Part 4
And yet, with the exception of “Lines written whilst sailing up the Cam,” Wordsworth does not seem to have composed a line at Cambridge. He was learning, however, the first lessons of worldly wisdom all this time; was initiated into the ways of life, and the characters of men; and such discipline could not have been spared the poet, without loss to him. He does not regret, he says, any experience in his college life, and thinks the gowned youth who only misses what he missed, and fell no lower than he fell, is not a very hopeless character.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS.
At length the long vacation, which the good Alma Mater allows for the refreshment of the minds and bodies of her dear children, came to set Wordsworth at liberty; and, in the summer of 1788, he revisited his native scenes at Esthwaite. The old cramp of University life, with its dissipations, and frivolous pleasures, fell from him like an evil enchantment, the first moment when he beheld the bed of Windermere,
“Like a vast river stretching in the sun. With exultation at my feet I saw Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays, A universe of Nature’s finest forms, Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst, Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay. I bounded down the hill, shouting amain For the old ferryman; to the shout the rocks Replied; and when the Charon of the flood Had stay’d his oars, and touched the jutting pier, I did not step into the well-known boat Without a cordial greeting.”
There is something very delightful and refreshing in this burst of enthusiasm, and it shews clearly enough, which was the University Wordsworth loved best. At Cambridge he was a prisoner, with his dark heart yearning for the sunshine of his native hills; but here he was free, his heart no longer dark nor sad, but flooding with light and joy, and exulting in the delicious beauty of Nature.
And what strikes me as very touching and beautiful in the poet’s relation of this visit to his birthplace, is the fact that he did not forget his old dame,--although certain critics have of late declared that he had no heart,--but that on the contrary he went straight to her cottage, and so closed his journey from Cambridge. Hear how he speaks of her and her reception of him:
“Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps, From my old dame, so kind and motherly, While she perused me with a parent’s pride. The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart Can beat, never will I forget thy name. Heaven’s blessings be upon thee where thou liest After thy innocent and busy stir In narrow cares, thy little daily growth Of calm enjoyment, after eighty years, And more than eighty of untroubled life, Childless; yet, by the strangers to thy blood Honoured with little less than filial love.”
Such is the affectionate tribute which Wordsworth pays to her memory. And if the reader be anxious to know all the small and large delights which the poet felt in renewing his acquaintance with the scenes of his childhood, I must refer him to the “Prelude.” He will there read how the old dame led him--he “willing, nay, wishing to be led,” through the village and its neighbourhood. How each face of the ancient neighbours was like a volume to him; how he hailed the labourers at their work “with half the length of a long field between,” how he shook hands with his quondam schoolfellows; proud and yet ashamed of his fine Cambridge clothes, doing everything in the way of recognition, in short, which a kind generous, and loving heart could dictate. The brook in the garden, which had been imprisoned there until it had lost its voice--he hailed also, with the delight of many remembrances, and much present pleasure. And then how his heart overflows at the sight of his favourite dog--the rough terrier of the hills--an inmate of the dame’s cottage by ancient right!--a brave fellow, that could hunt the badger, or unearth the fox--making no bones about either business. The poet slept, too, during this visit, in his old sleeping room;
“That lowly bed, where I had heard the wind Roar, and the rain beat hard, where I so oft Had lain awake on summer nights to watch The moon in splendour couched among the leaves Of a tall ash that near our cottage stood; Had watch’d her with fixed eyes, while to and fro In the dark summit of the waving tree She rock’d with every impulse of the breeze.”
The poet then describes the refreshing influence which Nature spread, like a new element of life, over his spirit, and quotes even the time and place--viz., one evening at sunset, when taking his first walk, these long months, round the lake of Esthwaite, when his soul
“Put off her veil, and self-transmuted, stood Naked in the presence of her God;”
whilst a comfort seemed to “touch a heart that had not been disconsolate;” and “strength came where weakness was not known to be--at least not felt.” Then he took the balance, and weighed himself:
“Conversed with promises, had glimmering views How life pervades the undecaying mind; How the immortal soul, with godlike power Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep That time can lay upon her; how on earth Man, if he do but live within the light Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad, His being armed with strength that cannot fail.”
Here was evidence that the soul of the poet was settling down, if we may say so, to something like repose, preparatory to the grand aim and purpose of his life. He begins to see that idleness and pleasure will not last--will not serve any end in the world; and that man must be a worker, with high endeavours, if he is indeed to be or do anything worthy of a man.--And this light breaking in upon him, through the twilight of Nature and his own soul, is soothing, consolatory, and hopeful to him. He begins, likewise, to take a fresh interest in the daily occupations of the people around him; read the opinions and thoughts of these plain living people, “now observed with clearer knowledge;” and saw “with another eye” “the quiet woodman in the woods,” and the shepherd roaming over the hills. His love for the grey-headed old dame returns to him again and again in these latter pages of the “Prelude,” and he pictures her as a dear object in the landscape, as she goes to church,
----“Equipped in monumental trim; Short velvet cloak, (her bonnet of the like,) A mantle, such as cavaliers Wore in old time.”
