Part 2

It was very fortunate for Wordsworth that his early life was cast in the midst of such magnificent scenery, as that of Cumberland, for it acted powerfully upon his mind, and helped to mould his character, and develope his genius. School did very little for him, nor College, nor even books, until a comparatively late period of his life. But both nature and poetry had always a great and transcendent charm for him. As a boy, at Cockermouth he obtained the rudiments of learning from the Rev. W. Gillbanks; and his father, who was a man of vigorous character, and considerable culture and scholarship, initiated him into the pantheon of poetry, by repeating to him the finest passages of Shakspeare, Milton, and Spenser, which the boy subsequently committed to memory. But he was frequently refractory in his conduct, and peevish in his temper. His mother, whom he loved much, and who died before he was eight years of age, had at times terrible misgivings about her darling son, on these accounts, although I find no record to justify her in her forebodings. He was certainly a wild little fellow, full of animal spirits, which never flagged, with a little of the dare-devil in him: but this is natural enough in a healthy boy. Wordsworth, in alluding to his mother’s dread of the “evil chance” of his life, gives us an anecdote, with the intention of justifying her, which seems to me very comical in such connection.

“I remember going once,” he says, “into the attics of my grandfather’s house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in my hand, but my heart failed me.

“Upon another occasion, while I was at the same house, along with my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down upon particular occasions.--The walls were humg round with family pictures, and I said to my elder brother: ‘Dare you strike your whip through that old lady’s petticoat?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I won’t.’ ‘Then,’ said I, ‘here goes!’--and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat; for which, no doubt, I was properly punished, although I have forgotten it. But, possibly from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I was perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise.”

Perhaps the real truth of Mrs. Wordsworth’s anxiety is, after all, to be found in the fact that she had anticipated an extraordinary career for her son. There does not appear, however, to have been much ground for the supposition that the “evil chance” would prevail; and considering the wise teaching of this dear mother, and the apt though erratic nature of her son, I think there was good reason for a more cheering augury of his fate. Speaking of his mother’s mode of education, in the “Prelude,” he says, that it was founded upon

“a virtual faith, that He Who fills the mothers breast with innocent milk, Doth also for our nobler part provide, Under His great correction and control, As innocent instincts, and as innocent food.

* * * * *

This was her creed, and therefore she was pure From anxious fear of error, or mishap, And evil, overweeningly so called, Was not puffed up by false, unnatural hopes, Nor selfish, with unnecessary care; Nor with impatience for the season asked More than its timely produce; rather loved The hours for what they are, than from regard Glanced on their promises in restless pride. Such was she--not for faculties more strong Than others have, but from the times, perhaps, And spot in which she lived, and thro’ a grace Of modest meekness, simple-mindedness, A heart that found benignity and hope, Being itself benign.”

That there are evidences of this healthful and pious faith, this holy and beneficent teaching, in Wordsworth’s writings, every one acquainted with them will admit; and the passage just quoted is more than ordinarily interesting on this account, as an illustration of the force of early training. His mother’s love haunts him in later years, although he is altogether silent about his father, and only speaks of his mother twice in all his poems. The hearth-stone, and its gods, seem to have been too sacred with him for parade. When he appears before the vicar, with a trembling, earnest company of boys about his own age, to say the catechism, at Easter, as the custom was, the mother watches him with beating heart; and here is the second tribute of affection to her beloved memory:

“How fluttered then thy anxious heart for me, Beloved mother! Thou whose happy hand Had bound the flowers I wore, with faithful tie; Sweet flowers, at whose inaudible command, Her countenance, phantom like, doth reappear; Oh! lost too early for the frequent tear, And ill-requited by this heart-felt sigh.”

With such a mother as this, it is no wonder that Wordsworth--in spite of his occasional devilry--was a happy and joyous boy. He looks back, indeed, in after life, upon the home and scenes of his childhood, as upon some enchanted region. He has no withering recollections of poverty or distress; all is sunshine and delight. The sweet, melodious, and romantic Derwent is the syren of these dreams, and it sings with wondrous music in his verse. All his memories are associated with the fine scenery of his birth-place--are fused into it--and become, at last the real foundation of his life: and here is a description of his native scenery, which I find ready made to my hand:

