But Wordsworth is too honest to pretend that sublime meditations were alone concerned in building up his stores of thought; skating in winter and the oar in summer, and the management of "the paper kite high among fleecy clouds" (p. 23), and occasionally the hired steed, possessed their legitimate attractions, and were keenly enjoyed: a game "too humble," he declares, "to be named in verse," but which we easily recognise by the mention of its crosses and cyphers, and an old pack of cards, not used in the spirit of a gambler, diversified the long evenings and formed real relaxations for a mind eager in enjoying the first dawnings of knowledge, and keenly sensitive to all outward forms of beauty. All earliest reminiscences are rushing on him while he writes, until the song "is loth to quit Those recollected hours that have the charm Of visionary things, those lovely forms A visible scene, on which the sun is shining!"-p. 29. His love of nature deepens, and becomes a feeling, a passion, with the intensity of which but few of us perhaps can fully sympathise. Still he perceives how impossible it is-and the admission is a refreshing one-to ascribe all the effects produced upon his mind to their several causes, "who shall parcel out Split like a province into round and square? Who that shall point as with a wand and say, Came from yon fountain ?" "-p. 41. Nevertheless, the poet continues the attempt in part, and lights upon a semi-metaphysical subject,— On which, with other points, we shall have a word to say presently. One memorial of a bosom friend of those youthful days, one more impassioned outburst upon the glories of nature and their influence, an apostrophe to Coleridge, and we find ourselves at the conclusion of the second book. Thus far have we been speaking chiefly with the poet, and almost as in his person. It is time to pause and assume our proper character of critics. Imperfect as must be the idea of these opening books imparted to such as have seen nothing more than the sketch here given, enough has, we trust, been done to enable us to suggest at least (though we cannot afford time to dwell upon) some interesting questions arising from this portion of the poem. And, firstly, have we not already some justification of the claim made for Wordsworth to be, despite his marked individuality of mind, the spokesman of many a one besides himself? Few of us indeed may have any bounteous share of that inventive and originating faculty, that union of powerful reason and affluent imagination which constitutes poetic genius, yet few likewise, among men endued with any thoughtfulness, but have been partly nurtured, though sometimes half unconsciously, with mental food like that here recounted by the poet, and none are there who have not some vocation, some work to do in the world (be it high or humble, limited or extensive) which was intended for them, and which if not sought and striven after, may entail perchance some loss on others, but the worst and greatest loss upon themselves. That which was true, in the highest and most awful sense, of our great Example, is true likewise in its degree of each one among men,1 more especially of those who profess themselves His followers. There remains a further question interwoven with these books. For the absence of direct reference to religion and religious influences in the poem we have already tried to prepare the reader. Beyond the circumstance, that the "Prelude" is an intellectual, and not a spiritual history, there exists probably some share of that reserve, which all good men do assuredly exercise in practice, in whatever light they may view the attempt to deduce from that practice a systematic doctrine on the subject. But in this work it has been already seen how, concomitantly with the negative feature of a lack of reference to religion, there appears the positive element of a somewhat excessive and dangerous love of Nature. For even Nature may be admired in such wise as to endanger the preservation of our obedience to the spirit of the first two precepts of the decalogue. The poet himself, in the very midst of one of his most rapturous descants upon this theme, expresses a momentary misgiving. "If this be error, and another faith Find easier access to the pious mind."-p. 50. Still, although we do believe his almost adoration of created things to be error, and to need reprehension, lest the very fault of one so good and great should more seriously mislead other minds, possessing fewer safeguards than his own, we have yet no 11 S. John xvii. 4; xviii. 37. wish to denounce the fault as being in Wordsworth's case of a very deep and heinous dye. Granted that this passion of eternal Nature occupied during his early years a somewhat higher place than it could justly claim,-granted that such feeling falls short of the very highest principle, yet compare it with the ruling passion in the minds of the majority of young men, gifted with superior abilities, (especially those of Wordsworth's age),-compare it not only with the love of the grosser forms of sin, but with the desire of wealth, power, station, of getting on, as it is called in the world, and surely it must stand at least as far above them, as it stands below the loftiest Christian motives of thought and action. If it ministered not to the poet all that he might have won of good, yet from how much of evil did it shield and save him! "If thou be one, whose heart the holy forms is elsewhere his own appeal to his reader, and it implies of a truth no vain nor idle vaunt. True taste for that which is beautiful and sublime is antagonistic to the love of sensuality; sometimes