And then her
----“smooth domestic life, Affectionate, without disquietude, Her talk, her business pleased me, and no less Her clear, though shallow stream of piety, That ran on Sabbath days a fresher course; With thoughts unfelt till now, I saw her read Her Bible on hot Sunday afternoons, And loved the book, when she had dropped asleep, And made of it a pillow for her head.”
It would be impossible to follow the poet in all those minute relations of incident and feeling which run throughout the “Prelude,” during this first vacation amongst the hills.--One anecdote, however, must be told, for it is an inlet into the poet’s nature, and shewed that he had a heart, and deep sympathies also for suffering and poverty, let the critics say what they will.
During the autumn, while Wordsworth was wandering amidst the hills round Windermere,--with no living thing in sight, and breathless silence over all,--he was suddenly startled by the appearance of an uncouth shape, in a turning of the road. At first he was a little timid, and perhaps alarmed, for it was close to him, and he knew not what to make of it. The dusky light of the evening increased the mystery, and Wordsworth retreated noiselessly under the shadow of a thick hawthorn, that he might watch it unobserved. It turned out to be a poor wanderer, of tall stature,
“A span above man’s common measure, tall, Stiff, lank, and upright; a more meagre man Was never seen before, by day or night. Long were his arms, pallid his hands; his mouth Looked ghastly in the moonlight; from behind A mile-stone propped him up.”
He wore a faded military garb, and was quite alone--
“Companionless, No dog attending, by no staff sustained, He stood, and in his very dress appeared A desolation, a simplicity, To which the trappings of a gaudy world Make a strange back-ground.”
Presently, he began to mutter sounds as of pain, or birth-pangs of uneasy thought,--
“Yet still his form Kept the same awful steadiness; at his feet His shadow lay, and moved not.”
Wordsworth now came from his hiding place, and hailed the poor, lone, desolate, old man, who rose, slowly, from his resting place,
“and with a lean and wasted arm, Returned the salutation; then resumed His station, as before.”
The poet entered into conversation with him, and asked him to relate his history. It was the old tale--told with a quiet uncomplaining voice, a stately air of mild indifference. He had served in the Tropic islands, and on landing, three weeks ago, he had been dismissed the service. He was now journeying homeward, to lay his weary bones in the churchyard of his native village. Wordsworth was touched at the uncomplaining misery of the poor old man, and invited him to go with him. The veteran picked up his staff from the shadowy ground, and walked by the poet’s side down into the valley, where a hospitable cottage was soon found, and the soldier bestowed for the night. On leaving him, Wordsworth
“entreated that, henceforth, He would not linger in the public ways, But ask for timely furtherance and help, Such as his state required.”
And now, mark the touching reply of the friendless old man:
“With the same ghastly mildness in his look He said, “My trust is in the God of heaven, And in the eye of him who passes me.”
And in this manner,--with occasional adventures, but none so memorable as this,--Wordsworth passed his vacation. Nature, too, had claimed him for her own--for her bard, minister, and interpreter; had purified him of the frivolities which had previously lowered his mind, and loosed the girds of his gigantic spirit, and she now made him happy in the consciousness of his destiny. During one of his morning walks, he thus describes this consciousness:--
“My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be; else sinning greatly, A dedicated spirit. On I walked In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.”
Subsequent portions of his vacations were spent in Wales, and Penrith, on the southern border of Cumberland. His mother’s relations resided at this latter town, and it was with them that his beloved sister Dorothy was placed when the poet’s family was broken up. It was the daughter of these relations also to whom the poet was married in after life. Her name was Mary Hutchinson; she was a schoolmate of the poet’s at Penrith, and an affectionate, intelligent, good wife she made him, during the forty-eight years of their wedded life. And now, during the holidays, these beautiful persons--viz. Dorothy and Mary, were his companions, as he roved amongst the scenery of Penrith.[E]” He mounted with them the Border Beacon, on the north-east of the town; and, on that eminence, now overgrown with fir trees, which intercept the view, but which was then free and open, and displayed a glorious panorama, he beheld the wide plain stretched far and near below, closed by the dark hills of Ullswater on the west, and by the dim ridges of Scotland on the north. The road from Penrith towards Appleby, on the south-east, passes, at about a mile’s distance, the romantic ruins of that
“Monastic castle mid tall trees, Low standing by the margin of the stream,”
where the river Lowther flows into the Emont, which descends from the lake of Ullswater through a beautiful and fertile valley, in which at the village of Sockbridge, some of Wordsworth’s ancestors lived, and where, at the church of Burton, some of them lie buried. That “monastic castle” is Brougham Castle, a noble and picturesque ruin. This was a favourite resort of the youthful poet and his sister.
