Part 10
These lines occurred to William’s memory; and while he and I were talking of Burns, and the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions, we indulged ourselves in fancying that we might have been personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects with more pleasure for our sakes. We talked of Coleridge’s children and family, then at the foot of Skiddaw, and our own new-born John, a few miles behind it; and the grave of Burns’ son, which we had just seen, by the side of that of his father; and the stories we had heard at Dumfries, respecting the dangers which his surviving children were exposed to, filled us with melancholy concern, which had a kind of connection with ourselves, and with thoughts, some of which were afterwards expressed in the following supposed address to the sons of the ill-fated poet:--
“Ye now are toiling up life’s hill, ’Tis twilight time of good and ill!”
During this Scotch tour the party walked through the vale of the Clyde, visited Glengyle, the scene of some of Rob Roy’s exploits, Loch Lomond, Inverary, Glencoe, Kenmore, and the Duke of Athol’s gardens; resting whilst in this latter place on “the heather seat which Burns was so loth to quit that moonlight evening when he first went to Blair Castle.” Then they went to the Pass of Killicranky, respecting which Wordsworth wrote the following sonnet.
“Six thousand veterans practis’d in war’s game, Tried men, at Killicranky were arrayed Against an equal host that wore the plaid, Shepherds and herdsmen. Like a whirlwind came The Highlanders; the slaughter spread like flame; And Garry, thundering down his mountain road, Was stopped, and could not breathe beneath the load Of the dead bodies! ’Twas a day of shame For them whom precept, and the pedantry Of cold mechanic battle do enslave. Oh for a single hour of that Dundee, Who on that day the word of onset gave! Like conquest might the men of England see! And their foes find a like inglorious grave.
In the year 1803, when this sonnet was written, an invasion was hourly looked for; and Miss Wordsworth and her brother (for Coleridge had left them, worried by the “evil chance,” and something worse perhaps at Loch Lomond) could not but think with some regret of the times when from the now depopulated Highlands, forty or fifty thousand men might have been poured down for the defence of the country, under such leaders as the Marquis of Montrose, or the brave man who had so distinguished himself upon the ground where they were standing.
The tourists returned by way of Edinburgh, visiting Peebles and Melrose Abbey. Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, was, at the time of their visit to the abbey, travelling as Sheriff of Selkirk to the assizes at Jedburgh. They dined together at the Melrose Inn. Sir Walter was their guide to the abbey, taking them into Mr. Riddel’s gardens and orchard, where they had a sweet view of it through trees, the town being quite excluded. Sir Walter was of course at home in the history and tradition of these noble ruins, and pointed out to his visitors many things which would otherwise have escaped their notice. Beautiful pieces of sculpture in obscure corners, flowers, leaves, and other ornaments, which being cut in the durable pale red stone of which the abbey is built, were quite perfect. What destroyed, however, the effect of the abbey, was the barbarous taste of the good Scotch people who had built an ugly, damp charnel house within the ruins, which they called a church!
Quitting Melrose, they crossed the Teviot by a stone bridge, and visited Jedburgh. It rained all the way, and they arrived at the inn just before the judges were expected out of court to dinner, very wet and cold. There was no private room but the judges’ sitting-room, and they had to get private lodgings in the town. Scott sat with them an hour in the evening, and repeated a part of his “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” Their landlady was a very remarkable woman; and Wordsworth wrote some verses expressive of the feelings with which she inspired him. Here is the burden.
“Aye! twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers, And call a train of laughing hours, And bid them dance, and bid them sing, And thou, too, mingle in the ring.”
Miss Wordsworth gives the following sweet picture of the home at Grasmere on their return:--
“September 25th.--A beautiful autumnal day. Breakfasted at a public-house by the road-side; dined at Threlkeld; and arrived there between eight and nine o’clock, where we found _Mary in perfect health. Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire._”
At the ferry-house, and waterfall of Loch Lomond, Wordsworth had been struck with the beauty and kindness of two girls whom they met there, and on his return to Grasmere he wrote the following lines upon one of them:--
“Sweet Highland girl, a very shower Of beauty is thy earthly dower! Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head: And these grey rocks; this household lawn; These trees, a veil just half withdrawn; This fall of water that doth make A murmur near the silent lake; This little bay, a quiet road, That holds in shelter thy abode; In truth together ye do seem Like something fashioned in a dream; Such forms as from their covert peep When earthly cares are laid asleep. Yet dream and vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart: God shield thee to thy latest years! I neither know thee, nor thy peers; And yet my eyes are filled with tears.”
