Part 3
De Quincey then continues to relate, as an illustration of the sudden, silent manner in which Nature makes herself felt by the observer, even when he is paying no attention to her operations, but is occupied with nearer and more secondary matters--how he and Wordsworth were walking one midnight, during the Peninsular war, from Grasmere to Dunmail Raise, to meet the mail, in order that they might obtain the newspaper Coleridge was in the habit of sending them, and thus learn the earliest intelligence of the state of affairs on the Continent. “At intervals, Wordsworth had stretched himself at length on the high road, applying his ear to the ground, so as to catch any sound of wheels that might be going along at a distance. Once, when he was slowly rising from this effort, his eye caught a bright star that was glittering between the brow of Seat Sandal and the mighty Helvellyn. He gazed upon it for a minute or so; and then, upon turning away to descend into Grasmere, he made the following explanation:--‘I have remarked, from my earliest days, that if, under any circumstances, the attention is perfectly braced up to a steady act of observation, or of steady expectation, then, if this intense condition of vigilance should suddenly relax, at that moment any beautiful, any impressive visual object, or collection of objects, falling upon the eye, is carried to the heart with a power not known under other circumstances. Just now my ear was placed upon the stretch, in order to catch any sound of wheels that might come down upon the lake of Wythburn, from the Keswick road; at the very instant when I raised my head from the ground, in final abandonment of hope for this night, at the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension, with a pathos and a sense of the Infinite, that would not have arrested me under other circumstances.’”
And it was precisely in this manner, according to De Quincy, and indeed according to the known laws by which Nature educates the faculties of the poet, that Wordsworth was educated in his boyhood. All this hunting, fishing, and rambling, were but the means by which Nature allured him to the woods and waters, that she might silently impress him with her manifold forms and influences. There are evidences, however, of something like _communion_ with Nature in the early poems of Wordsworth, even before he left Hawkshead; and his solitary wanderings, his roamings round the lake of Esthwaite--five miles before breakfast--were not without a purpose, and could not have been undertaken unless an unquenchable, though perhaps not a fully developed love, had possessed his heart, for natural scenery, and the mystic lore which it teaches. His own confession, that though Nature was at first a dumb perplexing riddle to him, and merely affected him by her beauty and grandeur,--I say his own confession, that in spite of this, he subsequently felt the coming of the “_auxiliar light_” from his own soul, which penetrated her forms, and made them instinct with sublime intelligence--will illustrate the idea with sufficient force and clearness.
Enough, however, has been said upon this subject, for it is impossible to trace in any direct manner, the subtle and delicate influences of Nature upon the human mind, or to determine even, in the instance of Wordsworth, the precise time when he first sought “the woods and mountains, with a direct conscious anticipation of imaginative pleasure.” We will leave all this, therefore, and direct the reader to the “Prelude,” as the best exposition of the poet’s mental development at this early period. A few words respecting the government of the Hawkshead grammar school, as an influence affecting the character of the poet, and we will then follow him to Cambridge.
“Taking into consideration the peculiar tastes of the person,” says De Quincy, “and the peculiar advantages of the place, I conceive that no pupil of a public school can ever have passed a more luxurious boyhood than Wordsworth. The school discipline was not, I believe, very strict; the mode of living out of school very much resembled that of Eton for Oppidans,--less elegant perhaps, and less costly in its provisions for accommodation, but not less comfortable; and in that part of the arrangement which was chiefly Etonian, even more so; for in both places the boys, instead of being gathered into one fold, and at night into one or two huge dormitories, were distributed amongst motherly old “dames,” technically so called at Eton, but not at Hawkshead.” In the latter place, agreeably to the inferior scale of the whole establishment, the houses were smaller and more college like, consequently more like private households; and the old lady of the _menage_ was more constantly amongst them, providing with maternal tenderness, and with a professional pride, for the comfort of her young flock, and protecting the weak from oppression. The humble cares to which those poor matrons dedicated themselves, may be collected from several allusions scattered through the poems of Wordsworth; that entitled “Nutting” for instance, in which his early Spinosistic feeling is introduced of a mysterious power diffused through the solitudes of woods, a presence that was disturbed by the intrusion of careless and noisy outrage, and which is brought into a strong relief by the previous homely picture of the old housewife equipping her young charge with beggar’s weeds in order to prepare him for a struggle with thorns and brambles. Indeed not only the moderate rank of the boys, and the peculiar kind of relation assumed by these matrons, equally suggested this humble class of motherly attentions, but the whole spirit of the place and neighbourhood was favourable to an old English homeliness of domestic and personal economy.”