“The whole district may be said to stand single in the world, and to have in the peculiar character of its beauty no parallel elsewhere. It is in the concentration of every variety of loveliness into a compass which in extent does not greatly tax the powers of the pedestrian, that it fairly defies rivalry, and affords the richest pabulum to the poetical faculty. There, every form of mountain, rock, lake, stream, wood, and plain, from the conformation of the country, is crowded with the most prodigal abundance into a few square miles. Coleridge characterises it as a ‘cabinet of beauties.’ ‘Each thing,’ says he, ‘is beautiful in itself; and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or valley to another, is itself a beautiful thing again.’ Wordsworth, in his own ‘Description of the Country of the Lakes,’ dwells with the zest and minuteness of idolatry upon every feature of that treasury of landscape. The idea he gives of the locality is very perfect and graphic. If the tourist were seated on a cloud midway between Great Gavel and Scafell, and only a few yards above their highest elevation, he would look down to the westward on no fewer than nine different valleys, diverging away from that point, like spokes from the nave of a wheel, towards the vast rim formed by the sands of the Irish Sea. These vales--Langdale, Coniston, Duddon, Eskdale, Wastdale, Ennerdale, Buttermere, Borrowdale, and Keswick--are of every variety of character; some with, and some without lakes; some richly fertile, and some awfully desolate. Shifting from the cloud, if the tourist were to fly a few miles eastward, to the ridge of old Helvellyn, he would find the wheel completed by the vales of Wytheburn, Ulswater, Haweswater, Grasmere, Rydal, and Ambleside, which bring the eye round again to Winandermere, in the vale of Langdale, from which it set out. From the sea or plain country all round the circumference of this fairy-land, along the gradually-swelling uplands, to the mighty mountains that group themselves in the centre, the infinite varieties of view may be imagined--varieties made still more luxuriant by the different position of each valley towards the rising or setting sun. Thus a spectator in the vale of Winandermere will in summer see its golden orb going down over the mountains, while the spectator in Keswick will at the same moment mark it diffusing its glories over the low grounds. In this delicious land, dyed in a splendour of ever-shifting colours, the old customs and manners of England still lingered in the youth of Wordsworth, and took a firm hold of his heart, modifying all his habits and opinions. Though a deluge of strangers had begun to set in towards this retreat, and even the spirit of the factory threatened to invade it, still the dalesmen were impressed with that character of steadiness, repose, and rustic dignity, which has always possessed irresistible charms for the poet. Their cottages, which, from the numerous irregular additions made to them, seemed rather to have grown than to have been built, were covered over with lichens and mosses, and blended insensibly into the landscape, as if they were not human creations, but constituent parts of its own loveliness. In this old English Eden, all his schoolboy days, Wordsworth wandered restlessly, drawn hither and thither by his irresistible passion for nature, and receiving into his soul those remarkable photographs which were afterwards to delight his countrymen. There can be no doubt that the charms of this lake scenery added still more strength to the poet’s peculiar tendencies, and developed a conservative sentiment, which, though temporarily overcome, afterwards reared itself up in haughtier majesty than before. The poet was naturally led to indulge much in out-of-door wanderings and pastimes, such as skating, of which he has left a picture unapproachable in its vividness and precision.”

In such scenery then, and with such occupations, did the boy spend his time, until it became necessary to send him to a higher school than Cockermouth afforded. He was accordingly dispatched to Hawkshead Grammar School, near the lake of Esthwaite, where he was not crammed with overmuch learning. He speaks of these larger school days with enthusiasm, in his “Prelude;”--not, however, because the little Latin and mathematics which he learned were so tasteful to his mind; but because his leisure hours and holidays were rendered sweeter by the restraints of the school, and gave a greater zest to his field-sports, and the secular books which he loved. He mentions his amusements--such as birds’ nesting, in the warm moist mornings of Spring,--springing woodcocks, in the brown and mellow days of Autumn,--bathing in the Derwent, that “tempting playmate” of his, into which, even when five years old, he would plunge again and again, “making one long bathing of a Summer’s day,”--rowing, on sunny half-holidays with his boisterous schoolmates, on the great “plain of Windermere,”--or skating, by day and night, upon the frozen bosom of Esthwaite. His beloved books, too, at this time, find a record in his verse. They are Fielding--that mighty creator, so full of the “_play-impulse_,” like an old god who makes worlds, and amuses himself with the story of their various fortunes; Cervantes, who laughed Christendom out of its chivalry, because chivalry was dead as an institution, and had become laughable; Le Sage, with his Shaksperian knowledge of life, and his inimitable artistic power; and Swift, with his sharp wit, learning, and satire, glittering amid continents of mud. “Gulliver’s Travels,” and the “Tale of a Tub,” were the things which stuck to him fastest, however, of all the works of these writers.

