Part 5
“There is in them,” says Coleridge, in his “Biographia,” a harshness and acerbity combined with words and images all aglow, which might recal those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of a hard and thorny rind or shell, within which the rich fruit is elaborating. The language is not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty and contorted, as by its own impatient strength; while the novelty and struggling crowd of images, acting in conjunction with the difficulties of the style, demand always a greater attention than poetry,--at all events, than descriptive poetry has a right to claim.”
Here is a specimen of this “gorgeous blossomy” style:
“Here half a village shines in gold arrayed, Bright as the moon; half hides itself in shade; While from amid the darkened roof, the spire, Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire: There all unshaded, blazing forests throw Rich golden verdure on the lake below. Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore, And steals into the shade the lazy oar; Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, And amorous music on the water dies.”
MORE TOURS, AND FRANCE.
In 1791 Wordsworth graduated, and left the University for London, where he spent four months; and in May of the same year he visited his friend Jones, in Wales, and made a tour through the northern parts of the Principality. A moonlight night on Snowdon is thus finely described in the “Prelude:--
“It was a close, warm, breezeless summer night, Wan, dull, and glaring with a dripping fog, Low hung, and thick, that covered all the sky; But undiscouraged, we began to climb The mountain side. The mist soon girt us round, And after ordinary traveller’s talk With our conductor, presently we sank Each into commerce with his private thoughts: Thus did we breast the ascent, and by myself Was nothing either seen or heard that checked Those musings, or diverted, save that once The shepherd’s lurcher, who, among the grass, Had to his joy unearthed a hedge-hog, teased His coiled-up prey, with barkings turbulent. This small adventure, for even such it seemed In that wild place, and at the dead of night, Being over and forgotten, on we wound In silence as before. With forehead bent Earthward, as if in opposition set Against an enemy, I panted up With eager pace, and no less eager thoughts. Thus might we wear a midnight hour away, Ascending at loose distance each from each, And I, as chance, the foremost of the band. When at my feet the ground appeared to brighten, And with a step or two, seemed brighter still; Nor was time given to ask or learn the cause, For instantly a light upon the turf Fell like a flash, and lo! as I looked up, The moon hung naked in a firmament Of azure without cloud, and at my feet Rested a silent sea of hoary mist. A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved All over this still ocean, and beyond Far, far beyond the solid vapours stretched In headlands, hills, and promontory shapes, Into the main Atlantic, that appeared To dwindle, and give up his majesty Usurped upon, far as the sight could reach. Not so the ethereal vault; encroachment none Was there, nor loss; only the inferior stars Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light In the clear presence of the full-orbed moon, Who, from her sovereign elevation gazed Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay All meek and silent, save that thro’ a rift-- Not distant from the shore whereon we stood, A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing place-- Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams Innumerable, roaring with one voice! Heard over earth and sea, and in that hour, For so it seemed, felt by the starry heaven.”
This is poetry; and with the exception of the Arab and Dromedary passage, is certainly the finest in the “Prelude.”
After the completion of this tour, Wordsworth was urged by his friends to take holy orders; but he was not of age for ordination, nor was his mind sufficiently imbued with love for the clerical functions at this time, even had he been of age, to have induced him to have assumed them. A Mr. Robinson offered him the curacy of Harwich, whilst he was in Wales, and the curacy was the high way to the Living. But from the above circumstances, and other motives of an active and political nature, the offer was declined, and his non-age was the apology. The truth is, that Wordsworth, like all the young, enthusiastic, and highly-gifted men of that time, was filled with the grand idea of liberty, and the hope of further enfranchisement from old forms of error and superstition, which France had raised upon the theatre of her soil. And accordingly, in November, 1791, he determined to cross the channel, and winter in Orleans, that he might watch the progress of events. He had at this time a very imperfect acquaintance with the French language, and set out on his journey alone. In that same month, France was in the convulsions of her first agony--her first birth-pangs of Revolution. “The National Assembly met; the party of Madame Roland and the Brissotins were in the ascendant; the war of La Vendee was raging; the army was in favour of a constitutional monarchy; Dumourier was Minister of the Exterior; a German army was hovering on the French frontier; popular sedition was fomented by the Girondists, in order to intimidate the government, and overawe the Crown. In the following year, 1792, the sanguinary epoch of the Revolution commenced; committees of public safety struck terror into the hearts of thousands; the king was thrown into the prison of the Temple; the massacres of September, perpetrated by Danton and his associates, to daunt the invading army and its adherents, deluged Paris with blood; the Convention was constituted; monarchy was abolished; a rupture ensued between the Gironde and the Montagne; Robespierre arose; Deism was dominant; the influence of Brissot and of the Girondists was on the decline; and in a short time they were about to fall victims to the power which they themselves had created.”[F]
Such is a summary of the events which transpired whilst Wordsworth was in France; and he has left us a record of the hopes, and wild exultations with which he hailed the Revolution, when it first boomed above the horizon of the morning.
