Part 6

In a letter which Wordsworth wrote to his dear friend, Sir George Beaumont, Bart., in the year 1806, we learn the manner in which the £900, bequeathed to him by Calvert, were invested. “Upon the interest of the £900, £400 being laid out in annuity, with £200,” says Wordsworth, “deducted from the principal, and £100, a legacy to my sister, and £100 more, which the “Lyrical Ballads” have brought me, my sister and I lived seven years--nearly eight.” And it is certain that this sister, who never left him from this time through his long life, exercised a beautiful and benign influence over the poet, softened the asperities of his character, and cheered him in his despondency. He thanks God that his “beloved sister,”

----“in whose sight Those days were passed,”

maintained for him a saving intercourse with his true self. It was to her that he was indebted for many salutary admonitions; it was she who, in the midst of the clashing politics and noisy-throated revolutions of Europe, preserved him “still a poet,” and made “him seek beneath that name, and that alone, his office upon earth.”

In 1795, Wordsworth, accompanied by his sister, left Cumberland, for Racedown Lodge, near Cremkerne, in Dorsetshire. The country was delightful, and the house pleasantly situated, with a garden attached to it. They passed their time in reading, gardening, writing, and in translating Ariosto, and other Italian poets. We also find the poet making imitations of Juvenal’s Satires, copies of which he sent to his friend Wrangham, with a view to joint publication. They were never printed, however; and Wordsworth, in 1805, when he was urged by the same friend to allow them to appear, repudiated them altogether, and regretted that he had spent so much time in their composition, declaring that he had come to a “fixed resolution to steer clear,” now and for ever, of all personal satire. During this same year of ’95, he finished his poem on “Guilt and Sorrow,” and began his tragedy of “The Borderers,” which was completed before the close of the following year. It is a cumbrous affair, and will not act; but it contains some fine passages. It was first published in 1842, and was offered to Mr. Harris, the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, through Mr. Knight, the actor, and was, as Wordsworth confesses, “_judiciously_ returned, as not calculated for the stage.”

In the year 1797, Coleridge came to Racedown. Miss Wordsworth describes him in one of her letters as “a wonderful man;” his conversation teeming with “soul, mind, and spirit,”--three things very nearly related to each other, one would think. He is benevolent, too, good-tempered, and cheerful, like her dear brother William, and “interests himself much about every little trifle.” At first she thought him very plain--that is for about “three minutes” for he is “pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth; longish, loose growing, half-curling, rough black hair.” But he no sooner began to talk than she forgot his want of comeliness, his bad teeth, and wide mouth, and was entranced by the magic of his eloquence. “His eye,” she adds, “is large and full, not very dark, but grey; such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of the ‘poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling,’ than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark eye-brows, and an overhanging forehead.”

Such was the apparition of Coleridge, in Wordsworth’s house at Racedown. The poet himself was delighted with his visitor, and they were soon in deep conversation about literature, and their own several adventures, and proposed argosies on that great and shoreless deep.--Wordsworth read a new poem, which he had just written, called the “Ruined Cottage,”--and Coleridge praised it highly. Then they sat down to tea, and presently the latter “repeated two acts and a half of his tragedy, ‘Osoris.’”

The next morning, the “Borderers” was read, and passages from “twelve hundred lines of blank verse,--superior,” says Coleridge, in a letter to a friend, “I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our language which in any way resembles it.” “I speak with heart-felt sincerity, and I think combined judgment, when I tell you,” he elsewhere writes, “that I feel a little man by his side.”

Coleridge came several times to see his big man, after this; and the two poets grew so much attached to each other, and found such profitable advantages in each other’s conversation and literary judgments, that they resolved to dwell nearer to each other. Accordingly Wordsworth and his sister went to live at Alfoxden, near Stowey, where Coleridge was residing. This was in July, 1797,--and he describes his sojourn there as a very “pleasant and productive time of his life.” The house which Wordsworth occupied belonged to Mr. St. Aubyn, who was a minor,--and the condition of occupancy seems to have been, that the poet should keep the house in repair.