This Scottish tour was a little episode in the quiet history of the poet’s residence at Grasmere. The truth is, that Wordsworth could not at this time rest long, even in his beautiful Grasmere, without the excitement of pedestrian travel and adventure. It was likewise a part of his education as a poet; the knowledge which he thus acquired of men, manners, and scenery. He had devoted himself to poetry; and every thing that tended to feed the divine faculty, he grasped at with an avidity equally as intense as that with which your mere canine man grasps at food for his perishing body. Nothing comes amiss to him; high and low, great and small; from the daffodil to Skiddaw--from Skiddaw to heaven and its hosts of glorious stars,--all are seized by this omnivorous poet, fused in his mind, and reproduced by him in song. His limited means are no barrier to his wanderings; he and his sister can live upon black bread and water, so far as rations are concerned; but setting aside the necessity of the case, this economy is for a sacred purpose,--viz.:--that they may enjoy the communion of Nature, and partake of her spiritual banquets. The gods, however, had determined to pet Wordsworth, and recompense him for his religious devotion to their doings through early life; and, to say nothing of the bequest of Raisley Calvert, the second Lord Lonsdale, just as the poet needed a wife, and larger means, paid the debt which his predecessor owed to Wordsworth’s father, amounting to £1,800, as the share of each member of the family. This was a most fortunate circumstance to Wordsworth and his sister; though it mattered little to the rest, because they were well appointed in life. De Quincy says that, a regular succession of similar, but superior, God-sends fell upon Wordsworth, to enable him to sustain his expenditure duly, as it grew with the growing claims upon his purse; and after enumerating the three items of “good luck,” mentioned above, he adds:--and “fourthly, some worthy uncle of Mrs. Wordsworth’s was pleased to betake himself to a better world; leaving to various nieces, and especially to Mrs. W., something or other, I forget what, but it was expressed by thousands of pounds. At this moment Wordsworth’s family had begun to increase; and the worthy old uncle, like every body else in Wordsworth’s case (I wish I could say the same in my own), finding his property clearly ‘wanted,’ and as people would tell him ‘bespoke,’ felt how very indelicate it would look for him to stay any longer, and so he moved off. But Wordsworth’s family, and the wants of that family, still continued to increase; and the next person, being the fifth, who stood in the way, and must, therefore, have considered himself rapidly growing into a nuisance, was the Stamp-Distributor for the county of Westmorland. About March, 1814, I think it was, that this very comfortable situation was vacated. Probably it took a month for the news to reach him; because in April, and not before, feeling that he had received a proper notice to quit, he, good man--this Stamp-Distributor--like all the rest, distributed himself and his offices into two different places,--the latter falling of course into the hands of Wordsworth.
“This office, which it was Wordsworth’s pleasure to speak of as a _little_ one, yielded, I believe, somewhere about £500 a year. Gradually even that, with all former sources of income, became insufficient; which ought not to surprise anybody; for a son at Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner, could spend at least £300 per annum; and there were other children. Still it is wrong to say, that it had become insufficient; as usual it had not come to that; but, on the first symptoms arising that it would soon come to that, somebody, of course, had notice to consider himself a sort of nuisance elect,--and in this case it was the Distributor of Stamps for the county of Cumberland.” And in this strain of good-humoured banter--stimulated no doubt by his own precarious circumstances, in a measure, circumstances which ought not in his case to be precarious,--De Quincy relates how another £400 a year was added to the poet’s income from the increase of his district as Stamp-Distributor.
In 1842, since De Quincy wrote the above, Wordsworth resigned this office, and it was bestowed upon his son,--whilst he (the poet,) was put down upon the Civil-list for £300 a year, and finally made Poet Laureate.
