Part 15

Those who would know more of the poet must go to his writings; and, I may add, that the “Memoirs” of Dr. Wordsworth are indispensable to a full understanding both of the Poet and the Man. His letters, containing his most private thoughts, are printed there with plentiful profuseness; and the “Memoranda” respecting the origin of his poems are intensely interesting and important to all students of Wordsworth. The reminiscences of various persons who knew him, set the character of the poet before us in strong relief. All agree in speaking of him as a most kindly, affectionate, and hospitable man, living with the simple tastes and manners of a patriarch, in his beautiful home. My limits prevent me from entering into an analysis of his mind and character, as I had intended to do; I must reserve this work, therefore, for another occasion, and will conclude with a few quotations from the poet’s “Table-Talk,” respecting his cotemporaries.--Speaking of Goethe, he says:--

“He does not seem to me to be a great poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first I would place Homer and Shakspeare, whose universal minds are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling, without bringing his own individuality before the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into every object they approach, but you cannot find _themselves_. At the head of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes, you can trace the gentle, affectionate spirit of the man; in all that Milton writes, you find the exalted, sustained being that he was. Now, in what Goethe writes, who aims to be of the first class, the _universal_, you find the man himself, the artificial man, where he should not be found; so that I consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but an artificial writer.

And again:--

“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.”

Of Scott he says:--

“As a poet, Scott cannot live, for he has never in verse written anything addressed to the immortal part of man. In making amusing stories in verse, he will be superseded by some newer versifier; what he writes in the way of natural description is merely rhyming nonsense. As a prose writer, Mr. Wordsworth admitted that Scott had touched a higher vein, because there he had really dealt with feeling and passion. As historical novels, professing to give the manners of a past time, he did not attach much value to those works of Scott’s, so called, because that he held to be an attempt in which success was impossibility. This led to some remarks on historical writing, from which it appeared that Mr. Wordsworth has small value for anything but contemporary history. He laments that Dr. Arnold should have spent so much of his time and powers in gathering up, and putting into imaginary shape, the scattered fragments of the history of Rome.”

And again:--

“He discoursed at great length on Scott’s works. His poetry he considered of that kind which will always be in demand, and that the supply will always meet it, suited to the age. He does not consider that it in any way goes below the surface of things; it does not reach to any intellectual or spiritual emotion; it is altogether superficial, and he felt it himself to be so. His descriptions are not true to nature; they are addressed to the ear, not to the mind. He was a master of bodily movements in his battle-scenes; but very little productive power was exerted in popular creations.”

Moore:--

“T. Moore has great natural genius; but he is too lavish of brilliant ornament. His poems smell of the perfumer’s and milliner’s shops. He is not content with a ring and a bracelet, but he must have rings in the ear, rings on the nose--rings everywhere.”

Shelley:--

“Shelley is one of the best _artists_ of us all: I mean in workmanship of style.”

Tennyson:--

“I saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most value in my attempts--viz., the spirituality with which I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appearances.”

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.’

“He thought highly also of some of Hartley’s sonnets.

Southey--

He said had outlived his faculties. His mind he thought had been wrecked by long watching by the sick bed of his wife, who had lingered for years in a very distressing state.

Coleridge--

He said the liveliest and truest image he could give of Coleridge’s talk was that of “a mystic river, the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals, which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost in sand, and then came flashing out broad and distinct; then again took a turn which your eye could not follow, yet you knew and felt that it was the same river....[M] Coleridge had been spoilt as a poet by going to Germany. The bent of his mind, at all times very much inclined to metaphysical theology, had there been fixed in that direction.”

Lord Byron--

“Has spoken severely of my compositions. However faulty they may be, I do not think I ever could have prevailed with myself to print such lines as he has done, for instance--

‘I stood at Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.’

“Some person ought to write a critical review analising Lord Byron’s language, in order to guard others against imitating him in these respects.”

Emerson and Carlyle--

“Do you know Miss Peabody of Boston? She has just sent me, with the highest eulogy, certain essays of Mr. Emerson. Our---- and he appear to be what the French called _esprits forts_, though the French idols showed their spirit after a somewhat different fashion. Our two present _Philosophes_, who have taken a language which they suppose to be English, for their vehicle, are, verily, _par nobile fratrum_, and it is a pity that the weakness of our age has not left them exclusively to this appropriate reward--mutual admiration. Where is the thing which now passes for philosophy at Boston to stop?”

Such are a few random selections from the spoken opinions of the poet. He hated innovation, hence his attack upon the two last named authors, not made, I think, in the very best spirit. I must here leave him, however. He will stand well upon his honours in all future generations, and must certainly be ranked as a poet in the same category with Milton.

_FINIS._

J. S. Pratt, Stokesley, Yorkshire.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] These remarks do not of course apply to Cowper and Burns, to whom our modern literature is so deeply indebted, but to their predecessors, from Pope downwards.

[B] Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Dr. Wordsworth, vol. 1, page 7.

[C] De Quincy, Tait’s Magazine, for 1839.

[D] It is related by De Quincy, that during Wordsworth’s early residence in the lake country--after his return from Cambridge--his mind was so oppressed by the gloomy aspect of his fortunes, that evening card-playing was resorted to, to divert him from actual despondency.

[E] Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoir, page 53.

[F] Memoir, page 71-2.

[G] Chambers’ Papers for the People, article Wordsworth.

[H] Vol. 1, page 149 to 154.

[I] Memoirs, Vol. 1., page 156

[J] Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,” vol. 2, p. 94.

[K] “Memoirs,” vol. 2, p. 102-105.

[L] Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 121.

[M] This view of Coleridge is confirmed by Carlyle, in his “Life of John Sterling,” just published.

“Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate-hill, in those years, looking down on London and its smoke tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life’s battle; attracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary,--a kind of prophetic, or magician character. He was thought to hold,--he alone in England,--the key of German and other transcendentalisms; knew the sublime secret of believing by ‘the reason’ what ‘the understanding’ had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and say and point to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, _Esto perpetua_. * * * * He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the most _surprising_ talker extant in this world,--and to some small minority, (by no means to all,) the most excellent. The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps,--and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. * * * * * I still recollect his ‘object’ and ‘subject,’ terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sung and snuffled them into ‘om-m-mject’ ‘sum-m-mject,’ with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, could be more surprising.

* * * * *

“He had knowledge about many things and topics,--much curious reading; but generally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the high seas of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean transcendentalism, with its ‘sum-m-mjects’ and ‘om m-mjects.’ Sad enough, for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest, wide, unintelligible deluge of things,--for most part in a rather profitless, uncomfortable manner. Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze; but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general element again. * * * * * * One right peal of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at some injustice or depravity rubbing elbows with us on this solid earth,--how strange would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles, and dim-melting ghosts and shadows! None such ever came. His life had been an abstract thinking and dreaming, idealistic one, passed amid the ghosts of defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The mourning sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary feeling.”