In one of Miss Wordsworth’s letters, dated August 14, 1797, she speaks with great enthusiasm and delight, both of the house and the country. “Here we are,” she says, “in a large mansion, in a large park, with seventy head of deer around us.... Sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted, brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland, villages so romantic, &c. The woods are as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; it has the character of the less grand part of the neighbourhood of the Lakes.” She then describes their “favourite parlour,” which, like that of Racedown, looks into the garden. They were three miles from Stowey, and only two from the sea. Look which way they would, their eyes were filled with beauty: smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with hedges, but scattered over with trees. The hills were covered with bilberries, or oak woods. They could walk for miles over the hill-tops, which was quite smooth, without rocks.

And in this beautiful locality did the poet reside for about twelve months, composing during that time, all the poems contained in the first edition of the “Lyrical Ballads,” with the exception of the “Female Vagrant.” These _Ballads_ are in many ways remarkable: in the first place, because they were the joint production of men who subsequently proved themselves to be two of our greatest poets; and, secondly, because they brought these men prominently before the eyes of the public and of the critical world. The Ballads, as they were called, were likewise of a very high order; and it is not too much to say, that such a book of poems as this had not been published since the Augustan era of our literature, Milton’s alone excepted, if Milton may not be said to have closed that era. Here first appeared the “Ancient Mariner,” and the “Nightingale,” by Coleridge; “Tintern Abbey,” and “Lines left under a Yew-tree Seat,” by Wordsworth; four poems which of themselves were sufficient to float half a dozen volumes. It is true that the “Ancient Mariner,” the “_Old Navigator_,” as Coleridge loved to call it, is what may be styled a _made-up_ poem--a wild, unearthly patchwork of the imagination,--but it contains, nevertheless, such passages as it would be rare to match outside those seas. It is full, too, of all kinds of music--sweet, wild, natural, and supernatural--now grand, like the rolling bass of some mighty organ, and now, ærial, celestial; catching up the reader into a strange heaven, and filling him with an unspeakable ecstacy. Wonderful power is likewise manifested in the structure of the tale; and one is amazed how so slender an incident, as that upon which the tale is founded, could be worked out so successfully, and with such deep and thrilling interest. The “Nightingale,” however, is quite a different poem, and is redolent of nature. “Tintern Abbey,” and “Lines left under a Yew-tree Seat,” are in Wordsworth’s best style, and have never been surpassed by him, in the fullest maturity of his genius.

The idea of the “Ballads” originated in the following circumstances: Wordsworth and his sister, accompanied by Coleridge, commenced a pedestrian tour, in November 1797, to Linton, and the Valley of Stones, near it. The whole party, however, were so poor that they could ill afford the expense of the journey, and the two poets resolved to write a poem for the “New Monthly Magazine,” for which they hoped to get £5, and thus balance the outlay which they required for the tour. The course of the friends lay along the Quartock Hills, towards Watchet; and here it was that Coleridge planned his “Old Navigator,” the base of it being, as he said, a dream of Cruikshanks’. Wordsworth and Coleridge were to have written this poem conjointly, but the great dissimilarity of their manner soon compelled them to abandon this idea, and Coleridge was left to complete the work by himself. Wordsworth suggested, however, as some crime was to be committed by the Mariner, which was to bring upon him a spectral persecution in his wanderings, as the consequence of that crime, that he should be represented as having killed an Albatross on entering the South-Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions should follow him and avenge the crime. The navigation of the ship by the dead men was also a suggestion of Wordsworth’s. As Coleridge proceeded with his work, it was very soon found that it would be too long for the Magazine, and they began to think of issuing it as a volume, along with other poems, by both bards. These poems were to be founded “on supernatural subjects, taken from common life, but to be looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium.” Wordsworth’s share in the poetical contributions to this volume, besides those already mentioned were, amongst others, “The Idiot Boy,” “Her Eyes are Wild,” “We are Seven,” and “The Thorn.” The last verse of “We are Seven,” was composed first, and Coleridge threw off, impromptu, the first verse of the poem, whilst the little party were sitting down to tea, in the pretty little parlour at Alfoxden, which looked out into the garden. Speaking of the “Idiot Boy,” Wordsworth says:--“The last stanza, ‘The cocks did crow, and moon did shine so cold,’ was the production of the whole. The words were reported to me by my dear friend Thomas Poole; but I have since heard the same reported of other idiots. Let me add, that this long poem was composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost extempore; not a word, I believe, being corrected, though one stanza was omitted. I mention this in gratitude to those happy moments, for in truth I never wrote anything with so much glee.”

