beaten, nigh to death, I found him by the highway side; I raised his pulse, brought back his breath, Revived his spirit, and supplied Wine, oil, refreshment; he was healed: I had myself a wound concealed; But from that hour forgot the smart, And peace bound up my broken heart.

"In prison I saw him next, condemned To meet a traitor's doom at morn; The tide of lying tongues I stemmed, And honored him 'mid shame and scorn: My friendship's utmost zeal to try, He asked if I for him would die; The flesh was weak, my blood ran chill, But the free spirit cried, 'I will.'

"Then in a moment to my view, The stranger darted from disguise; The tokens in his hands I knew, My Savior stood before mine eyes: He spake; and my poor name He named: Of me thou hast not been ashamed: Those deeds shall thy memorial be: Fear not, thou didst them unto Me.'"