It will thus be seen that Wordsworth was early inducted into those thriftful and economical habits which marked his character through life, and enabled him during his young days to bear the temporary loss of his paternal fortune without much inconvenience. And the above facts are worthy to be remembered, not only as illustrating much for us in the history of Wordsworth, but as another instance of the power of a wise and early training.
The poet thus alludes to the cottages of the “Danes:”--
“Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt A ministration of your own was yours; Can I forget you, being, as you were, So beautiful among the pleasant fields In which ye stood? or can I here forget The plain and seemly countenance, with which Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye Delights and exultations of your own. Eager, and never weary, we pursued Our home-amusements, by the warm peat-fire, At evening; when, with pencil and smooth slate, In square divisions parcelled out, and all With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o’er, We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head, In strife too humble to be named in verse; Or round the naked table, snow white deal, Cherry or maple, sate in close array, And to the combat, loo or whist,[D] led on A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world, Neglected, or ungratefully thrown by, Even for the very service they had wrought, But husbanded thro’ many a long campaign. Uncouth assemblage was it, where no fear Had changed their functions; some plebeian cards Which fate, beyond the promise of their birth, Had dignified, and called to represent The persons of departed potentates. Oh, with what echos on the board they fell! Ironic diamonds,--clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,-- A congregation piteously akin! Cheap matter offered they for boyish wit, Those sooty knaves, precipitated down, With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven: The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse, Queens gleaming thro’ their splendour’s last decay, And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained By royal-visages. Meanwhile, abroad Incessant rain was falling, or the frost Raged bitterly, with keen and silent work; And, interrupting oft that eager game, From under Esthwaits’ splitting scenes of ice The pent up air, struggling to free itself, Gave out, to meadow grounds and hills, a loud Protracted yelling; like the noise of wolves, Howling, in troops, along the Bothnic main.”
And, then, as a specimen of the out-door sports, and exercises of his youth, whilst dwelling with his good old dame, he says:
“And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and visible for many a mile The cottage windows blazed thro’ twilight gloom, I heeded not their summons; happy time It was, indeed, for all of us--for me, It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud, The village clock struck six--I wheeled about, Proud and exulting, like an untired horse, That cares not for his home. All shod with steel We hissed along the polished ice in games Confederate, imitative of the chase, And woodland pleasures--the resounding horn, The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare. So thro’ the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees, and every icy crag, Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills Into the tumult sent an awful sound Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away. Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng To cut across the reflex of a star, That fled, and flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes, When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled, With visible motion, her diurnal round! Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched, Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.”
And with this famous skating passage--the finest realization of the kind in poetry, I will conclude this outline of the poet’s school-days and mental history.
CAMBRIDGE.
It was in October, 1787, that Wordsworth was sent to St. John’s College, Cambridge, by his uncles, Richard Wordsworth, and Christopher Crackanthorpe, under whose care his three brothers and his sister were placed on the death of their father, in 1795. The orphans were at this time nearly, if not entirely, dependent upon their relatives, in consequence of the stubborn refusal of the wilful, if not mad, Sir James Lowther, to settle the claims of their father upon his estate.
The impressions which Wordsworth received of Cambridge, on his arrival, and during his subsequent residence in that university, are vividly pictured in the “Prelude.” The “long-roofed chapel of King’s College,” lifting its “turrets and pinnacles in answering files,” high above the dusky grove of trees which surrounded it, was the first object which met his eye, as he approached the town. Then came the students, “eager of air and exercise,” taking their constitution walks; and the old Castle, built in the time of the Conqueror; and finally Magdalene bridge, and the glimpse of the Cam caught in passing over it, and the far-famed and much-loved Hoop Hotel.
“My spirit was up, my thoughts were full of hope; Some friends I had, acquaintances who there Seemed friends, poor simple school-boys, now hung round With honour and importance; in a world Of welcome faces up and down I roved; Questions, directions, warnings, and advice Flowed in upon me from all sides; fresh day Of pride and pleasure, to myself I seemed A man of business and expense, and went From shop to shop about my own affairs, To tutor or to tailor, as befel, From street to street, with loose and careless mind.”