It was in 1798 that the Lines to Tintern Abbey were written. The poet and his sister had been staying for a week with Mr. Cottle, of Bristol, visiting Coleridge by the way, who had a little time before resigned his ministerial engagement with a Unitarian congregation at Bristol, and was now in receipt of an annuity of £150, given to him by the magnificent generosity of “Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood.” From Mr. Cottle’s they proceeded to the Banks of the Wye, crossed the Severn ferry, and walked ten miles further to Tintern Abbey, a very beautiful ruin on the Wye. They proceeded, next morning, along the river, through Monmouth, to Goderich Castle, returning to Tintern in a boat, and from thence in a small vessel back again to Bristol.

“The Wye,” says Wordsworth, “is a stately and majestic river, from its width and depth, but never slow and sluggish--you can always hear its murmur. It travels through a woody country, now varied with cottages and green meadows, and now with huge and fantastic rocks.... No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this [viz., “Tintern Abbey:”]--I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol, in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not a line of it was uttered, and not any part of it written down, till I reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after in the “Lyrical Ballads.”

“Peter Bell” was likewise written about this time; and the following interesting particulars, respecting its origin, are furnished by the poet:

“This tale was founded upon an anecdote which I read in a newspaper, of an ass being found hanging his head over a canal, in a wretched posture. Upon examination, a dead body was found in the water, and proved to be the body of its master. In the woods of Alfoxden, I used to take great delight in noticing the habits, tricks, and physiognomy of asses; and it was here, no doubt, that I was put upon writing the Poem of ‘Peter Bell,’ out of liking for the creature that is so often dreadfully abused. The countenance, gait, and figure of Peter were taken from a wild rover with whom I walked from Builth, on the river Wye, downwards, nearly as far as the town of Hay. He told me strange stories. It has always been a pleasure to me through life, to catch at every opportunity that has occurred in my rambles, of being acquainted with this class of people. The number of Peter’s wives was taken from the trespasses in this way of a lawless creature who lived in the county of Durham, and used to be attended by many women, sometimes not less than half a dozen, as disorderly as himself; and a story went in the county, that he had been heard to say, whilst they were quarrelling: “Why can’t you be quiet?--there’s none so many of you.’ Benoni, or the child of sorrow, I knew when I was a school-boy. His mother had been deserted by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, she herself being a gentlewoman by birth. The circumstances of her story were told me by my dear old dame, Ann Tyson, who was her confidante. The lady died broken-hearted. The crescent moon, which makes such a figure in the prologue, assumed this character one evening, while I was watching its beauty, in front of Alfoxden House. I intended this poem for the volume before spoken of; but it was not published for more than twenty years afterwards. The worship of the Methodists, or Ranters, is often heard during the stillness of the summer evening, in the country, with affecting accompaniments of moral beauty. In both the psalmody and voice of the preacher there is not unfrequently much solemnity, likely to impress the feelings of the rudest characters, under favourable circumstances.”

It was during Wordsworth’s residence in the South, in 1794, that a circumstance occurred, which has not been alluded to before in these memoirs, but which is interesting in itself, and still more so from the fact that it was the means of making Wordsworth acquainted with Coleridge, Southey, Robert Lovell, and George Burnet. I will relate this circumstance in the language of a writer for Chambers’ Papers for the People, and quote still further passages from the same tract, illustrative of the life of Wordsworth and his friends, at this time.[G]

The circumstance was as follows: Coleridge, Southey, Lovell, and Burnet “came down to Bristol, as the most convenient part from which they could embark for the wild banks of the Susquehana. On that remote river they were to found a Platonic Republic, where everything was to be in common, and from which vice and selfishness were to be for ever excluded. These ardent and intellectual adventurers had made elaborate calculations how long it would take them to procure the necessaries of life, and to build their barns, and how they should spend their leisure in what Coleridge sung as

‘Freedom’s undivided dell, Where toil and health with mellowed love shall dwell; Far from folly, far from men, In the rude romantic glen.’