To return, however, to the more even tenor of these Memoirs:--A circumstance occurred in the year 1803, shortly after the Scottish tour, which will further illustrate the “good luck” of Wordsworth, although in this instance he did not avail himself of it. Sir George Beaumont, the painter, out of pure sympathy with the poet,--and before he had seen or written to him,--purchased a beautiful little estate at Applethwaite, near Keswick, and presented it to him, in order that he (Wordsworth) and Coleridge, who was then residing at Greta Hall, might have the pleasure of a nearer and more permanent intercourse. A fragment of Sir George’s letter (good Sir George, who _could_ recognise genius, and was noble and generous enough to prove his recognition in a most practical form) is printed in Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,” and it shews what a fine heart he had, God bless him! It is dated October 24, 1803, and runs thus:--
“I had a most ardent desire to bring you and Coleridge together. I thought with pleasure on the increase of enjoyment you would receive from the beauties of Nature, by being able to communicate more frequently your sensations to each other, and that this would be the means of contributing to the pleasure and improvement of the world, by stimulating you both to poetic exertions.” The benevolent project of this excellent baronet was defeated, partly because Coleridge soon after left Greta Hall for a warmer climate, being impelled to this course by ill health, and partly from private considerations respecting Wordsworth and his family, which, however, do not transpire in the “Memoirs.” A curious fact in connection with this gift of Sir George is, that Wordsworth neglected to thank the donor, or to take the slightest notice of it, for eight weeks after the writings were placed in his hands. In a letter addressed to the baronet, dated Grasmere, October 14th, 1803, Wordsworth apologises for this apparent neglect, and attributes it partly to the overpowering feelings with which the gift inspired him, and partly to a nervous dread of writing, and a fear lest he should acknowledge the honour that had been done him in an unworthy manner. “This feeling,” he says, “was indeed so very strong in me, as to make me look upon the act of writing to you, not as the work of a moment, but as a thing not to be done, but in my best, my purest, my happiest moments.” Thus strangely began one of the few friendships which Wordsworth cultivated with men, and one which lasted through the life of the noble-hearted baronet, who, in dying, in the year 1827 (on the 7th of February), left Wordsworth an annuity of £100 to defray the expenses of an annual tour. (Another instance of the poet’s “good luck!”) It is right to add, that Wordsworth was deeply affected by his friend’s death, and that he has left, in his “Elegiac Musings,” some noble lines to his memory.
Amongst the occasional visitors at Grasmere between the years 1800 and 1804, was Captain John Wordsworth, the poet’s second brother, who was eventually lost in the Abergaveny East Indiaman, on the 5th of February, 1804. His brother was a man of fine taste and discernment, and prophesied in various letters and at various times, the ultimate success of Wordsworth’s poetry. Wordsworth felt severely the untimely death of his brother, whom he loved with that devoted family fondness, which was characteristic of him. Writing to Sir George Beaumont upon this event, he says: “February 11th, 1808. This calamitous news we received at two o’clock to-day; and I write to you from a house of mourning. My poor sister, and my wife, who loved him almost as we did (for he was one of the most amiable of men) are in miserable affliction, which I do all in my power to alleviate; but, Heaven knows, I want consolation myself. I can say nothing higher of my ever dear brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in everything but words.” The lyre of the poet sounded his praises in three poems. The first is entitled “Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a picture of Peel Castle in a storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont.” The next is “To a Daisy,” which suggests his brother’s love of quiet and peaceful things, and closes with the tragedy of his death, and the discovery and final burial of the body in the country churchyard of Wythe, a village near Weymouth.
“And thou, sweet flower, shalt sleep and wake, Upon his senseless grave,”
he concludes, returning thus finely to the simple flower which suggested the melancholy train of thought that runs through the poem. The third of these sad lyrical verses refers to the scene where the poet bade his brother farewell, on the mountains from Grasmere to Patterdale. The verses upon the “Picture of Peel Castle,” is the best of all these pieces; and as a fitting conclusion to this brief memorial of the poet’s brother, I will transcribe it.
“I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile! Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee: I saw thee every day; and all the while Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure thy sky, so quiet was the air! So like, so very like, was day to day! Where’er I looked, thy image still was there; It trembled, but it never passed away.
How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep; No mood, which season takes away or brings: I could have fancied that the mighty deep Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.
Ah! _then_, if mine had been the painter’s hand, To express what then I saw; and add the gleam, The light that never was on sea, or land, The consecration, and the poet’s dream;
I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile! Amid a world how different from this! Beside a sea that could not cease to smile On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
A picture had it been of lasting ease, Elysian quiet, without toil or strife; No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.
Such, in the fond illusion of my heart, Such picture would I at that time have made; And seen the soul of truth in every part, A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.
So once it would have been--‘tis so no more; I have submitted to a new control; A power is gone, which nothing can restore; A deep distress hath humanised my soul.