In the meanwhile the poet was awakening within him, and the poetic pabulum was becoming, every day, more and more necessary to his existence. His fine receptive spirit stored up all the forms and influences of nature; revivified them, and reproduced them by its power. The strong individuality, which marks his poetry, manifested itself at this early period; for he loved solitude better than his playmates; although he loved them too, and speaks of them with affection; but the dells, mountains, and lakes, were his most beloved companions.--Often would he lie down upon the grass or the heather, and wait for the gentle voices which had so frequently whispered the secrets of nature in his ears, and by their inspiration had enabled him to catch a glimpse of the divine glory behind the veil of things; or looking upwards into the blue unfathomable depths of heaven, he has asked questions which those depths could not answer, and has thus tasted of the sorrow which makes life holy. His own mind had begun to react upon Nature, and to make her more beautiful or terrible, according to his mood. He began to feel the _auxiliar light_, which comes from the soul, and diffuses its glory over all things, making the common noble, and investing the grandest forms of the material world, with the still grander attributes of imagination. He hints at the process of all this; at the “plastic power” and the creative power,--the outer and the inner modus of his culture. “A plastic power,” he says--

“Abode with me; a forming hand, at times Rebellious, acting in a devious mood; A local spirit of his own, at war With general tendency; but for the most Subservient strictly to external things With which it communed. An auxiliar light Came from my mind, which on the setting sun Bestowed new splendour; the melodious birds, The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed A like dominion; and the midnight storm Grew darker in the presence of my eye.”

And all this was much better than school-learning--although school learning is not to be despised. But Wordsworth, as before remarked, learned very little at school, although he took honours in the great Alma Mater, out of doors. And it is singular that nearly every one who has made a figure, and left a mark in the world’s page, has been equally unindebted to school for his success. Genius hates to be put in harness, and yet without discipline of some sort or other, there can be no stability of character--no steady aim, purpose, or achievement. Nature always takes care to exaggerate the natural tendency of her favourites, that the balance may be restored by discipline, and that the work which she requires of the peculiar faculties may be done. And to this discipline genius itself must, in the end, submit, or fail in the high purpose of its existence. We can afford that it should be a little erratic, and wild in its ways, especially in youth; that it should even like the song of the birds better than the concords of grammar. But it must learn grammar after all, and many other things beside, if it is really to do any great work in the world. And this was the case with Wordsworth, who alternated his book studies with those of Nature. For although he acquired nothing more than the mechanical forms of learning at Hawkshead--and these were limited to Latin and mathematics--yet the discipline was good for his health, and the acquirements themselves were not to be despised. In the meanwhile, he had written verses too remarkable to be passed over without notice, although the poet himself says, “they are but a tame imitation of Pope’s versification, and a little in his style.” They were written upon the completion of the second centenary of the foundation of the Hawkshead grammar school (in 1585, by Archbishop Sandys,) as a school exercise, when Wordsworth was only fourteen years old; and as the poetry is not included in his works, although Dr. Wordsworth has preserved it in the autobiographical memoranda of his “Memoir,” lately published, I will make a quotation from it, that the reader may see how the genius of Wordsworth first adapted itself to the laws and formulary of poetic art. It is _Education_ that speaks in the following lines.

“There have I lov’d to skim the tender age, The golden precepts of the classic page; To lead the mind to those Elysian plains Where, thron’d in gold, immortal Science reigns; Fair to the view is sacred Truth display’d, In all the majesty of light arrayed, To teach, on rapid wings, the curious soul, To roam from earth to heaven, from pole to pole; From thence to search the mystic cause of things, And follow Nature to her secret springs; Nor less to guide the fluctuating youth, Firm in the sacred paths of moral truth. To regulate the mind’s disordered frame, And quench the passions kindling into flame; The glimmering fires of virtue to enlarge, And purge from vice’s dross my tender charge. Oft have I said, the paths of fame pursue, And all that virtue dictates, dare to do. Go to the world--peruse the book of man, And learn from thence thy own defects to scan; Severely honest, break no plighted trust-- But coldly rest not here--be more than just! Join to the rigour of the sires of Rome The gentler manners of the private dome; When virtue weeps in agony of woe, Teach from the heart the tender tears to flow; If Pleasure’s soothing song thy soul entice, Or all the gaudy pomp of splendid vice, Arise superior to the syren’s power, The wretch, the chort-liv’d vision of an hour. Soon fades her cheek, her blushing beauties fly, As fades the chequer’d bow that paints the sky.”

Now, it must be acknowledged, that this writing, imitative as it is, is very remarkable as the production of a boy of fourteen; and that it displays an uncommon degree of artistic skill in its construction, with much command of language, and a moral culture one does not often meet with in boys. This, however, was not Wordsworth’s first attempt at composition. “It may be, perhaps, as well to mention,” says the poet, in his brief autobiographical notes, appended to the Memoir, “that the first verses I wrote, were a task imposed by my master; the subject ‘The Summer Vacation;’ and of _my own accord_ I added others upon ‘Return to School.’ These exercises, however,” he continues, “put it into my head to compose verses from the impulse of my own mind; and I wrote, while yet a schoolboy, a long poem running upon my own adventures, and the scenery of the country in which I was brought up. The only part of that poem which has been preserved is the conclusion of it, which stands at the beginning of my collected poems. It commences ‘Dear native regions.’” This poem was the archetype of the “Prelude,” and was a good preparatory discipline to the structure of that nobly musical poem.