“Those mouldering towers Have seen us side by side, when having clomb The darksome windings of a broken stair, And crept along a ridge of fractured wall, Not without trembling, we in safety looked Forth, through some Gothic window’s open space, And gather’d with one mind a rich reward From the far stretching landscape, by the light Of morning beautified, or purple eve.”
In aftertimes this castle was to be the subject of one of his noblest lyrical effusions. “The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle.”
“High in the breathless hall the minstrel sate, And Emont’s murmur mingled with the song.”
A little beyond the castle, by the roadside, stands the Countess’ Pillar, a record of filial affection, and Christian charity to which also he has paid a poetical tribute; and the woods of Lowther, at a short distance on the south, were ever associated in his memory with the delightful days which he passed in his vacations at Penrith, and were afterwards the scene of intellectual enjoyment in the society of the noble family whose name they bear.”
A remarkable man, and one connected by friendship with the poet, lived between Penrith and Lowther, at Yanwath. This was Mr. Thomas Wilkinson “a quaker, a poet, a professor of the topiarian art, a designer of walks, prospects, and pleasure grounds.
‘Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till’d his land, And shap’d these pleasant walks by Emont’s side,’
and the verses which follow, will hand down the name of Wilkinson to posterity, together with that of John Evelyn, and the Corycian old man of Virgil.”
Wordsworth’s last college vacation was spent in a pedestrian tour in France, along with his friend Robert Jones, of Plas-yn-llan, near Ruthin, in Denbighshire. De Quincy thinks that the poet took Jones along with him as a kind of protective body-guard, against the rascality of foreign landlords, who in those days were apt to play strange tricks upon travellers, presenting their extortionary bills with one hand, whilst they held a cudgel in the other, to enforce payment. De Quincy, however, is not quite sure of this, but conjectures the fact to have been so, because Wordsworth has only apostrophised him in one of his poems commencing
“I wonder how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face.”
Jones, however, seems to have been a scholar and gentleman; and Wordsworth frequently visited him, not only at his house, in Plas-yn-llan, but afterwards at Soulderne, near Deddington, in Oxfordshire, when Jones was made incumbent of that place. At all events, whatever sympathies--whether intellectual or those of friendship--united these college chums, it is certain that they commenced their tour together, and ended it with mutual satisfaction. They set out on the 13th of July, 1790, for Calais, _via_ Dover, “on the eve of the day when the king took an oath of fidelity to the new constitution.” The poet gives a highly coloured account of his wanderings through France, Switzerland, and Italy, in the “Prelude,” and a chart of the entire journey, commencing July 13th, at Calais, and ending September 29th, at a village three miles from Aix-la-Chapelle, is recorded in the “Memoirs.” There is likewise a letter addressed to his sister, dated September 6th, 1790, Kesill (a small village on the Lake of Constance), in which the poet describes his own feelings and reflections during this romantic journey. In this letter he says, “My spirits have been kept in a perpetual hurry of delight, by the almost uninterrupted succession of sublime and beautiful objects which have passed before my eyes during the past month.” He then describes the course they took from, the wonderful scenery of the Grande Chartreuse to Savoy and Geneva; from the Pays de Vaud side of the lake to Villeneuve, a small town seated at its head. “The lower part of the lake,” he says, “did not afford us a pleasure equal to what might have been expected from its celebrity. This was owing partly to its width, and partly to the weather, which was one of those hot, gleamy days, in which all distant objects are veiled in a species of bright obscurity. But the higher part of the lake made us ample amends; ’tis true we had some disagreeable weather,--but the banks of the water are infinitely more picturesque, and as it is much narrower, the landscape suffered proportionally less from that pale steam, which before almost entirely hid the opposite shore.” From Villeneuve they proceeded up the Rhone, to Martigny, where they left their bundles, and struck over the mountains to Chamouny, and visited the glaciers of Savoy.