Not for a moment could I now behold A smiling sea, and be what I have been; The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old; This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.
Then, Beaumont, friend! who would have been the friend, If he had lived, of him whom I deplore, This work of thine I blame not, but commend; This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.
O ’tis a passionate work!--yet wise and well; Well chosen is the spirit that is here; That hulk, which labours in the deadly swell, This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!
And this huge castle, standing here sublime, I love to see the look with which it braves, Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone, Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind! Such happiness, wherever it be known, Is to be pitied, for ’tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, And frequent sights of what is to be borne! Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.-- Not without hope we suffer, and we mourn.”
--1805.
About a month after his brother’s death, Wordsworth concluded his “Prelude,” upon which he had been employed for upwards of six years. In allusion to this poem, Coleridge, in the “Table Talk,” says: “I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not first publish his thirteen books (there are fourteen of them,) “On the growth of an individual mind,”--superior, as I used to think, on the whole, to the “Excursion!” ... Then the plan laid out, and I believe partly suggested by me was, that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man in mental repose, one whose principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man, a subject of eye, ear, touch and taste, in contact with external nature, and inferring the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out of the senses; then he was to describe the pastoral and other states of society, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the high civilization of cities and towns, and opening a melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence he was to infer and reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole state of man and society being subject to, and illustrative of, a redemptive process in operation, showing how this idea reconciled all the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration.”
Wordsworth himself unfolds his own plan of the poem to Sir George Beaumont, in a letter dated December 25th, 1804. It was to consist, first of all, of a poem to be called “The Recluse,” wherein the poet was to express in verse, his own feelings concerning Man, Nature, and Society--and, secondly, a poem on his _earlier life_ or the _growth of his own mind_. This latter poem was “The Prelude,” two thousand verses of which, he says, in the same letter, he had written during the last ten weeks. “The Prelude,” therefore, which was not published till after the poet’s death, was first written, and “The Recluse,” subsequently. Only a part of this poem, however--viz., “The Excursion,” except, of course, “The Prelude,” is published; “The Recluse” Proper, being still in MS.
Besides these larger works, Wordsworth threw off--not without care and meditation,--for no man ever wrote with more method and purpose--many minor poems, and amongst them was “The Waggoner,” dedicated to Charles Lamb, but not published until 1819. It was in this year (1805) that Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, and Sir Humphry Davy ascended Helvellyn together; and learned the sad story of poor Charles Gough, who perished in attempting to cross over Helvellyn to Grasmere, by slipping from a steep part of the rock, where the ice was not thawed, and beside whose remains his faithful dog was found many days afterwards, almost starved to death. This affecting incident afforded a theme for both poets--viz., Sir Walter and Wordsworth, and each wrote upon it without knowing that the other was similarly engaged. Scott’s poem is entitled “Helvellyn,” and Wordsworth’s “Fidelity.”
In 1807, Wordsworth issued two new volumes of poetry, in 12mo., which contained some of his best pieces; but which, like all his poems, did not gain immediate popularity. It is true that a fourth edition of the “Lyrical Ballads” had been called for, and that this indicated a growing taste in the public mind for Wordsworth’s effusions; but the critics assailed him with the bitterest animosity, and on the whole without much reason. With no reason, in short, so far as the poetic principles--the canon of his poetry--was concerned, and only with some show of reason in the instance of his peculiar mannerism. For although he was often misled by his craving after simplicity, and uttered what might be called without any violation of truth or desecration of the poet’s name and memory--_drivel_--still he had published poems of a very high order, such as had not been published in the lifetime of any man then living. The critics, however, could not let him alone, could not see the manifest beauties of his poetry, or _would_ not see them, but denounced the whole without reserve or mercy. In the meanwhile Coleridge cheered him on, and on his return to England, in the summer of 1806, Wordsworth read “The Prelude” to him in the gardens of Coleorton, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, where the poet was then residing at the invitation of Sir George Beaumont; and the high commendations which Coleridge poured upon this poem animated Wordsworth to increased exertion and perseverance. During his residence at this beautiful house, he composed the noble “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,”--the finest thing of the kind in our language; and he left behind him as usual, many records of his feelings at Coleorton. The poet’s letters to Sir George Beaumont and an occasional one to Sir Walter Scott, are amongst the most interesting transcripts we have of his mind at this period.