CHAPTER XXIII WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850 "Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine In honored poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."-SHELLEY. "Whatever the world may think of me or my poetry, is now of little consequence; but one thing is a comfort of my old age, that none of my works written since the days of my early youth, contains a line which I should wish to blot out because it panders to the baser passions of our nature. This is a comfort to me; I can do no mischief by my works when I am gone."— WILLIam Wordsworth. WORDSWORTH was the great master of the Lake School, in which Coleridge and Southey were, after him, the most prominent members. The poets of that school took their subjects often from among the commonest things, and wrote their poems in the simplest style, choosing the ordinary speech of educated people as the vehicle of their thoughts. They probably went too far in their disdain for the conventional subjects and ornaments of poetry; but their principles were sound and healthful, and their labors made a deep and lasting impression on English thought. William Wordsworth was born on the 7th of April, 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, England, where his father was a law agent. Both father and mother died while the poet was yet a boy; and when his school education was considered to be sufficiently advanced, he was sent, in 1787, to Cambridge University. There, during the four years of his undergraduate course, he read many books, and wrote poetry; but he thought and felt the course of study to be narrow and irksome. Right welcome, therefore, were the va his delight to go on tours on the Continent. In 1790 he spent some time in Switzerland and France, although the tempest of Revolution was then raging with great fury. In the following year, having graduated, he went again to France, with a soul on fire in her cause. There he stayed for fifteen months; and there he might have perished by the guillotine had not his return to England, in 1792, changed the current of his life. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH His friends wished him to enter the Church; but he was born to be a poet and nothing else. The love of poetry was the grand passion of his heart, which grew and strengthened with the coming of more mature years. He made his first public appearance as a poet in 1793, when he published a modest volume entitled "Descriptive Sketches." This was followed in the same year by "An Evening Walk." These poems revealed to thoughtful minds the rise of a new star in the poetical heavens, which was destined to shed a brilliant luster on the land. The need of earning a livelihood had turned Wordsworth's thoughts to the study of law and to journalism. Before he had settled anything, a young friend died, in 1795, leaving him nine hundred pounds, with a pressing request that he would devote himself to poetry. That Wordsworth resolved to do. Settling down in Dorsetshire with his sister Dora, he wrote "Salisbury Plain," and a tragedy called "The Borderers," which he failed to get put on the stage. Soon afterward he made the acquaintance of Coleridge, and removed to Alfoxden, in order to be near his new friend. The result of this alliance was the publication of a joint volume of "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798, to which Wordsworth contributed twenty-two poems, and Coleridge one, "The Ancient Mariner." The vol ume was not a success. After a tour in Germany, Wordsworth settled with his sister in a cottage at Grasmere, in Cumberland, where he spent the next nine years. There he married Mary Hutchinson in 1802, the "phantom of delight"; and there he began his great philosophical poem, "The Excursion." His mind was relieved from anxiety about money matters by the payment to his family of a debt due to their father by the late Earl of Lonsdale. This settlement yielded eighteen hundred pounds each to Wordsworth and his sister. The young earl became the faithful friend of the poet, who afterward dedicated to him his masterpiece, "The Excursion." In 1813 Wordsworth removed to Rydal Mount, in sight of those beautiful lakes and under the shadow of those old hills which have become inseparably associated with his name. In that well-known "cottage-like building, almost hidden by a profusion of roses and ivy," from whose grassy lawn a silver gleam of Windermere could be caught, the poet spent the greater part of his long life. About the same time he received, through the influence of his friend, Lord Lonsdale, the office of Distributor of Stamps for the County of Westmoreland, with a salary of five hundred pounds, and no very heavy duties attached to it. In 1814 "The Excursion" was published. It brought its author very little money, and a good deal of abuse. This grand poem is only a fragment, a part of a vast moral epic to have been called "The Recluse," in which the poet intended to discuss the human soul in its deepest workings and its loftiest relations. Its original unpopularity must be ascribed in part to the absence of dramatic life and the want of human interest, and in part to the novelty of embodying metaphysical reasoning in blank verse. Even now, though Wordsworth's popularity has grown immensely, "The Excursion" is read by few. Yet it is not all a web of subtile reasoning, for there are rich studies from nature and from life scattered plentifully over its more thoughtful groundwork. The chief remaining works of this great writer are, "The White Doe of Rylstone," a tragic tale founded on the ruin of a Northern family in the Civil War; "Peter Bell," a remarkable specimen of the style of the Lake School, which he dedicated to Southey; "Sonnets on the River Duddon;" "The Wagoner," dedicated to Charles Lamb; "Memorials of a Tour on the Continent;" "Ecclesiastical Sonnets; "Yarrow Revisited;" and "The Prelude," a fragment of autobiography, describing the growth of a poet's mind. Wordsworth is best known on account of his minor poems, which display his genius in its simple beauty and unaffected grace. Such are "Ruth," a touching tale of love and madness; "We are Seven," a glimpse of that higher wisdom which the lips of childhood often utter; the classic "Laodamia," clear-lined and graceful as an antique cameo; and the lines on "Revisiting the Wye," which are so rich in the calmly eloquent philosophy that formed the groundwork of all he wrote. In 1842 Wordsworth, then past seventy, resigned his public office to his son, and received a pension of three hundred pounds a year. In 1843, on the death of his friend Southey, he succeeded to the laureateship. Seven years later he sank into the grave, dying a few days after completing his eightieth year, April 23, 1850. His remains were laid in the churchyard of Grasmere, beside those of his beloved daughter, who had been taken from him three years before. Wordsworth was a man of tall, ample, well-proportioned frame, a grave and tranquil manner, a Roman cast of appearance, and a Roman dignity and simplicity. De Quincey says that "his face made amends for greater defects of figure; it was the noblest for intellectual effects that I have ever seen. It was a face of a long order. The forehead was remarkable for its breadth and expansive development. His eyes were not bright, lustrous, or piercing; but I have seen them assume an appearance the most solemn and spiritual that is possible for the human eye to wear." |