“That very day, From a bare ridge, we also first beheld, Unveiled, the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved To have a soulless image on the eye, That had usurped upon a living thought That never more could be. The wondrous vale Of Chamouny stretched far below, and soon, With its dumb cataracts, and streams of ice, A motionless array of mighty waves, Five rivers, broad and vast, made rich amends, And reconciled us to realities; There small birds warble from the leafy trees, The eagle soars high in the element; There doth the reaper bind the yellow sheaf, The maiden spread the haycock in the sun; While Winter, like a well-tamed lion, walks, Descending from the mountain to make sport, Among the cottages, by beds of flowers.”
From Chamouny they returned to Martigny, and went from thence, along the Rhine, to Brig, where, quitting the Valais, they made for the Alps, which they crossed at Simplon, and visited the Lake Como, in Italy. Wordsworth’s description of the scenery round Como, is in his highest manner:--
“The banks,” he says, “of many of the Italian and Swiss lakes are so steep and rocky as not to admit of roads; that of Como, is partly of this character. A small footpath is all the communication by land between one village and another, on the side along which we passed for upwards of thirty miles. We entered upon this path about noon, and owing to the steepness of the banks, were soon unmolested by the sun, which illuminated the woods, rocks, and villages of the opposite shore. The lake is narrow, and the shadows of the mountains were early thrown across it. It was beautiful to watch them travelling up the side of the hills--for several hours, to remark one-half of a village covered with shade, and the other bright with the strongest sunshine. It was with regret that we passed every turn of this charming path, where every new picture was purchased by the loss of another, which we should never have been tired of gazing upon. The shores of the lake consist of steeps, covered with large sweeping woods of chestnut, spotted with villages, some clinging upon the summits of advancing rocks, and others, hiding themselves in their recesses. Nor was the surface of the lake less interesting than its shores; half of it glowing with the richest green and gold, the reflection of the illuminated wood and path, shaded with a soft blue tint. The picture was still further diversified by the number of sails which stole lazily by us, as we passed in the wood above them. After all this, we had the moon. It was impossible not to contrast that repose, that complacency of spirit, produced by these lovely scenes, with the sensations I had experienced two or three days before in passing the Alps. At the lake of Como my mind ran through a thousand dreams of happiness, which might be enjoyed upon its banks, if heightened by conversation, and the exercise of the social affections. Among the more awful scenes of the Alps, I had not a thought of man, or a single created being; my whole soul was turned to Him, who produced the terrible majesty before me.” From Como the tourists proceeded to the country of the Grisons; from thence to Switzerland, and the lakes Lucerne, Zurich, Constance, and the falls of the Rhine. At Basle, a town in Switzerland, upon the Rhine, they bought a boat, and floated down that glorious river, which, as Longfellow says, “rolls through his vineyards, like Bacchus, crowned and drunken,” as far as Cologne, returning home by Calais.
In passing the Alps, the travellers lost their way, and were benighted. They were afterwards indebted for their safety to a peasant; and in speaking of this event, the poet has the following fine passage in the “Prelude:”--
“The melancholy slackening that ensued Upon these tidings by the peasant given, Was soon dislodged. Downwards we hurried fast, And with the half-shaped road which we had missed, Entered a narrow chasm. The brook and road Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait, And with them did we journey several hours, At a slow pace. The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls,-- And in the narrow rent, at every turn Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside, As if a voice were in them; the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds, and region of the Heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness of the light-- Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree; Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types, and symbols of eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.”
This Swiss tour furnishes the materials for many autobiographical passages in the “Prelude,” which was written about ten years afterwards--and more immediately for the poem entitled “Descriptive Sketches,” written in 1791-2, and dedicated to Mr. Jones. These sketches, and another poem, called “The Evening Walk,” were published by Johnson, of Cambridge, in 1793. They are, according to De Quincy, who bought up the remainder, in 1805, as presents, and as future curiosities in literature--“forcibly picturesque, and the selection of circumstances is very original and felicitous.” I cannot speak of these poems at first hand, for they were never republished, and only a few extracts are included in the poet’s collected works. De Quincy, however--himself the greatest master of our language, and the highest literary judge in Britain--is good to speak after. “The Evening Walk” is dedicated to the poet’s sister, and was written during his school and college days. It is an ideal representation of the Lake scenery. The “Sketches” were composed chiefly in the poet’s wandering on the banks of the Loire, 1791-2. From the specimens I have seen of them, they appear to be founded, like the earlier pieces already quoted, upon the style of Pope, though they are clothed in high and dignified language, and glow with all the gorgeous colouring which poetry can command and apply. They are totally unlike his mature poems, and have a different artistic base and execution. It will be seen from them, however, that what is called the “meanness” and “poverty” of Wordsworth’s latest effusions, is not the result of incapacity, but of theoretic principle.
The “Sketches” fell into the hands of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1794, and were the means of introduction between these two great men, and of a life-enduring friendship.