Yet, it is supposed, they knew nothing of the Susquehana more than of any other American river, except that its name was musical and sonorous; and far from having anything wherewith to convey themselves and their moveables across the Atlantic, they had to borrow five pounds to make up their lodging bill. This sum was advanced them, with unalloyed pleasure, by Mr. Cottle, a bookseller in the town, a benevolent and worthy man, who seems almost to have been located there for no other purpose than to introduce the three chief Lake Poets to the world.

“The bubble of the Susquehana, or, as it was called, Pantisocracy, was exploded, by Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, all getting into the bonds of matrimony, which have a miraculous virtue in testing the solidity of schemes of life. They married three sisters of the name of Fricker. It was the perpetual restlessness of Coleridge which first brought him and his companions into contact with Wordsworth. The former wonderful man, in capabilities perhaps the mightiest of that illustrious group, and in his mental constitution one of the most puzzling psychological phenomena which human nature has ever presented, was the originator of the Pantisocratic proposal. He was a man of luxurious imagination, deep emotiveness, various learning, and an exquisite nervous susceptibility. In 1795, he was making excursions through the lovely and tranquil scenery of Somersetshire, when he became acquainted with a most worthy and excellent man, Mr. Poole, resident in the quiet village of Stowey. On his return to Bristol, where he was married, he still exhibited his uneasiness. First he removed to his immortal rose-bound cottage at Clevedon, then back to the pent-up houses at Redcliff Hill, and from these again to the more open situation of Kingsdown. Nothing would then satisfy him but he must set up a serial, to be called ‘The Watchman;’ and his own sketches of his travelling canvass for that periodical, might take rank with some chapters of Don Quixote. Take, for instance, this picture of a great patriot at Birmingham, to whom he applies for his magnificent patronage:--He was ‘a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall, dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry poker! Oh, that face!--I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair, pinguinitescent, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of his thin, gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a scorched aftermath from a last week’s shaving. His coat-collar behind, in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse yet glib cordage which I suppose he called his hair, and which, with a bend inward at the nape of the neck--the only approach to flexure in his whole figure--slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance, lank, dark, very hard, and with strong, perpendicular furrows--gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a gridiron,--all soot, grease, and iron.’ This thoroughbred lover of liberty, who had proved that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in the ‘Revelations’ that spake as a dragon, nevertheless declined to take ‘The Watchman’; and in short, after a disastrous career, that serial died a natural death. The disappointed editor took refuge, for a brief season, with Mr. Poole, at Stowey, and there, for the first time, he met Wordsworth, who then resided about twenty miles off, at Racedown, in Dorsetshire.

“Coleridge returned for a short time to Bristol, but in January, 1797, he removed to Stowey, where he rented a small cottage. This must have been a pleasant episode in the lives of the gifted individuals whom it brought together in that sweet village. Wordsworth, who was now twenty-seven, had come with his sister to Alfoxden, which was within two miles of Stowey. Charles Lloyd, a young man of most sensitive and graceful mind, and of great poetical susceptibility, resided in the family with Coleridge. Charles Lamb, then in the spring-time of his life, was also a frequent inmate; and often afterwards, under the cloud which lowered over his noble devotedness in London, his fancy wandered back to that happy valley.--Why, says he to Charles Lloyd, who unexpectedly looked in upon him in the great Babylon:

‘Why seeks my Lloyd the stranger out? What offering does the stranger bring Of social scenes, home-bred delights, That him in aught compensate may For Stowey’s pleasant winter nights, For loves and friendships far away?’

The Pantisocratist, George Burnet, was also a visitor. Mrs. Coleridge herself had a poetical taste, and there is one very graceful piece of hers written on the receipt of a thimble from her kind friend Mr. Cottle. Just such a thimble, sings Sarah Coleridge--

‘Just such a one, _mon cher ami_ (The finger-shield of industry), The inventive gods, I deem, to Pallas gave, What time the vain Arachne, madly brave, Challenged the blue-eyed virgin of the sky A duel in embroidered work to try. And hence the thimbled finger of grave Pallas To the erring needle’s point was more than callous. But, ah! the poor Arachne! she, unarmed, Blundering through hasty eagerness, alarmed With all a rival’s hopes, a mortal’s fears, Still missed the stitch, and stained the web with tears.’