The University seemed like a dream to him:
“I was the dreamer, they the dream; I roamed Delighted thro’ the motley spectacle; Gowns--grave or gaudy--doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers; Migration strange for stripling of the hills-- A northern villager.”
And then he goes on to describe his personal appearance and habits; how suddenly he was changed amidst these scenes, as if by some fairy’s wand; rich in monies, and attired--
“In splendid garb, with hose of silk, and hair Powdered, like rimy trees when frost is keen; My lordly dressing-gown, I pass it by, With other signs of manhood, that supplied The lack of beard.--The weeks went roundly on; With invitations, suppers, wine, and fruit; Smooth housekeeping within--and all without Liberal, and suiting gentlemen’s array.”
The contrast is picturesque and striking enough of Wordsworth, the Hawkshead schoolboy, clad in rustic garb, and placed under the control of his good dame, in her little whitewashed cottage, with its warm peat-fire; to Wordsworth, the collegian, dressed in silk-stockings, with his powdered hair, plentiful monies, troops of wine-drinking, and sight-loving friends. Perhaps, it was natural that Wordsworth should be proud of his butterfly-wings, after having escaped from the shell of the chrysallis--but no one could have imagined, from the grave, high, and austere character he afterwards sustained, that he had, at any previous time of his life, given way to the weakness of dandyism. Youth, however, is not to be measured by severe standards; and even if it were to be so measured, Wordsworth has not many sins to answer for, and certainly none of a venial cast. He was, nevertheless, what would be called a gay young fellow, during the first year of his college life; and he himself attributes a good deal of this to the fact that he was before the freshmen of his year in Latin and mathematics, and had, therefore, no pressing inducement to study. Pleasure called him with her syren voice, and he, nothing loath, obeyed her behests. Still he did not neglect his studies; although French and Italian, with the literature of his own country, seem to be the staple of the scholarship he acquired at Cambridge. “It is true,” says De Quincy, “that he took the regular degree of B.A., and in the regular course; but this was won in those days by a mere nominal examination, unless where the mathematical attainments of the student prompted his ambition to contest the honourable distinction of Senior Wrangler. This, in common with all other honours of the university, is won, in our days, with far severer effort than in that age of relaxed discipline; but at no period could it have been won, let the malicious and the scornful say what they will, without an amount of mathematical skill very much beyond what has ever been exacted of its _alumni_ by any other European university. Wordsworth was a professed admirer of the mathematics; at least of the higher geometry. The secret of this admiration for geometry lay in the antagonism between this world of bodiless abstraction and the world of passion.”
Leaving this subject of his attainments, however, and returning to his college life, it may farther be stated, as a proof of Wordsworth’s love of good fellowship at this time, that during a visit to a friend who occupied the rooms which John Milton, the blind old Homer of the Commonwealth occupied, during his residence in Cambridge, he drank so copiously in his enthusiasm and reverence for the place, and its grand and golden memories, that he was fairly carried away on the other side of the rational barriers, and in short got gloriously drunk; not so drunk, however, that he could not attend the chapel service, and behave there with due decorum. Speaking of the great men who had trod the streets of Cambridge and worn an university gown before him, and of his great reverence for them, he has occasion to introduce Milton, and alludes to this excess at the close of the passage. I will quote it entire.
“Beside the pleasant mill of Trumpington, I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade; Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales Of amorous passion. And that gentle bard, Chosen by the muses for their page of state!-- Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven With the moon’s beauty, and the moon’s soft pace, I called him brother, Englishman, and friend. Yea our blind poet, who in his later day, Stood almost single, uttering odious truth-- Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind. Soul awful,--if the earth has ever lodged An awful soul--I seem’d to see him here Familiarly, and in his scholar’s dress, Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth-- A boy, no better, with his rosy cheek Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, And conscious step of purity and pride. Among the band of my compeers was one Whom chance had stationed in the very room Honoured by Milton’s name. O temperate bard! Be it confest, that for the first time, seated Within thy innocent lodge and oratory, One of a festive circle, I poured out Libations to thy memory, drank, till pride And gratitude grew dizzy in a brain Never excited by the fumes of wine Before that hour, or since. Then forth I ran From the assembly; through a length of streets Ran, ostrich like, to reach our chapel door In not a desperate or opprobrious time, Albeit long after the importunate bell Had stopped, with wearisome Cassandra voice No longer haunting the dark winter night. Call back, O friend! a moment to thy mind, The place itself, and fashion of the rites. With careless ostentation shouldering up My surplice, through the inferior throng I clove Of the plain Burghers, who, in audience stood On the last skirts of their permitted ground, Under the pealing organ. Empty thoughts! I am asham’d of them; and that great bard And thou, my friend! who in thy ample mind Hast placed me high above my best deserts, Ye will forgive the weakness of that hour, In some of its unworthy vanities, Brother to many more.”