keeping the young quite safe from such dread snares, sometimes only diminishing the degree of their fall, but even then leaning aspirations after better things, which serve to keep alive the vital spark of the soul, and render its recovery more hopeful;-for while that lasts, all is not lost. The entire subject of secondary motives to what is good, their value and the lawfulness of some appeal to them, is indeed one which seems to us well deserving of a fuller treatment by Christian moralists than (so far as our knowledge extends) it has hitherto received. It could not be safely entrusted to casuits of that school, against which Pascal led the campaign in the last century. But it would seem that Holy Scripture does sanction some use of such motives, not merely, as has been remarked, by single passages, (such as S. Luke xiv. 8-11, Proverbs xxv. 21, 22, re-affirmed by S. Paul, Rom. xii. 20, 21) but likewise by its general appeals to man's dread of punishment, and wish for happiness, as reasons for serving his Maker, in addition to that highest, which to pure spirits like Angels may be the sole ground of duty, namely, love of the Creator, and desire to perform His will. Not now to pursue further this interesting topic, we must for the present assume that teachers of holy truth ought never to discourage secondary motives, except as a means of introducing primary ones in their place, and that where this latter process is for the time hopeless, they had better leave the less excellent springs of action undisturbed: provided of course that these latter are, so far as they go, at least in the right direction. And thus do we believe, that not only to himself, but to hundreds more, have Wordsworth's strains proved eminently serviceable in a moral and religious aspect, by helping to recall them from an in finitely lower dedication of their gifts of thought, and furnishing their minds with healthy nutriment at a season when still more salutary and ennobling food might have been offered them in vain. But to return to the "Prelude." Residence at Cambridge is the title of book the third. But perhaps in few respects has the substantial truth of the saying, Poeta nascitur non fit, been more fully exhibited than in the small Academic distinction for the most part achieved by our great poets, and the comparatively little influence which universities seem to have exercised on them, as compared with the eminence among the gens togata achieved, and the benefits experienced by men who in after life have become great statesmen, lawyers, divines, historians, or masters of mental and physical philosophy. Cambridge, it is said, and we believe with justice, has reared a richer harvest of poetry than her sister on the Isis; but which of her tuneful alumni ever expressed towards her institutions the gratitude freely lavished on her (as also upon Oxford) by foster children distinguished in other paths which led to greatness? Let us not be supposed on this account to join in the cavils against the universities, which an elegant songster of this century has raised on this score,' in a book of which, on far more serious grounds, he lived, we trust, bitterly to repent. It is a frivolous charge to advance against learned bodies, that they have not succeeded in a task, which nothing but natural genius and self-education can perform, the creation and culture of great poets. We are only stating a general law, which has but few exceptions, among which exceptions no man will have cause to mention the name of William Wordsworth. Of examinations and scholastic triumphs, say the poet, "Let others that know more speak as they know. And little won. Whatever other thoughts there occupied him, there existed yet more than all, a strangeness in the mind, A feeling that I was not for that hour, Such consciousness throws him back upon himself. to the tastes of a gownsman of the higher stamp, Not won "I looked for universal things; perused 1 Moore: Life of Lord Byron. We have marked in italics here, as elsewhere, lines by which we have been peculiarly struck: but certainly, if exception can anywhere be taken to the above assertion, it might be in the vicinity of Cambridge, where a minor poet sings1 of "Madingley, sole village from the plague Of ugliness, in that drear land, exempt." And here we have the earliest notice of a marked feature in Wordsworth's mind, well known to the students of his poetry, namely the extremely subjective manner in which he views and describes scenery. Instead of giving us, like Walter Scott for example, or Tennyson, the objects, as they appear to the outward eye, he might say of all his works, as here: "To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower, Or linked them to some feeling.”—p. 60. A process to a great extent original, and doubtless one of the secrets of Wordsworth's strength: yet sometimes also, we must think, a source of weakness, because forced and carried to excess, so as to leave a yearning for the gratification produced by mere pictorial power, without the adjunct of any inward emotion thence awakened. We subjoin an illustration of our meaning: "One burnish'd sheet of living gold, Lady of the Lake. "Some blue peaks in the distance rose, And white against the cold white sky, One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh, Chasing itself at its own wild will, And far thro' the marish green and still The tangled water-courses slept, Canto I. Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow." Tennyson's "Dying Swan." As a great philosophic poet, we certainly rank Wordsworth far higher than either Scott or Tennyson, nor would we deny that 1 Moultrie. |