“Before him shone a glorious world Fresh as a banner bright, unfurled To music suddenly; He looked upon the hills and plains, And seemed as if let loose from chains, To live at liberty.”
But, alas! the counterpart of the picture came as suddenly, not attended by the sweet breathings of a delicious music, but by the roar of mad and fiery throats, and the pageantry of blood and death. Before these dread events took place, and whilst hope was still high in the poet’s heart, he made acquaintance with some of the most distinguished personages on the republican side--and, amongst others, with General Beaupuis, whom he characterises as a philosopher, patriot, and soldier, and one of the noblest men in France. At length, he stands in the midst of the Revolution; quits Orleans for Blois, and, in 1792, arrived in Paris, only a month after the horrors and massacres of September. Republicanism had prevailed--and what a republic it proved! All law and order suspended, or dead--thousands of innocent and patriotic men condemned to death on the faintest suspicions--the ghastly skeleton of Atheism seated on the throne of God--and liberty strangled in her own cradle. “What a picture,” says De Quincy, “does Wordsworth give of the fury which then possessed the public mind; of the frenzy which shone in every eye, and through every gesture; of the stormy groups assembled at the Palais Royal, or the Tuilleries, with ‘hissing factionists,’ for ever in their centre? ‘hissing,’ from the self-baffling of their own madness, and incapable, from wrath, of speaking clearly; of fear already creeping over the manners of multitudes; of stealthy movements through back streets; plotting and counter-plotting in every family; feuds to extermination--dividing children of the same house for ever; scenes, such as those of the _Chapel Royal_ (now silenced on that public stage), repeating themselves daily amongst private friends; and to show the universality of this maniacal possession--that it was no narrow storm discharging its fury, by local concentration, upon a single city, but that it overspread the whole realm of France--a picture is given, wearing the same features of what passed daily at Orleans, Blois, and other towns. The citizens are described in the attitudes they assumed at the daily coming in of the post from Paris; the fierce sympathy is pourtrayed with which they echoed back the feelings in the capital; men of all parties had been there up to this time--aristocrats as well as democrats, and one, in particular, of the former class, is put forward as a representative of this class. This man, duly as the hour arrived that brought the Parisian newspapers, read, restlessly, of the tumults and insults amongst which the Royal Family now passed their days; of the decrees by which his own order were threatened or assailed; of the self-expatriation, now continually swelling in amount, as a measure of despair on the part of myriads, as well priests as gentry,--all this, and worse, he read in public; and still as he read--
‘his hand Haunted his sword, like an uneasy spot In his own body.’
“In short, as there never has been so strong a national convulsion diffused so widely, with equal truth, it may be asserted that no describer, so powerful, or idealizing, so magnificent in what he deals with, has ever been a living spectator of parallel scenes.”
The reaction of the atrocities and enormous crimes of the Revolution, upon Wordsworth’s mind, was terrible. But a short time before the Revolution commenced, we find him the espouser, the advocate of democracy; the enemy of monarchial forms of government, and consequently of _hereditary_ monarchy; the foe, likewise, of all class distinctions and privileges; for he regarded these as enemies to human progress and happiness.--After his return to England, he says, in one of his unpublished letters to the Bishop of Llandaff, “In my ardour to attain the goal, I do not forget the nature of the ground where the race is to be run. The destruction of those institutions which I condemn, appears to me _to be hastening on too rapidly. I abhor the very idea of a revolution._ I am a determined enemy to every species of violence. I see no connection, but what the obstinacy of pride and ignorance renders necessary, between reason and bonds. I deplore the miserable condition of the French, and think that we can only be guarded from the same scourge by the undaunted efforts of good men. I severely condemn all inflammatory addresses to the passions of men. I know that the multitude walk in darkness. I would put into each man’s hand a lanthern to guide him; not have him to set out on his journey depending for illumination on abortive flashes of lightning, the corruscations of transitory meteors.” These were the opinions of Wordsworth before, and at the commencement of the Revolution. As I said, however, the crimes into which the leaders of it subsequently plunged, and the mad passions which influenced them, completely revolutionised the mind of Wordsworth, and filled him with the darkest forebodings. He lost for a time, his generous faith in men, his hope of human liberty, and his belief in the perfection of human nature. He has given a fearful picture of his state of mind at this period, in the _Solitary_ of the “Excursion,” which the reader will do well to consult. The events of the Revolution, however, brought with them much wisdom to Wordsworth. They turned his thoughts inward, and compelled him to meditate upon man’s nature and destiny,--upon what it is possible for man to become; whilst they gave breadth, and depth, and expansion to his higher sympathies. From this time Wordsworth’s mission as a priest may be dated. He was no longer a mere dreamer, but was deeply impressed with the stern realities--with the wants and necessities of his time; and he resolved to devote himself to the service of humanity.