It is interesting to know all this--to be assured that although Wordsworth was in after life as temperate as Milton--drinking nothing but water, and requiring, indeed, no stimulants but that which healthy and robust exercise afforded--I say it is pleasant to be assured that once in his life our poet did really link himself with the imperfections of man, and by an excess of sympathy got drunk--or as De Quincy calls it, “boozy,”--to the honour and glory of Milton. It is a thing to be pardoned, and is almost the only anecdote of Wordsworth which possesses a really human interest.
The rooms which Wordsworth occupied at St. John’s were so situated, that had he been a hard student instead of a gay gownsman, the circumstances which environed them might very materially have affected his studies; for immediately below him ran the great college kitchen, which was continually in an uproar of dissonance with the voices of cooks, and their preparations for the eating necessities of the college members. To atone, however, for this animal riot, the poet could look forth from his pillow by the light
“Of moon or favouring stars,”
and there behold through the majestic windows of Trinity Chapel, the pale statue
“Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”
It must not be supposed, however, from what has now been stated respecting the _gay_ life of Wordsworth, that he committed any of those excesses which are so common to the undergraduates of Cambridge. He was not a Barnwell-man, nor a Newmarket jockey, nor a gambler, nor gay, indeed, at all, in the gross meaning of that word. He was more idle and genial than this; and a lover of generous society. It was not in his nature, which was always high and pure, and which had been strengthened and solemnised by his converse with the majestic scenery of his childhood,--to descend to the low forms of vice; on the contrary, he had always a dread, horror, and loathing for vice, and vicious society. And, perhaps, one primal cause of his carelessness at Cambridge, lay in his contempt for its scholastic discipline, and for the character and conduct of its chiefs and professors. He felt that Cambridge could teach him but little--that he was “not for that hour, or that place,” as he himself expresses it; but for quite another hour and another place. The dead, cold formality of its religious services,--the absence from chapel of those who “ate the bread of the founders of the colleges, and had sworn to administer faithfully their statutes;” whilst the students were required, under penalties, to attend the senseless mummery;--all these things, and others, revolted Wordsworth’s mind against them, and made him regard the whole system, of which they were part, with distrust and abhorrence. He thus alludes to these matters in the “Prelude:”--
“---- Spare the house of God. Was ever known The witless shepherd who persists to drive A flock that thirsts not to a pool disliked? A weight must surely hang on days begun And ended with such mockery. Be wise, Ye Presidents and Deans, and, till the spirit Of ancient times revive, and truth be trained At home in pious service, to your bells Give seasonable rest, for ’tis a sound Hollow as ever vexed the tranquil air; And your officious doings bring disgrace On the plain steeples of our English church, Whose worship, ’mid remotest village trees, Suffers for this.”
Wordsworth felt this, at the time, very keenly, and saw what a grist it afforded for the grinding ridicule of the scoffer and the atheist. Turning from these melancholy reflections, to the dear old times, when men of learning were really pious, and devoted to their scholarly functions, when
“Bacon, Erasmus, or Melancthon read Before the doors or windows of their cells, By moonshine, thro’ mere lack of taper-light,”
he conjures up a vision of scholastic life--a vision of the future--which however, he says, “fell to ruin round him,” and was all in vain.
Notwithstanding the confusion of his outer circumstances, and the general aimless tenor of his life, Wordsworth did not entirely neglect his own culture--and in the silence of the academic groves, by the sweetly remembered Cam, or in his own rooms in the Gothic court of St. John’s, he brooded over the problems of life, death, and immortality. The ghosts of the mighty dead haunted him likewise, as he walked through the familiar places, where they were wont to walk whilst dwelling in their earthly tenements, and roused him, at times, to commence anew the race of learning and distinction.
“I could not always pass Thro’ the same gateways, sleep where they had slept, Wake where they waked, range that enclosure old, That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.”