In 1786, in anticipation of leaving school, he wrote some sweet verses, in which he speaks, with a sad fondness, of the old region round about Hawkshead, and vows, with a lover’s heart, never to forget its beauty, but to turn towards it wherever he may be, as to the shrine of his idolatry.

“Thus from the precincts of the west The sun, while sinking down to rest, Though his departing radiance fail To illuminate the hollow vale, A lingering lustre fondly throws On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose.”

The muse had now fairly possessed him, and he was destined to have a triumphant career as the high priest of song. Among his earliest sonnets is the following, which is the last quotation I shall give from these boyish effusions.

“Calm is all nature as a resting wheel: The kine are couched upon the dewy grass; The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass, Is cropping audibly his later meal: Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal O’er vale and mountain and the starless sky. Now in this blank of things a harmony, Home-felt and home-created, comes to heal That grief for which the senses will supply Fresh food, for only then while memory Is hushed am I at rest. My friends! restrain Those busy cares that would allay my pain; Oh, leave me to myself, nor let me feel The officious touch that makes me droop again!”

His school-days at Hawkshead were now drawing to a close, but before we leave this part of his life, this genial seed-time from which he subsequently reaped so glorious a harvest, it will be well to add a few more particulars respecting the locality of Hawkshead, and the general discipline of its old Elizabethan grammar school, as a sort of supplement to the previous history. And, first of all, a word about Esthwaite. [C] “Esthwaite, though a lovely scene in its summer garniture of woods, has no features of permanent grandeur to rely on. A wet or gloomy day, even in summer, reduces it to little more than a wildish pond, surrounded by miniature hills; and the sole circumstances which restore the sense of a romantic region, and an Alpine character, are the knowledge (but not the sense) of endless sylvan scenery, stretching for twenty miles to the sea-side, and the towering groups of Langdale and Grasmere fells, which look over the little pasture barrier of Esthwaite, from distances of eight, ten, and fourteen miles.”

“Esthwaite, therefore, being no object for itself, and the sublime head of Coniston being accessible by a road which evades Hawkshead, few tourists ever trouble the repose of this little village town.... Wordsworth, therefore, enjoyed this labyrinth of valleys in a perfection that no one can have experienced since the opening of the present century. The whole was one paradise of virgin beauty; and even the rare works of man, all over the land, were hoar with the grey tints of an antique picturesque; nothing was new, nothing was raw and uncicatrized. Hawkshead, in particular, though tamely seated in itself and its immediate purlieus, has a most fortunate and central locality, as regards the best (at least the most interesting) scene for a pedestrian rambler. The gorgeous scenery of Borrowdale, the austere sublimities of Wastdalehead, of Langdalehead, or Mardale,--these are too oppressive in their colossal proportions, and their utter solitudes, for encouraging a perfectly human interest. Now, taking Hawkshead as a centre, with a radius of about eight miles, we might describe a little circular tract which embosoms a perfect net-work of little valleys--separate wards or cells, as it were, of one large valley, walled in by the great primary mountains of the region. Grasmere, Easdale, Little Langdale, Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, Elterwater, Loughrigg Tarn, Skelwith, and many other little quiet nooks, lie within a single division of this labyrinthine district. All these are within one summer afternoon’s ramble. And amongst these, for the years of his boyhood, lay the daily excursions of Wordsworth.

“I do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an amiable boy; he was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits; not generous; and above all, not self-denying.... Meantime, we are not to suppose that Wordsworth, the boy, expressly sought for solitary scenes of nature amongst woods and mountains, with a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative pleasure, or loving them with a pure, disinterested love, on their own separate account. These are feelings beyond boyish nature, or, at all events, beyond boyish nature trained amidst the necessities of social intercourse. Wordsworth, like his companions, haunted the hills and the vales for the sake of angling, snaring birds, swimming, and sometimes of hunting, according to the Westmorland fashion, on foot: for riding to the chace is often quite impossible, from the precipitous nature of the ground. It was in the course of these pursuits, by an indirect effect growing gradually upon him, that Wordsworth became a passionate lover of Nature, at the time when the growth of his intellectual faculties made it possible that he should combine those thoughtful passions with the experience of the eye and ear.”