In De Quincy’s admirable “Lake Reminiscences,” in Tait’s Magazine, already alluded to, it is stated that by his connection with public men, Wordsworth had become an object of suspicion long before he left France, and was looked upon as an English spy. How little did these persons know of Wordsworth! At this very time his whole soul was in the cause for which the patriots were struggling; and his own noble heart was rendered still nobler, braver, and better, by his daily communings with the grand and sublime nature of his friend Beaupuis. To this man De Quincy pays the finest tribute of admiration and reverence which ever came from the pen of the historian, or the mouth of the orator. “This great season,” he says, of “public trial had searched men’s natures, revealed their real hearts; brought into life and action qualities of writers not suspected by their possessors; and had thrown man as in alternating states of society, each upon his own native resources, unaided by the old conventional forms of rank and birth. Beaupuis had shone to unusual advantage under this general trial. He had discovered, even to the philosophic eye of Wordsworth, a depth of benignity very unusual in a Frenchman; and not of local, contracted benignity, but of large, illimitable, apostolic devotion to the service of the poor and the oppressed;--a fact the more remarkable, as he had all the pretensions, in his own person, of high birth, and high rank; and, so far as he had any personal interest embarked in the struggle, should have allied himself to the aristocracy. But of selfishness in any shape, he had no vestiges; or if he had, it shewed itself in a slight tinge of vanity; yet no--it was not vanity, but a radiant quickness of sympathy with the eye which expressed admiring love--sole relic of the chivalrous devotion once limited to the service of the ladies. Now again he put on the garb of chivalry; it was a chivalry the noblest in the world, which opened his ear to the Pariah and the oppressed all over his misorganized country. A more apostolic fervour of holy zealotry in this great cause has not been seen since the days of Bartholomew Las Casas, who shewed the same excess of feeling in another direction. This sublime dedication of his being to a cause which, in his conception of it, extinguished all petty considerations for himself, and made him thenceforward a creature of the national will,--“a son of France,” in a more eminent and lofty sense than according to the heraldry of Europe--had extinguished his sensibility to the voice of worldly honour: ‘injuries,’ says Wordsworth--
----‘injuries Made him more gracious.’
And so utterly had he submitted his own will, or separate interests, to the transcendant voice of his country, which, in the main, he believed to be now speaking authentically for the first time since the foundation of Christendom, that, even against the motions of his own heart, he adopted the hatreds of the young Republic, growing cruel in his purposes towards the ancient oppressors, out of very excess of love for the oppressed; and against the voice of his own order, as well as in stern oblivion of every early friendship, he became the champion of democracy in the struggle everywhere commencing with prejudice, or feudal privileges. Nay, he went so far upon the line of this new crusade against the evils of the world, that he even accepted--with a conscientious defiance of his own inevitable homage to the erring spirit of loyalty embarked upon that cause--a commission in the Republican armies preparing to move against La Vendee; and finally in that cause, as commander-in-chief, he laid down his life.”
RETURNS TO ENGLAND.
Before this last event occurred, however, in the autumn of 1792, Wordsworth had left France for London, where he remained, more or less, for upwards of a year; and it was during this time, that he wrote the unpublished letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, respecting the political opinions of his lordship, contained in an appendix to one of his sermons, a portion of which letter has already been quoted. And although Wordsworth still cleaves to his democratic ideas, and announces them fearlessly to the bishop, he by no means sympathises, as will be seen, with the mad actors in the Revolution. On the contrary, he is pained to agony when he hears of the atrocities committed in the name of liberty; and when, in the year 1794, crossing the sands of Morecomb Bay, during one of his visits to Cumberland, he asked of a horseman who was passing, “_What news?_” and received for answer, that “_Robespierre had perished_,” “a passion seized him, a transport of almost epileptic fervour prompted him, as he stood alone upon the perilous waste of sands, to shout aloud anthems of thanksgiving, for this great vindication of Eternal justice.”
Wordsworth was shocked, however, when England, after the death of the king, on January 21st, 1793, declared war with France; and now resolved to withdraw his mind, as much as possible, from the disappointed hopes which politics had brought him as their harvest, and devote himself to poetry. Accordingly, he left London, and once more commenced his ramblings, and poetic labours. He passed a part of the summer of 1793 in the Isle of Wight, hoping to find repose there; but the booming of terrible cannon, every evening, at Portsmouth, and the consciousness that a fleet was equipping in that port against France, made him sad, and full of misgivings as to the result of the enterprise. He soon left the beautiful island, therefore, and wandered, on foot, all over the vast plain of Salisbury--visiting the old and melancholy temple of the ancient Druids--and passing thence by Bristol and Tintern to North Wales. It was during this tour, on Salisbury Plain, that he commenced his poem entitled “Guilt and Sorrow;” a production of considerable vigour and ability.
Having now, in 1793, completed his twenty-third year, his friends again urged him to receive holy orders; but, feeling that he was not _inwardly_ prepared for this important step, he again refused. The principle manifested in this refusal, is all the more worthy and memorable, because the poet had, at this time, no hearthstone, no place that he could call _his_. His time was employed, therefore, in travelling about, from place to place, and from friend to friend; now to good Robert Jones, in Wales,--the man whom De Quincy conjectures to have had no brains, and for which I owe the said De Quincy a grudge, notwithstanding that I think more highly of him than any other man now living in these realms,--and now to Mr. Rawson’s, of Millhouse, Halifax, who had married Wordsworth’s cousin, Miss Threlkeld, the lady who brought up Dorothy Wordsworth, the dearly beloved sister of the poet. In 1794, Wordsworth writes to his friend Mathews “that his sister is under the same roof with him; but that he is doing nothing, and knows not what will become of him.” All his path lay dark and gloomy before him. He was recommended to study the law, but he absolutely refused; and the Fates seemed to be sporting with him. His love for Dorothy grew in him every day, and it was in the year I am now speaking of, that she, having accompanied him by coach from Halifax to Kendal, _walked_ with him from the latter place to Grasmere--eighteen miles, and from thence to Keswick--fifteen miles further, where they put up at a farm-house, called Windybrow, and became thenceforth all-in-all to each other.
But the grand question for Wordsworth now to solve was, how he should earn his daily bread. His poetry brought no grist to the mill; and he had no friends to fall back on. In this condition, he wrote to his friend Mathews, who was connected with the London Press, to get him employment upon one of the daily or weekly papers, but without success. He projected, likewise, several literary journals, with the same bad fortune.
At last, however, Providence had ordained that a young man, named Raisley Calvert, should die, and leave the poet £900. Poor fellow! He seems to have been born for this special purpose. Wordsworth had known him previous to his illness, and the young man was so impressed with the genius and capabilities of the poet, that he bequeathed his little fortune to him, in order that he might have leisure to develope them. This was in 1795, whilst the negociations respecting the newspaper employment were still pending. It was at Mrs. Sowerby’s hostel, at the sign of the “Robin Hood,” in Penrith, where poor Calvert lay sick--where Wordsworth nursed and tended him,--and where also he died.
This bequest was of the last importance to Wordsworth, for it rescued him from poverty and distress, and enabled him to _live_.
All the avenues of the world were closed against him; for he was, by nature and education, unfitted for the tradesman’s service, or the clerk’s office, or the schoolman’s desk. He was a solitary dreamer; a lonely, meditative man, who thought golden thoughts, and built starry ladders to heaven, and did all sorts of strange things, similar in character, which unfortunately could not be sold as wares in the public market-place. And it was necessary, if Wordsworth was to be any thing, that he should continue this foolish habit of dreaming, of rhyming, and writing, into which he had so singularly fallen. For in her education of the poet, Nature--who is a wise teacher and developer--always adopts one regular method, although she frequently varies the process: and this method consists in impressing the mind with her manifold forms, colours, sounds, and works, that they may hereafter be reproduced in the glorious imagination of the poet, and shine, like rich mosaics, in the wisdom of his teaching. But for the friend alluded to, however, our poet could never have afforded to have gone through his initiation in the mysteries of poetry, but must have squatted down as a school-master in some suitable town (which De Quincy says he once thought of doing), and have turned professor of flogging Greek into pigmy humanities. Or, perhaps, the Poet of Rydal might have been little better than a _scribe-engro_, if I may coin a word from George Borrows’ “Romany,” and have ended his life as a political or literary hack, in some _Times’_ omnibus, or other vehicle of less note and more principle.
Fortunately for literature, and for men, as the readers of literature, Raisley Calvert was born and died--and the “Excursion” was written. I would not, however, be thought to speak ungenerously of poor Calvert:--God forbid!--but still I cannot help thinking about Providence, and His dark, inscrutable ways how He smites one frail child to the grave that another may have leisure to sing songs.--The poet never forgets the bounty and generosity of the poor dead heart, now hushed to silence, but raises this monument to his memory:
“Calvert! it must not be unheard by them Who may respect my name, that I to thee Owe many years of early liberty. This care was thine, when sickness did condemn Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem, That I, if frugal and severe, might stray Where’er I liked, and finally array My temples with the Muse’s diadem. Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth, If there be aught of pure, or good, or great, In my past verse, or shall be in the lays Of highest mood, which now I meditate, It gladdens me, O worthy short-lived youth, To think how much of this will be thy praise.”